Sketches of Reforms and Reformers, of Great Britain and Ireland Part 15

CHAPTER XXIX.

Ireland, her Condition and Prospects--The Causes of her Misery--The Remedies for the Evils which afflict her.

The "Irish Question" is environed with peculiar difficulties. An American might shrink from discussing what has puzzled and baffled Irishmen on both sides of the Atlantic.

The poetic, fancy view of Ireland is a mountain nymph, with flowing garments, wavy ringlets, glowing countenance, enrapt eye, and Venus-like fingers, thrilling the strings of a harp. The prosaic, real view is more like a mother, seated on the mud floor of a bog cabin, clad in rags, with disheveled hair, pinched features, eyes too hot and dry for tears, and skinny fingers, dividing a rotten potato amongst a brood of famis.h.i.+ng children. Thanks to some of her orators, they have ceased to rave in fine frenzy about "the first flower of the earth, and the first gem of the sea." All friends of Ireland, native and alien, should stop ranting about "flowers," "gems," "Emerald Isles," "Tara's Halls," "St.

Patrick," and such rhapsodies, and come down to the things of time and sense. Potatoes, as a standing dish, may grow stale; but to a starving people they are "roast beef and two dollars a day," compared with a surfeit of antiquated heroics. And yet, take up the report of a meeting for the relief of Ireland, whether held in Dublin or Was.h.i.+ngton, and half of it will be filled with such s.h.i.+ning sc.u.m. Orators and writers addicted to such whims should be indicted for murdering the Queen's Irish.

The prime cause of Ireland's misery is the oppressive rule of England.

For centuries she has been governed by and for the alien few, and not by and for the native many. England first wantonly subdued Ireland; then planted there an alien race and a rival church, to hate, worry, and plunder her; then, by the Catholic Penal Code, steeped her in ignorance and debas.e.m.e.nt; and finally, by bribery, and against the national will, abolished her Parliament, destroyed her nationality, and reduced her to the condition of a dependent province. Since the days of Cromwell, the ruling English have absorbed the wealth of the country, and carried it away to be expended in other lands. They have annually eaten out the substance of the people, and fled, leaving misery and poverty behind, and casting reproach upon the national character, and offering insult to the national spirit.

Since the Union, the legislation of the British Parliament, in respect to Ireland, has been an almost unbroken series of insults and injuries.

I will mention two instances; and they are the very two that England always cites as proofs of her liberality. In 1828-9, the people of Ireland demanded Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation. The boon was granted; but it was accompanied by the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the whole body of forty-s.h.i.+lling freeholders; thus, in revenge, striking from the electoral body two hundred thousand names, which had aided in wringing the gift from the oppressor. Emanc.i.p.ation, granted on such ungracious terms, exasperated rather than appeased the Irish people. And in that other day, when England felt peculiarly liberal, and was ready to "give everything to everybody," she made Ireland an exception. The Reform bill made an odious distinction in the case of Ireland. England and Wales, with a population of about fourteen millions, were allowed 500 members of the House of Commons. Ireland, with a population of about eight millions, was allowed but 105. Bearing the same ratio as England, Ireland should have had 290. Scotland has two millions four hundred thousand inhabitants, and 53 members. In the same proportion, Ireland would have been ent.i.tled to 177. Thus, of the two most benign instances of English legislation over Ireland, during this century, one was accompanied by a positive outrage; the other by a most unjust disparagement.

The Established Church of England, planted by force in Ireland, has done little for it, except to unjustly tax and cruelly treat those who dissent from its ritual, and to foment and aggravate religious feuds. Of the eight millions of Ireland, six and a half are Catholics. Of the remaining one and a half million, not half a million belong to the Establishment. And yet, to take care of this half million, the Establishment has had 4 archbishops, 18 bishops, and 2,000 clergy--drawing annually from this potato-eating people 1,500,000; while the income of the clergy of the seven and a half millions of all denominations has not exceeded 500,000. The whole income of the Irish Establishment, from all sources of revenue, is nearly 2,000,000 annually. An attempt was once made to modify this enormous abuse. After four years of contention in Parliament, during which two ministries were turned out, the bill was shorn of its effective features, in order to pacify the Tory peers, and pa.s.sed, still leaving the revenues to the Church of England, and the people to the Church of Rome.

