Life, Services, and Character of Daniel O'Connell.
Every page of Ireland's history during the present century bears the
name of DANIEL O'CONNELL. In many important respects he is the greatest
of Irishmen. He occupied a first place among the persons who have
recently figured in European affairs, and was one of the most celebrated
orators of our times. For the last twenty years, few men exerted so
powerful an influence on the politics of Great Britain, while his sway
over his immediate countrymen has probably never been equaled. His death
produced a profound sensation in two hemispheres. Though his character,
like that of all men who leave a deep impress on their age, has been
variously estimated by those who, on the one hand, received his warm
sympathy and powerful support, or, on the other, encountered his fierce
reprobation and vigorous opposition, yet all classes of friends and foes
concurred in the sentiment that a master spirit had ceased to influence
human affairs.
Mr. O'Connell was admitted to the Dublin bar at a time when Curran, one
of the most witty, graceful, and brilliant advocates that ever swayed a
jury, and Plunkett, one of the most eloquent lawyers that ever addressed
a bench, were in the zenith of their fame. It is sufficient proof of the
ability and skill of young O'Connell to say, that he had been at the bar
but a year or two before he was surrounded by a large circle of clients,
and had won victories over each of the eminent barristers I have named.
But it was not possible for a mind composed of such fervid elements as
his, to be confined within the purlieus of the courts, looking after the
minor interests of John Doe and Richard Roe; and it soon became evident
that he was to mingle with the sober duties of the lawyer the more
exciting and less profitable toils of the politician. He came to the bar
at one of the most memorable periods of Irish history--the year
Ninety-Eight--when the "United Irishmen" struck an unsuccessful blow for
the independence of their country. The leaders of the rebellion were
arrested for high treason. The life-blood of the chivalrous Robert Emmet
was poured out on the scaffold. Several of his compatriots, after
suffering cruel imprisonments, and wandering, as exiles, through Europe,
reached America, where they were received with open arms by the friends
of freedom. Among these, were Thomas Addis Emmet, the eloquent Attorney
General of New York; Counselor Sampson, one of the acutest lawyers and
keenest wits that ever excoriated a brother advocate at the bar of New
York, and whose father, a dissenting minister, was hanged as a rebel;
and Dr. Macneven, who rose to eminence in the medical profession in that
city. The rebellion of Ninety-Eight resulted in the legislative union
between Great Britain and Ireland. Against this measure Mr. O'Connell,
in company with a majority of his countrymen, uttered a solemn protest.
His first political speech was made in opposition to the proposed act,
the repeal of which occupied so prominent a place in the efforts of his
declining years. This speech, pronounced before the congregated
thousands of Dublin, is said not to have been surpassed for power of
argument, severity of invective, and splendor of declamation, by any of
his later displays on the same subject. His young soul welled up from
full fountains as he portrayed this final degradation which England was
about to inflict upon Ireland; and when the deed was done, and he saw
the emblems of national independence borne away by the conqueror,
Hannibal-like, he swore eternal hostility to the oppressor. And most
religiously did he perform his vow!
Mr. O'Connell now turned his attention to the civil and ecclesiastical
disabilities of the Roman Catholics of the kingdom. Of the extent of his
services in procuring their removal, I have spoken in another place. To
this work he gave up twenty-five of the prime years of his life. To him,
not the Catholics only, but the Dissenters of every name in Great
Britain, are much indebted for the enlargement of their privileges
during the last thirty years. This endeared him to large bodies of
Christian men, who widely differed from him in religious opinion, giving
him a strong hold, Catholic and agitator though he was, upon liberal
Baptists, Congregationalists, and Quakers, who, while repudiating his
creed, cherished the principle of toleration for which he contended. Mr.
O'Connell regarded Catholic Emancipation as the great achievement of his
life; and it was that which won for him the title of "The Liberator of
Ireland."
