We have now closed our reference to the portion of Irish history comprised within the years 1798 and 1803, and as far as concerns the men who suffered for Ireland in those disastrous days our "Speeches from the Dock" are concluded. We leave behind us the struggle of 1798 and the men who organized it; we turn from the records of a period reeking with the gore of Ireland's truest sons, and echoing with the cries and curses of the innocent and oppressed; we pass without notice the butcheries and outrages that filled the land, while our countrymen were being sabred into submission; and we leave behind us, too, the short-lived insurrection of 1803, and the chivalrous young patriot who perished with it. We turn to more recent events, less appalling in their general aspect, but not less important in their consequences, or less interesting to the present generation, and take up the next link in the unbroken chain of protests against British rule in Ireland with the lives and the fortunes of the patriots of 1848. How faithfully the principles of freedom have been handed down—how nobly the men of our own times have imitated the patriots of the past—how thoroughly the sentiments expressed from the Green-street dock nineteen years ago coincide with the declarations of Tone, of Emmet, and of Russell—our readers will shortly have an opportunity of judging. They will see how all the sufferings and all the calamities that darkened the path of the martyrs of '98 were insufficient to deter others, as gifted, as earnest, and as chivalrous as they, from following in their footsteps; and how unquenchable and unending, as the altar light of the fire-worshipper, the generous glow of patriotic enthusiasm was transmitted through generations, unaffected by the torrents of blood in which it was sought to extinguish it.
The events of our own generation—the acts of contemporary patriots—now claim our attention; but we are reluctant as yet to turn over the page, and drop the curtain on the scenes with which we have hitherto been dealing, and which we feel we have inadequately described. We have spoken of the men whose speeches from the dock are on record, but we still linger over the history of the events in which they shared, and of the men who were associated with them in their endeavours. The patriots whose careers we have glanced at are but a few out of the number of Irishmen who suffered during the same period, and in the same cause, and whose actions recommend them to the admiration and esteem of posterity. Confining ourselves strictly to those whose speeches after conviction have reached us, the list could not well be extended; but there are many who acted as brave a part, and whose memories are inseparable from the history of the period. We should have desired to speak, were the scope of our labours more extended, of the brave Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the gallant and the true, who sacrificed his position, his prospects, and his life, for the good old cause, and whose arrest and death contributed more largely, perhaps, than any other cause that could be assigned to the failure of the insurrection of 1798. Descended from an old and noble family, possessing in a remarkable degree all the attributes and embellishments of a popular leader, young and spirited, eloquent and wealthy, ardent, generous, and brave, of good address, and fine physical proportions, it is not surprising that Lord Edward Fitzgerald became the idol of the patriot party, and was appointed by them to a leading position in the organization. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was born in October, 1763; being the fifth son of James Duke of Leinster, the twentieth Earl of Kildare. He grew up to manhood, as a recent writer has observed, when the drums of the Volunteers were pealing their marches of victory; and under the stirring events of the period his soul burst through the shackles that had long bound down the Irish aristocracy in servile dependence. In his early years he served in the American War of Independence on the side of despotism and oppression—a circumstance which in after years caused him poignant sorrow. He joined the United Irishmen, about the time that Thomas Addis Emmet entered their ranks, and the young nobleman threw himself into the movement with all the ardour and energy of his nature. He was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the National forces in the south, and laboured with indefatigable zeal in perfecting the plans for the outbreak on the 23rd of May. The story of his arrest and capture is too well known to need repetition. Treachery dogged the steps of the young patriot, and after lying for some weeks in concealment, he was arrested on the 19th day of May, 1798, two months after his associates in the direction of the movement had been arrested at Oliver Bond's. His gallant struggle with his captors, fighting like a lion at bay, against the miscreants who assailed him; his assassination, his imprisonment, and his death, are events to which the minds of the Irish nationalists perpetually recur, and which, celebrated in song and story, are told with sympathising regret wherever a group of Irish blood are gathered around the hearth-stone. His genius, his talents, and his influence, his unswerving attachment to his country, and his melancholy end, cast an air of romance around his history; and the last ray of gratitude must fade from the Irish heart before the name of the martyred patriot, who sleeps in the vaults of St. Werburgh, will be forgotten in the land of his birth.
In less than a fortnight after Lord Edward expired in Newgate another Irish rebel, distinguished by his talents, his fidelity, and his position, expiated with his life the crime of "loving his country above his king." It is hard to mention Thomas Russell and ignore Henry Joy M'Cracken—it is hard to speak of the Insurrection of '98 and forget the gallant young Irishman who commanded at the battle of Antrim, and who perished a few weeks subsequently, in the bloom of his manhood, on the scaffold in Belfast. Henry Joy M'Cracken was one of the first members of the Society of United Irishmen, and he was one of the best. He was arrested, owing to private information received by the government, on the 10th of October, 1796—three weeks after Russell, his friend and confidant, was flung into prison—and lodged in Newgate Jail, where he remained until the 8th of September in the following year. He was then liberated on bail, and immediately, on regaining his liberty, returned to Belfast, still bent on accomplishing at all hazards the liberation of his country. Previous to the outbreak in May, '98, he had frequent interviews with the patriot leaders in Dublin, and M'Cracken was appointed to the command of the insurgent forces in Antrim. Filled with impatience and patriotic ardour, he heard of the stirring events that followed the arrest of Lord Edward Fitzgerald; he concentrated all his energies in preparing the Northern patriots for action, but circumstances delayed the outbreak in that quarter, and it was not until the 6th of June, 1798, that M'Cracken had perfected his arrangements for taking the field, and issued the following brief proclamation, "dated the first year of liberty, 6th June, 1798," addressed to the Army of Ulster:—
"To-morrow we march on Antrim. Drive the garrison of Randalstown before you, and hasten to form a junction with your Commander-in-Chief."