But the English Church is only a blotch. The great sore is the Irish landlord system. The misgovernment of the country has conspired with landlordism to drive out capital, and destroy commerce, trade, mining, fis.h.i.+ng, and manufacturing, thus throwing the ma.s.s of the population upon the land for subsistence. This has increased compet.i.tion for the hire of the soil to an extent unknown in any other country, and has stimulated a grinding scale of rents, which has descended from the landlords to the middlemen, and from them to the small farmers, and from them to the poor laborers, growing more extortionate as it goes down, till the soil has been cut into minute pieces, which are held by short and uncertain tenures, precluding permanent improvements, driving the ma.s.s of the people to the raising of potatoes, because they are cheap in the cultivation, and prolific in the crop, and yearly turning thousands out to beg, starve, rob, die of disease, or shoot their lessors at the expiration of their terms. One-third of the people of Ireland live (if they live at all) on potatoes, and the addition of a sprinkling of salt is a rare luxury. Two and a half millions are beggars, and Mr. O'Connell estimated the paupers in 1846-7 (the years of famine) at four millions.

The main reliance of nearly half the nation, for food, is potatoes. G.o.d have mercy on them when that source fails!

With many n.o.ble exceptions, the large landed proprietors of Ireland are heartless, reckless, thriftless men. Nearly one-third of the country is a bog, three-fourths of which might be drained. Nearly five millions of acres, capable of cultivation, lie waste. An acre of potato land rents for from 5 to 10 per annum. Labor is abundant at the lowest rates. Yet these landlords have done little toward draining these bogs, enclosing these wastes, and improving their estates. Grant that for the four or five past years of pinching famine, attended with loss of rents, they have been unable to make improvements. It was just so before these years came, and has been so time out of mind. These landlords are generally _absentee_ proprietors, who feel no abiding interest in the prosperity of a soil which they forage but do not inhabit, which they own but do not occupy. Half of the very money voted to them in 1846-7, by Parliament, for the improvement of Ireland, they spent the next season at Paris, Florence, and Baden-Baden, there to swell the pomp of British aristocracy, while millions at home, whom it was intended to a.s.sist, ate garbage that an English pig would hardly nose over, or starved in hovels that the royal stag-hounds would not skulk into from a pelting storm.

The energies of the ma.s.ses in Ireland being absorbed in a hand-to-mouth struggle for existence, they have neither time nor means to stimulate the industry of the country by establis.h.i.+ng manufactories, opening mines, carrying on fisheries, increasing trade, laying out roads, &c., nor to elevate and expand the national mind by founding common schools and seminaries of learning. The wealthy landlords and capitalists--the Besboroughs, the Lansdownes, the Devons, the Fitzwilliams, the Hertfords--who might do all this, will not; but, looking on from afar, cry to their stewards and agents, "Give! Give! Give!"

The result of this complicated system of bad government and bad management is painfully obvious. Ireland is nigh unto death of a chronic disease of famine, pestilence, agitation, despair, and insurrection.

And what is England's remedial process for this disease in one of her members? As a panacea for the miseries that she herself has to a great extent inflicted, England, at stated periods, administers to her victim-patient coercion bills and cold steel, blotching her surface with police stations and military camps. Sending her tax-gatherers instead of schoolmasters, dotting her soil with cathedrals instead of workshops, sowing her fields with gunpowder instead of grain, England affects to wonder that the crop should be famine and faction, misery and murder, improvidence and insurrection; and when the harvest is dead ripe, she sends over police and soldiery, armed with coercion bills and cannon b.a.l.l.s, to cut and gather it in.

