D'Alton: History of Ireland; J.P. Prendergast: Cromwellian
Settlement; Barrington: Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation; McNevin:
Confiscation of Ulster; R.R. Madden: History of the Penal Laws;
Murphy: Cromwell in Ireland; T.A. Emmet: Ireland under English Rule,
2 vols.; Mrs. J.R. Green: Irish Nationality; Walpole: A Short History
of the Kingdom of Ireland; A.M. Sullivan: Story of Ireland; Thomas
Moore: History of Ireland; Edmund Spenser: View of the State of
Ireland; C. Gavan Duffy: Four Years of Irish History, 1845-49; Isaac
Butt: Land Tenure in Ireland; Justin McCarthy: History of our own
Times; Johnston and Spencer: Ireland's Story; MacGeoghegan's History
of Ireland and its continuation by John Mitchel; William Sampson:
Memoirs of an Irish Exile, 1832; John Curry: A Historical and
Critical Review of the Civil Wars in Ireland (1775); John Boyle: The
Battlefields of Ireland (1879); Speeches of Edmund Burke, Daniel
O'Connell, Henry Grattan; Wendell Phillips's Speech on Daniel
O'Connell; Father Tom Burke: Lectures on Ireland.
IRISH LEADERS
By SHANE LESLIE.
Irish leaders have proved far-famed but not long-lived. Their short
and strenuous careers have burnt out in their prime, and their ends
have been such as attend conflagrations. More often they have left a
pall than a light in the heavens, for the most brilliant lives in
Irish history have led to the most tragic deaths. The Destiny which
allotted them impossible tasks has given them immortality on the
scenes of their glorious failure.
They differ from leaders of other countries, who divide the average
pittances of success or ill success on the road to honored
retirement. Few of the heroes among modern nations have left such
vivid and lasting memory as "the strong men of Ireland." During the
nineteenth century their lore and cult have traversed the whole world
in the wake of the great emigrations. Whether they failed or
succeeded in wresting the independence and ideals of Ireland for a
while from the fell clutch of circumstance, they live with their race
forever.
Under Plantagenet and Tudor rule, the Irish leaders presented a
sullen but armed resistance. A never completed invasion was met by
sporadic raids and successive risings. A race of military outlaws was
fashioned, which accounts for much in Irish character today.
Previously the Irish, like all Celtic civilization, was founded on
the arts, on speech, and on law, rather than on war and feudalism.
Even Irish militancy was crushed in the Williamite wars, and the
race, deprived of its original subsistence as well as of its acquired
defense, sank into the stupor of penal times. Those who should have
been leaders of Ireland became marshals of Austria and France.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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