Thomas D'Arcy McGee

“ The sublime, the eloquent, the figurative orator, the plain, the connected, the metaphysical reasoner, the classical, the learned, and the solemn declaimer, in a succession of speeches so full of energy and enthusiasm, so interesting in their nature, so important in their consequence, created a variety of sensations even in the bosom of a stranger, and could scarcely fail of exciting some sympathy with a nation which was doomed to close for ever that school of eloquence which had so long given character and celebrity to Irish talent. ”

“ While their kinsmen in Ireland were declared incapable of filling the humblest public employments, or of exercising the commonest franchise, they met British ambassadors abroad as equals, and checked or countermined the imperial policy of Great Britain. It was impossible that such a contrast of situations should not attract the attention of all thinking men! It was impossible that such reputations should shine before all Europe without reacting powerfully on the fallen fortunes of Ireland! ”

“ The Irish are, unfortunately, not so; and yet, what is English or Scottish history to compare with Irish? Ireland was a land of saints and scholars when Britons were painted savages. Wise and noble laws, based upon the spirit of Christianity, were administered in Erin, and valuable books were written ere the Britons were as far advanced in civilization as the Blackfeet Indians. In morals and intellect, in Christianity and civilization, in arms, art, and science, Ireland shone like a star among the nations when darkness enshrouded the world. ”

“ The glare of the burning Abbey reflected over the beautiful bay, the darkness of night all round, the shouts of the assailants, and the shrieks of the fugitives driven by the flames upon the spears of their enemies, must have formed a scene of horrors such as even war rarely combines. Hundreds of the besieged were slain, but Nial Garve himself, with the remainder, covered by the fire of an English ship in the harbour, escaped along the strand to the neighbouring monastery of Magherabeg, which he quickly put into a state of defence. ”

“ Maynooth, whatever its after lot, was the creation in the first instance of the Irish Parliament. We have thus, in the third century after the reformation, after three great religious wars, after four confiscations, after the most ingenious, cruel, and unchristian methods of oppression and proselytism, had been tried and had failed, the grand spectacle of the Catholics of Ireland restored, if not fully, yet to the most precious of the civil and religious liberties of a people! So powerless against conscience is and ever must be coercion! ”

“ In the third month of Cromwell's campaign, the report of Owen O'Neil's death went abroad, palsying the Catholic arms. By common consent of friend and foe, he was considered the ablest civil and military leader that had appeared in Ireland during the reigns of the Stuart kings. Whether in native ability he was capable of coping with Cromwell, was for a long time a subject of discussion; but the consciousness of irreparable national loss, perhaps, never struck deeper than amid the crash of that irresistible cannonade of the walled towns and cities of Leinster and Munster. ”

“ As the imposing host formed on the sea side, a white hare, according to an English chronicler, leapt from a neighbouring hedge, and was immediately caught and presented to the King as an omen of victory. Prophecies, pagan and Christian—quatrains fathered on Saint Moling and triads attributed to Merlin—were freely showered in his path. But the true omen of his success he might read for himself, in a constitution which had lost its force, in laws which had ceased to be sacred, and in a chieftain race, brave indeed as mortal men could be, but envious, arrogant, revengeful, and insubordinate. ”

“ Native Irish life, therefore, throughout the whole of the fifteenth, and during the first half of the sixteenth century, was as free to shape and direct itself, to ends of its own choosing, as it had been at almost any former period in our history. Private wars and hereditary blood-feuds, next after the loss of national unity, were the worst vices of the nation. Deeds of violence and acts of retaliation were as common as the succession of day and night. Every free clansman carried his battle-axe to church and chase, to festival and fairgreen. ”

“ Lord Westmoreland was recalled, and Lord Fitzwilliam, largely connected with Ireland by property, and one of the most just and liberal men in England, was to be his successor. The highest expectations were excited; the best men congratulated each other on the certain promise of better times close at hand; and the nation, ever ready to believe whatever it wished to believe, saw in prospect, the oligarchy restrained, the patriots triumphant, and the unfinished fabric of independence completed, and crowned with honour. ”

“ It was a strange anomaly, and one which continued for some years longer, that the statesmen of the Catholic body should be all Protestants. A more generous or tolerant spirit than Grattan's never existed; a clearer or more fearless intellect than Plunkett's was not to be found; nobler and more disinterested friends than Ponsonby, Curran, Burroughs and Wallace, no people ever had; but still they were friends from without; men of another religion, or of no particular religion, advising and guiding an eminently religious people in their struggle for religious liberty. ”

