Sketches of Reforms and Reformers, of Great Britain and Ireland Part 5

Everything in Dublin reminds the Irishman of the captivity of his country. He feels a blighting shame when he conducts a stranger through the stately halls of the Bank of Ireland; for there the Lords and Commons of the Emerald Isle once legislated. He is pained when you extol the grandeur of this n.o.ble building; for, to his eye, its glory has faded and fled. Walk with him through that broad and beautiful avenue, Sackville street, and your praise of its elegant mansions only reminds him that the Irish n.o.bility that once resided there have gone to swell the brilliant pageant of the conqueror at Hyde Park and St. James's Palace. Wander with him amidst the filth and squalor of the lanes of the city, and he points to wretchedness and want as the fruits of English legislation. Go with him to the Castle, and, as the soldiery file through its turreted gate, clad in the uniform of the Saxon, he regards them not as the troops of a legitimate ruler, but as the trained a.s.sa.s.sins of an alien despot.

With such mementoes of the departed power and present captivity of Ireland, meeting his eye at every turn, was it not natural that the genuine Irishman, who submitted to the rule of England for the same reason that the slave wears the chain of his master, should, with the free blood which his Creator gave him boiling in his veins, twenty years ago present to his oppressor the alternative of civil war or unqualified toleration in the exercise of his hereditary religious faith--that nine years ago he should rush to Conciliation Hall, and agitate for his civil rights under the motto, "No People, strong enough to be a Nation, should consent to be a Province"--and that in the past year, when the last hope of civil emanc.i.p.ation by peaceful means had died out, and all Europe was in arms, casting away the chains of ages, he should light the fires of revolution on the hights of Tipperary, resolved to strike one despairing blow for the deliverance of a long-oppressed country? He who would brand Was.h.i.+ngton a traitor, may sink the iron into the foreheads of Mitchel, O'Brien, and Meagher.

Prominent among the early champions of Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, stood MR.

GRATTAN. To prove that, for nearly a century past, Ireland has constantly exhibited on the floor of the British Commons some of the most eloquent men who have swayed the councils of the United Kingdom, I only need mention the names of Burke, Flood, Sheridan, Grattan, Plunkett, O'Connell, and s.h.i.+el. Perhaps Canning may be included in the list. Both his parents were pure Irish, and he was, as it were, accidentally born in England. In this galaxy, Grattan shone unrivaled, except by Burke and Canning. He was the equal of the latter in many respects--his superior in some. As a practical Parliamentarian, he ranks scarcely below the former. And he stands at the head of all of his countrymen who have been strictly _Irish_ members, representing Irish const.i.tuencies.

Graduating at Dublin, and entering the Middle Temple, London, in 1767, when just turned 21, Grattan was an eager observer, from the galleries of the Lords and Commons, of the fierce struggles of North, Grenville, Chatham, and Burke, then in the zenith of their fame. Throwing c.o.ke and Plowden on the dusty shelf, he employed his leisure hours in writing sketches of these "Battles of the Giants," for the perusal of his Irish friends. He became enamored of politics, and resolved to s.h.i.+ne in the Parliament of his native island. Some of his sketches found their way into the Dublin newspapers, and their point and power gave plausibility to the charge at one time made, that he was the author of Junius. In answer to a direct application to him, in 1805, to know if he were the famous author, he laconically replied:

"SIR: I am not 'Junius,' but your good wisher and obedient servant, HENRY GRATTAN."

On his permanent return to Ireland, he immediately connected himself with the opposition to the Vice-Regal Government, opening the attack by a series of newspaper articles in vindication of Irish rights, which attracted much attention, and came near subjecting him to a royal prosecution. From that moment, he gave his whole mind and soul to public affairs, and, during the subsequent fifty years, every page of Irish history records his name, a.s.sociated with some measure for the amelioration of Irish wrongs. He is the author of what is miscalled "Irish Independence." On the accession of George III to the throne, the government of Ireland was then, as it is now, the chief difficulty of Ministers. During the American Revolutionary war, intestine commotions, from the incendiary proceedings of the "Whiteboys," (a rabble band which fired the houses of the landlords, and now and then put to death a non-complying tenant,) and the danger of invasion from France, impelled the middle cla.s.ses to pet.i.tion Government for succor and protection.

