Early in 1846, when the Repeal Association was still powerful and great,
and ere yet the country had ceased to throb to the magic of O'Connell's
voice, there rose one day from amongst those who crowded the platform of
Conciliation Hall, a well-featured, gracefully-built, dark-eyed young
gentleman, towards whom the faces of the assembly turned in curiosity,
and whose accents when he spoke, were those of a stranger to the
audience. Few of them had heard of his name; not one of them--if the
chairman, William Smith O'Brien be excepted--had the faintest idea of
the talents and capacities he possessed, and which were one day to
enrapture and electrify his countrymen. He addressed the meeting on one
of the passing topics of the day; something in his manner savouring of
affectation, something in the semi-Saxon lisp that struggled through his
low-toned utterances, something in the total lack of suitable gesture,
gave his listeners at the outset an unfavourable impression of the young
speaker. He was boyish, and some did not scruple to hint conceited; he
had too much of the fine gentleman about his appearance, and too little
of the native brogue and stirring declamation to which his listeners
had been accustomed. The new man is a failure, was the first idea that
suggested itself to the audience: but he was not; and when he resumed
his seat he had conquered all prejudices, and wrung the cheers of
admiration from the meeting. Warming with his subject, and casting off
the restraints that hampered his utterances at first, he poured forth a
strain of genuine eloquence, vivified by the happiest allusions, and
enriched by imagery and quotations as beautiful as they were
appropriate, which startled the meeting from its indifference, and won
for the young speaker the enthusiastic applause of his audience. O'Brien
complimented him warmly on his success, and thus it was that the orator
of Young Ireland made his debut on the political platform.
Meagher was not quite twenty-three years of age when his voice was first
heard in Conciliation Hall. He was born in Waterford of an old Catholic
family, which through good and ill had adhered to the national faith and
the national cause; his school-boy days were passed partly at
Clongowes-wood College, and partly under the superintendence of the
Jesuit Fathers at Stoneyhurst in Lancashire. His early years gave few
indications of the splendid wealth of genius that slumbered within his
breast. He took little interest in his classical or mathematical
studies; but he was an ardent student of English literature, and his
compositions in poetry and prose invariably carried away the prize. He
found his father filling the Civic Chair in Waterford, when he returned
from Stoneyhurst to his native city. O'Connell was in the plenitude of
his power; and from end to end of the land, the people were shaken by
mighty thoughts and grand aspirations; with buoyant and unfaltering
tread the nation seemed advancing towards the goal of Freedom, and the
manhood of Ireland seemed kindling at the flame which glowed before the
altar of Liberty. Into the national movement young Meagher threw himself
with the warmth and enthusiasm of his nature. At the early age of twenty
we find him presiding over a meeting of Repealers in his native city,
called to express sympathy with the State Prisoners of '43, and he
thence-forward became a diligent student of contemporary politics. He
became known as an occasional speaker at local gatherings; but it was
not until the event we have described that Meagher was fairly launched
in the troubled tide of politics, and that his lot was cast for good or
evil, with the leaders of the national party.
Up to the date of secession Meagher was a frequent speaker at the
meetings of the Repeal Association. Day by day his reputation as a
speaker extended, until at length he grew to be recognised as the orator
of the party, and the knowledge that he was expected to speak was
sufficient to crowd Conciliation Hall to overflowing. When the influence
of the _Nation_ party began to be felt, and signs of disunion appeared
on the horizon, O'Connell made a vigorous effort to detach Meagher from
the side of Mitchel, Duffy, and O'Brien. "These young Irelanders," he
said, "will lead you into danger." "They may lead me into danger,"
replied Meagher, "but certainly not into dishonour."
