THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 73, 19 September 1874, Page 13

THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER.

Eaelt in 1846, when the Repeal Association was still powerful and great, and^ ere yet the country had ceased to throb to the magic of O'Connell's voice, there rose one day from amongst those who crowded the platform of Conciliation Hall, a well-featured, gracefully built, dark-eyed young gentleman, towards whom the faces of the assembly turned in curiosity, and whose accents when he spoke, were those of a ■stranger to the audience. Few of them had heard of his name ; not one of them — if the chairman, William Smith O'Brien be excepted had the faintest idea of the talents and capacities he possessed, and which were one day to enrapture and electrify his countrymen. He addressed the meeting on oho of the passing topics of Ike day ; some•thing in his manner, savouring of affection, something in the semiSaxon lisp that struggled through his low-toned utterances, something in the total lack of suitable gesture, gave his listeners at the outset a,a unfavourable impression of the young speaker. He was boyish, and eorue did not scruple to hint conceited ; he had too much of the fine gentleman about his appearance, and too little of the native brogue and stirring declamation to which his listeners had been accustomed. Thenew man is a failure, was the first idea that suggested itself to the : but he was not ; and when he resumed his seat he had conquered all prejudices, and rung the cheers of admiration from the meeting. Warming with his subject, and casting off the restraints that hampered hie utterances at first, he poured fourth a strain of genuine eloquence, vivified by the happiest allusions, and enriched by I imagery and quotations as beautiful as they were appropriate, which startled the meeting from it« indifference, and won for tue youna speaker the enthusiastic applause of his audience. Smith O'Brien complimented him warmly upon his success, and thus it was that the orator of Young Ireland made his debut on the political platform. Meagher was not quite twenty-three years of age when his voice was first heard in Conciliation Hall. He was born in Waterford of an ■old Catholic family, which through good and ill had adhered to the national faith and the national cause ; his school-boy days were passed partly at CJongowes-wood College, and partly uuder the superintendence of the Jesuit Fathers ot Stoneyhurst, in Lancashire. His early .years gave few indications of the splendid wealth of genius that slumbered within his breaet. He took little interest in his classical or mathematical studies ; but he was an ardent student of English literature, and his compositions in poetry and prose invariably carried away 'the prize. He found his father filling the Civic Chair in Waterford when he returned from Stoneyhurst to his native city. O'Connell vas in the plentitude of his power ; and from the end of the land, the people -were shaken by mighty thoughts and -grand aspirations ; with buoyant and unfaltering tread the nation seemed advancing towards the goal of Freedom, and the manhood of Ireland Beemed kindling at the flame which glowed before the altar of Lihorty. Into the national movement .young Meagher threw himself with the warmth and enthusiasm of his nature. At the early age of twenty we find him presiding over a meeting of Repealers in his native city, oalled to express s empathy with the State Prisoners of '43, and he thenceforward became a diligent student of contemporary politics. He became known as an -occasional speaker at local gatherings ; bat it. was not until the event ■we have described that Vt eagher was fairly launched in the troubled *id« of politic, and that bis lot was cast for good or uyil, with the leaders of thr national party.

