To the lovers of Ireland--to those who sympathize with her sufferings
and resent her wrongs, there can be few things more interesting than the
history of the struggles which sprang from devotion to her cause, and
were consecrated by the blood of her patriots. The efforts of the Irish
race to burst the fetters that foreign force and native dissensions
imposed on them, and elevate their country from bondage and degradation
to a place amongst free nations, fill a page in the world's history
which no lover of freedom can read without emotion, and which must
excite wonder, admiration, and regret in the mind of every man with whom
patriotism is not a reproach, and who can sympathize with a cause
ennobled by fidelity and sacrifice, and sanctified by the blood and
tears of a nation. "How hands so vile could conquer hearts so brave," is
the question which our National Poet supposes to arise in the mind of
the stranger, as he looks on the spectacle of Ireland in her decay; but
another question will suggest itself to those who study the history of
our country: it is, how a feeling so deeply rooted as the love of
independence is in the hearts of the Irish people--an aspiration so
warmly and so widely entertained--which has been clung to with so much
persistency--which has survived through centuries of persecution--for
which generations have arisen, and fought, and bled, and dashed
themselves against the power of England with a succession as unbroken as
that of the waves upon our shores--a cause so universally loved, so
deeply reverenced, and so unflinchingly supported by a brave and
intrepid race, should never have attained the blessing of success. A
more signal instance than that which Ireland can supply of the baffling
of a nation's hope, the prolonged frustration of a people's will, is not
on record; and few even of those who most condemn the errors and
weakness by which Irishmen themselves have retarded the national object,
will hesitate to say that they have given to mankind the noblest proof
they possess of the vitality of the principles of freedom, and the
indestructibility of national sentiment.
It is for us, however, Irish of the Irish, that the history of the
struggle for Ireland's rights possesses most attractions. We live amidst
the scenes where the battles against the stranger were fought, and where
the men who waged them lived and died. The bones of the patriots who
laboured for Ireland, and of those who died for her, repose in the
graveyards around us; and we have still amongst us the inheritors of
their blood, their name, and their spirit. It was to make us free--to
render independent and prosperous the nation to, which we belong--that
the pike was lifted and the green flag raised; and it was in furtherance
of this object, on which the hearts of Irishmen are still set, that the
men whose names shine through the pages on which the story of Ireland's
struggles for national existence is written, suffered and died. To
follow out that mournful but absorbing story is not, however, the object
aimed at in the following pages. The history of Ireland is no longer a
sealed volume to the people; more than one author has told it truthfully
and well, and the list of books devoted to it is every day receiving
valuable accessions. Nor has it even been attempted, in this little
work, though trenching more closely on its subject, to trace the career
and sketch the lives of the men who fill the foremost places in the
ranks of Ireland's political martyrs. In the subjoined pages little more
will be found than a correct report of the addresses delivered, under
certain peculiar circumstances, by the group of Irishmen whose names are
given on the titlepage. A single public utterance from the lips of each
of these gentlemen is all that we have printed, though it would be easy
to supplement them in nearly every case by writings and speeches owning
a similar authorship, equally eloquent and equally patriotic. But the
speeches given here are associated with facts which give them peculiar
value and significance, and were spoken under circumstances which lend
to them a solemn interest and impressiveness which could not otherwise
be obtained. They reach us--these dock speeches, in which nobility of
purpose and chivalrous spirit is expressed--like voices from the tomb,
like messages from beyond the grave, brimful of lessons of dignity and
patriotism. We can see the men who spoke them standing before the
representatives of the government whose oppression had driven them to
revolt, when the solemn farce of trying them for a crime which posterity
will account a virtue had terminated, and when the verdict of "guilty"
had gladdened the hearts of their accusers. The circumstances under
which they spoke might well cause a bold man to falter. They were about
parting for ever from all that makes life dear to man; and, for some of
them, the sentence; which was to cut short the thread of their
existence, to consign them to a bloody and ignominious death, to leave
their bodies mutilated corpses, from which the rights of Christian
burial were to be withheld--which was to assign them the death of a dog,
and to follow them with persecuting hand into the valley of death--was
about to fall from the lips of the judges whom they addressed. Against
others a fate less repulsive, perhaps, to the feelings of humanity, but
certainly not more merciful, and hardly less painful and appalling, was
about to be decreed. Recent revelations have thrown some light on the
horrors endured by the Irish political prisoners who languish within the
prison pens of England; but it needs far more than a stray letter, a
half-stifled cry from the dungeon depths, to enable the public to
realize the misery, the wretchedness, and the degradation attached to
the condition to which England reduces her political convicts. Condemned
to associate with the vilest of the scoundrels bred by the immorality
and godlessness of England--exposed, without possibility of redress, to
the persecutions of brutal, coarse-minded men, accustomed to deal
only with ruffians than whom beasts are less ferocious and
unreclaimable--restricted to a course of discipline which blasts the
vigour of the body, and under whose influence reason herself totters
upon her throne--the Irish rebel against whom the doom of penal
servitude has been pronounced is condemned to the most hideous and
agonizing punishments to which men of their class could be exposed. It
was with such terrors staring them in the face that the men whose words
are recorded in this little work delivered their speeches from the dock.
