Thomas D'Arcy McGee

“ O'Neil, in the full prime of life, really desired to live in peace with Elizabeth, provided he might be allowed to govern Ulster with all the authority attached to his name. Bred up in England, he well knew the immense resources of that kingdom, and the indomitable character of its queen. A patriot of Ulster rather than of Ireland, he had served against the Desmonds, and had been a looker on at Smerwick. To suppress rivals of his own clan, to check O'Donnell's encroachments, and to preserve an interest at the English Court, were the objects of his earlier ambition. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Curran stands alone; O'Connell never had a model, and never had an imitator who rose above mimicry. Every combination of powers, every description of excellence, and every variety of style and character, may be found among the masterpieces of this great school. Of their works many will live for ever. Most of Burke's, many of Grattan's, and one or two of Curran's have reached us in such preservation as promises immortality. Selections from Flood, Sheridan, Canning, Plunkett and O'Connell will survive; Shiel will be more fortunate for he was more artistic, and more watchful of his own fame. ”

“ It was impossible that a people like the Irish, disinterested and unselfish to a fault, should ever come to respect a compact brought about by such means and influences as these. Had, however, the Union, vile as were the means by which it was accomplished, proved to the real benefit of the country—had equal civil and religious rights been freely and at once extended to the people of the lesser kingdom—there is no reason to doubt that the measure would have become popular in time, and the vices of the old system be better remembered than its benefits, real or imaginary. ”

“ 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! ”

“ It is to be observed, farther, that the inspiration of all these men was drawn from the very hearts of the people among whom they grew. With one or two exceptions, sons of humble peasants, of actors, of at most middle class men, they were true, through every change of personal position, to the general interests of the people—to the common weal. From generous thoughts and a lofty scorn of falsehood, fanaticism and tyranny, they took their inspiration; and as they were true to human nature, so will mankind, through successive ages, dwell fondly on their works and guard lovingly their tombs. ”

“ The policy he was sent to represent at Dublin was undoubtedly an imperial policy; a policy which looked as anxiously to the integrity of the empire as any Tory cabinet could have desired; but it was, in most other respects, a policy of conciliation and concession, dictated by the enlarged wisdom of Burke, and adopted by the magnanimous candour of Fox. Yet by a generous people, who always find it more difficult to resist a liberal than an illiberal administration, it was, in reality, a policy more to be feared than welcomed ”

“ 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. ”

“ The mania against everything Irish took in England forms the most ludicrous and absurd. Wharton's doggerel refrain of Lillibullero, was heard in every circle outside the court; all London, lighted with torches, and marshalled under arms, awaited during the memorable "Irish night" the advent of the terrible and detested regiments brought over by Tyrconnell; some companies of these troops quartered in the country were fallen upon by ten times their numbers, and cut to pieces. Others, fighting and inquiring their way, forced a passage to Chester or Bristol, and obtained a passage home. ”

“ Half a century of the Stuarts had not extinguished their blind partiality for the descendants of the old Scoto-Irish kings. The restoration of that royal house was, therefore, an event which penetrated to the remotest wilds of Connaught, lighting up with cheering expectation the most desolate hovels of the proscribed. To the Puritans settled in Ireland, most of whom, from the mean condition of menial servants, common soldiers and subaltern officers, had become rich proprietors, the same tidings brought apprehension and alarm. ”

“ If the blow could be withheld till August, there was every reason to expect a French invasion of England, which would drain away all the regular army, and leave the people merely the militia and the volunteers to contend against. But all the Dublin arrangements exploded in the melancholy emeute of the 23rd of July, 1803, in which the Chief-Justice, Lord Kilwarden, passing through the disturbed quarter of the city at the time, was cruelly murdered; for which, and for his cause, Emmet suffered death on the same spot on the 20th of September following. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Monster petitions, both for and against the repeal of these acts, as well as for and against Catholic emancipation, soon became of common occurrence. Protestants of all sects petitioned for, but still more petitioned against equal rights for Catholics; while Catholics petitioned for the rights of Protestant dissenters. It is a spectacle to look back upon with admiration and instruction; exhibiting as it does, so much of a truly tolerant spirit in Christians of all creeds, worthy of all honour and imitation. ”