During the Catholic controversy, of the bitterness of which Americans
can scarcely conceive, Mr. O'Connell for once departed from the pacific
policy which was the guiding principle of his excited life. Dublin was
the central heart whence he sent out agitating pulsations through every
artery of the Irish body. The corporation of that city was a high Tory
municipality, of the most bigoted and vindictive class. The leader of
the Emancipationists was often in collision with its members, many of
whom encountered his severest attacks. In 1815, Mr. D'Esterre, a member
of the corporation, at the instigation of its leading officers,
challenged Mr. O'Connell to personal combat. The parties met, and at the
first fire D'Esterre fell, mortally wounded. The successful duelist saw
his antagonist stretched on the grass at his feet, gasping in death. The
awful spectacle left an abiding abhorrence of blood on the sensitive
mind of O'Connell. Twenty-five years later he inscribed on the Repeal
banner his memorable saying, "No political change is worth the shedding
of one drop of human blood." His remorse for the D'Esterre tragedy
brought forth fruits meet for repentance. During their lives he
contributed liberally to the support of the widow and children of the
man whom he had slain.
After the death of Grattan, Ireland had no champion in the British
Senate, to give utterance to the emotions that swelled her full heart.
The Emancipation Act of 1829 opened the doors of the House of Commons to
Mr. O'Connell. Born and cradled in Ireland, he had grown up with her
people, an Irishman of the Irishmen. He landed on the eastern shore of
St. George's Channel the same man as when the spires of Dublin faded
from his eye in the western horizon. He carried with him a name endeared
in every cabin from Coleraine to Cork, and familiar to statesmen in
England and throughout Europe. Widely as he was known, he was known only
as an Irishman; and his reputation was, in its kind, purely Irish. To
his dying day, he gloried in the epithet early bestowed upon him in
Parliament, and which, though intended as a reproach, he converted into
a talisman--"The member for all Ireland."
A new field was now opened before him. Grattan, alluding to Flood's
failure in the English Parliament, said: "An oak of the forest is too
old to be transplanted at fifty." Though O'Connell was fifty-four when
he entered that body, his parliamentary career, covering eighteen years,
was of the most sturdy growth. His speeches in support of the Reform
Bill rank with the ablest which that controversy called forth. He threw
his soul into the cause of Negro Emancipation, fighting side by side, in
and out of Parliament, with Wilberforce, Clarkson, Buxton, Brougham,
Lushington, till the slave became a man. He early embraced the doctrine
of immediate and unconditional emancipation, and was among the few
members who voted against the delusive scheme of apprenticeship. He
united with Sturge, Wardlaw, and Scoble, in the subsequent movement that
restored to the apprentices the full rights of British subjects. At the
outset of the enterprise, he gave his voice and vote in favor of the
leading principles of the Chartists, and was among the earliest
advocates of Rowland Hill's plan of cheap postage. He joined George
Thompson in portraying the wrongs of British India and denouncing the
crimes of its oppressors, and was an able supporter of the doctrines and
measures of the Anti-Corn-Law League.
The member for all Ireland gave a large share of his thoughts to
Irish affairs. Regarding the abolition of the Irish Parliament as one of
the chief sources of the national suffering, he consecrated the last
ten years of his life to efforts for the Repeal of the Union. The
means employed were the same as those by which he obtained
Emancipation--Popular Agitation. The Repeal excitement, which was
soothed for a time by the conciliatory course of the Melbourne
Government, broke out with increased intensity when Sir Robert Peel rose
to power in 1841-2. In the latter year, "Repeal!" resounded from every
parish in the island. The next year saw the "Monster Meetings," when the
assembled populace, which swayed to the inspiring eloquence of the
Liberator, was measured by acres. The Government was alarmed. Just
previous to a grand demonstration at Clontarf, O'Connell, and five
others, were arrested for conspiring to change the laws of the realm by
intimidation. The trials, which consumed nearly the whole of January,
1844, resulted in the conviction of most of the defendants. O'Connell,
when brought up for sentence, pronounced an able and dignified protest
against the proceedings. He was adjudged to pay a fine of L2,000, be
imprisoned one year, and give sureties to keep the peace for seven. He
brought a writ of error to the House of Lords. In the mean time he was
sent to the Richmond Penitentiary. The Lords reversed the judgment.