“ This iniquitous deprivation of equal civil rights, accompanied with the onerous burthen of tithes falling heaviest on the cultivators of the soil, produced the first great Irish exodus to the North American colonies. The tithe of agistment or pasturage, lately abolished, had made the tithe of tillage more unjust and unequal. Outraged in their dearest civil and religious rights, thousands of the Scoto-Irish of Ulster, and the Milesian and Anglo-Irish of the other provinces, preferred to encounter the perils of an Atlantic flitting rather than abide under the yoke and lash of such an oligarchy. ”

“ The virtue of hospitality was, of all others, that which the old Irish of every degree in rank and wealth most cheerfully practised. In many cases it degenerated into extravagance and prodigality. But in general it is presented to us in so winning a garb that our objections on the score of prudence vanish before it. When we read of the freeness of heart of Henry Avery O'Neil, who granted all manner of things "that came into his hands," to all manner of men, we pause and doubt whether such a virtue in such excess may not lean towards vice. ”

“ Under these circumstances, the powerless leader and his devoted staff resolved to withdraw, formally and openly, from further attendance on the House of Commons. The deplorable state of the country, delivered over to an irresponsible magistracy and all the horrors of martial law; the spread among the patriotic rising generation of French principles; the scarcely concealed design of the Castle to goad the people into insurrection, in order to deprive them of their liberties; all admonished the faithful few that the walls of Parliament were no longer their sphere of usefulness. ”

“ A new centre of royal authority should be established on the banks of the great middle river of the island—itself the best bond of union, as it was the best highway of intercourse; the Dalgais dynasty should there flourish for ages, and the descendants of Brian of the Tributes, through after centuries, eclipse the glory of the descendants of Nial of the Hostages. It is idle enough to call the projector of such a change an usurper and a revolutionist. ”

“ Abroad there was no hope of an alliance sufficient to counterbalance the immense resources of England; at home life-wasting private wars, the conflict of laws, of languages, and of titles to property, had become unbearable. That fatal family pride, which would not permit an O'Brien to obey an O'Neil, nor an O'Conor to follow either, rendered the establishment of a native monarchy—even if there had been no other obstacle—wholly impracticable. Among the clergy alone did the growing supremacy of Henry meet with any effective opposition. ”

“ From early summer till the last week of October, the main force of the English and Anglo-Irish, supplied with every species of arm then invented, assailed the walls of Limerick. The plague, which during these months swept with such fearful mortality over the whole kingdom, struck down its defenders, and filled all its streets with desolation and grief. The heroic bishops, O'Brien of Emly, and O'Dwyer of Limerick, exerted themselves to uphold, by religious exhortations, the confidence of the besieged; while Hugh O'Neil and General Purcell maintained the courage of their men. ”

“ The Norman Kings of England were not insensible to the fact that the Cymric element in Wales, the Saxon element in England, and the Gaelic element in Scotland, were all more agreeable to the Irish than the race of Rollo and William. They were not ignorant that Ireland was a refuge for their victims and a recruiting ground for their enemies. They knew, furthermore, that most of the strong points on the Irish coast, from the Shannon to the Liffey, were possessed by Christian Northmen kindred to themselves. They knew that the land was divided within itself, weakened by a long war of succession ”

“ The Pagan belief of this formidable race was in harmony with all their thoughts and habits, and the exact opposite of Christianity. In the beginning of time, according to their tradition, there was neither heaven nor earth, but only universal chaos and a bottomless abyss, where dwelt Surtur in an element of unquenchable fire. The generation of their gods proceeded amid the darkness and void, from the union of heat and moisture, until Odin and the other children of Asa-Thor, or the Earth, slew Ymer, or the Evil One, and created the material universe out of his lifeless remains. ”

“ Yet, from the hour of that union of the houses of York and Lancaster, it needed no extraordinary wisdom to foresee that the exemption of the Anglo-Irish nobles from the supremacy of their nominal King must come to an end, and the freedom of the old Irish from any formidable external danger must also close. The union of the Roses, so full of the promise of peace for England, was to form the date of a new era in her relations with Ireland. ”

“ Iona was now in the zenith of its glory. The barren rock, about three miles in length, was covered with monastic buildings, and its cemetery was already adorned with the tombs of saints and kings. Five successors of Columbkill slept in peace around their holy Founder, and a sixth, equal in learning and sanctity to any who preceded him, received the remains of King Egfrid from the hands of his conquerors. This was Abbot Adamnan, to whom Ireland and Scotland are equally indebted for his admirable writings, and who might almost dispute with Bede himself, the title of Father of British History. ”

“ The art of war, if art it could in their case be called, was in a much less forward stage among the Irish in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries than amongst the Normans. Of the science of fortification they perhaps knew no more than they had learned in their long struggle with the Danes and Norwegians. To render roads impassable, to strengthen their islands by stockades, to hold the naturally difficult passes which connect one province or one district with another—these seem to have been their chief ideas of the aid that valour may derive from artificial appliances. ”

