Part 14

To understand what O'Connell fought against we must, of course, understand O'Connell's time. It is not easy for an American reader to understand it without some thought and without the endeavor to grasp the reality of a state of things quite outside his own living experience. When O'Connell began his career in politics the Act of Union had but lately been passed. That Act of Union deprived Ireland of the more or less independent Parliament which she had had for generations and even for centuries. It was indeed a Parliament "more or less" independent--less, perhaps, much rather than more. Still there had been always a recognition of Irish nationality in the existence of any form of Irish Parliament. The troubles between England and her American colonies--between England and France--had led to the concession of what we now know as Grattan's Parliament--the nearest form of Home Rule Ireland had ever enjoyed since her conquest by the descendants of the great Norman kings. But it was a Parliament of Protestants--no Catholic, in a nation of which five-sixths were Catholics, could sit in the National Parliament or even give a vote for a member of that National Parliament. Grattan's Parliament was exclusively Protestant; but yet, with all its imperfections, so nationalist was it in spirit that it was willing, under Grattan's inspiration, to enable Roman Catholics to vote for the election of members of the Irish House of Commons. But Grattan and his friends were anxious to go much farther. They demanded a complete political equality for the Roman Catholics. A society was formed for the purpose of conducting the agitation. Its leaders were almost all Protestants--many of them were Protestants from Ulster. The stupid bigotry of George the Third bluntly refused Catholic Emancipation; and the Society of United Irishmen became a rebellious organization. The rebellion of 1798 broke out and was crushed after terrible bloodshed. Then, when Ireland was wholly at the mercy of England, Pitt brought in his proposal for an Act of Union. After much resistance from all that was patriotic in Ireland and all that was sympathetic in England, the Act of Union was carried--by fraud and force and bribery and purchase. It has to be remembered with satisfaction that some of the noblest Englishmen of the time were as strenuously opposed to such a measure as Grattan himself. Pitt had made liberal promises about Catholic Emancipation while he was striving to carry the Act of Union, but when the Act was passed he dropped all talk about Catholic Emancipation, and pleaded as his excuse that the king would not listen to any further proposals on the subject. O'Connell's first political speech was made in January, 1800, at a meeting of Catholics held in Dublin to protest against the Act of Union.

Something else had to be done, however, before it could be possible in Ireland to encounter the Act of Union with anything like a successful constitutional agitation. The right had to be obtained for a Catholic to sit in Parliament. The Catholic Association had been formed for the purpose, and O'Connell became its recognized leader, and, more than that, the recognized leader of the Irish people. Meanwhile there were constant efforts made in Parliament for the emancipation of the Catholics. Sir Robert Peel, who had begun his career as Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, had become Secretary of State for the Home Department--and it may be well to mention to American readers that the Irish Secretaryship is really a subordinate part of the Home Office. Peel, as Home Secretary, was necessarily kept in constant touch with everything going on in Ireland. He was greatly impressed by some of the debates in the House of Commons. He was especially impressed by an observation which Lord Brougham, then Mr. Brougham, made in a speech supporting Catholic Emancipation, to the effect that not one of those who spoke against emancipation had ventured even to suggest that things could remain as they then were. Something will have to be done, Peel said to himself. What is the something to be? The new king, George the Fourth, in whose succession to the throne O'Connell and Thomas Moore and the Irish people generally had had so much hope, was doggedly opposed to the political relief of the Catholics.

Accident helped to bring about a settlement of the question. A sudden vacancy occurred in the Parliamentary representation of the County of Clare, owing to the fact that the former representative had accepted office in the government, and had therefore to offer himself for re-election. The leaders of the Catholic Association determined on the bold policy of putting forward a candidate to contest the seat. O'Connell, of course, was recognized by everyone as the man to fight the battle. He willingly accepted the responsibility. Even moderate men, partly sympathetic, shook their heads when they heard of this determination. "O'Connell will end his life on the gallows" was the confident prediction of some who passed among their neighbors for sensible persons. The Viceroy of Ireland predicted that O'Connell would take care to maintain good order in Clare during the election. O'Connell's opponent predicted that O'Connell would not dare to come to Clare in person; that he would not run the risk of confronting his enemies. O'Connell ran the risk--he was not a man likely to be afraid of risks. He went to Clare. The enthusiasm was wild, but the order was perfect. O'Connell, the excluded Catholic, was elected by a majority of more than two to one. The result set Peel thinking. What he thought we have in his own words. Was it possible to take no account of "that political and religious excitement which was quickening the pulse and fluttering the bosom of the whole Catholic population--which had inspired the serf of Clare with the resolution and the energy of a freeman?" No, it was not possible. Peel soon made up his mind.

