Lord Edward was a dreamer, an Irish Bayard, too chivalrous to
conspire successfully and too frankly courageous to match a
government of guile. Tone was far more dangerous. He realized that
foreign invasion was necessary to successful rebellion, and he
allowed no scruple or obstacle in his path. He washed his hands of
law and politics entirely. To divert Napoleon to Ireland was his
object and the total separation of Ireland his ambition. The United
Irishmen favored the invasion, which the Volunteers had been formed
to repel. The feud between moral and physical force broke out. The
failure of the sterner policy in 1798 did not daunt Emmet from his
ill-starred attempt in 1803. He combined Lord Edward's chivalry with
some abilities worthy of Tone, but he failed. The failure he redeemed
by a swan-song from the dock and a demeanor on the scaffold which
have become part of Irish tradition.
After the Union, Irish leaders sprang up in the English House, which
Pitt had unwittingly made the cockpit of the racial struggle. Far
from absorbing the Irish element, the Commons found themselves forced
to resist, rally, and finally succumb.
The Irish House cannot be dismissed without mention of Curran. He was
a brilliant enemy of corruption and servility. O'Connell said "there
was never so honest an Irishman," which may account for his greater
success as a lawyer than a politician. To be an Irish leader and a
successful lawyer is given to no man. For the former the sacrifice of
a great career is needed. This sacrifice Daniel O'Connell was
prepared to make. His place in history will never be estimated, for
few have been so loved or hated, or for stronger reasons. Never did a
tribune rising to power lift his people to such sudden hope and
success. Never did a champion leave his followers at his death and
decline to more terrible despair. Friend and foe admit his immensity.
He was the greatest Irishman that ever lived or seemingly could live.
In his own person he contained the whole genius of the Celt. Ireland
could not hold his emotions, which overflowed into the world for
expression. He rose on the crest of a religious agitation, but,
Emancipation won, he had the foresight to associate the Irish cause
with the advent of Reform and Liberalism throughout Europe. He
sounded the notes of free-trade and anti-slavery. What he said in
parliament one day, Ireland re-echoed the next. To her he was all in
all, her hero and her prophet, her Messias and her strong deliverer.
On the continent he roughly personified Christian Democracy.
In public oratory O'Connell introduced a new style. Torrential and
overwhelming as Flood and Grattan had never been, he proved more
successful if less polished. The exaggerations of Gaelic speech found
outburst in his English. Peel's smile was "the silver plate on a
coffin", Wellington "a stunted corporal", and Disraeli "the lineal
descendant of the impenitent thief."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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