They were frankly told that no aid could be afforded them, and they must take care of themselves. Acting on this license, a volunteer militia was enrolled in all parts of the island, the Government furnis.h.i.+ng arms, which swelled till it numbered 100,000 men, of the bone and sinew of Ireland. The "Whiteboys" shrunk into the caves, the threatened invasion was abandoned, and the popular leaders, who had been active in mustering the volunteers, took advantage of their strong position to demand the removal of onerous restrictions on Irish commerce, and the amelioration of the Catholic penal code. The British Government essentially modified the commercial regulations between the two countries, and though some of the darker features of the code were relaxed, it still remained a disgrace to civilization. The greatest burden yet existed--_the supremacy of the British Parliament over Irish affairs_. Emboldened by success, an attempt was made to procure its repeal. Flood, the rival of Grattan, demanded a distinct disavowal, by the British Parliament, of the right to govern Ireland. Grattan, who had the hearts of his countrymen in his hand, avowed that he would be satisfied if Britain would repeal all existing laws interfering with Irish rights. The measure was adopted, and the Irish Parliament became the supreme legislature of Ireland, subject to the supervision of the King in Council. Hibernia was intoxicated with joy, and, in the fervor of their grat.i.tude, the countrymen of Grattan voted him 50,000. Thus, in 1782, was _quasi_ legislative independence granted to Ireland. But British gold and intrigue were ever able to seduce the integrity and distract the counsels of its legislators, till, eighteen years afterward, all was obliterated in the Act of Union. It was in allusion to the rise and fall of legislative independence that Grattan, years subsequently, so beautifully said, "I watched its cradle; I followed its bier." During these eighteen years, he did all that great talents and vigilant patriotism could to secure the prosperity and save the honor of his native land. The leader of the liberals in the Irish Parliament, he resisted the oppressions of the Saxon, and spurned his bribes, and appealed to Hibernia to be true to herself, and to maintain her national ident.i.ty. Exasperated beyond endurance, Irish patriotism fomented the rebellion of 1798-9, which precipitated upon the heads of the "United Irishmen" the whole weight of British hatred and revenge. The scaffold ran blood, and the cheek of Ireland turned pale. In 1799, Pitt proposed the Union. Undaunted by the defection around him, Grattan, in the Irish Commons, resisted it with such vehement eloquence, that it was postponed till the next year. In the mean time, British gold proved more potent than its bayonets. Half the Irish Parliament was bribed into compliance with England's base proposals, and in 1800, after a last effort to rally the drooping spirits of his countrymen, Grattan followed the bier of Hibernian Independence to its resting place in St. Stephen's Chapel.

Said his compatriot, young Emmet, the martyr, about to perish upon the scaffold, "When Ireland becomes a nation, let my epitaph be written!"

Forty years afterward, in the midst of an excited throng, in the Dublin Corn Exchange, I heard O'Connell say, "Men of Ireland! I swear by your wrongs that Ireland shall yet become a nation!" Those wrongs are yet unavenged, the vow is yet unredeemed, the epitaph unwritten. BUT THEY WILL BE!

Grattan entered the British Parliament in 1805, where he remained till his death, in 1820. Ever in the front rank of Reformers, he was the special champion of Catholic emanc.i.p.ation, divided the House almost every year, and frequently two or three times in a session, on various propositions looking to ultimate emanc.i.p.ation, but without success; and in his last effort was defeated by only two majority--an earnest that the "good time" was coming. He met with the common misfortune of displeasing the ultras of both parties. He asked too little to please the extreme Catholics--too much to win the favor of the extreme Protestants. He asked for a part, and got nothing. At a later day, O'Connell demanded the whole, and got the greater part. History is philosophy teaching by examples.

