Charles Gavan Duffy

“ I am still an Irish rebel to the backbone and to the spinal marrow. A rebel for the same reason that John Hampden and Algernon Sydney, that George Washington and Charles Carroll of Carroltown were rebels—because tyranny has supplanted law in my native country. I would not be tempted by all the gold in Australia to repudiate my share in a struggle which was as just and holy a one as ever was lost or won in this world. But having been a good Irishman in my old home would not, I conceived, be a bad security for my becoming a good Australian in my new one. ”

“ Because the seeds of hatred between creed and creed, between class and class, between man and man, have been studiously sown by her hand to the ruin of our strength and of our honour. Because we have been an exception to the nations of the earth. Throughout all Europe there was scarcity in the past year, in Ireland alone there were famine and death. Throughout all Europe there have been concessions to the will of the people; in Ireland alone was there insolence for concession, and tyranny for justice. We fight because we are denied peace, except at the price of dishonour ”

“ For I was deeply wounded that you should treat me as if I were M'Glashan or James Duffy, or Fardorougha. ... Still, my friend, there is a basis of truth in them. In a gust of passion you are one of the most unjust of men, and shut your eyes to everything but your wrath. That is one side of the account, but only one. No friend was ever firmer in adversity, not swayed a hair's breadth by fear, favour, or worldliness—utterly ignoring all the small, shabby motives that influence common men, impregnable against all things but the tempestuous fury of your own passion. ”

“ But what I propose to you is the life of both body and soul; life for endless centuries on this globe, in this good city of Dublin, if you choose, in health, strength, and peace of mind. From the earliest times, from the beginning of this world indeed, the inestimable gift of immortality without the intervention of the grave was promised and expected, and at last this new dispensation is granted as the crown and confirmation of Christianity, for who shall refuse to believe, when revelation is confirmed by such a tremendous miracle? ”

“ This was the creed of the Nation. I am entitled to answer for myself and my fellow-labourers alone; but I believe it is substantially the creed of the Irish Confederation. They do not demand Republicanism—they demand the legislative independence of Ireland, and will guard it jealously if it come by free negotiation. If independence must come by force, a Republic is inevitable and welcome. But in a free Parliament or a free Congress the rights of private property, the just rights of every class in the State will be sacred. ”

“ During the delivery of this false and intemperate harangue O'Connell cheered every offensive sentence, and finally took off his cap and waved it over his head triumphantly. He knew, as all the intelligent spectators knew, that a man destitute of character and veracity was libelling men as pure and disinterested as any who had ever served a public cause, and he took part with the scoundrel. It was one of the weaknesses of his public life to prefer agents who dared not resist his will; but this open preference of evil to good was the most unlucky stroke of his life. ”

“ But if he should see a people struggling to overthrow a dear and a bad Government, and to replace it by a good and cheap one, he would give a dollar to help them. The history of Ireland can hardly in truth be called the history of a nation. The glory that could be won in two or three battles is too small a thing for a nation to subsist upon. There is not one link that can bind the past of Ireland to its future. The old forms of society, the old laws, and the old language have perished irrecoverably. ”

“ But if we succeed—when we succeed, did God ever bless men with so intoxicating a triumph as will be ours? To see our nation arise again like a young queen proud and happy. To see prosperity run like fresh blood through all the veins of society. To see our Irish race year after year growing more prosperous, more manly, more virtuous. ”

“ I do not mean to say that nothing could justify an appeal to arms in Ireland, but I feel certain that nothing will render it necessary, so long as the horrible possibility is kept out of sight, and the justice of the cause is so admirably kept in it, as it now is. In all my life, nay, in all history, I have seen no such spectacle as the bloodless triumph your leader is achieving, and manifestly achieving, because of the bloodlessness. ”

“ You must choose your side, and choose quickly. If you love famine, stripes, and dishonour; if you are prepared to abandon your arms and your liberty, join the red ranks of England; if you love justice, if your heart warms at the memories of the dear land, if it swells with the hope of her deliverance and her glory, God bless you, your side is with your country—your rank is beneath the green banner of Ireland.
"Let no man who has stimulated the quarrel by word or deed presume to hold back now. ”

“ I had worked incessantly for forty years, but I was not less resolved to still work provided it should be at tasks free from the onerous necessity of attending at a particular place at a particular hour every day. Some of the unfinished designs of early life might be taken up and completed for work which did not aim to serve Ireland had no attraction for me. To be content and long for no change, " to pay court to no one and expect it from no one," to cherish the fruitful leisure in which thought is ripened and reverie is born—this was the condition I desired. ”

“ We have had delightful climbing of great wild mountains, and looking down over the brink of fearful sea-cliffs, and rambling through endless dismal wastes of moor and bare fields of rock, and among deep, silent, dark glens, where lie the mountain lakes, gloomy or placid—and we have heard the sullen roar of the Atlantic, and seen the long lines of foaming waves advancing in battle array, and like all the proud old armies of men rushing into oblivion. And we have viewed ruins dear to Irish hearts—seats of ancient learning, dwellings of Irish power and pride. ”

