A third leader of this party was Thomas Meagher, who afterwards called himself O’Meagher, son of a wealthy and respectable Roman Catholic citizen at Waterford. Mr. Meagher was the youngest of all the Young Ireland leaders.
He had been educated at the Jesuit College, Stonyhurst, Lancashire, where it would appear that one principle undermined another in his education; for while he came forth a Roman Catholic politician and a patriot, he found that the consistent profession of the one came into such frequent collision with the other, that his honest and manly mind could not reconcile them, and, as some regarded it, he sacrificed his creed to his country. Sir Jonah Barrington represents the Roman Catholic leaders of his day as sacrificing their country to their church. Thomas Meagher certainly appeared to perform the converse of this. His enunciations of religious opinion were boldly liberal, and utterly incompatible with the ascendancy of his own or any other church. In this respect, as, indeed, in every other, he preserved throughout his course a most laudable consistency. He probably comprehended the principles of civil and religious liberty better than any other member of the Young Ireland confederacy. Young Meagher was full of ardour for the cause of repeal. Like Davis and Smith O’Brien (to both of whom he was attached by the tenderest friendship), he believed it to be the salvation of his country. His soul was inflamed with love of her, and he consecrated his genius and his life to her resuscitation by the modes which alone appeared to him calculated to restore her from political death. Intellectually, Mr. Meagher was superior to any other leader of the party. Davis had neither the compass nor versatility of Meagher, who was the only finished orator of the remarkable group of men whom he intellectually outshone. Some of his orations are as chaste and fervent as Emmet’s, as rich and varied as Curran’s, as intellectual as Grattan’s, as logical as Flood’s, and as graceful and eloquent as Shiel’s. There are few specimens of political oratory in the English language which rival some of the speeches of this young tribune. He was almost as gifted with his pen as with his tongue. His letters abound with pathos, and poetry of thought and feeling; his descriptions are graphic and lifeful; his analysis of character accurate and discriminating; his aspirations noble and pure. There was a pleasing fascination in his oratory and writing which never passed away. One can hardly think of his sad story without remembering also the simile of his national poet:—
“You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will, But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.”
John Mitchell was another remarkable member of this fraternity. He was a solicitor, a Protestant, and a Dissenter. He was the most fiery of all “the rebels,” as these agitators ultimately became. Mitchell was a native of Ulster, and possessed much of the spirit of the old Presbyterian United Irishmen of 1798; indeed, some of their leaders were his relations. He possessed a vigorous intellect, great energy of thought and action, overbearing-purpose, and unflinching courage. His information was not extensive, nor his judgment profound, and yet he was a well-educated, well-read, and very thoughtful, reflective man. He was adapted to be the sole leader of an insurrection where the object might be clear, the undertaking desperate, and the work short. His nature was not adapted either to lay an extensive plan, or co-operate with other men of mental power in the execution of such. He was crotchetty and impracticable, a man of rash judgment and hasty action-as brave and as tenacious as a bulldog. In private life he was gentle and loving; it was easy, as a friend or companion, to argue with John Mitchell, but impossible to co-operate with him as a compatriot. He had not the mind of a statesman, nor had he the prudence and policy requisite for a popular leader anywhere, much less in Ireland, at a crisis of her history so peculiar. This gentleman did much to precipitate the insurrection which drew down upon Ireland, so soon after the period of which we write, disgrace and ridicule. Like Smith O’Brien, he did not thoroughly understand the people he was to lead, nor those of his countrymen to whom he and they were so certain to be opposed, nor did he compute the religious prepossessions by which those distinct parties were respectively influenced. Mr. Mitchell was nominally a Unitarian in his religious creed, but he held very lax notions of this theology, and verged to Deism.