Grattan was a model orator. His style had the genius, the enthusiasm, the brilliancy, the pathos, which mark Hibernian eloquence, and was divested of many of those peculiarities which often mar the forensic displays of a country where, as an accomplished Irishman says, "you may kick an orator out of every bush." If he was fertile in ill.u.s.trations, he was redundant in principles--if his speech was replete with epigram, it abounded in terse reasoning--if it sparkled with wit, it was luminous in its calmer statements--if it blighted with its sarcasm, it mellowed with its pathos--if it was charged with the lightning of invective, it was freighted with the most ponderous argument--if it could wither a groveling enemy with its scorn, it could persuade a manly opponent with its logic. Nor did he overlay the solid parts of his oratory with the lighter graces of declamation, nor smother them under a redundancy of poetical ill.u.s.tration. He was a master of the compressed, nervous, rapid, racy style of argumentation--the very perfection of the art.

On the death of this great man, the cause of Catholic emanc.i.p.ation fell under the guidance of MR. PLUNKETT, who, next to him, was the ablest Irish representative in the Commons. Sir James Mackintosh sketches him, in one of his das.h.i.+ng conversational profiles, thus: "If Plunkett had come earlier into Parliament, so as to have learned the trade, he would probably have excelled all our orators. He and Counselor Phillips (or O'Garish, as he is nicknamed here) are at the opposite points of the scale. O'Garish's style is pitiful to the last degree. He ought, by common consent, to be driven from the bar." Plunkett brought to his work a true Irish heart, talents of the first cla.s.s, eloquence cast in a rare mold, and a reputation unsurpa.s.sed at the Dublin bar. He bore a conspicuous part in all those violent throes, in and out of Parliament, in regard to Catholic emanc.i.p.ation, which convulsed the country from 1820 to 1829, and drove Ireland to the borders of rebellion. He won several partial triumphs over Ministers, preliminary to the granting of the great boon in the latter year, when the kingdom held its breath while O'Connell, the dreaded "Agitator," appeared at the bar of the Commons, to demand his seat for the county of Clare. When the Whigs rose to power, in 1830, Mr. Plunkett was made Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

Even this meager notice of the early friends of Catholic emanc.i.p.ation would be incomplete without the name of SYDNEY SMITH, the founder of the Edinburgh Review. Of all English Protestants, out of Parliament, he rendered the most effective aid to that cause. In six or eight articles in that influential periodical, in an equal number of speeches and sermons, and as many pamphlets, he pressed the Catholic claims upon public attention during twenty-five years, in a style which no mortal man but Sydney Smith could do. He did not so much argue the claims of the Catholics as ridicule the fears of their opponents. And never were wit, drollery, humor, irony, and sarcasm, rained down upon a bad cause in greater variety or rarer quality. He fairly drowned the High Church party in their own absurdities. His ten letters, signed Peter Plymley, addressed to "My Brother Abraham, who lives in the country," are the very effervescence of ridicule. They will be read when test acts are remembered only to be execrated. They will preserve them from the rottenness of oblivion. They are inimitable--capable of driving the blues from the cloister of an Archbishop. In the preface to his works, Mr. Smith says: "I have printed in this collection the letters of Peter Plymley. The Government of that day took great pains to find out the author. All that they _could_ find was, that they were brought to Mr.

Budd, the publisher, by the Earl of Lauderdale. Somehow or other it came to be conjectured that I was that author. I have always denied it. But finding that I deny it in vain, I have thought it might be as well to include the letters in this collection. They had an immense circulation at the time, and I think above 20,000 copies were sold." This is cool.

But the letters were _cooler_. They gibbeted the absurd opposition which his Episcopal brethren made to emanc.i.p.ation, "without benefit of clergy." The services of Mersrs O'Connell and s.h.i.+el will be noticed in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XIII.

Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation--Antiquity and Power of the Papal Church--Treaty of Limerick--Catholic Penal Code of Ireland--Opinions of Penn, Montesquieu, Burke, and Blackstone, concerning it--Its Amelioration--Catholic a.s.sociation of 1823--The Hour and the Man--Daniel O'Connell elected for Clare--Alarm in Downing Street--Duke of Wellington's Decision--Pa.s.sage of the Emanc.i.p.ation Bill--Services of O'Connell and s.h.i.+el--The latter as an Orator.

The subject-matter of this chapter will be, the Catholic Penal Code, and its repeal by act of Parliament, in 1829.

