They differ from leaders of other countries, who divide the average pittances of success or ill success on the road to honored retirement. Few of the heroes among modern nations have left such vivid and lasting memory as "the strong men of Ireland." During the nineteenth century their lore and cult have traversed the whole world in the wake of the great emigrations. Whether they failed or succeeded in wresting the independence and ideals of Ireland for a while from the fell clutch of circumstance, they live with their race forever.
Under Plantagenet and Tudor rule, the Irish leaders presented a sullen but armed resistance. A never completed invasion was met by sporadic raids and successive risings. A race of military outlaws was fashioned, which accounts for much in Irish character today. Previously the Irish, like all Celtic civilization, was founded on the arts, on speech, and on law, rather than on war and feudalism.
Even Irish militancy was crushed in the Williamite wars, and the race, deprived of its original subsistence as well as of its acquired defense, sank into the stupor of penal times. Those who should have been leaders of Ireland became marshals of Austria and France.
Gradually it was learnt that the pen is mightier than the sword and the human voice more potent than the sound of cannon—and the constitutional struggle developed, not without relapse and reverse. To Dean Swift must be attributed the change in the national weapon and the initiation of a leadership of resistance within the law, which has lasted into modern times. Accident made Swift an Irishman, and a chance attempt to circulate debased coins in Ireland for the benefit of a debased but royal favorite made him a patriot. Swift drove out Wood's halfpence at the pen-point. He shamed the government, he checked the all-powerful Walpole, and he roused the manhood of Ireland towards independence in legislation. He never realized what a position history would give him. To himself he seemed a gloomy failure, to his contemporaries a popular pamphleteer, but to posterity he is the creator of public conscience in Ireland. He was the father of patriotic journalism, and the first to defend Ireland's rights through literature. Though his popularity was quenched in lunacy, his impress upon Irish politics remains as powerful and lasting as upon English literature.
Within the so-called Irish parliament sprang forth the first of a long line of orators, Henry Flood. He was the first to study the Constitution for purposes of opposition. He attacked vice-regal government in its own audit-house. Pension and corruption he laid bare, and upon the people he breathed a spirit of independence. Unfortunately he was not content with personal prominence. He accepted office, hoping thereby to benefit Ireland. His voice became lost to the higher cause, and another man rose in his stead, Henry Grattan. The American war tested the rival champions of Liberty. Flood favored sending Irish troops, "armed negotiators" he called them, to deal with the revolted colonists. Grattan nobly reviled him for standing—"with a metaphor in his mouth and a bribe in his pocket, a champion against the rights of America, the only hope of Ireland and the only refuge of the liberties of mankind." Flood collapsed under his ignoble honors. He was not restored by returning to patriotic opposition. Grattan's leadership proved permanent politically and historically. His name connotes the high water-mark of Irish statesmanship. The parliament which he created and whose rights he defined became a standard, and his name a talisman and a challenge to succeeding generations. The comparative oratory of Grattan and Flood is still debated. Both after a manner were unique and unsurpassed. Flood possessed staying power in sheer invective and sustained reasoning. Grattan was fluent in epigram and most inspiring when condensed, and he had an immense moral advantage. The parliament which made him a grant was independent, but it was from one of subservience that Flood drew his salary. Henceforth Grattan was haunted by the jealous and discredited herald of himself. A great genius, Flood lacked the keen judgment and careless magnanimity without which leadership in Ireland brings misunderstanding and disaster. In the English House he achieved total failure. Grattan followed him after the Union, but retained the attention if not the power of Dublin days. Neither influenced English affairs, and their eloquence curiously was considered cold and sententious. Their rhapsody appeared artificial, and their exposition labored. The failure of these men was no stigma. What is called "Irish oratory" arose with the inclusion of the Celtic under strata in politics.
Burke's speeches were delivered to an empty house. Though he lived out of Ireland and never became an Irish leader in Ireland, Burke had an influence in England greater than that of any Irishman before or since. The beauty and diction of his speech fostered future parliamentary speaking. Macaulay, Gladstone, Peel, and Brougham were suckled on him. His farthest reaching achievement was his treatment of the French Revolution. His single voice rolled back that storm in Europe. But no words could retard revolution in Ireland herself. Venal government made the noblest conservative thinking seem treason to the highest interests of the country. The temporary success of Grattan's parliament had been largely won by the Volunteers. They had been drilled, ostensibly against foreign invasion, but virtually to secure reforms at home. Their power became one with which England had to reckon, and which she never forgave. Lord Charlemont, their president, was an estimable country gentleman, but not a national leader. A more dashing figure appeared in the singular Earl of Bristol. Though an Irish bishop and an English peer, he set himself in the front rank of the movement, assuming with general consent the demeanor and trappings of royalty. He would not have hesitated to plunge Ireland into war, had he obtained Charlemont's position. But it was not so fated.
After forcing parliamentary independence the Volunteers meekly disbanded, and the United Irishmen took their place. The brilliancy of Grattan's parliament never fulfilled national aspirations. Bristol was succeeded by another recruit from the aristocracy—Lord Edward Fitzgerald. With Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet he has become legendary. All three attained popular canonization, for all three sealed their brief leadership with death.
Lord Edward was a dreamer, an Irish Bayard, too chivalrous to conspire successfully and too frankly courageous to match a government of guile. Tone was far more dangerous. He realized that foreign invasion was necessary to successful rebellion, and he allowed no scruple or obstacle in his path. He washed his hands of law and politics entirely. To divert Napoleon to Ireland was his object and the total separation of Ireland his ambition. The United Irishmen favored the invasion, which the Volunteers had been formed to repel. The feud between moral and physical force broke out. The failure of the sterner policy in 1798 did not daunt Emmet from his ill-starred attempt in 1803. He combined Lord Edward's chivalry with some abilities worthy of Tone, but he failed. The failure he redeemed by a swan-song from the dock and a demeanor on the scaffold which have become part of Irish tradition.
After the Union, Irish leaders sprang up in the English House, which Pitt had unwittingly made the cockpit of the racial struggle. Far from absorbing the Irish element, the Commons found themselves forced to resist, rally, and finally succumb.
The Irish House cannot be dismissed without mention of Curran. He was a brilliant enemy of corruption and servility. O'Connell said "there was never so honest an Irishman," which may account for his greater success as a lawyer than a politician. To be an Irish leader and a successful lawyer is given to no man. For the former the sacrifice of a great career is needed. This sacrifice Daniel O'Connell was prepared to make. His place in history will never be estimated, for few have been so loved or hated, or for stronger reasons. Never did a tribune rising to power lift his people to such sudden hope and success. Never did a champion leave his followers at his death and decline to more terrible despair. Friend and foe admit his immensity. He was the greatest Irishman that ever lived or seemingly could live. In his own person he contained the whole genius of the Celt. Ireland could not hold his emotions, which overflowed into the world for expression. He rose on the crest of a religious agitation, but, Emancipation won, he had the foresight to associate the Irish cause with the advent of Reform and Liberalism throughout Europe. He sounded the notes of free-trade and anti-slavery. What he said in parliament one day, Ireland re-echoed the next. To her he was all in all, her hero and her prophet, her Messias and her strong deliverer. On the continent he roughly personified Christian Democracy.