His views of political economy were erroneous and impracticable; yet he seemed to pride himself upon his absurd economical theories. He seemed to have no fixed views of government; he was neither monarchist, aristocrat, nor republican: his opinions seemed to be incompatible with all organised government, except a popular despotism, such as the French empire exemplified. Hatred to England, her name, race, and institutions, seems to have amounted to a monomania with him; yet he was not himself of Celtic lineage. His intolerance of opinion and rashness of action would have been utterly unendurable, were it not for the directness of his aims, the sincerity of his motives, the disinterestedness of his spirit, and the suavity of his disposition. The only other member of the Young Ireland party deserving notice as a chief was Charles Gavin Duffy, the editor and proprietor of the Nation newspaper. Mr. Duffy was a Roman Catholic, and professed unbounded respect for the priests. He was generally suspected of coquetting with them to secure their patronage of the Young Ireland cause, and that at heart he despised the popular subserviency to them. There was much in his speeches and literary articles to confirm this view, but there was also a great deal to lead to the belief that he was at heart “a priest’s man.” Certainly their reverences did not think, or, at all events, appear to think him, a very particular friend to their order, for they frequently opposed the circulation of his paper, and denounced himself. He bravely,-’-but respectfully battled with them, and lost the game-the circulation of his paper fell as the Roman Catholic tone of it was lowered. Whether this circumstance had any influence, as was alleged, it is beyond doubt that, while he continued to maintain his young Ireland theories, he became more chary of combat with the clergy, and no paper put forth a more wild and daring ultra-montanism than the Dublin Nation, at the very time that its columns were filled with passionate poetry dedicated to the rights of country and of kind. Articles asserting that all Irishmen should be held equal before God and the law, and that Orange ascendancy and all party ascendancy was destructive to Ireland, were strangely in contiguity with others asserting the most despotic claims for the church of Rome that ever were put forth in her name. On the whole, the inference might be fairly drawn from the writings and speeches of Mr. Duffy that he hated England with an indiscriminating and malignant rancour; that her peculiar virtues were as hateful to him as her vices, her glorious deeds as her errors; and that he hated her for the power with which she supported a certain degree of civil and religious liberty, as much as from any grievances of which his country had to complain, or any distaste he entertained to her race, her habits, or the idiosyncracies of thought by which her people were characterised. He was anxious to see his country independent and prosperous, and in order to be so, wished to see a severance from England, and a full and unmitigated ascendancy of the Roman Catholic religion. Personally, Mr. Duffy was too generous, kind-hearted, and manly to persecute, and would have been among the first to endanger himself by interposing to protect another from the chain or brand of the persecutor; but the tone of his writings, and the writings of those who found readiest access to the columns of his journal, was relentlessly bigoted. If mobs fell upon zealous, or, it may be, over-zealous clergymen or Scripture-readers, the Nation always extenuated the ruffianism, and abused the objects of popular violence. Some reason for this course, applicable only to the particular case, or to a class of cases under which it was ranged, was always relied upon in justification of these bitter outbreaks of intolerance, but the paragraphs in which the vituperation found vent always disclosed some bigoted principle which constituted the core of the article. O’Connell obtained an unhappy celebrity for his violence in religious disputation, but there was always a waggery in his most virulent sectarian harangues which relieved them, and left the impression that his bigotry was professional or forensic rather than heartfelt, but the Nation newspaper allowed no humour to shed a ray of relief upon the dark sentences of its intolerance. If indomitable fortitude, endurance, and perseverance could win a cause, Charles Gavin Duffy would have secured all for which he afterwards struggled and suffered. The political economy of Mr. Duffy, judging from the columns of the Nation, was not much more enlightened than that of his coadjutors.
Such were the men who constituted the leaders of the Young Ireland section of the Repeal Association. There were others who possessed eloquence, courage, and patriotism, but they did not occupy the front rank. With this fresh, youthful, earnest, intellectual, and uncompromising body of young men O’Connell had to compete almost single-handed; for although he was well supported by the priests, and by the old hacks of the association, he alone could confront intellectually so gifted an array of antagonists, or maintain, with any chance of victory, his side in the logomachy which was perpetually proceeding within the circle of the Repeal Association. Moore, in one of his melodies, represents the demon of discord as annually appearing in the Boyne, and casting forth the burning arrows which were ignited by his breath; but the scene of the fiery fiend’s operations might be well supposed as changed to “Conciliation Hall,” and his arrows thence flung over the inflammable isle. However indifferent the loyalists might be to the conflicts between Old Ireland and Young Ireland, the government could not be so, for “O’Connell’s tail” was, if no ornament, of some use on the ministerial benches. O’Connell denounced the Whigs, but intrigued to keep them in power, or help them to obtain it. The old Ireland party had votes in parliament, and gave them with more or less fidelity on the side of Lord John’s administration; whereas the Young Irelanders had yet to gain the heart, if not the ear of their country, and were not recognised as a power, except so far as they constituted an imperium in imperio within the circle of the Repeal Association. The bolder doctrines of this young party tended also to inspire a spirit of determined and organised revolt, which the government could not observe without concern, and the temper of the people was so embittered by the feuds of their leaders, as to be at least an unfavourable set-off against the probability that these contests would impair the moral influences of those who waged them. As a specimen of the state of feeling between these two parties, the proceedings of the Repeal Association for June 22nd may be adduced. At that time Sir Robert Peel was still in office, if not in power; but every one in Ireland believed that the Whigs would soon resume place, and that O’Connell would pass from the sphere of unqualified opposition to that of qualified support. The Young Irelanders took advantage of these impressions to weaken O’Connell’s influence as a leader. This cut him to the heart: he received the tidings in London, and chafed under the vigilant restraint which this opposition in his own parliament placed him as to the policy he might adopt at St. Stephen’s. He wrote to the association a letter, which showed his annoyance and apprehension; the following is an extract, the most pertinent to the purpose for which the reference is made:—“It is with the bitterest regret and deepest sorrow that I witness the efforts which are made by some of our juvenile members to create dissension and circulate distractions amongst the repealers. It is manifest that the great majority of the Repeal Association must exert themselves strenuously to support the association, or the persons to whom I allude will divide its ranks, and finally destroy the association itself. For my poor part, I will not be an idle spectator of such a struggle. ’Tis true that the people may be induced to desert me, but I never will desert the people. I perceive that it is—I will not use the proper term—but I will say, most unhandsomely suggested that, in the event of the Whigs coming into power, the repeal cause is to be abandoned, or postponed, or compromised. I utterly deny the assertion. While I live the repeal cause shall never be abandoned, postponed, or compromised, to advance any persons to power, to support any party or faction. I have long since; nailed the colours of repeal to the mast, and they shall, during my life, never be taken down, unless to cover the entry of the Irish members into the Irish parliament in College Green.”
