In public oratory O'Connell introduced a new style. Torrential and overwhelming as Flood and Grattan had never been, he proved more successful if less polished. The exaggerations of Gaelic speech found outburst in his English. Peel's smile was "the silver plate on a coffin", Wellington "a stunted corporal", and Disraeli "the lineal descendant of the impenitent thief."
It sounds bombastic, but in those feudal forties it rang more magnificent than war. Single-voiced he overawed the host of bigots, dullards, and reactionaries. Unhappily, he let his people abandon their native tongue, while teaching them how to balance the rival parties in England, the latter a policy that has proved Ireland's fortune since. He loosed the spirit of sectarianism in the tithe war, and he crushed the Young Ireland movement, which bred Fenianism in its death agony. But he made the Catholic a citizen. Results stupendous as far-reaching sprang from his steps every way.
The finest pen-sketch of O'Connell is by Mitchel, who says, "besides superhuman and subterhuman passions, yet withal, a boundless fund of masterly affectation and consummate histrionism, hating and loving heartily, outrageous in his merriment and passionate in his lamentation, he had the power to make other men hate or love, laugh or weep, at his good pleasure."
Yet during his lifetime there lived others worthy of national leadership. O'Brien, Duffy, and Davis played their part in England as well as in Ireland. Father Mathew founded the Temperance, as Feargus O'Conor the Chartist, movement. And there was an orator who fascinated Gladstone—Sheil.
Father Mathew succeeded in keeping many millions of men sober during the forties until the great Famine engulfed his work as it did O'Connell's. To him is due, as a feature of Irish life, the brass band with banners, which he originally organized as a counter-intoxicant.
Feargus O'Conor founded Radical Socialism in England. As the Lion of Freedom, he enjoyed a popularity with English workmen approaching that of O'Connell in Ireland. He ended in lunacy, but he had the credit of forwarding peasant proprietorship far in advance of his times.
Sheil was a tragic orator—"an iambic rhapsodist", O'Connell called him—who might have been leader, did not a greater tragedian occupy the stage. And Sheil was content to be O'Connell's organizer. Without O'Connell's voice or presence, he was his rhetorical superior, excelling in irony and the by-plays of speech for which O'Connell was too exuberant. Shell's speeches touch exquisite though not the deep notes of O'Connell, whom he criticized for "throwing out broods of sturdy young ideas upon the world without a rag to cover them." He discredited his master and his cause by taking office. The fruits of Emancipation were tempting to those who had borne the heat of the day, but there was a rising school of patriots who refused acquiescence to anything less than total freedom.
The Young Irelanders reincarnated the men of "ninety-eight." They were neither too late nor too soon. They snatched the sacred torch of Liberty from the dying hands of O'Connell, who summoned in vain old Ireland against his young rivals. But men like Davis and Duffy appealed to types O'Connell never swayed. He could carry the mob, but poet, journalist, and idealist were enrolled with Young Ireland. For this reason the history of their failure is brighter in literature than the tale of O'Connell's triumphs. To read Duffy's "Young Ireland" and Mitchel's "Jail Journal", with draughts from the Spirit of the Nation. is to relive the period. Without the Young Irelanders, Irish Nationalism might not have survived the Famine.
Mitchel, as open advocate of physical force, became father to Fenianism. An honest conspirator and brilliant writer, he proved that the pen of journalism was sharper than the Irish pike. Carlyle described him as "a fine elastic-spirited young fellow, whom I grieved to see rushing on destruction palpable, by attack of windmills." Destruction came surely, but coupled with immortality. He was transported as a felon before the insurrection, while his writings sprang up in angry but unarmed men.
Mitchel and O'Connell both sought the liberation of Ireland, but their viewpoint differed. Mitchel thought only of Liberty; O'Connell not unnaturally considered the "Liberator." His refusal to allow a drop of blood to be shed caused Young Ireland to secede. Only when death removed his influence could the pent-up feelings of the country break out under Smith O'Brien. If Mitchel was an Irish Robespierre, O'Brien was their Lafayette. His advance from the level of dead aristocracy had been rapid. From defending Whigs in Parliament he passed to opposition and "contempt of the House." He resigned from the Bench from which O'Connell had been dismissed, became a Repealer, adding the words "no compromise," and finally gloried in his treason before the House. His next step brought a price upon his head.