O'Connell presented himself at the bar of the House of Commons later on, but not until after Peel and Wellington had crammed emancipation down the king's throat and compelled him to accept it. Wellington seems to have reasoned much in this way: "I know nothing about the question--Peel knows all about it; Peel thinks it will be for the good of the king and the country to pass Catholic Emancipation; the king, I am sure, does not know any more about the matter than I do, and I am prepared to go with Peel, and the king must come with us. Peel thinks there must be civil war if we don't pass Catholic Emancipation, and I have had too much of war in my time--and I don't propose to stand a civil war--not if I know it." The king had, of course, to give way in the end, and Catholic Emancipation was passed. It was passed rather ungraciously. It was accompanied by a quite superfluous measure suppressing the Catholic Association, which had in fact already dissolved itself, its work being done, and invalidating the election of O'Connell. Perhaps, without these sops to religious bigotry, an act for the emancipation of the Catholics could not then have been carried through the Houses of Parliament. O'Connell presented himself at the bar of the House of Commons and claimed a right to take his seat. He was called upon to swear the old oaths--what we may fairly call the anti-Catholic oaths. Of course he refused. A new writ was ordered for Clare, and O'Connell was triumphantly returned. The struggle was over.

The remainder of O'Connell's life was devoted mainly to the cause of Repeal of the Union--in other words, the cause of Home Rule. He organized the great system of monster meetings--vast out-of-door gatherings, which he swayed as he pleased by the magic of his eloquence, his humor, his passion, and the charm of his wonderful voice. No doubt he sometimes used very strong language; no doubt some of the younger men fully believed that he meant rebellion--that he had rebellion up his sleeve if his demands were not conceded. The meetings were always held on the Sunday; were indeed, regarded as, in a certain sense, religious celebrations. The meeting of October 8, 1843, was to be held on the historic ground of Clontarf, and it was expected to be the greatest of all the assemblages, although some of them had drawn together a crowd of nearly a quarter of a million of men. The Government issued a proclamation prohibiting the meeting, and O'Connell bowed to the prohibition. He sent messengers in every direction countermanding the assembling of men, in order to prevent any chance of that disorder and bloodshed which he had always shrunk from and abhorred. He and some of his friends, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy among the rest, were put on their trial on a charge of sedition. Most of them were found guilty and sentenced to fine and imprisonment. They were confined in Richmond Prison, Dublin. Their incarceration did not last long, and indeed, was what might be called "internment" rather than actual imprisonment. A majority of the law lords in the House of Peers, the final tribunal, annulled the sentences on the ground that the jury had been unfairly chosen--was packed, in fact. O'Connell and his colleagues were set free after a few months; but the leader never recovered his former ascendency over the political movement of Ireland. He was growing old; he had been reckless of his great physical resources, he had been unsparing of his strength; and undoubtedly, the younger men in the agitation fell away from him when he had made it clear that he never meant, under any conditions, to lead them into revolution. A number of his young and brilliant followers set up a party of their own--the Young Ireland Confederation--which after his death drifted into a generous, but hopeless, rebellion. The Young Ireland movement, however, quickened and established a national literature which had an immense effect on subsequent political history in Ireland. The Irish famine of 1846 and 1847 was a terrible blow to O'Connell in his rapidly weakening health. His last speech in the House of Commons was an appeal for a generous help to Ireland, and a prediction, which proved only too true, that if generous help were not given, one-fourth of Ireland's population must perish by starvation. His physicians ordered him to the Continent, and he passionately longed to reach Rome and die under the shadow of the Vatican. He had during some of his years led a wild life, and he had killed a man in a duel--a duel which was literally forced upon him, but for which he always felt deeply penitent. His ultimate longing had come to be a quiet death in the papal city. He was not graced so far. He died in Genoa on May 15, 1847.

