In the faint hope that he might have strength left to face the ocean and the enemy, he was the object of an appeal. But it could not be made possible for him to accept, as the following correspondence will show: WENDELL PHILLIPS, Boston. OFFICE OF "THE IRISH WORLD," I have just received the following cable from Mr. Egan, LandLeague treasurer, Paris: "Will Wendell Phillips come to Ireland, to advocate No Rent during the suspension of Constitutional liberties? The League will pay all expenses. Reply. PATRICK EGAN." I beg you, Mr. Phillips, to hearken to this as an inspiration and a call from God himself. You are the one man in America fitted for the glorious mission. All Ireland will rise to its feet to bless and cheer you. Never did Cæsar receive such an ovation. Civilization will look on in admiring wonder. The good which your heroic act will effect is incalculable; and your name, consecrated in the memory of a grateful people, will live whilst time endures. PATRICK FORd. To this invitation Mr. Phillips sent the following reply, under cover of a note to Mr. Ford: BOSTON, 2d Nov., 1881. Sir, I receive with humility the summons you send me, well knowing, that, in any circumstances, I could not do a tenth part of what your partiality makes you think I could. But, in this case, humanity, civil liberty, constitutional government, and civilization itself claim his best service of every man. Ireland to-day leads the van in the struggle for right, justice, and freedom. England has forfeited her right to rule, if she ever had any, by a three hundred years' exhibition of her unfitness and inability to do so. The failure is confessed by all her statesmen of both parties for the last hundred years. Discontent, poverty, famine, and death are her accusers. Her rulers cannot plead ignorance. Their own shameless confessions, repeated over and over again, admit that England's rule has been unjust, selfish, and cruel. She has planned that Ireland should starve, hoping she would then be too weak to resist. To-day, while her government tramples under foot every principle in English history that makes men honor it, the world waits in sure and glad expectation of her defeat, confident that her overthrow will be the triumph of right, justice, and civilization. The three thousand miles of ocean that separate us from her shores, enable us to judge her course as dispassionately as posterity will judge it a hundred years hence; and we see the mad blunders of her government as posterity will see them. Let Ireland only persevere, and her victory is certain. With unbroken front, let her assault despotism in its central point, RENT. Ireland owes none to-day,— certainly not to a class whose government is the prison and the bayonet. How cheerfully would I do my part! How gladly would I share in the honors of such a struggle! But the state of my health obliges me to give up public speaking. I can only bid you God-speed, and pray for your speedy and complete success. Yours very respectfully, WENDELL PHILLIPS. For many years Mr. Phillips's home was in Essex Street, Boston, a quiet street, now almost wholly de voted to business. Near by, in Exeter Place, lived Theodore Parker, the neighbor and bosom-friend of Phillips. Although socially attached to one another, in theology these genial spirits never agreed, for the reason that Mr. Phillips was born and bred, and always remained, a Calvinist. This fact, however, did not interfere with their friendship. But, while Parker was fully informed of the secret plans of John Brown in 1858, it was not until 1859, and then not fully, that Brown saw fit to communicate them to Phillips, who probably knew of them but generally. Yet, after Brown's death, Mr. Phillips, who spoke at his funeral in North Elba, brought thence the correspondence between Brown and his Boston friends, which would have made a great stir had it fallen into the hands of his opponents. These papers Phillips deposited with John A. Andrew; and from him, in the winter of 1859-60, the correspondents got back their dangerous epistles. To allude again to the old home: it was a brick house, rather narrow, of three stories and a half. Painted on the door, in black letters on a dark ground, was the name · PHILLIPS. Two or three servants looked after the domestic details of the house; and, long before there was any talk |