Sometimes England varies the prescription, or makes different applications to various parts of the body politic. Sir Robert Peel, for instance, prescribes bullets for Repealers, and guineas to a cloister of priests at Maynooth, to stop the mouths of the latter and the wind of the former, and the clamor of both. Then comes Lord John Russell with the Whig nostrum--money to carry the landlords to Baden, and a steamer to transport Mitch.e.l.l to Bermuda--projects of railways to furnish hard work for laborers and fat jobs for contractors--a patch or two on a worn-out and inefficient poor-law, and packed juries for O'Brien and Meagher. So these Tory and Whig quacks administer--inflicting wounds and doling out palliatives--never probing the ulcer, but striving to skim over its surface--while there stands John Bull, robbing the naked and half-dead patient, at the same time affecting to do penance, by paying the doctors, and giving alms to the victim.

What, then, is the remedy for these evils? Having been very imperfect in detailing their causes, I must be equally imperfect in pointing out remedies. Looking on from afar, it seems to me that some of the things that Ireland needs are these:

And first, as to a few temporary measures. Ireland needs a just and beneficent poor law. The present law is a mockery and a shame. The principle of the law should be, that every man who wishes for work shall have it, or be fed by the poor rates. Government owes bread or work to all its subjects. The rates should be mainly laid on the land, where _it_ is able to pay them, even if it be by sale under the hammer. This done, those landlords who apply to Parliament for money on which to live in improvidence, and in many instances in extravagance, would feel the pressure, awake to a consciousness of their condition, and, knowing that if they did not provide the laboring poor with work, they must furnish them with food, would either abandon their estates, or commence draining and planting the bogs and wastes. In either case, the laborer, for whose use G.o.d said, "Let the dry land appear!" would be restored to his inheritance.

The ma.s.s cannot wait for the meager relief of poor laws. Tens of thousands must emigrate by their own means or Government aid. The country is too densely populated for the present state of things.

America should open wide her gates, to welcome the sons and brothers of those who have fought our battles, dug our ca.n.a.ls, and built our railways, and, pointing to the unoccupied plains that stretch from the great lakes to Astoria, from the Rocky Mountains to San Francisco, say, "Go in and possess the land."

a.s.sociations should be formed, of true-hearted Irishmen, to reclaim the wastes, develop the resources, and revive the industry of the country--thus giving scope to capital and employment to labor.

The middle and lower cla.s.ses should be more provident and careful, less wasteful and indolent, using thriftily the little they have, and adding to the stock by economy and enterprise. After traveling through half the island, I never was able to understand why a middling-man should waste his substance in riotous living, or a poor man should live in a hovel dirtier than a pig-sty, when pure water was abundant; or year after year let the rain drive through his thatched roof, when straw was rotting around him, merely because England would not grant a repeal of the Union.

The ignorant should, of course, be educated. But general education, it is to be feared, is a long way off. In the mean time, the better informed should instruct the people in their social duties, as well as their political rights, while such as are not utterly debased should exhibit more personal independence in opinion and action, do less of their thinking by proxy, show less subserviency to priests of all sorts, and less tolerance of demagogues of every shade of party.

But these things are only provisional remedies--mere clippings of the branches. The axe should be hurled at the root of the evil.

The Established Church should be driven out, and, if need be, by a whip of small cords, such as was applied to those money-changers in the Temple, who had set up their _desks_ where they had no business to be.

This done, complete ecclesiastical independence, both of England and of Rome, both of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope of St. Peter's, should be declared, bringing with it less servility among the clergy, less abjectness among the people, less gathering in of parochial t.i.thes, and a more liberal diffusion of Christian charity. In a word, less "religion," and more Christianity.

The landlord system should be broken up; all taints of feudalism abolished; primogeniture and entail destroyed; and traffic in the soil be made as free as in the potatoes it yields. "Ireland for the Irish,"

was the watchword of Daniel O'Connell; and when translated "The Land of Ireland for the People of Ireland," it is just and equitable.

