Across the narrow strip of water, in Dublin, Daniel O’Connell sat in a ruby-brick house off Rutland Square, while the dusk of a September evening closed about him. He held a letter in his hand—a letter he had been re-reading while he waited. From far-off America his friend, William Lloyd Garrison, had written:
I send him to you, O’Connell, because you of all men have most to teach him. He is a young lion, not yet fully come into his strength, but all the latent power is there. I tremble for him! I am not a learned man. When confronted with clever phrasing of long words I am like to be confused. Scholars well versed in theology say I am a perfectionist.... As Christians, I believe we must convert the human race. Yet, God forgive me, doubts assail my heart. Here is a man, a few short years ago a slave. I stand condemned each time I look into his face. I am ashamed of being identified with a race of men who have done him so much injustice, who yet retain his people in horrible bondage. I try to make amends. But who am I to shape this young man’s course? I have no marks of a lash across my back; I’ve had the comforts of a mother’s tender care; I speak my father’s name with pride. I am a free white man in a land shaped and designed for free white men. But you, O’Connell, know of slavery! Your people are not free. Poor and naked, they are governed by laws which combine all the vices of civilization with those of primitive life. The masses of Ireland enjoy neither the freedom of the savage, left to roam his own forests and draw fish from his rivers, nor the bread of servitude.... From you, Frederick Douglass can learn. I commend him to you, with my love. He will strengthen your great heart. He will renew your faith and hope for all mankind.
The old man sat, turning the letter in his hand. The years lay heavy along his massive frame. His own voice came back to him: Sons of Ireland! Agitate, agitate, agitate!
Yet the evictions of starving tenants went on. The great castle in its circle of wretched cabins, stripped the surrounding country of food and fuel. People were ignorant because they could not go to school, slothful because there was nothing they could do. Drunkards because they were cold. Ireland had long been in subjection harsh enough to embitter, yet not complete enough to subdue. But the failure of the potato crop this year had brought a deadening apathy. The Irish cottier was saying he could never be worse off or better off by any act of his own. And everywhere there were the gendarmes, sodden with drink and armed with carbines, bayonets and handcuffs.
Daniel O’Connell had been thirty-six years old when, in 1812, Robert Peel came to Dublin. To O’Connell the twenty-four-year-old Secretary for Ireland was the embodiment of everything English. The Irishman had been destined and educated for the priesthood, had taken up law instead, and risen as rapidly as a Catholic could in a Protestant government. An Irish Catholic could vote, but could not sit in Parliament; he could enter the army, navy or professions, but could not rise to the higher ranks. The universities and all the important posts in the Civil Service were closed to him.
As an advocate, Daniel O’Connell had been greatly in demand. In those days he stood six feet tall, with a head of fox-red curls and a face that had irregular, almost ugly features. They said his voice could be heard a mile off and was like music strained through honey. Reckless, cunning, generous and vindictive, O’Connell had fought for Ireland. They threw him in jail when he challenged Robert Peel to a duel. It never came off. He finally apologized, thinking to propitiate the Englishman in the matter of his Catholic Relief Bill that was up before Parliament.
Now Robert Peel was Prime Minister of England, and misery still lay like a shroud over all Ireland. O’Connell shook his head. Garrison was mistaken. There was nothing he could teach his young man. At seventy, one’s work is finished, and he, Daniel O’Connell, had failed.
After a while the girl brought in a lighted lamp and set it on the table. O’Connell said nothing. He was waiting.
Then he heard voices in the hall and he stood up, his keen eyes fixed on the door. It opened to admit Frederick Douglass. The dark man stood a moment where the lamplight fell on him; then he smiled. And something in the Irishman’s tired heart ran out to meet that smile. O’Connell strode across the room. He placed his two hands on the younger man’s shoulders and looked deep into his eyes.