The antiquity and power of the Roman Hierarchy, and the sway it now holds over 150,000,000 of people, diffused through all quarters of the globe, is one of the most extraordinary facts in the history of the Christian era. Whether the combined efforts of Protestanism to overthrow it, during the next three centuries, will be more successful than during the three since the Reformation, time only can show. In his review of Ranke's History of the Popes, speaking of the Catholic Church, Macaulay says: "She saw the commencement of all the governments, and of all the ecclesiastical establishments, that now exist in the world; and we feel no a.s.surance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain--before the Frank had pa.s.sed the Rhine--when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch--when idols were still wors.h.i.+ped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor when some traveler from New England shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge, to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's."

Amongst the adherents to the Papal faith, none have shown a steadier attachment to it, through all vicissitudes, than the Catholics of Ireland. For centuries it has been the dominant, and at times almost exclusive, religion of that country. Persecutions the most bigoted and b.l.o.o.d.y have not abated the zeal and tenacity with which the Irish have practiced and clung to their hereditary creed. The battle of the Boyne, in 1690, was followed by the Treaty of Limerick, by which William of Orange guaranteed in the most solemn terms religious toleration to his Irish Catholic subjects. The treaty was to be binding upon him, his heirs, and successors. But, a fear of the return of the banished Catholic princes of the house of Stuart, mingled with a propagandist zeal to convert Ireland to the doctrines of the Reformation, induced England to disregard the stipulations of the Treaty of Limerick. Partly by the direct legislation of the British Parliament, and partly through the medium of the Pale, a _quasi_ Legislature of Ireland, the Catholic Penal Code was introduced into that country. Like other branches of British law, it was a piece of patchwork, the contribution of many reigns. It received its worst features within twenty years after the Treaty of Limerick. I will give a summary of its main provisions.

FIRST, _as to persons professing the Catholic religion_. No Papist could take the real estate of his ancestor, either by descent or purchase; nor purchase any real estate, nor take a lease for more than thirty-one years; and if the profits of such lease exceeded a certain rate, the land went to any Protestant informer. The conveyance of real estate in trust for a Papist was void; nor could he inherit any, nor be in a line of entail, but the estate descended to the next Protestant heir, as if the Papist were dead. A Papist who turned Protestant succeeded to the family estate; and an increase of jointure was allowed to Papist wives on their turning Protestant; whilst, on the other hand, a Protestant who turned Papist, or procured another to turn, was guilty of high treason. Papist fathers were debarred, on a penalty of 500, from being guardians of their children; and a Papist minor, who avowed himself a Protestant, was immediately delivered to a Protestant guardian. No Papist could marry a Protestant, and the priest celebrating the marriage was to be hanged. Papists could not be barristers; and being Protestants, if they married Papists they were to be treated as Papists.

It was a felony for a Papist to teach a school; to say or hear ma.s.s subjected him to fine and a year's imprisonment; to aid in sending another abroad, to be educated in the Popish religion, subjected the parties to a fine, and disabled them to sue in law or equity, to be executors and administrators, to take any legacy or gift, to hold any office, and to a forfeiture of all their chattels, and all real estate for life. No Papist could hold office, civil or military, sit in Parliament, or vote at elections. Protestants, robbed by privateers in a war with a Popish prince were to be indemnified by levies on the property of Catholics alone.

SECOND, _as to Popish recusants_, i. e., persons not attending the Established Church. Such Papists could hold no office, nor keep arms, nor come within ten miles of London, on pain of 100, nor travel above five miles from home without license, on pain of forfeiting all goods, nor come to court on pain of 100, nor bring any action at law or equity; and to marry, baptize, or bury such an one subjected the offending priest to heavy penalties. A recusant married woman forfeited two-thirds of her dower or jointure, nor could she be the executrix of her deceased husband, nor have any part of his goods; and during coverture she might be imprisoned, unless her husband redeemed her at the rate of 10 per month. All other recusant females must renounce Popery or quit the realm; and if they did not leave in a reasonable time, or afterwards returned, they could be put to death.

