Darker skies were gathering over O'Connell. The pacific tenor of his agitations had thwarted the government. The magic of his name had prevented any overt act of violence by vast assemblies of his excited countrymen. The sub-leaders became impatient of delay, assumed a defiant tone, and demanded that the non-resistant doctrines of O'Connell be repudiated by the National Repeal Association. Then arose "Young Ireland." Then came strife and division, one party clinging to, the other separating from, the great leader. The alienation of large numbers of his friends overtaking him when his powers were impaired by years of exhausting toil, broke the spirit of the old man, undermined his constitution, and compelled him to repair to the Continent to resuscitate his waning health and drooping heart. But he left the field of exertion too late. His energies rapidly declined; death overtook him while on his weary pilgrimage; his eye saw the sun for the last time in a foreign sky; and he slept his final sleep far from the land which gave him birth, and from that ocean by whose side his cradle was rocked. The stroke that felled him to the earth sent a pang through many a heart in every country where humanity has a dwelling-place; for his sympathies, like his reputation, were world-wide. He had delivered his own countrymen from the bonds of ecclesiastical tyranny, and had plead for the victims of a hellish traffic on the shores of Africa, for the swarthy serfs of British cupidity on the banks of the Ganges, for the persecuted Jews of ancient Damascus, and for the stricken slaves in the isles of the Caribbean Sea and in the distant States of America.
No impartial and well-informed mind doubts the sincerity of Mr. O'Connell in demanding a Repeal of the Union. But it is equally unquestionable that, in his estimate of the benefits to flow from that measure, he either was deceived himself, or misled his followers. Probably long contemplation of that object, as the one remedy for the ills of Ireland, betrayed him into the errors of all disciples of "one-ideaism," while he was not exempt from the common infirmity of political leaders, in unduly magnifying before the eye of their partisans the measure of the party. Ineffectual as Repeal must have proved in producing a radical cure for Ireland, it would have been a preliminary stage in her restoration to complete independence, and therefore was important.
In respect to Mr. O'Connell's general course as a public man, it may be said that he did not belong to the ascetic school of politicians. He was not exempt from trick and artifice in attaining his ends, and was lavish in promising to do for his followers what he must have known he could not perform. Indeed, he was something of a demagogue. In honesty of purpose, he ranks with the better class of great public leaders; and if this be not saying much, it is saying more than can be uttered of the body. He is a rare man who is worthy to be ranked among the exceptions to bad general rules. The objects to which he devoted his political life were the noblest that can move the hearts of men. He that has never employed questionable means to secure even such ends may cast the first stone at Daniel O'Connell.
It only remains that I refer to his personal, social, and mental characteristics. Mr. O'Connell had a massive frame, capable of enduring great fatigue, and he was one of the most industrious and laborious of men. His manners were cordial and frank; his social qualities genial and winning; and he was singularly affectionate as a husband and a father. It was only in the fierce conflicts of partisan strife, when challenged by some strong provocation, that the unlovely and almost vindictive traits of his nature were displayed. Then, the man who, an hour before, had been all gentleness and good humor—caressing his grandchildren with womanly fervor, or, in his seat in the Commons, affectionately holding the hand of his son for a half hour together—now opened that terrible battery of invective which he so well knew how to employ, and covered his foe with a storm of fire.
He possessed a mind of uncommon native vigor, trained by a complete education, and enlarged with a knowledge of men and things varied and ample. The versatility of his genius, his extensive information, and his capacity to adapt himself to the matter under discussion or the audience before him, were surprising. I have heard him exhaust topics that required for their elucidation an intimate acquaintance with the Constitution of the United States, with the condition of barbarous tribes in the interior of Africa, with the wrongs inflicted by the East India Company upon the dwellers in Hindostan, with the commercial tariffs of European nations, with the persecution of the Jews in Asia, with the causes of the opium war in China, with the relative rights of planters and laborers in the Western Archipelago—and he was at home in each. I have seen him hold the House of Commons spell-bound, call shouts from the elite of British intelligence and philanthropy in Exeter Hall, lash into fury or hush into repose acres of wild peasantry gathered on the moors of Ireland—and he was at home with each.
As a popular orator, before mixed assemblies, our age has rarely seen his equal. So good a judge as John Randolph pronounced him the first orator in Europe. Every chord of the human bosom lay open to his touch, and he played upon its passions and emotions with a master's hand. He could subdue his hearers to tears by his pathos, or toss them with laughter by his humor. His imagination could bear them to a giddy hight on its elastic wing, or he could enchain their judgment by the strong links of his logic. He could blanch their cheek as he painted before their eye some atrocity red with blood, or he could make them hold their sides as he related some broad Irish anecdote fresh from Cork. He used to say he was the bes-tabused man in Europe. But he was able to liquidate all such scores with most usurious interest. He could excoriate an antagonist with invective, or roast him alive before a slow fire of sarcasm. When his indignation was fully roused, he boiled like a volcano; yet there was no excess of action or noise, but an eruption whose lava consumed all before it. His recital of facts charmed like a romance, and his appeals to the sympathies, uttered in a musical voice and the richest brogue of his native island, were tender and subduing.
No actor ever excelled him in reflecting the workings of the mind through the windows of the countenance. He looked every sentiment as it fell from his lips. I have seen a deputation of Hindoo chiefs, while listening to his detail, before an assembly, of the wrongs of India, never take their eyes off of him for an hour and a half, though not one word in ten was intelligible to their ears. His gesticulation was redundant, never commonplace, strictly sui generis, far from being awkward, not precisely graceful, and yet it could hardly have been more forcible, and, so to speak, illustrative. He threw himself into a great variety of attitudes, all evidently unpremeditated. Now he stands bolt upright like a grenadier. Then he assumes the port and bearing of a pugilist. Now he folds his arms upon his breast, utters some beautiful sentiment, relaxes them, recedes a step, and gives wing to the coruscations of his fancy, while a winning smile plays over his countenance. Then he "stands at ease," and relates an anecdote with the rollicking air of a horse-jockey at Donnybrook Fair. Quick as thought, his indignation is kindled; and, before speaking a word, he makes a violent sweep with his arm, seizes his wig as if he would tear it in pieces, adjusts it to its place, advances to the front of the rostrum, throws his body into the attitude of a gladiator, and pours out a flood of rebuke and denunciation.
Like most other rare men who have acted conspicuous parts in turbulent times, he had great faults, eminent virtues, crowds of enemies, troops of friends. His flatterers have rarely called him a statesman. In truth, he was neither a good statesman, nor a bad statesman, but simply a bold and generally successful political agitator. He grappled with questions that shook empires; led the van in many a contest against despotism; was indebted in no small degree for his victories to the rottenness of the institutions he assailed. All right-minded and liberal-hearted men will ascribe his defects partly to the evil times in which he lived, partly to a hasty temper and an indomitable pride of opinion, while to a large extent they will be attributed to a generous and impulsive nature, impatient of unmeasured abuse and unreasonable opposition. Impartial history will record that his fury was usually poured out on the heads of meanness, fraud, injustice, and oppression; that he was the friend, the champion, the brother, of depressed and outraged manhood, irrespective of clime, color, or creed; and that wherever Humanity writhed under the heel of Tyranny, there were found the glowing heart and trumpet voice of Daniel O'Connell, sympathizing with the victim and rebuking the tyrant.