"Absenteeism" should be no longer tolerated. To strip foreign landlords of soil that they will neither cultivate nor sell, is justifiable on every principle of property and Christianity. Every farm in America is held by a t.i.tle based on the doctrine that land is given to man to be occupied and cultivated, not wandered over and made a waste. We displaced the aboriginal hunters on this principle, and inclosed farms and built cities. The means used to effect this were often nefarious; the object sought was righteous. The landlords of Ireland, in regard to one-third of the soil, neither cultivate nor occupy it; and such is the dire necessity of the case, that the Government would be justified in taking the land from every such owner, and giving it to the people, so that it might bring forth its natural increase of bread to the sower.

Every man owning land in Ireland, who prefers to live in England, and habitually lets the soil lie waste, or, being cultivated, draws the substance from it to be expended abroad in extravagance, should be compelled to restore it to the people of Ireland, to be used, not for purposes of luxury, but to save the dwellers thereon from starvation.

This is not confiscation, but restoration. Famine-stricken Ireland, and not full-fed English aristocracy, is the owner of the soil of Ireland.

The great ma.s.s of these alien proprietors hold their lands by t.i.tles derived from wholesale confiscation. Cromwell and other English rulers took them by force from the native, and gave them to the foreigner.

Force, if need be, should compel their restoration. Property in the soil has its duties to discharge, as well as its rights to enjoy; and if it willfully refuse to discharge the former, then it should not be allowed to enjoy the latter. The people of Ireland have a G.o.d-given right to live upon and by the soil on which His Providence has planted their feet. Coercion bills _may_ be necessary for Ireland. If they be, they should be impartially enforced on both landlords and tenants, compelling each to discharge their respective duties. If the owners of Irish estates are incapable of learning that property has its obligations as well as its immunities, they should be made to give place to more tractable scholars.

And finally: more than all this, and including it all, IRELAND SHOULD GOVERN IRELAND. This is the tender point in this much vexed and most vexatious "Irish Question." England has never brought her unbiased judgment to its investigation. The truth simply is, John Bull dare not look it steadily in the face. He knows he has no more right to govern Ireland than he has to govern Pennsylvania--no more right to govern it in the way he has since the Union, than to put its every man, woman, and child, to the sword. Conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity, his government of that people has been one series of crimes and blunders. It was sheer usurpation in the beginning, and neither time nor the mode of its administration has changed its character. Three-fourths of the genuine, unadulterated Irish desire a separation from England. But England refuses to relinquish its grasp. It pleads in extenuation of its hold on the national throat, that Ireland is incapable of governing itself. This may be. But it is evident that England is incompetent to the task. Ireland could hardly do worse for itself than England has done for it. It should be permitted to try an experiment which, in England's hands, has proved a sad failure. Let England give Ireland the rope, and, if she hang herself, it will at least be suicide, and not murder. If free Ireland continued to s.h.i.+ver in bog cabins, and feed on saltless potatoes, she would at least gratify that inherent principle in human nature, which makes the beggar prefer to freeze and starve in his own chosen way, rather than on compulsion. But no such doom awaits emanc.i.p.ated Ireland. A government, based on democratic foundations, springing from and responsible to the people, would be a government for the people. Cast off British rule, drive out the Church Establishment, extirpate the landlord system, give Ireland to the Irish, throw them upon their own ample physical and mental resources--thus creating for them a new world, and a new race to people it--and who can estimate the upward spring of the national energies?

But, will Ireland ever obtain independence? Will she ever become a nation? Will Emmett's epitaph ever be written? Did England ever relinquish her hold upon a rod of bog or an acre of sand, except at the point of the bayonet? By voluntarily restoring independence to Ireland, dare she set an example that would bring Canada, Hindostan, and all her colonies and "Keys" in the uttermost parts of the earth to her doors, asking, yea, demanding, like rest.i.tution? And must Ireland draw the sword, or submit? Ah! must she draw the sword _and_ submit? England will never dare to give freedom to Ireland, till she dare not refuse.