THIRD _as to Popish priests_. Severe penalties were inflicted on them for discharging their ecclesiastical functions anywhere, and if done in England they were liable to perpetual imprisonment. Any such priest who was born in England, and, having left, should come in from abroad, was guilty of treason, and all who harbored him might be punished with death. Rewards were given for discovering Popish clergy, and any person refusing to disclose what he knew of their saying ma.s.s, or teaching pupils, might be imprisoned a year. A Popish priest who turned Protestant was ent.i.tled to 30 per annum. Besides this, they were subject to all the penalties and disabilities of lay Papists.

FOURTH. Papists were excluded from grand juries; in all trials growing out of the Penal Code, the juries were to be Protestants; and in any trial on statutes for strengthening the Protestant interest, a Papist might be peremptorily challenged.

In surveying the lineaments of such a Code, the blood of a statue might glow with indignation, or chill with horror. It was inflicted on Catholic Ireland by Protestant England, in the name of that Church which claims to be the pillar and ground of the Christian faith. Well might the mild William Penn be aroused to denounce it as inhuman, when pleading before the House of Commons for toleration to the Quakers. Well might the sagacious Montesquieu characterize it as cold-blooded tyranny.

Well might the philosophic Burke describe it "as a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, noted for its vicious perfection; and as admirably fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debas.e.m.e.nt in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." Even Blackstone, who usually selected his choicest eulogies for the darkest features of the English law, was forced to say of this Code: "These laws are seldom exerted to their utmost rigor; and, indeed, if they were, it would be very difficult to excuse them." Yes, though in the times when the "No-Popery" cry was at its hight, these laws were rigorously enforced, yet, as the mellowing light of civilization increased, the more cruel lay a dead letter on the statute book. But the whole hung over the head of the Catholic, like the sword of Damocles, ready to drop at the breath of any persecuting zealot or malicious informer.

This Code was essentially ameliorated in 1779, and again in 1793. Among other concessions, the elective franchise was extended to Catholics, though they were still excluded from Parliament. But, he who would bring himself within the pale of these ameliorations, must submit to many degrading and annoying requisitions, in the form of registrations, oaths, subscriptions, declarations, &c. In a word, down to 1829, when it was finally repealed, many of the worst features of the Code remained, making it an offense for seven-eighths of the people of Ireland to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d according to the dictates of their consciences; subjecting them to degrading tests or heavy penalties for exercising precious civil and social rights; goading them with a thousand petty and provoking annoyances, till they had come to be regarded as heathens while bowing at Christian altars, and aliens to a Government under which they were born, and to whose support they were compelled to contribute their blood in war, and their money in peace. To all this, one may enter his protest, while holding at arm's length the Catholic ritual. To wors.h.i.+p G.o.d according to the dictates of his own conscience, without human molestation or earthly fear, is the divine right of every man, whether he be Irish Catholic or English Protestant, Ma.s.sachusetts freeman or Louisiana slave.

Notwithstanding the important amendments made in the Catholic Code, in 1779 and 1793, its remaining disabilities and penalties hung over Ireland like a dark cloud, shutting out the sun of civil and religious freedom. In the latter year, an a.s.sociation was organized in Dublin, to agitate and pet.i.tion for Repeal. Though ultimately rent in pieces by internal commotions, it was the germ of all subsequent organizations for the same objects. During the succeeding thirty years, this question frequently convulsed Parliament and the country. The remedies which the British Government usually prescribed for the political and religious diseases of Ireland were insurrection acts, coercion acts, suspensions of the _habeas corpus_, capital trials, hangings, and transportation, administered by the batons of the police and the bayonets of the soldiery.

The year 1823 saw a bright star of promise arise on the dark and troubled horizon of Hibernia. The exigencies of the times had healed the feuds of hostile factions among the Emanc.i.p.ationists, and they closed hands in defense of their common liberties. In May, of that year, Daniel O'Connell and Richard Lalor s.h.i.+el, who had long been estranged from each other, accidentally met among the mountains of Wicklow, at the house of a friend. A reconciliation took place, and they resolved to form a league for the deliverance of their enslaved Catholic countrymen. The same month they organized the "Catholic a.s.sociation," in Dublin, on the plan of admitting all persons, of whatever sect or party, who approved its objects. It early enrolled some of the first minds in the island, who commenced an agitation which was soon felt in the fartherest corner of the kingdom, nor stopped till it brought back responses from France, Germany, the United States, Canada, the East Indies, and other distant countries. It made the realm vocal with its orators, crowded Parliament with its pet.i.tions, and scattered its tracts over the Continent.