As a politician O'Connell was absolutely consistent. He was in favor of liberty for Ireland, but he was in favor of liberty for every other country. His definition of liberty was practical and not merely declamatory. He was in favor of equal rights for all men before the law; he was in favor of a free press, a free vote, and as nearly as possible a manhood suffrage. He was in many ways far in advance of the English liberals of his day. When the question of slavery in the West Indian colonies was under discussion in Parliament, he went farther for abolition than even the professed philanthropists and emancipationists, the Clarksons and the Buxtons, were inclined to go. He was almost fanatically opposed to the advocates of the slave system in the United States, and he refused to receive any help in money from them to carry on his Repeal agitation. He declined to endure any political dictation from the Vatican, although he was a most devoted Roman Catholic. He would take, he said, without question his religion from Rome, but not his politics. There was no great cause of freedom upheld all through the world in his time, but he clung to it and cleaved to it. The writer of this article once talked to Mr. Gladstone about O'Connell, well knowing that in early life Mr. Gladstone had been a great admirer of O'Connell's abilities. Mr. Gladstone told many anecdotes of O'Connell's personal energy in pursuit of any purpose which he believed to be just, and in illustration of his wonderful mastery over even a thoroughly hostile audience. When asked what he believed to be O'Connell's principal characteristic, Mr. Gladstone paused for a while and thought the question out, and then gravely and deliberately answered: "I should think his greatest characteristic was a passion of philanthropy." A passion of philanthropy! Is it possible to have a nobler epitaph pronounced on one than that--and pronounced by such a man? No man in our modern history was ever so bitterly and savagely denounced in England as O'Connell. No words were too rough for him. He was commonly called in English newspapers the "Big Beggarman." He was accused every day, of making a fortune out of the contributions of a half-starving people. The truth was that all and much more than all the money raised by the Irish people, was spent on the agitation for repeal of the Union. The truth was that O'Connell gave up his splendid practice at the bar, for the sake of advocating the Irish national cause. The truth was that he spent his own money and reduced his own property to all but pauperism, for the sake of advancing the same cause. The truth was that he died poor, leaving his children poor. But he had his reward. A man whom Mr. Gladstone could describe as possessed above all other things by a passion of philanthropy, may leave his memory safely in the charge of those whose best interests he honestly strove to serve.

[Signature of the author.]

SIMON BOLIVAR[9]

By HON. JOHN P. ST. JOHN

(1783-1830)

[Footnote 9: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

So far as the world knew, the birth of Simon Bolivar at Caracas, Venezuela, on July 24, 1783, was of no greater importance than that of any other child. Perhaps but one person entertained the slightest thought that he would ever be the hero of many battles and the liberator of his countrymen; and that person was his mother. A mother, as a rule, always in her imagination anticipates a brilliant future for her boy. If Bolivar's mother was not an exception to this rule, surely her highest anticipations were fully realized in the wonderful career of her son.

His father, Juan Vincente Bolivar y Ponte, and his mother, Maria Concepcion Palacios y Sojo, were descendants of noble families in Venezuela. Nothing unusual occurred in his school-boy days to distinguish him from others of his age and rank. He was attentive to his studies, warm-hearted, generous, and always a favorite among his associates. When he had made sufficient advancement in his studies at home, and had arrived at the proper age, he was sent to Madrid, where he remained several years, during which time he completed his education.

Bolivar was now a full-grown man, and as a source of needed recreation after years of hard study, he spent some time in visiting places of special interest in the south of Europe. On his journey he stopped for a time at the French capital, where he witnessed the closing scenes of the French revolution. This was the hour of Napoleon's greatest glory. He was the acknowledged military hero of the age. All France bowed at his feet. Is it not probable that here was where Bolivar caught the inspiration that led him to make an effort to be to his own country, what Napoleon was to France? From Paris Bolivar returned to Madrid, where, in 1801, he married the daughter of Don N. Toro, uncle of the Marquis of Toro, in Caracas. He soon sailed with his young bride for his native country, but it was only a little while until she fell a victim to yellow fever. The sudden and unexpected death of his young wife, to whom he was intensely devoted, so shattered his health and frustrated his plans, that he wended his way back to Europe, where he remained until 1809, when he returned through the United States to his own country. His remembrance of the closing scenes of the French revolution, and the realization as he passed through the United States of the blessings of her free institutions, no doubt account in some measure for the fact that, as soon as he reached Venezuela, he joined the movement then crystallizing into an aggressive warfare for independence, and a larger degree of freedom for his own countrymen.