It is surely something for us, their countrymen, to boast of, that
neither in their bearing nor in their words was there manifested the
slightest trace of weakness, the faintest exhibition of any feeling
which could show that their hearts were accessible to the terror which
their situation was so well calculated to inspire. No cheek grew pale,
no eyes lost their light--their tones were unbroken, and their manner
undaunted as ever, as these men uttered the words we purpose recording.
Their language tells of minds which persecution could not subdue, and
for which death itself possessed no sting; and the manner in which it
was expressed showed that, in their case, elevation of sentiment was
allied with unconquerable firmness and resolution. Never were lessons so
noble more boldly preached. It is in courts of justice, after all,
declares a great English authority, that the lessons of morality are
best taught; and in Ireland the truthfulness of the assertion is
established. But it is not from the bench or the jury-box that the words
have fallen in which the cause of morality and justice has been
vindicated; venality, passion, and prejudice have but too often swayed
the decisions of both; and it is to the dock we must turn when we seek
for honour, integrity, and patriotism.
We owe it to the men who suffered so unflinchingly in the cause of our
country, and who have left us so precious a heritage in the speeches in
which they hurled a last defiance at their oppressors, that their names
should not be forgotten, or the recollection of their acts suffered to
grow cold. The noblest incentive to patriotism, as it is the highest
reward which this world can offer those who dare and suffer for
fatherland, is the gratitude, the sympathy, and the applause of the
people for whom they laboured. We owe it to the brave men whose
patriotism is attested in the addresses comprised in this volume, that
the memory of their noble deeds shall not pass away, and that their
names shall remain enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen. They
failed, it is true, to accomplish what they attempted, and the battle to
which they devoted themselves has yet to be won; but we know that they,
at least, did their part courageously and well; and, looking back now
upon the stormy scenes of their labours, and contrasting the effects of
their sacrifices with the cost at which they were made, the people of
Ireland are still prepared to accept the maxim that--
"Tis better to have fought and lost,
Than never to have fought at all."
While such men can be found to suffer as they have suffered for Ireland,
the ultimate triumph of her aspirations cannot be doubted, nor can the
national faith be despaired of while it has martyrs so numerous and so
heroic. It is by example that the great lessons of patriotism can best
be conveyed; and if the national spirit burn brightly to-day in
Ireland--if the spirit of her children be still defiant and
unsubdued--if, at home and in the far West, the hearts of the Irish
people still throb with the emotions that prompted Emmet and Wolfe
Tone--if their eyes are still hot to see the independence of their
country, their arms still ready to strike, and their spirit ready to
sacrifice for the accomplishment of that object, we owe the result
largely to the men whose names are inscribed in this little work, and
whose memory it is intended to perpetuate.
We have commenced our series with the speech of Theobald Wolfe Tone, and
our record stretches no further back than the memorable insurrection of
1798. If our object were to group together the Irishmen who are known
to have struggled for the independence of their country, and who
suffered for their attachment to her cause, we might go much farther
back into history, and indefinitely increase the bulk of this
publication. We fix the insurrection of '98 as the limit of our
collection, chiefly because it was at that time trials for high treason
in Ireland assumed the precise meaning and significance which they now
possess, and there is consequently, in the speeches which follow, such a
unity of purpose and sentiment as renders them especially suitable for
presentation in a single volume. Only seventy years have elapsed since
Wolfe Tone spoke to the question why sentence should not be pronounced
on him--only two-thirds of a century since Emmet vindicated the cause of
his country from the Green street dock, and already what a host of
imitators and disciples have they had! There is not a country in Europe,
there is not a nationality in the world, can produce such another
collection as that which we to-day lay before the people of Ireland. We
live under a government which claims to be just, liberal, and
constitutional, yet against no other government in Christendom have the
same number of protests been made within the same space of time. Not
Poland, not Hungary, not Venetia, can point to such an unbroken
succession of political martyrs. The pages of history contain nothing to
compare with the little volume we to-day place in the hands of our
countrymen; and we know of no more powerful and eloquent condemnation of
the system on which Ireland is governed, than that contained in the
simple fact that all those speeches were spoken, all those trials
carried-out, all those sentences decreed, within the lifetime of a
single generation. It is idle to think of subduing a people who make so
many sacrifices, and who are undaunted still; it is vain to think of
crushing a spirit which survives so much persecution. The executioner
and the gaoler, the gibbet, the block, and the dungeon, have done their
work in the crusade against Irish Nationality, and we know what the
result is to-day. The words of the last political convict whose name
appears in these pages are as uncompromising and as bold as those of the
first of his predecessors; and, studying the spirit which they have
exhibited, and marking the effect of their conduct on the bulk of their
countrymen, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion, that so much
persistent resolution and heroism must one day eventuate in success, and
that Ireland, the country for which so many brave men have suffered with
such unfaltering courage, is not destined to disprove the rule that--
"Freedom's battle once begun,--
Bequeath'd from bleeding sire to son--
Though baffled oft, is ever won."
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