O'Connell and s.h.i.+el were the life and soul of the a.s.sociation; the former being its chief manager, the latter its most brilliant advocate.

Undoubtedly some of the transactions of this almost omnipotent body were of an inflammatory character. But it gave concentration and rational aim to the efforts of the oppressed Irish, and, by exciting the hope of relief, withdrew from them the temptation to illegal acts of violence.

The justice of its object, and the contempt which its pet.i.tions received from Parliament, ultimately rallied to its standard the whole of the Catholics and an influential portion of the dissenting Protestants of Ireland. Alarmed at its power, the session of March, 1825, after a stormy debate, pa.s.sed an act terminating its existence. Immediately after the adjournment of Parliament, the a.s.sociation was reorganized, with a const.i.tution which did not come within the law. At the session of 1826, finding that the agitation could not be silenced, various efforts were made to ameliorate the condition of Ireland. After spending five months in vehement discussion, Parliament abandoned the country to the rage of party spirit, and it was left for the well-directed labors of the a.s.sociation to prevent it from plunging into anarchy and revolution.

At the general election in the summer of 1826, the friends of Emanc.i.p.ation took the field and achieved some signal triumphs in returning members to Parliament. The Irish tenantry, the "forty-s.h.i.+lling freeholders," who had generally been supple instruments in the hands of the Protestant landlord, to perpetuate his domination and their chains, had, by the labors of the a.s.sociation, been converted into an engine to overthrow the oppressors. They now voted with the Emanc.i.p.ators.

Canning rose to power in 1827. His professed regard for Catholic relief induced Ireland to wait and see what would come from his ministry. His early death quenched all hope of succor from his administration. After the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts the next year, a struggle for partial relief to the Catholics, which resulted successfully in the Commons, but was defeated in the Lords, only stimulated the friends of Emanc.i.p.ation to take a bolder step. The hour to strike the decisive blow had come, and it brought with it the man.

In 1828, Mr. Fitzgerald, the member for Clare, received a place in the cabinet, thus vacating his seat in the Commons. He was a candidate for reelection. The Catholic a.s.sociation requested Mr. O'Connell to become a candidate for the vacancy, and in his own person seek to establish the right of Catholics to sit in Parliament. He immediately issued an address to the electors of Clare, in which, among other things, he said: "Fellow-countrymen, your county wants a representative. I respectfully solicit your suffrages, to raise me to that station. * * * * You will be told I am not qualified to be elected. The a.s.sertion is untrue. I am qualified to be elected, and to be your representative. It is true that, as a Catholic, I cannot, and of course never will, take the oaths at present prescribed to members of Parliament. But the authority which created those oaths can abrogate them. And I entertain a confident hope that, if you elect me, the most bigoted of our enemies will see the necessity of removing from the chosen representative of the people an obstacle which would prevent him from doing his duty to his king and to his country."

The address fell like a thunderbolt upon the enemies of Emanc.i.p.ation.

The friends of Fitzgerald would not believe it was the intention of O'Connell to seriously contest the canva.s.s. The speedy arrival of two of his agents in Clare dispelled their doubts. The county was in a boil of excitement. The day of election approaches. s.h.i.+el addresses a concourse of electors. His eloquence inspires a wild enthusiasm in their hearts.

The time for the arrival of the great agitator himself is fixed. An immense throng hails him, with banners, music, and shoutings. The trial day comes, and the candidates appear before a.s.sembled thousands of the electors. Fitzgerald delivers an able speech. O'Connell rises and p.r.o.nounces a magnificent harangue, which sways the pa.s.sions of the peasantry as forests wave when swept by the wing of the tempest. A violent contest ensues, and at its close the high-sheriff declares that "Daniel O'Connell, Esq., is duly elected a member of the Commons House of Parliament for the county of Clare."