After spending three months in a prison, where his "cell" was fitted up
and filled like the presence-chamber of a king, and his "confinement"
consisted in walking among arbors and parterres that "a Shenstone might
have envied," he was released, and, mounted on a triumphal car, rode in
state to his residence in Dublin, attended by uncounted thousands of his
shouting countrymen. In the frenzy of its joy, Conciliation Hall
declared that "The Liberator had driven the car of Repeal through the
Monster Indictment."
Darker skies were gathering over O'Connell. The pacific tenor of his
agitations had thwarted the government. The magic of his name had
prevented any overt act of violence by vast assemblies of his excited
countrymen. The sub-leaders became impatient of delay, assumed a defiant
tone, and demanded that the non-resistant doctrines of O'Connell be
repudiated by the National Repeal Association. Then arose "Young
Ireland." Then came strife and division, one party clinging to, the
other separating from, the great leader. The alienation of large numbers
of his friends overtaking him when his powers were impaired by years of
exhausting toil, broke the spirit of the old man, undermined his
constitution, and compelled him to repair to the Continent to
resuscitate his waning health and drooping heart. But he left the field
of exertion too late. His energies rapidly declined; death overtook him
while on his weary pilgrimage; his eye saw the sun for the last time in
a foreign sky; and he slept his final sleep far from the land which gave
him birth, and from that ocean by whose side his cradle was rocked. The
stroke that felled him to the earth sent a pang through many a heart in
every country where humanity has a dwelling-place; for his sympathies,
like his reputation, were world-wide. He had delivered his own
countrymen from the bonds of ecclesiastical tyranny, and had plead for
the victims of a hellish traffic on the shores of Africa, for the
swarthy serfs of British cupidity on the banks of the Ganges, for the
persecuted Jews of ancient Damascus, and for the stricken slaves in the
isles of the Caribbean Sea and in the distant States of America.
No impartial and well-informed mind doubts the sincerity of Mr.
O'Connell in demanding a Repeal of the Union. But it is equally
unquestionable that, in his estimate of the benefits to flow from that
measure, he either was deceived himself, or misled his followers.
Probably long contemplation of that object, as the one remedy for the
ills of Ireland, betrayed him into the errors of all disciples of
"one-ideaism," while he was not exempt from the common infirmity of
political leaders, in unduly magnifying before the eye of their
partisans _the_ measure of the party. Ineffectual as Repeal must have
proved in producing a radical cure for Ireland, it would have been a
preliminary stage in her restoration to complete independence, and
therefore was important.
In respect to Mr. O'Connell's general course as a public man, it may be
said that he did not belong to the ascetic school of politicians. He was
not exempt from trick and artifice in attaining his ends, and was lavish
in promising to do for his followers what he must have known he could
not perform. Indeed, he was something of a demagogue. In honesty of
purpose, he ranks with the better class of great public leaders; and if
this be not saying much, it is saying more than can be uttered of the
body. He is a rare man who is worthy to be ranked among the exceptions
to bad general rules. The objects to which he devoted his political life
were the noblest that can move the hearts of men. He that has never
employed questionable means to secure even such ends may cast the first
stone at Daniel O'Connell.
It only remains that I refer to his personal, social, and mental
characteristics. Mr. O'Connell had a massive frame, capable of enduring
great fatigue, and he was one of the most industrious and laborious of
men. His manners were cordial and frank; his social qualities genial and
winning; and he was singularly affectionate as a husband and a father.
It was only in the fierce conflicts of partisan strife, when challenged
by some strong provocation, that the unlovely and almost vindictive
traits of his nature were displayed. Then, the man who, an hour before,
had been all gentleness and good humor--caressing his grandchildren with
womanly fervor, or, in his seat in the Commons, affectionately holding
the hand of his son for a half hour together--now opened that terrible
battery of invective which he so well knew how to employ, and covered
his foe with a storm of fire.
