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gratitude to foreigners like Alexander Hamilton, born in the West Indies; or Robert Morris, born in Lancashire, England; or Alexander James Dallas, born on the island of Jamaica; or Albert Gallatin, born in Geneva, Switzerland; and their military associates and successors, the Frenchman Lafayette, the Poles Kosciusko and Pulaski, and the German Steuben. Precisely as, in after-years, we responded to the cries of the Greeks for help, through the sounding periods of Webster and Clay; to the appeals of the Irish in their movement for Repeal in 1842, and for Independence in 1848; to the successive popular risings in France, Germany, Hungary, Belgium, Italy, and Spain, so will our friendship be the star of hope to all the struggling nations of the future. Our ovation to Kossuth in 1850 was the spontaneous expression of this feeling; but nothing has ever been more earnest than American sympathy for Ireland. How suddenly all prejudices of race and religion perished before the bold demand of Daniel O'Connell for justice to Ireland thirty years ago? I have before me, as I write, the proceedings of a National Repeal Convention in Philadelphia, February 22, 1842, called to encourage his dazzling dream. It is a curious record. Prominent among the actors were Robert T. Conrad, William D. Kelley, Francis Cooper, Miles D. Sweeney, Jesse R. Burden, Richard Vaux, Ovid F. Johnson, and W. A. Stokes, of Philadelphia; Hendrick B. Wright, of Luzerne; Reah Frazer and Michael Malone, of Lancaster; Michael Burke, of Harrisburg, in the State of Pennsylvania: while Isaac H. Wright, of Boston; Hugh Jenkins, of Baltimore; Cyrus Newlin, of Delaware; James Hoban, of the city of Washington; Daniel Devlin, of Louisville, Kentucky; George Bird, of Trenton, New Jersey-and many more-represented other States. The Convention was almost unanimous against O'Connell for his denunciation of American slavery; and William D. Kelley offered and carried the following resolution: "Resolved, That this Convention will afford all legitimate encouragement to the

Irish people by the consumption of American or Irish manufactures in preference to English; and, further, that the several delegates to this Convention be directed to impress the importance of this subject upon the consideration of their respective associations."

While America was sending words of cheer to Ireland, spoken and applauded by such citizens as these, a young Irishman, born in the city of Waterford, Ireland, August 3, 1823, was just emerging from the Jesuit College with a high reputation for genius and scholarship. He left the peace and seclusion of his cloistered school to find his country lashed into a tempest of excitement by the great O'Connell. The Liberator was soon after thrown into prison (in 1844) and Repeal was languishing. In that hour Thomas Francis Meagher stepped into the arena, in company with John Mitchel, Thomas Davis, William Smith O'Brien, Devin Reilley, John Martin, Richard O'Gorman, and others. O'Connell was for agitation, Meagher for action. The old man was for moral suasion, the young men for force. Headed by Meagher, they threw themselves among the people, and, with the spoken and written eloquence of which they were the consummate masters, created intense feeling. Their example reached their millions of friends in America. England prepared to resist them. The sequel was a repetition of the days of the volunteers of 1788, when Grattan and Charlemont were the leaders, and of the revolution of 1798, when Wolfe Tone, Emmet, Fitzgerald, and Hamilton Rowan were in the front. The Government was ready; the Irish people unready. A race that constitutes some of the best material in the British service, and fights bravely for America, will not show the same spirit in its own behalf at its own hearthstone; and so, when these fiery and impulsive champions were caught with arms in their hands, they were tried for hightreason and convicted. The impassioned "tribune" Meagher was "sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, and his re

mains placed at the disposal of her Majesty the Queen, to be dealt with according to her royal pleasure."

The extreme youth of the impetuous leader, his fascinating manners, his strong hold on the people, and the high social position of his companions induced the Government to commute their death-penalty to transportation for life to the convict settlement of Van Diemen's Land. After four years of exile, Meagher escaped, and landed in New York at the close of May, 1852. He became the immediate centre of attraction. His speeches in Ireland, crowded with jewels and full of fire, had become a part of our popular literature, and he was hailed as a combination of Kossuth, Grattan, Phillips, and Mirabeau. Society opened its doors to the handsome hero and scholar. His youth, his wit, his polished address, his contagious magnetism, his high health, and his readiness to impart the store of mental wealth he had gathered among the learned men of his faith made him a sort of wonder. He became, in a word, the fashion. Franklin Pierce was nominated for President by the Democrats in their Convention at Baltimore on the 2d of June, a few days after his arrival, and Winfield Scott by the Whigs on the 17th; and the politicians of both sides were anxious to secure his services. He was a Democrat, of course, but he stood aloof with instinctive delicacy. He was not yet a citizen, and soon became a student at law under Judge Emmet, nephew of the Irish patriot. Besides, his country was in travail, and his comrades-in-arms still in exile. And on the 10th of June, in declining a public reception most graciously tendered by the corporation, he said:

"While my country remains in sorrow and subjection, it would be indelicate of me to participate in the festivities you propose. When she lifts her head and nerves her arm for a bolder struggle-when she goes forth, like Miriam, with song and trimbrel, to celebrate her victory-I too shall lift up my head and join in the hymn of freedom. Till then, the retire

ment I seek will best accord with the love I bear her, and the sadness which her present fate inspires. Nor do I forget the companions of my exile. The freedom that has been restored to me is imbittered by the recollection of their captivity. My heart is with them at this hour, and shares the solitude in which they dwell. While they are in prison a shadow rests upon my spirit, and the thoughts that otherwise might be free throb heavily within me. It is painful for me to speak. I should feel happy in being permitted to be silent. For these reasons you will not feel displeased with me for declining the honors you solicit me to accept."

But he did not deny himself wholly to the thousands who were anxious to meet him. As a lecturer his success was great, and his spoken pictures of Australia, of the Irish poets, orators, and statesmen are recollected by thousands in all parts of the country. He was also a fine writer, and his descriptions of Central America, which he visited after his admission to the bar in 1855, and his essays in the Irish News, established by himself in New York in June of 1856, proved his inexhaustible literary tastes and resources. About this time we had a memorable exodus of educated young Irishmen added to the American bar, press, and society. Of these I recall Fitzjames O'Brien, John Savage, John Mitchell, and Richard O'Gorman.

The mind of Thomas Francis Meagher is mirrored in his exquisite speeches. In these you see the man better than in a biography. You read the story of his boyhood and his manhood; his patriotism, his religion, his politics, and his prejudices. I copy some passages, chiefly that he may tell his own eventful story, and that his magical gifts as an orator may be appreciated by the general reader. First, from his appeals to the people of Ireland in the campaign for Irish independence, before he was sentenced to Van Diemen's Land:

IRISH PAUPERISM.-OUTDOOR RELIEF.

[Dublin, April 7, 1847.]

“Ay! Ireland is now at the mercy of England! Ireland is now a thoroughly conquered country! England has won her crowning victory! The war of centuries is at a close! The arches of Strongbow have failed; the ironsides of Cromwell have failed; the spies and yeomen of Castlereagh have failed; the patronage and proscriptions of Ebington have failed; the proclamations and State prosecutions of De Grey have failed: the procrastination and economy of Russell have triumphed! Let a thanksgiving be preached from the pulpit of St. Paul's; let the Lords and Commons of England vote their gratitude to the victorious economist; let the guns of London Tower proclaim the triumph which has cost, in past years, coffers of gold and torrents of blood, and in this year a wholesale system of starvation to achieve!

"England! your gallant and impetuous enemy is dead; your 'great difficulty' is at an end. Ireland, or rather the remains of Ireland, is yours at last. Your red ensign flies, not from the rath of Mullaghmast, where you played the cut-throat; not from Limerick wall, where you played the perjurer; not from the Senate - house, where you played the swindler; not from the Custom-house, where you played the robber; but it flies from her thousand graveyards, where the titled niggards of your Cabinet have won the battle your soldiers could not terminate.

"Celebrate your victory! bid your Scourge steamer from the western coast convey some memorial of your conquest; and in the hall where the flags and cannon you have captured from a world of foes are grouped together, let a shroud, stripped from some privileged corpse-for few have them now-be for its proper price displayed. Stop not here! Charge! For war-crest America has her eagle; let England have her vulture! What emblem more fit for the rapacious power whose statesmanship depopulates, and whose commerce is gorged with famine prices? That is her proper signal. It will commemorate a greater victory than that of Agincourt, than that of Blenheim, than that of Moodkee. It will commemorate the victories of Skull, of Skibbereen, of Bantry."

As an American citizen he revelled in a new field. Not forgetting his fatherland, he found another inspiration in the study of our people and our institutions. I copy a few extracts:

In Dublin, in 1848, on the transportation of John Mitchel, he said, before he himself was sent to join his friend,

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