“ From the valley of the Bann, over the rugged summits of Carntogher, from the glens of Donegal, and the western sea coast round to Mayo, troops of the fugitives hurried to the strong town of the London traders, as to a city of refuge. Enniskillen alone, resolute in its insular situation, and in a courage akin to that which actuated the defenders of Derry, stood as an outpost of the main object of attack, and delayed the junction of the Royalists under Mountcashel with those under Hamilton and De Rosen. ”

“ Never was a new nation more nobly heralded into existence! Never was an old nation more reverently and tenderly lifted up and restored! The Houses adjourned to give England time to consider Ireland's ultimatum. Within a month it was accepted by the new British administration, and on the 27th of May, the new Whig Viceroy, the Duke of Portland, was authorized to announce from the throne the establishment of the judicial and legislative independence of Ireland. ”

“ Thus the last open port, the last considerable town held by the Confederates, yielded to the overwhelming power of numbers and munitions, in the twelfth year of that illustrious war which Ireland waged for her religious and civil liberties, against the forces of the two adjoining kingdoms, sometimes estranged from one another, but always hostile alike to the religious belief and the political independence of the Irish people. ”

“ Grattan felt called upon to undertake, was not revolutionary, in the usually accepted sense of the term. He was a Monarchist and a Whig in general politics; but he was an Irishman, proud and fond of his country, and a sincere lover of the largest religious liberty. With the independence of the judiciary and the legislature, with freedom of commerce and of conscience, he would be well content to stand by the British connection. "The sea," he said, in his lofty figurative language, "protests against union—the ocean against separation." ”

“ To make the anti-unionists in Parliament, such as the Speaker, Sir Lawrence Parsons, Plunkett, Ponsonby and Bushe, personally responsible for this vindictive code, was to disarm them of the power, and almost of the right, to call on the people whom they turned over, bound hand and foot, to the mercy of the minister in '98, to aid them against the machinations of that same minister in '99. The last months of the year were marked besides by events already referred to, and by negotiations incessantly carried on, both in England and Ireland, in favour of the Union. ”

“ From this date forward until the accession of Owen Roe O'Neil to the command, the northern war assumed a ferocity of character foreign to the nature of O'Moore, O'Reilly and Magennis. That Sir Phelim permitted, if he did not sometimes in his gusts of stormy passion instigate, those acts of cruelty, which have stained his otherwise honourable conduct, is too true; but he stood alone among his confederates in that crime, and that crime stands alone in his character. Brave to rashness and disinterested to excess, few rebel chiefs ever made a more heroic end out of a more deplorable beginning. ”

“ Dangers, delays and difficulties lay thick and dark in the future, but from the year, when in Dublin, Cork and Limerick, the voice of the famous advocate was recognized as the voice of the Catholics of Ireland, their cause was taken out of the category of merely ministerial measures, and exhibited in its true light as a great national contest, entered into by the people themselves for complete civil and religious freedom. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We must not look, therefore, to see the Tones and Emmets continuing in the constitutional line of public conduct marked out by Burke in the one kingdom, and Grattan in the other. The new age was revolutionary, and the new men were filled with the spirit of the age. Their actions stand apart; they form an episode in the history of the century to which there may be parallels, but a chapter in the history of their own country original and alone.
The United Irish Society sprung up at Belfast in October, 1791. ”

“ He was neither by temper nor policy a persecutor; his allies were Spain, Austria and Rome; he had thousands of Catholics in his own army, and he gave his confidence as freely to brave and capable men of one creed as of another. But the oligarchy, calling itself the "Protestant Ascendancy," which had grown so powerful under Cromwell and Charles II., backed as they once again were by all the religious intolerance of England, proved too strong for William's good intentions. ”

“ On the 20th of January, 1828, the veteran McNevin wrote to Mr. O'Connell—"Public opinion in America is deep, and strong, and universal, in your behalf. This predilection prevails over the broad bosom of our extensive continent. Associations similar to ours are everywhere starting into existence—in our largest and wealthiest cities—in our hamlets and our villages—in our most remote sections; and at this moment, the propriety of convening, at Washington, delegates of the friends of Ireland, of all the states, is under serious deliberation. ”

“ 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. ”