“ In the eighth year after Clontarf—the summer of 1022—the Dublin Danes once again ventured on a foray into East-Meath, and the aged monarch marched to meet them. At Athboy he encountered the enemy, and drove them, routed and broken, out of the ancient mensal land of the Irish kings.
Thirty days after that victory he was called on to confront the conqueror of all men, even Death. He had reached the age of seventy-three, and he prepared to meet his last hour with the zeal and humility of a true Christian. ”

“ In this long interval of eight months, the two great parties, the Unionists and the anti-Unionists were incessantly employed, through the press, in social intercourse, in the grand jury room, in county and city meetings, by correspondence, petitions, addresses, each pushing forward its own views with all the zeal and warmth of men who felt that on one side they were labouring for the country, on the other for the empire. ”

“ And so the blood of Earl Richard and his Irish Princess descended for many generations to enrich other houses and ennoble other names than his own.
Strongbow is described by Giraldus, whose personal sketches, of the leading invaders form the most valuable part of his book, as less a statesman than a soldier, and more a soldier than a general. His complexion was freckled, his neck slender, his voice feminine and shrill, and his temper equable and uniform. His career in Ireland was limited to seven years in point of time, and his resources were never equal to the task he undertook. ”

“ Armagh and Cashel came in the wake of Tara, and Cruachan was soon to follow. Driven from the high places, the obdurate Priests of Bel took refuge in the depths of the forest and in the islands of the sea, wherein the Christian anchorites of the next age were to replace them. The social revolution proceeded, but all that was tolerable in the old state of things, Patrick carefully engrafted with the new. He allowed much for the habits and traditions of the people, and so made the transition as easy, from darkness into the light, as Nature makes the transition from night to morning. ”

“ A spotless soul, a disciplined body, an indomitable energy, an industry that never wearied, a courage that never blanched, a sweetness and courtesy that won all hearts, a tenderness for others that contrasted strongly with his rigour towards himself—these were the secrets of the success of this eminent missionary—these were the miracles by which he accomplished the conversion of so many barbarous tribes and Pagan Princes. ”

“ A nation with such a strange history must have some great work yet to do in the world. Except the Jews, no people has so suffered without dying.
The History of Ireland is the most interesting of records, and the least known. The Publishers of this edition of D'Arcy McGee's excellent and impartial work take advantage of the awakening interest in Irish literature to present to the public a book of high-class history, as cheap as largely circulating romance. A sale as large as that of a popular romance is, therefore, necessary to pay the speculation. ”

“ But internal discord in a great house, as in a great state, is fatal to the peaceable transmission of power. That "acknowledged right of birth" to which a famous historian attributes "the peaceful successions" of modern Europe, was too little respected in those ages, in many countries of Christendom—and had no settled prescription in its favour among the Irish. Primogeniture and the whole scheme of feudal dependence seems to have been an essential preparative for modern civilization: but as Ireland had escaped the legions of Rome, so she existed without the circle of feudal organization. ”

“ The carnage, compared with some great battles of that age, was inconsiderable, but the political consequences were momentous. The next day, the garrison of Drogheda, one thousand three hundred strong, surrendered; in another week, William was in Dublin, and James, terrified by the reports which had reached him, was en route for France. It is hardly an exaggeration to say, that the fate of Europe was decided by the result of the battle of the Boyne. At Paris, at the Hague, at Vienna, at Rome, at Madrid, nothing was talked of but the great victory of the Prince of Orange over Louis and James. ”

“ Let us admit that the Milesian-Irish, themselves invaders and conquerors of an older date, may have had no right to declare the era of colonization closed for their country, while its best harbours were without ships, and leagues of its best land were without inhabitants; yet what gives to the contest its lofty and fearful interest, is, that the foreigners who come so far and fight so bravely for the prize, are a Pagan people, drunk with the evil spirit of one of the most anti-Christian forms of human error. ”

“ The bank project was also rejected by Parliament, adding another to the triumphs of the invincible Dean.
During the last years of this reign, Swift was the most powerful and popular person in Ireland, and perhaps in the empire. The freedom with which he advised Carteret the Viceroy, and remonstrated with Walpole, the Premier, on the misrule of his country, was worthy of the ascendancy of his genius. No man of letters, no churchman, no statesman of any country in any age, ever showed himself more thoroughly independent, in his intercourse with men of office, than Swift. ”

“ But though crimes of violence are common, crimes of treachery are rare. The memory of a McMahon, who betrayed and slew his guest, is execrated by the same stoical scribes, who set down, without a single expression of horror, the open murder of chief after chief. Taking off by poison, so common among their cotemporaries, seems to have been altogether unknown, and the cruelties of the State Prisons of the Middle Ages undreamt of by our fierce, impetuous, but not implacable ancestors. ”