Against the trafficking with the Whigs, which subsequently laid the
Repeal Association in the dust, and shipwrecked a movement which might
have ended in the disinthralment of Ireland, Meagher protested in words
of prophetic warning. "The suspicion is abroad," he said, "that the
national cause will be sacrificed to Whig supremacy, and that the
people, who are now striding on to freedom, will be purchased back into
factious vassalage. The Whigs calculate upon your apostacy, the
Conservatives predict it." The place beggars, who looked to the Whigs
for position and wealth, murmured as they heard their treachery laid
bare and their designs dissected in the impassioned appeals by which
Meagher sought to recall them to the path of patriotism and duty. It was
necessary for their ends that the bold denouncer of corruption, and the
men who acted with him, should be driven from the association; and to
effect that object O'Connell was hounded on to the step which ended in
the secession. The "peace resolutions" were introduced, and Meagher
found himself called on to subscribe to a doctrine which his soul
abhorred--that the use of arms was at all times unjustifiable and
immoral. The Lord Mayor was in the chair, and O'Brien, John O'Connell.
Denis Reilly, Tom Steele, and John Mitchel had spoken, when Meagher rose
to address the assembly. The speech he delivered on that occasion, for
brilliancy and lyrical grandeur has never been surpassed. It won for him
a reception far transcending that of Shiel or O'Connell as an orator;
and it gave to him the title by which he was afterwards so often
referred to--"Meagher of the Sword." He commenced by expressing his
sense of gratitude, and his attachment to O'Connell, "My lord," he
said:--
"I am not ungrateful to the man who struck the fetters off my limbs
while I was yet a child, and by whose influence my father, the first
Catholic that did so for two hundred years, sat for the last two
years in the civic chair of my native city. But, my lord," he
continued, "the same God who gave to that great man the power to
strike down one odious ascendency in this country, and who enabled
him to institute in this land the laws of religious equality--the
same God gave to me a mind that is my own, a mind that has not been
mortgaged to the opinion of any man or set of men, a mind that I was
to use and not surrender."
Having thus vindicated freedom of opinion, the speaker went on to
disclaim for himself the opinion that the Association ought to deviate
from the strict path of legality. But he refused to accept the
resolutions; because he said "there are times when arms alone will
suffice, and when political ameliorations call for 'a drop of blood,'
and for many thousand drops of blood." Then breaking forth into a strain
of impassioned and dazzling oratory he proceeded:--
"The soldier is proof against an argument--but he is not proof
against a bullet. The man that will listen to reason--let him be
reasoned with. But it is the weaponed arm of the patriot that can
alone prevail against battalioned despotism.
"Then, my lord, I do not condemn the use of arms as immoral, nor do I
conceive it profane to say that the King of Heaven--the Lord of
Hosts! the God of Battles!--bestows his benediction upon those who
unsheath the sword in the hour of a nation's peril. From that evening
on which, in the valley of Bethulia, he nerved the arm of the Jewish
girl to smite the drunken tyrant in his tent, down to this our day,
in which he has blessed the insurgent chivalry of the Belgian priest,
His Almighty hand hath ever been stretched forth from His throne of
Light to consecrate the flag of freedom--to bless the patriot's
sword! Be it in the defence, or be it in the assertion of a people's
liberty, I hail the sword as a sacred weapon; and if, my lord, it had
sometimes taken the shape of the serpent, and reddened the shroud of
the oppressor with too deep a dye, like the anointed rod of the High
Priest, it has at other times, and as often, blossomed into celestial
flowers to deck the freeman's brow.
"Abhor the sword--stigmatize the sword? No, my lord, for in the
passes of the Tyrol it cut to pieces the banner of the Bavarian, and,
through those cragged passes, struck a path to fame for the peasant
insurrectionists of Inspruck! Abhor the sword--stigmatize the sword?
No, my lord, for at its blow a giant nation started from the waters
of the Atlantic, and by its redeeming magic, and in the quivering of
its crimsoned light the crippled colony sprang into the attitude of a
proud Republic--prosperous, limitless, and invincible! Abhor the
sword--stigmatize the sword? No, my lord, for it swept the Dutch
marauders out of the fine old towns of Belgium--scourged them back to
their own phlegmatic swamps--and knocked their flag and sceptre,
their laws and bayonets, into the sluggish waters of the Scheldt.