Commotions in her own bosom, that shall blanch her cheek, and make her knees smite together, may bring Ireland's "opportunity." If she should, in that hour, smite her chains, would not the blow quicken the pulses of every free heart in the world? "There is no sufficient cause to justify a revolution," says some coward or conservative. The case of George Was.h.i.+ngton _vs._ George Guelph, decided that question, wherein it was ruled by the whole Court, that "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to G.o.d." The stamp act? It was the little finger to the loins. England, by a thousand acts, has stamped the life out of eight millions of people.

But, unless light beams from unexpected quarters, there is not a shadow of hope of successful resistance to British oppression for years to come. If Ireland were three thousand miles away, she could break her chains with one united blow. But the shadow of her towering conqueror crosses the narrow channel, and fills her with awe. And worse than all, her councils, which should breathe only the spirit of harmony, are rent with domestic feuds. No true son of the land of Hanc.o.c.k and of Henry blames...o...b..ien, Meagher, and the "rebels" of Forty-Eight, for striking a blow for their country's independence. The hour was unpropitious. The preparation was defective. The means were wholly inadequate to the end.

But, the motive which inspired the deed was n.o.ble. Whether the graves of these patriotic men be made at the foot of an Irish scaffold, or on the soil of a penal colony, regenerated Ireland will seek out their resting-places, and her grateful tears

"Shall sprinkle the cold dust in which they sleep Pompless, and from a scornful world withdrawn; The laurel which its malice rent shall shoot, So watered, into life, and mantling shower Its verdant honors o'er their gra.s.sy tombs."

CHAPTER x.x.x.

Life, Services, and Character of Daniel O'Connell.

Every page of Ireland's history during the present century bears the name of DANIEL O'CONNELL. In many important respects he is the greatest of Irishmen. He occupied a first place among the persons who have recently figured in European affairs, and was one of the most celebrated orators of our times. For the last twenty years, few men exerted so powerful an influence on the politics of Great Britain, while his sway over his immediate countrymen has probably never been equaled. His death produced a profound sensation in two hemispheres. Though his character, like that of all men who leave a deep impress on their age, has been variously estimated by those who, on the one hand, received his warm sympathy and powerful support, or, on the other, encountered his fierce reprobation and vigorous opposition, yet all cla.s.ses of friends and foes concurred in the sentiment that a master spirit had ceased to influence human affairs.

Mr. O'Connell was admitted to the Dublin bar at a time when Curran, one of the most witty, graceful, and brilliant advocates that ever swayed a jury, and Plunkett, one of the most eloquent lawyers that ever addressed a bench, were in the zenith of their fame. It is sufficient proof of the ability and skill of young O'Connell to say, that he had been at the bar but a year or two before he was surrounded by a large circle of clients, and had won victories over each of the eminent barristers I have named.

But it was not possible for a mind composed of such fervid elements as his, to be confined within the purlieus of the courts, looking after the minor interests of John Doe and Richard Roe; and it soon became evident that he was to mingle with the sober duties of the lawyer the more exciting and less profitable toils of the politician. He came to the bar at one of the most memorable periods of Irish history--the year Ninety-Eight--when the "United Irishmen" struck an unsuccessful blow for the independence of their country. The leaders of the rebellion were arrested for high treason. The life-blood of the chivalrous Robert Emmet was poured out on the scaffold. Several of his compatriots, after suffering cruel imprisonments, and wandering, as exiles, through Europe, reached America, where they were received with open arms by the friends of freedom. Among these, were Thomas Addis Emmet, the eloquent Attorney General of New York; Counselor Sampson, one of the acutest lawyers and keenest wits that ever excoriated a brother advocate at the bar of New York, and whose father, a dissenting minister, was hanged as a rebel; and Dr. Macneven, who rose to eminence in the medical profession in that city. The rebellion of Ninety-Eight resulted in the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland. Against this measure Mr. O'Connell, in company with a majority of his countrymen, uttered a solemn protest.