Twenty-one thousand insurgents were to have rallied at the call of M'Cracken, out not more than seven thousand responded to the summons. Even this number, however, would have been sufficient to strike a successful blow, which would have filled the hearts of the gallant Wexford men, then in arms, with exultation, and effected incalculable results on the fate of Ireland, had not the curse of the Irish cause, treachery and betrayal, again come to the aid of its enemies. Hardly had the plans for the attack on Antrim been perfected, when the secrets of the conspirators were revealed to General Nugent, who commanded the British troops in the North, and the defeat of the insurgents was thus secured. M'Cracken's forces marched to the attack on Antrim with great regularity, chorusing the "Marseillaise Hymn" as they charged through the town. Their success at first seemed complete, but the English general, acting on the information which had treacherously been supplied him, had taken effective means to disconcert and defeat them. Suddenly, and as it seemed, in the flush of victory, the insurgents found themselves exposed to a galling fire from a force posted at either end of the town; a gallant resistance was offered, but it was vain. The insurgents fled from the fatal spot, leaving 500 of their dead and dying behind them, and at nightfall Henry Joy M'Cracken found himself a fugitive and a ruined man. For some weeks he managed to baffle the bloodhounds on his track, but he was ultimately arrested and tried by court-martial in Belfast, on the 17th July, 1798. On the evening of the same day he was executed. We have it on the best authority that he bore his fate with calmness, resolution, and resignation. It is not his fault that a "Speech from the Dock" under his name is not amongst our present collection. He had actually prepared one, but his brutal judges would not listen to the patriot's exculpation. He was hung, amidst the sobs and tears of the populace, in front of the Old Market place of Belfast, and his remains were interred in the graveyard now covered by St. George's Protestant church.
Later still in the same year two gallant young officers of Irish blood, shared the fate of Russell and M'Cracken. They sailed with Humbert from Rochelle; they fought at Castlebar and Ballinamuck; and when the swords of their French allies were sheathed, they passed into the power of their foes. Matthew Tone was one of them; the other was Bartholomew Teeling. The latter filled the rank of Etat-major in the French army; and a letter from his commanding officer, General Humbert, was read at his trial, in which the highest praise was given to the young officer for the humane exertions which he made throughout his last brief campaign in the interest of mercy. "His hand," he said, "was ever raised to stay the useless effusion of blood, and his protection was afforded to the prostrate and defenceless." But his military judges paid little heed to those extenuating circumstances, and Teeling was condemned to die on the day of his trial. He perished on the 24th September, 1798, being then in his twenty-fourth year. He marched with a proud step to the place of execution on Arbour Hill, Dublin, and he died, as a soldier might, with unshaken firmness and unquailing mien. No lettered slab marks the place of his interment; and his bones remain in unhallowed and unconsecrated ground. Hardly had his headless body ceased to palpitate, when it was flung into a hole at the rere of the Royal Barracks. A few days later the same unhonoured spot received the mortal remains of Matthew Tone. "He had a more enthusiastic nature than any of us," writes his brother, Theobald Wolfe Tone, "and was a sincere Republican, capable of sacrificing everything for his principles." His execution was conducted with infamous cruelty and brutality, and the life-blood was still gushing from his body when it was flung into "the Croppy's Hole." "The day will come," says Dr. Madden, "when that desecrated spot will be hallowed ground—consecrated by religion—trod lightly by pensive patriotism—and decorated by funeral trophies in honour of the dead whose bones lie there in graves that are now neglected and unhonoured."
There are others of the patriot leaders who died in exile, far away from the land for which they suffered, and whose graves were dug on alien shores by the heedless hands of the stranger. This was the fate of Addis Emmet, of Neilson, and of M'Nevin. In Ireland they were foremost and most trusted amongst the gifted and brilliant throng that directed the labours and shaped the purposes of the United Irishmen. They survived the reign of terror that swallowed up the majority of their compatriots, and, when milder councils began to prevail, they were permitted to go forth from the dungeon which confined them into banishment. The vision of Irish freedom was not permitted to dawn upon them in life; from beyond the sandy slopes washed by the Western Atlantic they watched the fortunes of the old land with hopeless but enduring love. Their talents, their virtues, and their patriotism were not unappreciated by the people amongst whom they spent their closing years of life. In the busiest thoroughfare of the greatest city of America there towers over the heads of the by-passers the monument of marble which grateful hands have raised to the memory of Addis Emmet. In the centre of Western civilization, the home of republican liberty, the stranger reads in glowing words, of the virtues and the fame of the brother of Robert Emmet, sculptured on the noble pillar erected in Broadway, New York, to his memory. Nor was he the only one of his party to whom such an honour was accorded. A stone-throw from the spot where the Emmet monument stands, a memorial not less commanding in its proportions and appearance, was erected to William James M'Nevin; and the American citizen, as he passes through the spacious streets of that city which the genius of liberty has rendered prosperous and great, gazes proudly on those stately monuments, which tell him that the devotion to freedom which England punished and proscribed found in his own land the recognition which it merited from the gallant and the free.
[Footnote: The inscriptions on the Emmet monument are in three languages—Irish, Latin, and English. The Irish inscription consists of the following lines:—
Do mhiannaich se ardmath
Cum tir a breith
Do thug se clu a's fuair se moladh
An deig a bais.
The following is the English inscription: