Daniel O'Connell, the Irish Patriot

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Lee and Shepard, 1884 - 32 pages
 

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Page 24 - May my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if ever I prove false to those teachings.
Page 5 - Mark what measure of success attended the able men who preceded him, in circumstances as favorable as his, perhaps even better ; then measure him by comparison. An island soaked with the blood of countless rebellions ; oppression such as would turn cowards into heroes; a race whose disciplined valor had been proved on almost every battlefield in Europe, and whose reckless daring lifted it, any time, in arms against England, with...
Page 29 - O'Connell was Clay, Corwin, Choate, Everett, and Webster in one. Before the courts, logic ; at the bar of the senate, unanswerable and dignified ; on the platform, grace, wit, and pathos ; before the masses, a whole man. Carlyle says, " He is God's own anointed king whose single word melts all wills into his." This describes O'Connell. Emerson says, " There is no true eloquence, unless there is a 568 WENDELL PHILLIPS. man behind the speech.
Page 32 - ... ahead of his times ; his eloquence, almost equally effective in the courts, in the senate, and before the masses ; that sagacity which set at naught the malignant vigilance of the whole imperial bar, watching thirty years for a misstep ; when I remember that he invented his tools, and then measure his limited means with his vast success, bearing in mind its nature; when I see the sobriety and moderation with which he used his measureless power, and the lofty, generous purpose of his whole life,...
Page 26 - Grattan's own success there was but moderate. The power O'Connell wielded against varied, bitter, and unscrupulous opposition was marvellous. I have no time to speak of his personal independence, his deliberate courage, moral and physical, his unspotted private character, his unfailing hope, the versatility of his talent, his power of tireless work, his ingenuity and boundless resource, his matchless self-possession in every emergency, his ready and inexhaustible wit. But any reference to O'Connell...
Page 23 - To show you that he never took a leaf from our American gospel of compromise ; that he never filed his tongue to silence on one truth, fancying so to help another ; that he never sacrificed any race to save even Ireland, — let me compare him with Kossuth, whose only merits were his eloquence and his patriotism. When Kossuth was in Faneuil Hall, he exclaimed, " Here is a flag without a stain, a nation without a crime...
Page 16 - But in a country like ours, of absolute democratic equality, public opinion is not only omnipotent, it is omnipresent. There is no refuge from its tyranny ; there is no hiding from its reach ; and the result is, that if you take the old Greek lantern, and go about to seek among a hundred, you will find not one single American who really has not, or who does not fancy at least that he has, something to gain or lose in his ambition, his social life, or his business, from the good opinion and the votes...
Page 15 - Above all, plant yourself on the millions. The sympathy of every human being, no matter how ignorant or how humble, adds weight to public opinion. At the outset of his career the clergy turned a deaf ear to his appeal. They had seen their flocks led up to useless slaughter for centuries, and counselled submission.
Page 5 - O'Connell lifted her to a fixed and permanent place in English affairs — no suppliant, but a conqueror dictating her terms This is the proper standpoint from which to look at O'Connell's work. This is the consideration that ranks him, not with founders of states, like Alexander, Caesar, Bismarck, Napoleon, and William the Silent, but with men who, without arms, by force of reason, have revolutionized their times — with Luther, Jefferson, Mazzini, Samuel Adams, Garrison, and Franklin.
Page 8 - ... unsuspected elements a power which, overawing king, senate, and people, wrote his single will on the statute-book of the most obstinate nation in Europe. Safely to emancipate the Irish Catholics...

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