His first political speech was made in opposition to the proposed act, the repeal of which occupied so prominent a place in the efforts of his declining years. This speech, p.r.o.nounced before the congregated thousands of Dublin, is said not to have been surpa.s.sed for power of argument, severity of invective, and splendor of declamation, by any of his later displays on the same subject. His young soul welled up from full fountains as he portrayed this final degradation which England was about to inflict upon Ireland; and when the deed was done, and he saw the emblems of national independence borne away by the conqueror, Hannibal-like, he swore eternal hostility to the oppressor. And most religiously did he perform his vow!

Mr. O'Connell now turned his attention to the civil and ecclesiastical disabilities of the Roman Catholics of the kingdom. Of the extent of his services in procuring their removal, I have spoken in another place. To this work he gave up twenty-five of the prime years of his life. To him, not the Catholics only, but the Dissenters of every name in Great Britain, are much indebted for the enlargement of their privileges during the last thirty years. This endeared him to large bodies of Christian men, who widely differed from him in religious opinion, giving him a strong hold, Catholic and agitator though he was, upon liberal Baptists, Congregationalists, and Quakers, who, while repudiating his creed, cherished the principle of toleration for which he contended. Mr.

O'Connell regarded Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation as the great achievement of his life; and it was that which won for him the t.i.tle of "The Liberator of Ireland."

During the Catholic controversy, of the bitterness of which Americans can scarcely conceive, Mr. O'Connell for once departed from the pacific policy which was the guiding principle of his excited life. Dublin was the central heart whence he sent out agitating pulsations through every artery of the Irish body. The corporation of that city was a high Tory munic.i.p.ality, of the most bigoted and vindictive cla.s.s. The leader of the Emanc.i.p.ationists was often in collision with its members, many of whom encountered his severest attacks. In 1815, Mr. D'Esterre, a member of the corporation, at the instigation of its leading officers, challenged Mr. O'Connell to personal combat. The parties met, and at the first fire D'Esterre fell, mortally wounded. The successful duelist saw his antagonist stretched on the gra.s.s at his feet, gasping in death. The awful spectacle left an abiding abhorrence of blood on the sensitive mind of O'Connell. Twenty-five years later he inscribed on the Repeal banner his memorable saying, "No political change is worth the shedding of one drop of human blood." His remorse for the D'Esterre tragedy brought forth fruits meet for repentance. During their lives he contributed liberally to the support of the widow and children of the man whom he had slain.

After the death of Grattan, Ireland had no champion in the British Senate, to give utterance to the emotions that swelled her full heart.

The Emanc.i.p.ation Act of 1829 opened the doors of the House of Commons to Mr. O'Connell. Born and cradled in Ireland, he had grown up with her people, an Irishman of the Irishmen. He landed on the eastern sh.o.r.e of St. George's Channel the same man as when the spires of Dublin faded from his eye in the western horizon. He carried with him a name endeared in every cabin from Coleraine to Cork, and familiar to statesmen in England and throughout Europe. Widely as he was known, he was known only as an Irishman; and his reputation was, in its kind, purely Irish. To his dying day, he gloried in the epithet early bestowed upon him in Parliament, and which, though intended as a reproach, he converted into a talisman--"The member for all Ireland."

A new field was now opened before him. Grattan, alluding to Flood's failure in the English Parliament, said: "An oak of the forest is too old to be transplanted at fifty." Though O'Connell was fifty-four when he entered that body, his parliamentary career, covering eighteen years, was of the most st.u.r.dy growth. His speeches in support of the Reform Bill rank with the ablest which that controversy called forth. He threw his soul into the cause of Negro Emanc.i.p.ation, fighting side by side, in and out of Parliament, with Wilberforce, Clarkson, Buxton, Brougham, Lus.h.i.+ngton, till the slave became a man. He early embraced the doctrine of immediate and unconditional emanc.i.p.ation, and was among the few members who voted against the delusive scheme of apprentices.h.i.+p. He united with Sturge, Wardlaw, and Scoble, in the subsequent movement that restored to the apprentices the full rights of British subjects. At the outset of the enterprise, he gave his voice and vote in favor of the leading principles of the Chartists, and was among the earliest advocates of Rowland Hill's plan of cheap postage. He joined George Thompson in portraying the wrongs of British India and denouncing the crimes of its oppressors, and was an able supporter of the doctrines and measures of the Anti-Corn-Law League.

