If we accept the definition of Irish freedom as “the Rights of Man in
Ireland” we shall find it difficult to imagine an apostle of Irish
freedom who is not a democrat. One loves the freedom of men because one
loves men. There is therefore a deep humanism in every true Nationalist.
There was a deep humanism in Tone; and there was a deep humanism in
Davis. The sorrow of the people affected Davis like a personal sorrow.
He had more respect for aristocracy than Tone had (Tone had none), and
would have been less ruthless in a revolution than Tone would have been.
But he was a democrat in this truest sense, that he loved the people,
and his love of the people was an essential part of the man and of his
Nationalism. Even his rhetoric (for Davis, unlike Tone, was a little
rhetorical) cannot disguise the sincerity of such passages as this:
“Think of the long, long patience of the people--their toils
supporting you--their virtues shaming you--their huts, their
hunger, their disease.
“To whosoever God hath given a heart less cold than stone, these
truths must cry day and night. Oh! how they cross us like
Banshees when we would range free on the mountain--how, as we
walk in the evening light amid flowers, they startle us from
rest of mind! Ye nobles! whose houses are as gorgeous as the
mote’s (which dwelleth in the sunbeam)--ye strong and haughty
squires--ye dames exuberant with tingling blood--ye maidens whom
no splendour has yet spoiled, will ye not think of the poor?...”
The real Davis must have been a greater man even than the Davis of the
essays, or the Davis of the songs. In literary expression Davis was
immature; in mind he was ripe beyond all his contemporaries. I cannot
call him a very great prose writer; I am not sure that I can call him a
poet at all. But I can call him a very great man, one of our greatest
men. None of his contemporaries had any doubt about his greatness. He
was the greatest influence among them, and the noblest influence; and he
has been the greatest and noblest influence in Irish history since Tone.
He was not Young Ireland’s most powerful prose writer: Mitchel was that.
He was not Young Ireland’s truest poet: Mangan was that, or, if not
Mangan, Ferguson. He was not Young Ireland’s ablest man of affairs:
Duffy was that. He was not Young Ireland’s most brilliant orator:
Meagher was that. Nevertheless, “Davis was our true leader,” said Duffy;
and when Davis died--the phrase is again Duffy’s--“it seemed as if the
sun had gone out of the heavens.” “The loss of this rare and noble
Irishman,” said Mitchel, “has never been repaired, neither to his
country nor to his friends.” What was it that made Davis so great in the
eyes of two such men, and two such different men, as Duffy and Mitchel?
It must have been the man’s immortal soul. The highest form of genius is
the genius for sanctity, the genius for noble life and thought. That
genius was Davis’s. Character is the greatest thing in a man; and
Davis’s character was such as the Apollo Belvidere is said to be in the
physical order--in his presence all men stood more erect. The Romans had
a noble word which summed up all moral beauty and all private and civic
valour: the word _virtus_. If English had as noble a word as that it
would be the word to apply to the thing which made Thomas Davis so great
a man.
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