This unexpected result carried dismay into the councils of Downing street; for they knew that O'Connell was soon to appear in London and demand his seat in Parliament. His fame was no stranger to the place where his person was unknown. His reputation had long ago penetrated every mansion and cabin in the realm. The agitation of the past five years, whose tread had shaken Ireland from Cape Clear to the Giant's Causeway, had ever and anon caused the walls of St. Stephen's to tremble. And now, what seemed so terrible in the distance, was to be brought to its very doors. Parliament was not in session; but it had been announced that ministers would oppose Mr. O'Connell's entrance into the Commons. The declaration drove Ireland to the brink of civil war.

The commander of the forces conveyed to the ministry the alarming intelligence, that the troops were fraternizing with the people, and their loyalty could not be relied on in the event of an outbreak. All minds not besotted with bigotry felt that the great right for which the a.s.sociation had contended must be conceded. The Duke of Wellington, then at the head of the government, saw that the hour had come when either his prejudices or his place must be surrendered. He decided that the former must yield. Parliament was convened on the 5th of March, 1829. On the first day of the session, Mr. Peel moved that the House go into committee, "to take into consideration the civil disabilities of his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects." After two days' debate, it prevailed. A bill of Emanc.i.p.ation was introduced. Ancient hatred was aroused, and in five days sent in a thousand pet.i.tions against its pa.s.sage. The bill pa.s.sed, after a severe struggle, and Mr. Peel carried it to the Lords. A fierce contest ensued, but it was forced through by the Iron Duke. On the 13th of April it received the royal a.s.sent, and was hailed with joy by the friends of religious freedom, whilst bigotry went growling to its den.

Mr. O'Connell appeared in the House to claim his seat. Having been elected before the act of Emanc.i.p.ation, the ancient oaths were tendered to him. He declined to take them. After tedious hearings before the Committee of Elections, extending through several weeks, and a powerful address at the bar of the House in support of his own right, his seat was declared vacant. He returned to Ireland, and was everywhere hailed as "the Liberator of his country." After walking over the course of Clare, he repaired to Westminster, and "the member for all Ireland" took his seat in the British House of Commons.

For this great concession to the Genius of Toleration, the age is indebted to the Catholic a.s.sociation, organized and sustained by O'Connell and s.h.i.+el, the Castor and Pollux of Emanc.i.p.ation. No two men were more perfect antagonisms in the prime elements of their characters, and no two more harmoniously blended in the accomplishment of a common object. Each supplied what was wanting in the other. O'Connell was unsurpa.s.sed in planning, organizing, and executing, and his unique and vigorous eloquence could stir to its bottom the ground tier of Irish society. s.h.i.+el was rich in the highest gifts of oratory, ornate, cla.s.sical, impa.s.sioned, and could rouse the enthusiasm and intoxicate the imaginations of the refined cla.s.ses of his countrymen. The one contributed to the work, the learning and skill of an acute lawyer, the knowledge of a well-read historian of his country, an intimate acquaintance with all the details of the great question at issue, and business capacities of the first order. The other gave to it a transcendent intellect, adorned with the genius of a poet, the graces of a rhetorician, and the embellishments of a polite scholar. Both consecrated to it intense nationality of feeling, quenchless perseverance, and indomitable courage. Each yielded to the other the exclusive occupancy of the peculiar field of labor to which his talents were best adapted.

Mr. s.h.i.+EL was born in 1791. In his youth, he won a high literary reputation as the author of two tragedies, _Evadne_ and _The Apostate_, and some beautiful essays in the periodicals. He early acquired an enviable reputation at the Dublin bar as an advocate. But "the guage and measure of the man" were known to a comparatively small circle till his splendid oratorical displays in defense of the principles and objects of the Catholic a.s.sociation made his fame coextensive with the empire. The result of his services has been recorded. To apply to himself what he so graphically said of Grattan, "The people of Ireland saw the pinnacles of the Establishment shattered by the lightning of his eloquence." The Emanc.i.p.ation bill opened to him the doors of Parliament. He entered its hall in 1831, heralded by a reputation surpa.s.sing that with which most orators have been content to leave that field of their triumphs. It is the highest proof of the solidity of his reputation, that in this new arena he increased the brilliancy of his fame, being a marked exception to the rule, that orators who have become famous at the bar, or the hustings, or on the platform, have failed to meet the public expectation on encountering the severer tests of the House of Commons.