The member for all Ireland gave a large share of his thoughts to Irish affairs. Regarding the abolition of the Irish Parliament as one of the chief sources of the national suffering, he consecrated the last ten years of his life to efforts for the Repeal of the Union. The means employed were the same as those by which he obtained Emanc.i.p.ation--Popular Agitation. The Repeal excitement, which was soothed for a time by the conciliatory course of the Melbourne Government, broke out with increased intensity when Sir Robert Peel rose to power in 1841-2. In the latter year, "Repeal!" resounded from every parish in the island. The next year saw the "Monster Meetings," when the a.s.sembled populace, which swayed to the inspiring eloquence of the Liberator, was measured by acres. The Government was alarmed. Just previous to a grand demonstration at Clontarf, O'Connell, and five others, were arrested for conspiring to change the laws of the realm by intimidation. The trials, which consumed nearly the whole of January, 1844, resulted in the conviction of most of the defendants. O'Connell, when brought up for sentence, p.r.o.nounced an able and dignified protest against the proceedings. He was adjudged to pay a fine of 2,000, be imprisoned one year, and give sureties to keep the peace for seven. He brought a writ of error to the House of Lords. In the mean time he was sent to the Richmond Penitentiary. The Lords reversed the judgment.

After spending three months in a prison, where his "cell" was fitted up and filled like the presence-chamber of a king, and his "confinement"

consisted in walking among arbors and parterres that "a Shenstone might have envied," he was released, and, mounted on a triumphal car, rode in state to his residence in Dublin, attended by uncounted thousands of his shouting countrymen. In the frenzy of its joy, Conciliation Hall declared that "The Liberator had driven the car of Repeal through the Monster Indictment."

Darker skies were gathering over O'Connell. The pacific tenor of his agitations had thwarted the government. The magic of his name had prevented any overt act of violence by vast a.s.semblies of his excited countrymen. The sub-leaders became impatient of delay, a.s.sumed a defiant tone, and demanded that the non-resistant doctrines of O'Connell be repudiated by the National Repeal a.s.sociation. Then arose "Young Ireland." Then came strife and division, one party clinging to, the other separating from, the great leader. The alienation of large numbers of his friends overtaking him when his powers were impaired by years of exhausting toil, broke the spirit of the old man, undermined his const.i.tution, and compelled him to repair to the Continent to resuscitate his waning health and drooping heart. But he left the field of exertion too late. His energies rapidly declined; death overtook him while on his weary pilgrimage; his eye saw the sun for the last time in a foreign sky; and he slept his final sleep far from the land which gave him birth, and from that ocean by whose side his cradle was rocked. The stroke that felled him to the earth sent a pang through many a heart in every country where humanity has a dwelling-place; for his sympathies, like his reputation, were world-wide. He had delivered his own countrymen from the bonds of ecclesiastical tyranny, and had plead for the victims of a h.e.l.lish traffic on the sh.o.r.es of Africa, for the swarthy serfs of British cupidity on the banks of the Ganges, for the persecuted Jews of ancient Damascus, and for the stricken slaves in the isles of the Caribbean Sea and in the distant States of America.

No impartial and well-informed mind doubts the sincerity of Mr.

O'Connell in demanding a Repeal of the Union. But it is equally unquestionable that, in his estimate of the benefits to flow from that measure, he either was deceived himself, or misled his followers.

Probably long contemplation of that object, as the one remedy for the ills of Ireland, betrayed him into the errors of all disciples of "one-ideaism," while he was not exempt from the common infirmity of political leaders, in unduly magnifying before the eye of their partisans _the_ measure of the party. Ineffectual as Repeal must have proved in producing a radical cure for Ireland, it would have been a preliminary stage in her restoration to complete independence, and therefore was important.