In this respect, the Life of O'Connell, by Sister Mary Francis Clare, is much superior to Mr. Luby's, as it is in every other essential quality, though in itself far inferior to what might have been expected from so popular a writer, particularly when dealing with so great and congenial a theme. In her book of eight hundred pages, the good religious has shown a vast amount of industry, a genuine appreciation of the character, labors, and conduct of the Liberator, and considerable literary skill in presenting them to the public in the most attractive and readable form. The correspondence between O'Connell and the venerable Archbishop of Tuam, now for the first time published, constitutes a most valuable, perhaps the most valuable, feature in the work, and, as a glimpse at the inner life of the busy lawyer and untiring agitator, will be read with particular gratification by the admirers of his extraordinary abilities in this country. Here, we regret to say, our praise of Miss Cusack's book must end. As a biography of one of the most remarkable public men of this century or of any country, it is not a decided success, and, as coming from the pen of an experienced, facile, and patriotic writer, it will, we do not doubt, disappoint the majority of her admirers at home and abroad. With the exception of the letters to Abp. McHale, alluded to above, and some original notes and appendices supplied by friends, the facts, incidents, and anecdotes recounted of the Irish leader are mainly taken from such books as those of O'Neill Daunt, Fegan, Sheil, and his own son, John O'Connell, all of which may be found in an anonymous compilation published five or six years ago.[76]
We do not find fault so much with the fact that it is so largely a compilation, as with the crude manner in which the extracts from those works are collated and presented to the public. We can even point to several instances where they are inserted bodily in the text, as original, without quotation-marks, foot-notes, or any other sign of reference. This may or may not be the fault of the printer, but the examples are so numerous as to incline us to the latter opinion. We have often admired the industry of Miss Cusack in bringing out so many good books in such rapid succession; as well as her zeal in endeavoring to aid, by the products of her genius, a most meritorious charity; but we hold it to be against the laws both of fair play and literary courtesy to neglect to accord to the labors of others a proper share of acknowledgment.
We do not want to be unreasonable. Had the gifted authoress allowed herself more time, and related the dramatic story of O'Connell's life entirely in her own words, we would have been satisfied. We do not expect that a lady secluded from the world, necessarily devoting the greater part of her time to the duties of her calling, and consequently practically unacquainted with the outside political world, its storms, passions, and intrigues, can treat us to anything like a full or elaborate disquisition on the circumstances, dangers, and difficulties which surrounded and impeded the career of such a man as the emancipator of the Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland. Only a person who has devoted much time to the examination of the history of Ireland and England, for the past hundred years, at least; who himself has been a participant in, or an interested spectator of, the unceasing conflict which during that period was naturally waged between the Irish nationalists and their opponents, can attempt to do so. This war was carried on in every relation of life; at the bar, on the bench; in the pulpit, press, and forum; in the workshop, the club, and the halls of St. Stephen; and the central figure, the invincible leader of the aggressive and at length victorious national party, was O'Connell—the man who for near half a century dared all opposition and defied all hostile power in the championship of the cause of his persecuted countrymen and co-religionists.
However men may differ as to the wisdom, policy, or honesty of O'Connell, none will deny that he was a man of stupendous intellect and indomitable perseverance. In everything he was gigantic. In physique, mental attainments, courage, virtues, and even in his errors, he was decidedly great. There was nothing small or dwarfed about him; and as, a popular leader while living, he seemed to hold in his hand the control of the masses of his countrymen; so, when dead, the very mention of his name is enough to awaken the gratitude and evoke the admiration of millions of the present generation, whose advent into the world succeeded his demise. Not only in Ireland was he trusted, beloved, and revered, but on the continent of Europe and in this country his name was associated with the cause of civil and religious liberty, and his every movement watched with interest by all classes. And when at length, worn down by his excessive labors in behalf of faith and liberty, he yielded up his soul to his Creator, his piety and patriotism became the subjects of unqualified encomiums from the noblest and most distinguished orators in both hemispheres. Surely so great an embodiment of zeal and genius, well directed, deserves a fitting chronicler.
Born of a house never remarkable before nor since his time for attachment to creed or country; educated far from the influences of his native land, we find him returning to it just as he had completed his majority, an accomplished scholar and a barrister, with nothing to depend upon but his own labors for support, yet full of ambition and eager for distinction. Had he followed the traditions of his family, he would have settled down quietly to the practice of his profession, and in course of time, doubtless, would have become wealthy and a useful assistant to the hostile power that controlled the destinies of his nation, as too many of his professional brothers had already done. But the young lawyer, to the dismay of many of his relations, soon showed that he was made of sterner stuff. He could not "bend the pregnant hinges of the knee, that thrift might follow fawning." He had arrived home in time to witness the horrors of '98; he had seen his fellow-Catholics, even then four-fifths of the population of Ireland, bowed down to the very dust, sneered at, reprobated, and, on their own soil, denied every social, commercial, and political right to which as freemen they were entitled; and, with a courage that never deserted him, and a capacity for labor that was truly remarkable, he ranged himself on the side of the proscribed, and took up the gauntlet cast down to the oppressed by the powerful and unscrupulous faction which then, as now, represented British supremacy in Ireland.