“ For a generation I was a factor in whatever was done or projected in the public affairs of Ireland, and if my countrymen in after times come to regard that era as the well-head of their liberty they can never be indifferent to its authentic history. For nearly another generation I lived in a new country, whose marvellous development is destined to take a permanent place in the annals of mankind, and I was not an idle witness of its progress. ”

“ Agitation for twenty or thirty years for some single concession was like the economy of ancient Egypt, where the labour of an entire generation was expended to raise a pyramid. And the agitators came out of the contest like soldiers from a long campaign, unfit for any other work and indifferent to the ordinary means and methods by which a people become prosperous. If the conflict could be brought to a close by a fierce encounter in arms it was not too high a price to pay for permanent peace. Letters from soldiers to the Nation were not unfrequent. ”

“ The Prime Minister of England, looking upon the desolation which has made our country a graveyard and a lazar house, tells us that he will resist our just claims for the management of our own affairs with the sword of the Empire. How can we answer but with the sword of Ireland? If famine has weakened the right arm of the people it has not paralysed His arm who rules the destinies of battles and fights by the side of the oppressed. Shall we tamely submit to see the last remnant of the Irish race and name sacrificed to the greedy and insolent spirit of English dominion? ”

“ Justice to Ireland—justice to all lands, and to Ireland first as the land that needs it most—the whole English nation (except the quacks and knaves of it, who in the end are men of negative quantities and of no force in the English nation) does honestly wish you that. Do not believe the contrary, for it is not true; the believing of it to be true may give rise to miserable mistakes yet, at which one's imagination shudders. ”

“ Here was the spark destined to kindle the souls of these tiery young men who thought to guide the destinies of Ireland by making her ballads. Davis and Duffy, Mangan and MacCarthy, and later on Thomas D'Arcy M'Gee, the greatest poet of them all, burst into song, and while I followed up the endeavour to elevate the romance of Irish history into the realm of legitimate history in the "Hibernian Nights' Entertainment "in the University, awoke the whole country to high and noble aspirations through their fine enthusiasm in the "Spirit of the Nation." ”

“ At length I proposed that to enlighten those who ignored our existence we should parade our forces. Let us meet in every county and barony of the province on the same day, or in rapid succession of days, in perfect order and with unbroken urbanity, but in all our strength. We were Liberals as much as ever, we should be ready to help any cause that promised to promote the liberty or prosperity of Ireland or human progress, but under leaders selected by ourselves, not bound to follow, but rather bound not to follow, the whistle or whip of any other organisation. ”

“ That office ought to carry with it the Government of Ireland in all important matters, and a career as fruitful as Thomas Drummond's and as brilliant as Plunkett's. To govern Ireland wisely and nobly implies heroic works of reform in various directions. I declare before Heaven you have no right to expect tranquillity till an Irish peasant can live in Ireland as prosperously, and an Irish gentleman, of the Irish race, can feel himself as much at home there, as the peasants and gentlemen of other European countries in their native lands. ”

“ In the Nation, where I was entitled and bound to speak without reserve, and where I committed nobody but myself, I said in the ensuing number:—
"Ireland's opportunity—thank God, and France—has come at last! Its challenge rings in our ears like a call to battle, and warms our blood like wine. It demands of us what mission we have to entrust to its ministry, so often and so fervently evoked. We must answer if we would not be slaves for ever. We must unite, we must act, we must leap all barriers but those which are divine ”

“ It is her last resource, long evaded, long postponed; the bitter cup which Heaven would not permit to pass away from her; and now, in the face of Europe, in the face of America, in the face of our kindred and our race, in the face of our Great Creator, we declare that this war is just and necessary; that men may enter upon it with a free conscience, and a full assurance that it is Heaven's work. ”

“ I do not seek a seat in Parliament, and I will only accept one, if it comes unsought, as a duty—the sort of duty we all owe to our country. A seat in Parliament to a man who means to use it only for public ends is a heavy burthen and a constant responsibility. I do not believe one man worth sending there has gone from Ireland to the House of Commons as a popular representative in my day, whose life was not shortened by the toils and chagrins of the position. ”

“ Will Ireland at last perish like a lamb and let her blood sink in the ground, or will she turn as turns the baited lion? Your path of safety as well as of honour is now the public highway. No bye-way of your own will carry you through the perils that beset, and the greater perils that are before you. ”

“ But all controversy was terminated by the news which arrived the second day that Smith O'Brien accepted the programme of the leaders who joined him from Dublin and would take the field. It was a spectacle strangely out of harmony with the sceptical scoffing generation in which it befell. A gentleman of mature years, of distinguished lineage and station, the descendant of a great Celtic house, the husband of a charming wife, the father of a household of happy children, a man rich in the less precious gifts of fortune called opulence, staked his life to save his race from destruction. ”

“ There are terrible traditions shadowing the word Liberty in Ireland. Let it be our task, men of this generation, descendants of martyrs and sufferers and heroes, to make it a glad evangel of happiness—a reign of truth over fictions and symbols of intellect over prejudice and conventionalism—of humanity over tyranny and oppression. ”