"My lord, I learned that it was the right of a nation to govern
itself, not in this hall, but on the ramparts of Antwerp; I learned
the first article of a nation's creed upon those ramparts, where
freedom was justly estimated, and where the possession of the
precious gift was purchased by the effusion of generous blood. My
lord, I honor the Belgians for their courage and their daring, and I
will not stigmatize the means by which they obtained a citizen-king,
a chamber of Deputies."
It was all he was permitted to say. With flushed face and excited
gesture John O'Connell rose, and declared he could not sit and listen to
the expression of such sentiments. Either Mr. Meagher or he should leave
the Association; O'Brien interceded to obtain a hearing for his young
friend, and protested against Mr. O'Connell's attempts to silence him.
But the appeal was wasted, O'Brien left the hall in disgust, and with
him Meagher, Duffy, Reilly, and Mitchel quitted it for ever.
Meagher's subsequent career in Ireland is soon told. He was a regular
attendant at the meetings of the Confederation, of which he was one of
the founders, and the fame of his eloquence, his manly appearance, and
the charms of his youthful frankness contributed immensely towards the
growth of the new organization. He always acted with O'Brien, whom he
loved in his inmost soul, but he was respected and admired by every
section of nationalists, the Mitchelites, the Duffyites, and we might
even say the O'Connellites. When the country began to feel the influence
of the whirlwind of revolution which swept over the continent,
overturning thrones and wrecking constitutions as if they were built of
cardboard, Meagher shared the wild impulse of the hour, and played
boldly for insurrection and separation. He was one of the three
gentlemen appointed to present the address from Ireland to the French
Republican government in 1848; and in the speech delivered by him at the
crowded meeting in the Dublin Music Hall before his departure, he
counselled his countrymen to send a deputation to the Queen, asking her
to convene the Irish parliament in the Irish capital. "If the claim be
rejected," said Meagher, "if the throne stand as a barrier between the
Irish people and the supreme right--then loyalty will be a crime, and
obedience to the executive will be treason to the country. Depute your
worthiest citizens to approach the throne, and before that throne let
the will of the Irish people be uttered with dignity and decision. If
nothing comes of this," he added, "if the constitution opens to us no
path to freedom, if the Union be maintained in spite of, the will of the
Irish people, if the government of Ireland insist on being a government
of dragoons and bombadiers, of detectives and light infantry, then," he
exclaimed in the midst of tumultuous cheering, "up with the barricades,
and invoke the God of Battles!"
While the Republican spirit was in full glow in Ireland, Meagher
astonished his friends by rushing down to Waterford and offering himself
as a candidate for the post left vacant in parliament by the resignation
of O'Connell. By this time the Confederates had begun to despair of a
parliamentary policy, and they marvelled much to see their young orator
rush to the hustings, and throw himself into the confusion and turmoil
of an election contest. _Que le diable allait il faire dans cette
galere_ muttered his Dublin friends. Was not the time for hustings
orations, and parliamentary agitation over now? Meagher, however,
conceived, and perhaps wisely, that he could still do some good for his
country in the House of Commons. He issued a noble address to the
electors of his native city, in which he asked for their support on the
most patriotic grounds. "I shall not meddle," he said, "with English
affairs. I shall take no part in the strife of parties--all factions are
alike to me. I shall go to the House of Commons to insist on the rights
of this country to be held, governed, and defended by its own citizens,
and by them alone. Whilst I live I shall never rest satisfied until the
kingdom of Ireland has won a parliament, an army, and a navy of her
own." Mitchel strongly disapproved of his conduct. "If Mr. Meagher were
in parliament," said the _United Irishman_, "men's eyes would be
attracted thither once more; some hope of 'justice' might again revive
in this too easily deluded people." The proper men to send to parliament
were according to Mitchel, "old placemen, pensioners, five pound
Conciliation Hall Repealers." "We have no wish to dictate," concluded
Mitchel in an article on the subject, full of the lurking satire and
quiet humour that leavened his writings, "but if the electors of
Waterford have any confidence in us, we shall only say that we are for
Costello!"
