The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

by Augustus J. Thébaud

Within a short time three million associates were contributing annually to the national fund, and a scene was witnessed which the most devoted lover of Erin could never have anticipated. It would be useless to search the annals of mankind for a more startling exhibition of purely moral force. The causes of its failure will appear causes altogether of a temporary and unexpected character, when we come to examine them.

But the stupendous spectacle itself was enough to impress the beholder with the irresistible effect which it could not fail to produce. A whole nation obedient to the voice of one man! —and that a man who had never been invested with a state dignity, proud only of having once represented a poor Irish county in the English Parliament; who was eminently a man of the people, identified in every way with the people, speaking a language they could all understand, speaking to hundreds of thousands who had come at his call to listen to him: at one time nearly a million of them surrounded him on the hill of Tara.

Had a demagogue stood in his place, how could he have resisted the temptation of using such power to effect a thorough revolution? O'Connell had only to utter the word, and those immense masses of men would have swept the whole island as with a besom of destruction. The impetuosity of the Irish character when placed in such circumstances is well known, and O'Connell knew it better than any man living at the time. He showed himself truly heroic in the constant moderation of his words, even in scenes the most exciting, when a look from him might have lashed the nation into madness.

To bring out more clearly the stamp and greatness of the man, compare his conduct with that of the leaders in the great French Revolution of 1793. Not one of them ever possessed a tithe, not merely of the great Irishman's honesty of purpose, but even of his real authority over the people; yet, what frightful convulsions did they not bring upon the state in the days of their brief popularity? Throughout the whole repeal movement, when millions of people obeyed implicitly one leader, ready to do his will at any moment, there was never a single breach of the peace, never an attempt at outrage, never a threat of retaliation.

The only difficulty is where to bestow the greater admiration, on O'Connell or the people; for, if O'Connell towered almost above humanity in his never-varying moderation, with such a powerful engine in his hands, the people offered a spectacle which would be looked for in vain elsewhere in the history of man, that of a whole nation swayed by the most excited feelings, one in thought, in aims, in the bitter memory of the past, conscious of their irresistible power in the present, yet never yielding to passion, but dispersing quietly after listening to the impassioned harangues of their leader, to return to their homes and resume their ordinary occupations. Any impartial man, who has read history at all, must acknowledge that this spectacle is unexampled, and in itself vindicates the Irish character from the foolish aspersions so lavishly cast upon it, and so thoughtlessly repeated still.

One great fact was brought out by those demonstrations which afterward appeared so barren of result, namely, the existence of a nation full of life and energy, of a surprising vigor, and at the same time governed by stern principles as well as swayed by emotion. It would be idle to pretend that they were a non-entity, save as forming a part of the British Empire, existing on sufferance as it were, merely to add to the greatness and the glory of the English nation. They possessed a life of their own. That life had, as was seen, been instilled into them by their religious convictions alone; it had lain dormant for more than a century; and now it burst forth in the view of the world, to proclaim that the Irish nation still existed. And this wonderful resurrection was due to moral force alone.

Though the Irish people then appeared so different from that humbled, crushed mass of oppressed beings, who, a hundred years before, lay so completely at the mercy of their masters, it was, nevertheless, the same people, and the difference was purely one of circumstances. Had they been allowed in the previous century to manifest their feelings, as a happy change in the state of affairs now permitted them, they would assuredly have acted in exactly the same manner. And this reflection tends to confirm the opinion, several times here expressed, that the Irish people existed all along, and that the most adverse circumstances had never succeeded in destroying it.

Meanwhile, O'Connell was the sovereign of that nation, and one whose power over his subjects was greater than that of any of the kings or emperors who occupied the various thrones of Europe at the time. Later events proved how precarious was the authority of all those who appeared to hold the fate of millions in their hands; the authority of O'Connell alone was deeply rooted in the heart of his nation. From the humble position of a Kerry lawyer, he had gradually risen to the proud preeminence which he occupied in the eyes of Europe, and he owed it solely to that moral force of which he was so sincere an advocate, and which he knew so well how to wield.

But how came all the high hopes then so ardently entertained by the friends of Ireland to be so suddenly dashed to the ground, and O'Connell to die of a broken heart?

It seems, indeed, to be the opinion of Irishmen even, that O'Connell's theory was faulty; that moral force alone could not restore Ireland to her lawful position among nations; that, in fact, he failed by his very moderation, and that the bitterness which clouded his last days was the natural consequence of his false and delusive expectations. Such seems now to be the almost universal opinion.