Upon occasion such as this, the Irishman—to whatever spot in this wide world he may have wandered—lives in the shadow of the past. In imagination he is once more under the ancestral roof; the vine-clad cottage is again a thing of reality. Again he wears the shamrock; again he hears the songs of his native land, while his heart is stirred by memories of her wrongs and of her glory.
What a splendid contribution Ireland has made to the world's galaxy of great men! In the realm of poetry, Goldsmith and Tom Moore; of oratory, Sheridan, Emmett, Grattan, O'Connell, Burke, and in later years Charles Stewart Parnell, whose thrilling words I heard a third of a century ago, pleading the cause of his oppressed countrymen.
The obligation of America to Ireland for men who have aided in fighting her battles and framing her laws cannot be measured by words. In the British possessions to the northward, in the old city of Quebec, there is one spot dear to the American heart—that where fell the brave Montgomery, fighting the battles of his adopted country. What schoolboy is not familiar with the story of gallant Phil Sheridan and "Winchester twenty miles away?" Illinoisans will never forget Shields, the hero of two wars, the senator from three States. It was an Irish-American poet of a neighboring State who wrote of our fallen soldiers words that will live while we have a country and a language:
"The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo;
No more of life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few."
The achievements of representatives of this race along every pathway of useful and honorable endeavor are a part of our own history. We honor to-day the far-away island, the deeds and sacrifices of whose sons have added so brilliant a chapter to American history. From the assembling of the First Continental Congress to the present hour, in every legislative hall the Irishman has been a factor. His bones have whitened every American battlefield from the first conflict with British regulars to the closing hour of our struggle with Spain.
The love of liberty is deeply ingrained into the very life of the Irishman. The history of his country is that of a gallant people struggling for a larger measure of freedom. His most precious heritage is the record of his countrymen, who upon the battlefield and upon the scaffold have sealed their devotion to liberty with their blood. With such men it was a living faith that—
"Whether on the scaffold high
Or in the battle's van
The fittest place for man to die
Is where he dies for man."
With a history reaching into the far past, every page of which tells of the struggle for liberty, it is not strange that the sympathies of the Irishman are with the oppressed everywhere on God's footstool. Irishmen, in common with liberty-loving men everywhere, looked with abhorrence upon the attempt of a great European power to establish monarchy upon the ruins of republics.
May we not confidently abide in the hope that brighter days are in waiting for the beautiful island and her gallant people? I close with the words: "God bless old Ireland!"