His first appearance in public, being then but twenty-three years old, was in 1799, when the question of a legislative union between Ireland and England convulsed the former and deeply moved the public mind of the latter country. At a meeting in Dublin, he denounced the measure in terms so bold, clear, and forcible that those who listened to him had little difficulty in foreseeing his future eminence and usefulness to the national cause. The scheme of Pitt and Castlereagh was, however, carried out, the Irish parliament was destroyed, and the Catholics saw themselves at the beginning of the century not only without a domestic legislature, but shut out from all representation, not only in the united Lords and Commons, but even in the most insignificant corporation and local boards.
Where, then, could the ardent young patriot, gifted, enthusiastic, and impatient of the restrictions placed upon himself and his fellow-countrymen, find an audience and an outlet for the fiery eloquence that heaved and burned in his soul? Clearly in popular gatherings and in the courts of law. But the people at that time were so timid, nay, so degraded, that they dared not assemble in any force to protest against the tyranny that had for so many generations enslaved them; or, if a few hundreds did assemble together, the sight of a magistrate, or the presence of some truculent follower of the castle, like the infamous Maj. Sirr, was sufficient to disperse them, while the few Catholic noblemen and gentry yet left were as timid as so many hares. The Irish Catholics of that epoch, so long trodden under foot, and deprived absolutely of political power and landed interests, were not like the Catholics of to-day, who, in all thankfulness be it said, are triumphantly bearing aloft the banner of the church when so much of Europe is trailing it in the mire of infidelity and communism. Then Wolfe Tone, once their secretary, in his Memoirs, and Wyse, in his History of the Catholic Association, likened them to the servile Jews, and described them as deficient in manliness and self-respect. They crawled at the feet of a hostile government, says the latter, fawned on their Protestant neighbors, and felt honored by being even noticed by persons of that creed, even though in every respect their inferiors. Such people had very little business in the civil courts to give, and what little they had they gave to those who loathed their creed and despised themselves.
O'Connell soon saw that nothing could be effected in the way of popular demonstrations with such unpromising materials. He therefore adopted another and a wiser course. The courts became his fulcrum, and his eloquence the lever, by which he sought to raise the spirit of the nation. Term after term, year after year, his potent voice was heard ringing through the halls of justice by an astonished bar and delighted and electrified audiences, in the defence of the victims of landlord tyranny or official persecution. His arguments to the bench, and his harangues to the jury, were always full of fire, audacity, and logic, and were seldom, even in the face of unmitigated prejudice, unsuccessful. Pathos and humor, wit and vituperation, strong appeals to the patriotism of his hearers, and stern denunciations of the rashness and folly of some of his compatriots, were with him invariably mingled with sound common sense and unerring legal acumen. So great, indeed, was his success as a pleader in criminal cases, so unlimited his resources in difficult motions, and so general his triumphs over ignorance and bigotry, that, before most of his fellow-practitioners had earned their first fees, he found himself in the enjoyment of a lucrative practice, and, what to him was an object of much greater importance, the spokesman of the degraded majority, and the oracle of his people. His forensic efforts were not confined to judges and juries exclusively. He lost no opportunity of throwing into his legal arguments and speeches some remarks for the benefit of the masses who always throng Irish courts—remarks which never failed to elicit the wildest delight and the most hearty applause.
In this indirect way he was gradually infusing into his countrymen that spirit of manhood which so powerfully moved himself. As an evidence of this, we may quote an extract, though a long one, from his speech in defence of Magee, editor of the Evening Post, then the most influential advocate of Catholic rights in Ireland. In 1813, Magee was prosecuted for a libel on the Duke of Richmond, the retiring lord-lieutenant; and as the crown officers in their speeches, and, as it appeared, by previous arrangement, endeavored to give to the trial—having first selected a jury to suit themselves—a political significance, Magee's counsel willingly joined issue with them on their own terms. The array of legal ability on both sides was proportionate to the gravity of the question involved. For the government appeared the Attorney-General, Saurin, the Solicitor-General, Bushe, and Sergeants Moore, Ball, and McMahon; for the defence, O'Connell, assisted by Messrs. Wallace, Hamilton, Findley, and Philips. Saurin, in his opening, alluding to the Catholic Board, of which the defendant's newspaper was the organ, made use of these words: "If the libel only related to him [Richmond], it would have gone by unprosecuted by me. But the imputation is made against the administration of justice by the government of Ireland, and it forms only a part of a system of calumny with which an association of factious and revolutionary men are in the habit of vilifying every constitutional authority in the land." The opportunity thus afforded O'Connell was instantly and dexterously seized by him to reply with more than his usual boldness and wealth of invective. In the course of his long address to the jury, he said:
"My lord, upon the Catholic subject I commence with one assertion of the Attorney-General, which I trust I misunderstood. He talked, as I collected him, of the Catholics having imbibed principles of a seditious, treasonable, and revolutionary nature! He seemed to me most distinctly to charge us with treason! There is no relying on his words for his meaning—I know there is not. On a former occasion, I took down a repetition of this charge full seventeen times on my brief; and yet afterwards it turned out that he never intended to make any such charge; that he forgot he had ever used those words, and he disclaimed the idea they naturally convey. It is clear, therefore, that upon this subject he knows not what he says; and that these phrases are the mere flowers of his rhetoric, but quite innocent of any meaning!