ant has had a friendly intercourse with the Treasury, and a propitious acquaintance with the Mint ! Impoverished by the Union, beggared by the Union, driven to the last extremity of destitution by the Union, it is advisable that we should prove all this to the minister and the parliament, with our pockets full of salaries, and our family circumstances in full bloom! Denouncing the rapacity of England, we are to share her spoils ! Impeaching the minister, we are to become his hirelings! Claiming independence, shouting for independence, foaming for independence, we are to crawl to the castle of the Lord Lieutenant, and there crave the luxuries and the shackles of the slave! Thus we are told to act! Thus we are implored to agitate! This is the great, peaceful, moral, and constitutional doctrine! This, the true way to make us the noblest people on the face of the globe, and restore Ireland to her place among the nations! Mean, venal, and destructive doctrine! - teaching the tongue that has burned and denounced, to cool and compliment! Mean, venal, and destructive doctrine! -teaching the people, on their march to freedom, to kneel and grovel before the golden idol in the desert! Mean, venal, and destructive doctrine! - teaching whining, teaching flattery, teaching falsehood! Scout it, spurn it, fling it back to the castle from whence it came! - there let it lie, among the treasured instructions of tyranny, and the precious revelations of treason! IB. SIR, the pursuit of liberty must cease to be a traffic. It must resume among us its ancient glory-be with us an active hĕroism. Once for all, sir, we must have an end of this money-making in the public forum. We must ennoble the strife for liberty; make it a gallant sacrifice, not a vulgar game; rescue the cause of Ireland from the profanation of those who beg, and from the control of those who bribe! Ah! trust not those dull philosophers of the age, those wretched skeptics, who, to rebuke our enthusiasm, our folly, would persuade us that patriotism is but a delusion, a dream of youth, a wild and glittering passion; that it has died out in this nineteenth century; that it can not exist with our advanced civilization-with the steam-engine and free trade! False false! The virtue that gave to Paganism its dazzling lustre, to Barbarism its redeeming trait, to Christianity THE RESURRECTION OF ITALY. 47 its heroic form, is not dead. It still lives, to preserve, to console, to sanctify humanity. It has its altar in every clime - its worship and festivities. On the heathered hills of Scotland, the sword of Wallace is yet a bright tradition. The genius of France, in the brilliant literature of the day, pays its high homage to the piety and heroism of the young Maid of Orleans. In her new senate hall, England bids her sculptor place among the effigies of her greatest sons the images of Hampden and of Russell. By the soft blue waters of Lake Lucerne stands the chapel of William Tell. At Innsbruck, in the black aisle of the old cathedral, the peasant of the Tyrol kneels before the statue of Andrew Hofer. In the great American republic-in that capital city which bears his name rises the monument of the Father of his country. Sir, shall we not join in this glorious homage, and here in this island, consecrated by the blood of many a good and gallant man, shall we not have the faith, the duties, the festivities, of patriotism? You discard the weapons of these heroic men do not discard the virtues. Elevate the national character; confront corruption wherever it appears; scourge it from the hustings; scourge it from the public forum; and, whilst proceeding with the noble task to which you have devoted your lives and fortunes, let this thought enrapture and invigorate your hearts: That in seeking the independence of your country, you have preserved her virtue-preserved it at once from the seductions of a powerful minister, and from the infidelity of bad citizens. XXII. THE RESURRECTION OF ITALY (1847). IB. SIR, is there nothing in the events now transpiring around us to rouse Ireland from her sleep-to stir the blood of her sons? Beyond the Alps a trumpet calls the dead nations of Europe from their shrouds. Do you not hear it? Does it not ring through the soul, and quiver through the brain? Italy at whose tombs the poets of the Christian world have knelt and received their inspiration-Italy, amid the ruins of whose Forum the orators of the world have learnt to sway the souls of men - Italy, from whose radiant skies the sculptor draws down the fire that quickens the marble into life-Italy, the brave, the beautiful, and the gifted - Italy is in arms! Prostrate for centuries amid the dust of heroes, wasting silently away, she has started from her swoon; for the vestal flame could not be extinguished. Austria-old, decrepid, haggard thief, clotted with the costly blood of Poland - trembles as she sheathes her sword, and plays the penitent within the walls of Ferrara. Glory to the citizens of Rome, who have sworn that they prize liberty as a treasure to be battled for with their lives! And glory to the maids and matrons of Rome, who bid the chivalry of their houses go forth in the righteous cause! And what can Ireland do to aid this brilliant nation in her struggle? In rags, in hunger, and in sickness, sitting, like a widowed queen, amid the shadows of her pillar towers and the gray altars of a forgotten creed, with two millions of her sons and daughters lying slain and shroudless at her feet, what can this poor island do? Weak, sorrowful, treasureless, as she is, I believe there are still a few rich drops within her heart that she can spare. Perish the law that forbids her to give more! Perish the law that, having drained her of her wealth, forbids her to be the boldest spirit in the fight! Perish the law which, in the language of one whose genius I admire, but whose apostasy I shall never imitate, "converts the island which ought to be the most fortunate in the world into a receptacle of suffering and degradation-counteracting the magnificent arrangement of Providence-frustrating the beneficent designs of God!" XXIII. IB. ENGLISH LEGISLATION - EUROPEAN EXAMPLES. - MEN of Ireland, a right noble philosophy has taught us that God has divided the world into those beautiful systems, called nations, each of which, fulfilling its separate mission, becomes an essential benefit to the rest. To this divine arrangement will you alone refuse to conform,-surrendering the position, renouncing the responsibility, which you have been assigned? Shame upon you!-Switzerland, without a colony, without a gun upon the seas, without a helping hand from any court in Europe, has held for centuries her footing on the Alps; spite of the avalanche, has made her little territory sustain the children to whom she has given birth; and, though a blood-red cloud is breaking, even whilst I speak, over one of her brightest lakes, be sure-whatever plague it may portend-be sure of this: the cap of foreign despotism will never gleam again in the marketplace of Altorf. Shame upon you! Norway, with her scanty population, scarce a million strong, has kept her flag upon the Categat; has reared a race of gallant sailors to guard her frozen soil; year after year has nursed upon that soil a harvest to which the Swede can THE TRANSPORTATION OF MITCHEL. 49. lay no claim; has saved her ancient laws, and to the spirit of her frank and hardy sons commits the freedom which she rescued from the allied swords when they hacked her crown at Frederickstadt! Shame upon you! Greece, "whom the Goth, nor Turk, nor Time hath spared," has torn the crescent from the Acropolis; has crowned a king in Athens, whom she calls her own; has taught you that a nation should never die; that not for an idle pageant has the blood of heroes flowed; that not to vex a schoolboy's brain, nor smoulder in a heap of learned dust, has the fire of heaven issued from the trib'une's tongue! And you-you, who are eight millions strong-you, who have no avalanche to dread - you, who might cull a plenteous harvest from your soil, and with the sickle strike away the scythe of death you, who have thus been prompted to all that is wise, generous, and great— you will make no effort; you will whine, and beg, and skulk, in sores and rags, upon this favored land; you will congregate in drowsy councils, and, when the very earth is loosening beneath your feet, you will respectfully suggest new clauses and amendments to some blundering bill; you will mortgage the last acre of your estates; you will bid a prosperous voyage to your last grain of corn; you will be beggared by the million; you will perish by the thousand; and the finest island which the sun looks down upon, amid the jeers and hootings of the world, will blacken into a plague-spot, a wilderness, a sepulcher ! XXIV. - THE TRANSPORTATION OF MITCHEL. IB. WHO speaks to Ireland of depression? Banish it! Let not the banners droop, let not the battalions reel, when the young chief is down! You have to avenge that fall. Until that fall shall have been avenged, a sin blackens the soul of the nation, and repels from our cause the sympathies of every gallant people. For one, I am pledged to follow him. Once again they shall have to pack their jury-box; once again exhibit to the world the frauds and mockeries, the tricks and perjuries, upon which their power is based. In this island the English never― never shall have rest! The work, begun by the Norman, never shall be completed! Generation transmits to generation the holy passion which pants for liberty, which frets against oppression. From the blood which drenched the scaffolds of 1798 the felons of this year have sprung. Should their blood flow, peace, and loyalty, and debasement, may here, for a time, resume their reign; the snows of a winter, the flowers of a summer, may clothe the proscribed graves; but from those graves there shall hereafter be an armed resurrection. Peace, loyalty, and debasement, forsooth! A stagnant society, breeding in its bosom slimy, sluggish things which make their way by stealth to the surface, and there creep, cringe, and glitter in the glare of a provincial royalty! Peace, loyalty, and debasement! A mass of pauperism, shoveled off the land, stocked in fever-sheds and poor-houses, shipped to Canadian swampspestilence, and vermin! Behold the rule of England, and, in that rule, behold humanity dethroned, and Providence blasphemed! rags, To keep up this abomination, they enact their laws of felony. To sweep away the abomination, we must break through their laws. Should the laws fail, they will hedge in the abomination with their bayonets and gibbets. These too shall give way before the torrent of fire which gathers in the soul of the people. The question so long debated — debated years ago on fields of blood debated latterly in a venal senate amid the jeers and yells of faction the question as to who shall be the owners of this island, must be this year determined. The end is at hand, and So unite and arm! - 1B. Or all the sciences, gentlemen, history is that which is always advancing. Mathematics and philosophical improvements may be long at a stand; poetry and the arts are often stationary, often retrograde; but every year, every month, every day, is contrib uting its knowledge to the grand magazine of historical experience. Look at what the last years have added, and behold how history accumulates as she rolls along what new attractions she holds forth to mankind! But with what an accession of beauty she invites us to the study of her charms, while she recounts the acts and the heroism of our own ancestry! Let the energies of our country become extinct; let her armies be overwhelmed; let her navy become the spoil of the enemy and the ocean; let the national credit become a byword; let the last dregs of an exhausted treasury be wrung from her coffers; let the constitution crumble; let the enemy ride in her capital, and her frame fall asunder in political dissolution; — then stand with history on one hand, and oratory on the other, over the |