"Costello" was defeated, however, but so was Meagher. The Young Ireland
champion was stigmatized as a Tory by the Whigs, and as a rebel by the
Tories; if _the people_, as Mitchel remarks had any power he would have
been elected by an overwhelming majority, but the people had no votes,
and Sir Henry Winston Barren was returned. Meagher went back to Dublin
almost a convert to Mitchel's views, leaving Whig, Tory, and West Briton
to exult over his discomfiture.
We have already seen what Meagher did when the guage of battle was
thrown down, and when "the day all hearts to weigh" was imagined to have
arrived, we have seen how he accompanied O'Brien in his expedition from
Wexford to Kilkenny, and thence to Tipperary; and how on the morning of
July 29th, 1848, he left O'Brien at Ballingarry, little dreaming of the
tragedy which was to make that day memorable, and expecting to be able
to bring reinforcements to his leader from other quarters before the
crisis came. He failed however in his effort to spread the flames of
insurrection. The chilling news of O'Brien's defeat--distorted and
exaggerated by hostile tongues--was before him everywhere, and even the
most resolute of his sympathisers had sense enough to see that their
opportunity--if it existed at all--had passed away. On the 12th day of
August, 1848, Meagher was arrested on the road between Clonoulty and
Holycross, in Tipperary. He was walking along in company with Patrick
O'Donoghue and Maurice R. Leyne, two of his intimate friends and
fellow-outlaws, when a party of police passed them by. Neither of the
three was disguised, but Meagher and Leyne wore frieze overcoats, which
somewhat altered their usual appearance. After a short time the police
returned; Meagher and his companions gave their real names on being
interrogated, and they were at once arrested and taken in triumph to
Thurles. The three friends bore their ill fortune with what their
captors must have considered provoking nonchalance. Meagher smoked a
cigar on the way to the station, and the trio chatted as gaily as if
they were walking in safety on the free soil of America, instead of
being helpless prisoners on their way to captivity and exile.
Meagher stood in the dock at Clonmel a week after O'Brien had quitted it
a convict. He was defended by Mr. Whiteside and Isaac Butt, whose
magnificent speech in his defence was perhaps the most brilliant display
of forensic eloquence ever heard Within the court in which he stood. Of
course the jury was packed (only 18 Catholics were named on a jury-panel
of 300), and of course the crown carried its point. On the close of the
sixth day of the trial, the jury returned into court with a verdict of
"guilty," recommending the prisoner to mercy on the ground of his youth.
Two days later he was brought back to the dock to receive sentence. He
was dressed in his usual style, appeared in excellent health, and bore
himself--we are told--throughout the trying ordeal, with fortitude and
manly dignity. He spoke as follows:--
"My lords, it is my intention to say a few words only. I desire that
the last act of a proceeding which has occupied so much of the public
time, should be of short duration. Nor have I the indelicate wish to
close the dreary ceremony of a state prosecution with a vain display
of words. Did I fear that hereafter, when I shall be no more, the
country I tried to serve would speak ill of me, I might, indeed,
avail myself of this solemn moment to vindicate my sentiments and my
conduct. But I have no such fear. The country will judge of those
sentiments and that conduct in a light far different from that in
which the jury by whom I have been convicted have viewed them, and by
the country the sentence which you, my lords, are about to pronounce,
will be remembered only as the severe and solemn attestation of my
rectitude and truth. Whatever be the language in which that sentence
be spoken, I know that my fate will meet with sympathy, and that my
memory will be honoured. In speaking thus, accuse me not, my lords,
of an indecorus presumption in the efforts I have made in a just and
noble cause. I ascribe no main importance, nor do I claim for those
efforts any high reward. But it so happens, and it will ever happen
so, that they who have lived to serve their country--no matter how
weak their efforts may have been--are sure to receive the thanks and
blessings of its people. With my countrymen I leave my memory, my
sentiments, my acts, proudly feeling that they require no vindication
from me this day. A jury of my countrymen, it is true, have found me
guilty of the crime of which I stood indicted. For this I entertain
not the slightest feeling of resentment towards them. Influenced as
they must have been by the charge of the Lord Chief Justice, they