Several years ago I heard Mr. s.h.i.+el deliver a speech in Parliament, and I retain a vivid impression of his powers. He seemed the very embodiment of all that was gorgeous and beautiful in the arts of rhetoric and oratory. His sentences rushed forth with the velocity of a mountain torrent, while for an hour and a half he poured down upon the House a ceaseless shower of metaphor, simile, declamation, and appeal, lighted with the brilliant flashes of wit, and mingled with the glittering hail of sarcasm. He belongs not to the best school of oratory, but is master of that in which he was trained. There is no rant or fustian in his speeches, for they are eminently intellectual. Though polished in the extreme, they are pure ore, and sparkle with real gems. His ornaments are lavishly put on, but are never selected from the tinsel and mock diamond mine. His defect is, that he too much discards logic, and revels in rhetoric. In discussing even an appropriation bill, his figures are drawn less from the annual budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer than from the perennial springs of Helicon. He aims to reach the heart, not through the reason, but the reason and the heart through the imagination. While his oratory lacks the logical power and majestic strength which bear aloft the poetic imagery and affluent ill.u.s.tration of Choate, it partakes largely of those embellishments that give brilliancy and grace to the eloquence of our distinguished countryman.

He is no more like Brougham or Webster, than a das.h.i.+ng charge of Murat at the head of his cavalry is like a steady fire from a park of artillery.

As a specimen of his oratory, I subjoin an extract from one of his speeches. In 1837, Lord Lyndhurst declared, in the Upper House, that the Irish were "aliens in blood and religion." Shortly after, Mr. s.h.i.+el thus repelled the charge in the Commons. Lord L. was a listener.

"Where was Arthur, Duke of Wellington, when those words were uttered?

Methinks he should have started up to disclaim them.

"'The battles, sieges, fortunes that he pa.s.sed'

ought to have come back upon him. He ought to have remembered that, from the earliest achievement in which he displayed that military genius which has placed him foremost in the annals of modern warfare, down to that last and surpa.s.sing combat which has made his name imperishable--from a.s.saye to Waterloo--the Irish soldiers, with whom your armies were filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to the glory with which his unparalleled successes have been crowned. Whose were the athletic arms that drove your bayonets at Vimiera through the phalanxes that never reeled in the shock of war before? What desperate valor climbed the steeps and filled the moats of Badajos? All, all his victories should have rushed and crowded back upon his memory: Vimiera, Badajos, Salamanca, Abuera, Toulouse--and, last of all, the greatest.

Tell me, for you were there--I appeal to the gallant soldier before me, (pointing to Sir Henry Hardinge,) who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast--tell me, for you must needs remember, on that day when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance; while death fell in showers upon them; when the artillery of France, leveled with the precision of the most deadly science, played upon them; when her legions, incited by the voice, inspired by the example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to the contest; tell me if for an instant, when to hesitate for an instant was to be lost, the 'aliens'

blanched? And when, at length, the moment for the last decisive movement had arrived; when the valor, so long wisely checked, was at last let loose; when, with words familiar but immortal, the great captain exclaimed, 'Up, lads, and at them!'--tell me if Catholic Ireland with less heroic valor than the natives of your own glorious isle precipitated herself upon the foe! The blood of England, Scotland, Ireland, flowed in the same stream, on the same field. When the chill morning dawned, their dead lay cold and stark together. In the same deep pit their bodies were deposited. The green spring is now breaking on their commingled dust. The dew falls from heaven upon their union in the grave. Partakers in every peril, in the glory shall we not partic.i.p.ate?

And shall we be told, as a requital, that we are estranged from the n.o.ble country for whose salvation our life-blood was poured out?"

Though approaching the verge of good taste, conceive of the present effect of such an outburst gus.h.i.+ng from the lips of s.h.i.+el, the perspiration standing in drops on his knotted locks, his eye kindled with Milesian fire, every feature of his expressive countenance instinct with pa.s.sion, every limb of his small but symmetrical frame trembling with emotion, his shrill but musical voice barbing every emphatic word!