He possessed a mind of uncommon native vigor, trained by a complete
education, and enlarged with a knowledge of men and things varied and
ample. The versatility of his genius, his extensive information, and his
capacity to adapt himself to the matter under discussion or the audience
before him, were surprising. I have heard him exhaust topics that
required for their elucidation an intimate acquaintance with the
Constitution of the United States, with the condition of barbarous
tribes in the interior of Africa, with the wrongs inflicted by the East
India Company upon the dwellers in Hindostan, with the commercial
tariffs of European nations, with the persecution of the Jews in Asia,
with the causes of the opium war in China, with the relative rights of
planters and laborers in the Western Archipelago--and he was at home in
each. I have seen him hold the House of Commons spell-bound, call shouts
from the _elite_ of British intelligence and philanthropy in Exeter
Hall, lash into fury or hush into repose acres of wild peasantry
gathered on the moors of Ireland--and he was at home with each.
As a popular orator, before mixed assemblies, our age has rarely seen
his equal. So good a judge as John Randolph pronounced him the first
orator in Europe. Every chord of the human bosom lay open to his touch,
and he played upon its passions and emotions with a master's hand. He
could subdue his hearers to tears by his pathos, or toss them with
laughter by his humor. His imagination could bear them to a giddy hight
on its elastic wing, or he could enchain their judgment by the strong
links of his logic. He could blanch their cheek as he painted before
their eye some atrocity red with blood, or he could make them hold their
sides as he related some broad Irish anecdote fresh from Cork. He used
to say he was the bes-tabused man in Europe. But he was able to
liquidate all such scores with most usurious interest. He could
excoriate an antagonist with invective, or roast him alive before a slow
fire of sarcasm. When his indignation was fully roused, he boiled like a
volcano; yet there was no excess of action or noise, but an eruption
whose lava consumed all before it. His recital of facts charmed like a
romance, and his appeals to the sympathies, uttered in a musical voice
and the richest brogue of his native island, were tender and subduing.
No actor ever excelled him in reflecting the workings of the mind
through the windows of the countenance. He _looked_ every sentiment as
it fell from his lips. I have seen a deputation of Hindoo chiefs, while
listening to his detail, before an assembly, of the wrongs of India,
never take their eyes off of him for an hour and a half, though not one
word in ten was intelligible to their ears. His gesticulation was
redundant, never commonplace, strictly _sui generis_, far from being
awkward, not precisely graceful, and yet it could hardly have been more
forcible, and, so to speak, illustrative. He threw himself into a great
variety of attitudes, all evidently unpremeditated. Now he stands bolt
upright like a grenadier. Then he assumes the port and bearing of a
pugilist. Now he folds his arms upon his breast, utters some beautiful
sentiment, relaxes them, recedes a step, and gives wing to the
coruscations of his fancy, while a winning smile plays over his
countenance. Then he "stands at ease," and relates an anecdote with the
rollicking air of a horse-jockey at Donnybrook Fair. Quick as thought,
his indignation is kindled; and, before speaking a word, he makes a
violent sweep with his arm, seizes his wig as if he would tear it in
pieces, adjusts it to its place, advances to the front of the rostrum,
throws his body into the attitude of a gladiator, and pours out a flood
of rebuke and denunciation.
Like most other rare men who have acted conspicuous parts in turbulent
times, he had great faults, eminent virtues, crowds of enemies, troops
of friends. His flatterers have rarely called him a statesman. In truth,
he was neither a good statesman, nor a bad statesman, but simply a bold
and generally successful political agitator. He grappled with questions
that shook empires; led the van in many a contest against despotism; was
indebted in no small degree for his victories to the rottenness of the
institutions he assailed. All right-minded and liberal-hearted men will
ascribe his defects partly to the evil times in which he lived, partly
to a hasty temper and an indomitable pride of opinion, while to a large
extent they will be attributed to a generous and impulsive nature,
impatient of unmeasured abuse and unreasonable opposition. Impartial
history will record that his fury was usually poured out on the heads of
meanness, fraud, injustice, and oppression; that he was the friend, the
champion, the brother, of depressed and outraged manhood, irrespective
of clime, color, or creed; and that wherever Humanity writhed under the
heel of Tyranny, there were found the glowing heart and trumpet voice of
Daniel O'Connell, sympathizing with the victim and rebuking the tyrant.