could perhaps have found no other verdict. What of that charge? Any
strong observations on it I feel sincerely would ill-befit the
solemnity of this scene; but I would earnestly beseech of you, my
lord--you who preside on that bench--when the passions and the
prejudices of this hour have passed away, to appeal to your own
conscience, and ask of it, was your charge what it ought to have
been, impartial and indifferent between the subject and the crown? My
lords, you may deem this language unbecoming in me, and perhaps it
may seal my fate; but I am here to speak the truth, whatever it may
cost--I am here to regret nothing I have ever done, to regret nothing
I have ever said--I am here to crave with no lying lip the life I
consecrate to the liberty of my country. Far from it. Even
here--here, where the thief, the libertine, the murderer, have left
their foot-prints in the dust--here, on this spot, where the shadows
of death surround me, and from which I see my early grave in an
unanointed soil open to receive me--even here, encircled by these
terrors, that hope which first beckoned me to the perilous sea on
which I have been wrecked, still consoles, animates, and enraptures
me. No; I do not despair of my poor old country--her peace, her
liberty, her glory. For that country I can do no more than bid her
hope. To lift this island up--to make her a benefactor to humanity,
instead of being, as she is now, the meanest beggar in the world--to
restore to her her native powers and her ancient constitution--this
has been my ambition, and this ambition has been my crime. Judged by
the law of England, I know this crime entails upon me the penalty of
death; but the history of Ireland explains that crime and justifies
it. Judged by that history, I am no criminal, you (addressing Mr.
M'Manus) are no criminal, you (addressing Mr. O'Donoghue) are no
criminal, and we deserve no punishment; judged by that history, the
treason of which I stand convicted loses all its guilt, has been
sanctified as a duty, and will be enobled as a sacrifice. With these
sentiments I await the sentence of the court. I have done what I felt
to be my duty. I have spoken now, as I did on every other occasion
during my short life, what I felt to be the truth. I now bid farewell
to the country of my birth--of my passions--of my death; a country
whose misfortunes have invoked my sympathies--whose factions I sought
to quell--whose intelligence I prompted to a lofty aim--whose freedom
has been my fatal dream. To that country I now offer as a pledge of
the love I bore her, and of the sincerity with which I thought and
spoke, and struggled for her freedom, the life of a young heart; and
with that life, the hopes, the honours, the endearments of a happy, a
prosperous, and honourable home. Proceed, then, my lords, with that
sentence which the law directs--I am prepared to hear it--I trust I
am prepared to meet its execution. I shall go, I think, with a light
heart before a higher tribunal--a tribunal where a Judge of infinite
goodness, as well as of infinite justice, will preside, and where, my
lords, many many of the judgments of this, world will be reversed."
There is little more for us to add. Meagher arrived with O'Brien,
O'Donoghue, and M'Manus in Van Dieman's Land in October, 1849, and
escaped to America in 1852. He started the _Irish News_ in New York,
which he enriched by personal recollections of the stirring scenes in
which he participated; but his career as a journalist closed abruptly
with the outbreak of the war of Secession, when he raised a Zouave
Company to join Corcoran's 69th Regiment, with which he fought gallantly
at Bull's Run. Every one remembers how the gallantry of the Irish
regiment in which Meagher served, saved the Federal forces from
annihilation on that field of disaster. Subsequently he raised and
commanded the Irish Brigade, which won imperishable laurels throughout
the hard-fought campaigns that ended with the capture of Richmond. When
Mr. Johnson became President of the United States, he appointed Meagher
to the position of Governor of Montana Territory, in the far West, a
post which he held until his death.
His end was sad and sudden. One dark wild night in July, 1867, a
gentleman suddenly disappeared from the deck of the steamer on which he
was standing, and fell into the great Missouri, where it winds its
course by the hills of Montana. The accident was too sudden for availing
assistance. A sudden slip, a splash, a faint cry, a brief struggle, and
all was over; the hungry waters closed over him, and the rapid rolling
current swept away his lifeless corpse. The finished scholar, the genial
friend, the matchless orator, the ardent patriot was no more. Thomas
Francis Meagher was dead.
* * * * *