Against the trafficking with the Whigs, which subsequently laid the Repeal Association in the dust, and shipwrecked a movement which might have ended in the disinthralment of Ireland, Meagher protested in words of prophetic warning. "The suspicion is abroad," he said, "that the national cause will be sacrificed to Whig supremacy, and that the people, who are now striding on to freedom, will be purchased back into factious vassalage. The Whigs calculate upon your apostacy, the Conservatives predict it." The place beggars, who looked to the Whigs for position and wealth, murmured as they heard their treachery laid bare and their designs dissected in the impassioned appeals by which Meagher sought to recall them to the path of patriotism and duty. It was necessary for their ends that the bold denouncer of corruption, and the men who acted with him, should be driven from the association; and to effect that object O'Connell was hounded on to the step which ended in the secession. The "peace resolutions" were introduced, and Meagher found himself called on to subscribe to a doctrine which his soul abhorred—that the use of arms was at all times unjustifiable and immoral. The Lord Mayor was in the chair, and O'Brien, John O'Connell. Denis Reilly, Tom Steele, and John Mitchel had spoken, when Meagher rose to address the assembly. The speech he delivered on that occasion, for brilliancy and lyrical grandeur has never been surpassed. It won for him a reception far transcending that of Shiel or O'Connell as an orator; and it gave to him the title by which he was afterwards so often referred to—"Meagher of the Sword." He commenced by expressing his sense of gratitude, and his attachment to O'Connell, "My lord," he said:—
"I am not ungrateful to the man who struck the fetters off my limbs while I was yet a child, and by whose influence my father, the first Catholic that did so for two hundred years, sat for the last two years in the civic chair of my native city. But, my lord," he continued, "the same God who gave to that great man the power to strike down one odious ascendency in this country, and who enabled him to institute in this land the laws of religious equality—the same God gave to me a mind that is my own, a mind that has not been mortgaged to the opinion of any man or set of men, a mind that I was to use and not surrender."
Having thus vindicated freedom of opinion, the speaker went on to disclaim for himself the opinion that the Association ought to deviate from the strict path of legality. But he refused to accept the resolutions; because he said "there are times when arms alone will suffice, and when political ameliorations call for 'a drop of blood,' and for many thousand drops of blood." Then breaking forth into a strain of impassioned and dazzling oratory he proceeded:—
"The soldier is proof against an argument—but he is not proof against a bullet. The man that will listen to reason—let him be reasoned with. But it is the weaponed arm of the patriot that can alone prevail against battalioned despotism.
"Then, my lord, I do not condemn the use of arms as immoral, nor do I conceive it profane to say that the King of Heaven—the Lord of Hosts! the God of Battles!—bestows his benediction upon those who unsheath the sword in the hour of a nation's peril. From that evening on which, in the valley of Bethulia, he nerved the arm of the Jewish girl to smite the drunken tyrant in his tent, down to this our day, in which he has blessed the insurgent chivalry of the Belgian priest, His Almighty hand hath ever been stretched forth from His throne of Light to consecrate the flag of freedom—to bless the patriot's sword! Be it in the defence, or be it in the assertion of a people's liberty, I hail the sword as a sacred weapon; and if, my lord, it had sometimes taken the shape of the serpent, and reddened the shroud of the oppressor with too deep a dye, like the anointed rod of the High Priest, it has at other times, and as often, blossomed into celestial flowers to deck the freeman's brow.
"Abhor the sword—stigmatize the sword? No, my lord, for in the passes of the Tyrol it cut to pieces the banner of the Bavarian, and, through those cragged passes, struck a path to fame for the peasant insurrectionists of Inspruck! Abhor the sword—stigmatize the sword? No, my lord, for at its blow a giant nation started from the waters of the Atlantic, and by its redeeming magic, and in the quivering of its crimsoned light the crippled colony sprang into the attitude of a proud Republic—prosperous, limitless, and invincible! Abhor the sword—stigmatize the sword? No, my lord, for it swept the Dutch marauders out of the fine old towns of Belgium—scourged them back to their own phlegmatic swamps—and knocked their flag and sceptre, their laws and bayonets, into the sluggish waters of the Scheldt.