m^£ P fII d of . se ° es3l ? n .M:e^er was a frequenc speaker at the meetings of the Kepeai Associauon. Day by day his reputation as a speaker extended, until afc. length he grew to be recogLed as tie orator of the party, and the kuowledge that he was expected to speak was sufficient to crowd the Conciliation Hall to overflowing When the influence of the Nation party began to felt, and sign 3 of disunion appeared on the horizon, O'Connell made a vigorous effort tod 5 Meagher from the side of Mitchel, Daffy, and O'Brien. « The*J young Irelauders," he said, " will lead you into danger." " They mil bo a nour c " lnt ° dangCr> " repUed Mea S her ' " bub certainly not imoS H,a T^ gain | 9t A the . t^ (Be ? nn S 1 **]" «w Whigs, which subsequently laid the Repeal Association in the dust, and ship wrecked a movement whic'i might hare i ended m the disenthralled of Ireland, Meaner protestel in words of prophetic warning. "The suspicion is abroad/ he said that the national cause will be sacrificed to Whig supremacy, and that the peop c, who are now striding on to freedom, will-be purchased back into factious vassalage. The Whigs calculate upon ySur aposS? WK C °" ser7at !^ s P red j cfc *'" The pluce-beggaw, who looked to the Whigs for position and wealth, murmured as they head thruheard their treachery laid bare and their designs dissected in the impassioned appeals by which Meagher sought to recall them to the path, ol patriotism and duty. It was necessary for their ends that the bold denouncer of corruption, and the men who acted with, him should be driven from the association ; and to effect that object O'Connell was hounded on to the step which ended in the secession. The " peace resolutions were introduced, ana Meagher found himself called on to subscribe to a doctrine which his soul abhored— that the use of arms was at all times unjustifiable and immoral. The Lori Mayor was in the chair, and O'Brien, John O'Connoll, Devin lleilly, Tom Steele, and Johu Mitchel had spoken, when Meagher rose to address tko ass -mbly. The speech he delivered on that occasion, for brillancj and lyrical grandeur has never been surpassed. It -won for him a re ;eption fair transcending that of Shiel or O'Oonnell as an orator ; and it gave to him the title to which he was afterwards so often referred to—" Meager of the Sword." He commenced by expressing his sense of gratitude, and his attachment to O'Connell, " My lord," he Slid :— " I am not ungrateful to the man who struck tbe fetfers of my L i, while * was yeb a cllild > and V whose influence my father, the first Catholic that did so for two hundred years, sat for the last two years in the Civic Chair of my native city. But, my lord,'.'- he continued, " the same God who gave to that great man the power to strike down one odious ascendency in this country, aud who enabled him to institute in this land the laws of religious equality— the same God gave to me a mind that is my own, a mind that has not been mortgaged to the opinion of any man or set of men, a mind that I was to use and not surrender. Having thus vindicated freedom of opiaiou, the speaker weut oa to disclaim for himself the opinion that die Association ought to deviate from the strict path of legality. But he refused to accept the resolutions ;- because he said " there are times when arms alone will aumce, and when political ameliorations call for • a drop of blood,' and for many thousand drops of blood." Then breaking forcli into a strain of impassioned and dazzling oratory he proceeded :-^ " The soldier is proof against an argument — but he is not proof against a bullet. The man that will listen to reason — let him b» reasoned with. But it is the weaponed arm of the patriot that, can alone prevail against battalioned despotism " Then, my lord, I do not condemn the use of arms a3 immoral, nor do I conceive it profane to say that the King of Heaven — the Lord of Hosts ! the God of Battles ! — bestows his benediction ur>on tlioso who unsheath tho sword in the hour of a nation's peril. From thafceveniug on which, iv the valley of Betliulia, he nerved the arm of tha> Jewish girl to smite the drunken tyrant in his tent, down to this our day, in which he has blessed the iusui'geut chivalry of the Belgian priest, His Almighty hand hath ever been stretched forth from ±£ia throne of Light to cousecrate the flag of freedom— to bless the patriot's sword ! Be it in the defence, or be it in the assertion of a people's" liberty, I hail the sword as a sacred ve:ipon ; and if, my lord, it ha-i sometimes taken the shap e of the serpeut, and reddened the shroud of the oppressor with too deep a dye, like tho anointed rod of the Hijlv Priest, it has at other times, and as often blossomed into celestial flower's to deck the freeman's brow. " Abhor the sword — stigmatize the sword ? No, my lord, for in the passes of the Tyrol it cut to pieces tlie bauuer of die Bavarian, and, through those crayged passes, struck a path to fame for the peasant insurrectionists of Inspruck! Abhor the sword— stigmatize the sword r\ No, my lord, for at its blow a giant nation started from the waters of the Atlautic, ant! by its redeeming magic, aad in the quivering of ita crimsoned light the crippled colony sprang into the attioude ot" a Republic—prosperous, limitless, and invincible! Abhor the sword — stigmatize the sword ? No, my lord, for it swept the Dutch marauder* out of the fine' old town of Belgium — scourged theuvback to their own phlegmatic s. vamps — and knocked their flag and soeptiv, their law* and bayonets, into tha sluggish water* of the Scheldt. "My lord, I learned that it wa3 the right of a nation to govern itself, not in this hall, but on the ramparts of xVntwerp ; I learned tha first article of a nations creed on tho^e ramparts, were freedom wa» justly estimated, and where the possession of tlie precious gift was purchased by the effusion of generous blood. .My lord, I honour tna Belgians for their courage an-1 theii* daring, and I will not stigmatiza the means by which they obtained a citizen-king, a chamber of Deputies." v It was all he was permitted to ?ay. With flushed face and excited gesture John O'Connell rose, and declared he could not sit and listen to the expression of such sentiments. Either Mr Meagher or ho should leave the Association ; O' Bnen interceded to obtain a hearing for his young friend, and protested against Mr O'ConneU's atte mpt» to silence him. But the appeal waa wasted, O'Brien left the hal 1 ia disgust, And with him Meagher, Daffy, Reilly, and Mitchel quitted it for eyer ever. »