The contests between the two sections of repealers ended in the secession of the Young Irelanders from the Repeal Association. O’Connell was at heart glad of this, for his physical and intellectual energies were flagging, and the constant tantalising to which he was subjected in the association by these young men irritated his nervous system, and impaired his health. He made a show of conciliation, and sent a Roman Catholic clergyman of considerable importance, the Rev. Dr. Miley, to open negotiations with Smith O’Brien, whom he did not hesitate publicly to declare was the only man of weight among them. O’Brien was not to be won by the voice of the charmer, and O’Connell became furious, attacking the literary men, who principally led the Young Irelanders, in terms which gave offence to the whole press, and strengthened the ranks of his opponents. The Whigs treated the Young Irelanders contemptuously, but endeavoured by every means in their power to conciliate the old repeal party. Not only was the arms bill dismissed from parliament, but place and patronage was at the beck of O’Connell; and many of his followers, notwithstanding their anti-English feeling, and the need of their services which they supposed their country had, accepted situations in England and the colonies. The magistrates who had been dismissed by Sir Robert Peel’s government for attending repeal meetings, or joining the association, were all restored to the commission of the peace. Dublin Castle unbarred its venerable portals to those who had ceased to be welcome there, because of their connection with the repeal agitation. O’Connell’s reiterated declaration, that the Young Ireland leaders did not possess the intelligence, experience, tact, or discretion to conduct any great movement, much less one of such magnitude and peril as they proposed, made a deep impression on the minds of the people, and checked the insurgent progress of these eloquent declaimers.
A circumstance occurred in the English house of commons, in the early part of the year, which damaged the prestige of Smith O’Brien, and although O’Connell exerted himself in parliament on his behalf, the event gave the arch-agitator satisfaction. He had many a private joke at the expense of O’Brien, and few men could wound with a brighter point than O’Connell in his best moods of satire. Mr. O’Brien was nominated on a committee, and refused to serve, alleging that the affairs of his country were so neglected that he would not attend to any other business than such as related to it. This was untrue, the affairs of Ireland had for some years occupied much of the attention of the house, and, moreover, if Mr. O’Brien did not choose to be amenable to the rules of the assembly, he ought to have resigned his seat. Persisting in his refusal to serve on the committee, he was, by order of the speaker, taken into custody by the serjeant-at-arms, and confined to a chamber within the precincts. After some time he was released, upon the motion of Mr. Shaw, an Irish Conservative member. The obstinate conduct of Mr. O’Brien, on this occasion, vindicated no principle and asserted no right; it caused his own pure patriotism to be suspected, and brought his country and himself into ridicule.
Such was the political condition of Ireland when 1846 closed in cold and gloom over its sickening, starving population. The year expired in the midst of the most frightful social condition to which any European people had ever been reduced. O’Connell too truly described it, in one of his strange and varied harangues in the Repeal Association, in the following manner:—He commenced by saying, that he deeply regretted to be obliged to announce that the state of the country was tenfold worse than it was that day week. The frost had set in, and cold and hunger were doing their work—in fact, starvation was stalking through the land. In Connaught there were no less than forty-seven deaths from starvation within the week—not merely reports of deaths, but forty-seven cases in which coroners’ juries returned verdicts of death from starvation. This was a horrible state of things, and he hoped that they would soon be put an end to. The landlords had come forward to give relief—at least, to some extent; but the merchant classes, he regretted to say, were holding back. He had seen no meeting of these men; however, he soon hoped to hear of one; and, in the name of the forty-seven starved and murdered victims, he would implore of them, and the men of all classes, to come forward and render every assistance in their power to relieve the distress.
The orator on that occasion was less than just to the merchants, and somewhat more than just to the landlords. It was brought to light by certain correspondents of the London press, that on Mr. O’Connell’s own land the state of the people was most deplorable; that this was so even before the failure of the crops; that the ordinary condition of his tenantry bordered upon famine. Mr. O’Connell was, in fact, “a middle man;” he rented extensive lands, and sub-let at a very large profit. The persons who were his tenants were ground down with an oppressive rent, and vainly endeavoured, without capital, profitably to cultivate their “takings.” On the land over which he had himself full control, the people had little ground of complaint, and much cause for gratitude. Although he did not come out unscathed from the controversy, which was raised about the state of the people on his own lands, he was as much sinned against as sinning—there was an unfair effort to fasten upon him an imputation of selfishness, which, at all events, he confuted.