"My lord, I learned that it was the right of a nation to govern itself, not in this hall, but on the ramparts of Antwerp; I learned the first article of a nation's creed upon those ramparts, where freedom was justly estimated, and where the possession of the precious gift was purchased by the effusion of generous blood. My lord, I honor the Belgians for their courage and their daring, and I will not stigmatize the means by which they obtained a citizen-king, a chamber of Deputies."
It was all he was permitted to say. With flushed face and excited gesture John O'Connell rose, and declared he could not sit and listen to the expression of such sentiments. Either Mr. Meagher or he should leave the Association; O'Brien interceded to obtain a hearing for his young friend, and protested against Mr. O'Connell's attempts to silence him. But the appeal was wasted, O'Brien left the hall in disgust, and with him Meagher, Duffy, Reilly, and Mitchel quitted it for ever.
Meagher's subsequent career in Ireland is soon told. He was a regular attendant at the meetings of the Confederation, of which he was one of the founders, and the fame of his eloquence, his manly appearance, and the charms of his youthful frankness contributed immensely towards the growth of the new organization. He always acted with O'Brien, whom he loved in his inmost soul, but he was respected and admired by every section of nationalists, the Mitchelites, the Duffyites, and we might even say the O'Connellites. When the country began to feel the influence of the whirlwind of revolution which swept over the continent, overturning thrones and wrecking constitutions as if they were built of cardboard, Meagher shared the wild impulse of the hour, and played boldly for insurrection and separation. He was one of the three gentlemen appointed to present the address from Ireland to the French Republican government in 1848; and in the speech delivered by him at the crowded meeting in the Dublin Music Hall before his departure, he counselled his countrymen to send a deputation to the Queen, asking her to convene the Irish parliament in the Irish capital. "If the claim be rejected," said Meagher, "if the throne stand as a barrier between the Irish people and the supreme right—then loyalty will be a crime, and obedience to the executive will be treason to the country. Depute your worthiest citizens to approach the throne, and before that throne let the will of the Irish people be uttered with dignity and decision. If nothing comes of this," he added, "if the constitution opens to us no path to freedom, if the Union be maintained in spite of, the will of the Irish people, if the government of Ireland insist on being a government of dragoons and bombadiers, of detectives and light infantry, then," he exclaimed in the midst of tumultuous cheering, "up with the barricades, and invoke the God of Battles!"
While the Republican spirit was in full glow in Ireland, Meagher astonished his friends by rushing down to Waterford and offering himself as a candidate for the post left vacant in parliament by the resignation of O'Connell. By this time the Confederates had begun to despair of a parliamentary policy, and they marvelled much to see their young orator rush to the hustings, and throw himself into the confusion and turmoil of an election contest. Que le diable allait il faire dans cette galere muttered his Dublin friends. Was not the time for hustings orations, and parliamentary agitation over now? Meagher, however, conceived, and perhaps wisely, that he could still do some good for his country in the House of Commons. He issued a noble address to the electors of his native city, in which he asked for their support on the most patriotic grounds. "I shall not meddle," he said, "with English affairs. I shall take no part in the strife of parties—all factions are alike to me. I shall go to the House of Commons to insist on the rights of this country to be held, governed, and defended by its own citizens, and by them alone. Whilst I live I shall never rest satisfied until the kingdom of Ireland has won a parliament, an army, and a navy of her own." Mitchel strongly disapproved of his conduct. "If Mr. Meagher were in parliament," said the United Irishman, "men's eyes would be attracted thither once more; some hope of 'justice' might again revive in this too easily deluded people." The proper men to send to parliament were according to Mitchel, "old placemen, pensioners, five pound Conciliation Hall Repealers." "We have no wish to dictate," concluded Mitchel in an article on the subject, full of the lurking satire and quiet humour that leavened his writings, "but if the electors of Waterford have any confidence in us, we shall only say that we are for Costello!"