In 1810 he received a colonel's commission from the revolutionary junta, and was associated with Luis Lopez Mendez in a mission to the court of Great Britain, which was rendered fruitless by England announcing her position in relation to the troubles in Venezuela as one of strict neutrality. On July 5, 1811, Venezuela formally declared her independence from the mother-country. This brought on a clash of arms at once.

The Spanish troops under Monteverde, owing to a lack of concert of action on the part of the "patriots," forced Bolivar, with his little band of volunteers, to abandon the important post of Puerto Cabello, and flee to Curacao, which was reached in safety, while Monteverde at the head of the Spanish troops gained control of Venezuela.

Chafing under defeat, Bolivar, in September, 1812, repaired to Carthagena, where a commission was given him to make war upon the Spanish troops along the Magdalena River. Although his army numbered but 500 men, he succeeded in driving the enemy, not only from the country along the Magdalena River, but entered Venezuela, and forced his way westward to the important towns of Merida and Truxillo, where the people gladly welcomed him and rallied to his support. Encouraged by his success, and embittered by the brutalities of the enemy, as he pressed forward he issued his noted proclamation of "War to the death."

He soon routed Monteverde's army at Lastoguanes, forcing him to take refuge in Puerto Cabello, while Bolivar pushed forward, entering Caracas in triumph August 4, 1813. But the tide of battle soon turned. The Royalists concentrated all their available force, and a number of bloody battles ensued, and finally Bolivar's men, inferior in numbers, were badly defeated near Cura. The fall of Caracas soon followed, and before the close of the year 1814 the Royalists were again in full possession of Venezuela. Though defeated, Bolivar was not dismayed. He had great faith in the righteousness of his cause, and his consciousness of this fact seemed to give him that courage which never knows defeat.

He next went to Tunja, where the revolutionary congress was in session, and notwithstanding the misfortunes of war and the bitter opposition of a few personal enemies, his enthusiastic reception showed that he still retained the confidence and respect of the people. He was soon given command of an expedition against Santa Fe de Bogota, where Don Cundinamarca had refused official recognition of the new union of the provinces, which, without any conflict of arms, was crowned with success by the surrender of the rebellious leaders. For this service Bolivar received the special thanks of Congress. The Royalists having captured Santa Martha, Bolivar was ordered to retake it, but failed in his attempt.

In May, 1814, he resigned his commission, and went to Kingston, Jamaica, where an attempt was made to assassinate him, which resulted, by a mistake, in the murder of another. Later on he went to Aux Cayes, in Hayti, where President Petion assisted him in organizing an expedition which, though it succeeded in reaching the main-land in May, 1816, eventually failed. But Bolivar's past experience had taught him not to go wild over a victory, nor be discouraged by a defeat, so he returned to Aux Cayes, where he secured reinforcements, and in December landed his troops, first at Marguerite, and then at Barcelona. At this point a provisional government was formed and all the available military force was promptly organized, and placed in readiness to resist the invasion of Morillo, who was at the head of a strong, well-disciplined army of Royalists. The opposing forces met on February 16, 1817, and a desperate battle, lasting three days, ensued, resulting in a complete rout of the Royalists, who, while retreating in great disorder, were assailed with such impetuosity by small bands of patriots, as to make their overthrow complete.

Being now the undisputed commander-in-chief, Bolivar seemed irresistible. Victory after victory crowned his efforts, until he established his head-quarters at Angostura, on the Orinoco. From this point, after a thorough reorganization of his forces, he pressed forward over the Cordilleras, and effected a junction with the army headed by General Santander, commander of the Republican forces in New Granada. The armies thus united proved to be invincible. The entire march was characterized by a succession of victories, ending in a complete overthrow of the enemy on August 7, 1819, at Bojaca, which gave him full possession, not only of Bogota, but of all New Granada. This brilliant achievement attracted the attention of the civilized world then, and as we read about it now, it forcibly reminds us, in its conception, the skill and rapidity of its execution, and its results, of the wonderful march of Sherman from Atlanta to the sea. Taking advantage of the great prestige his marvellous victories had given him with the people, he procured the passage of a fundamental law, December 17, 1819, uniting Venezuela and New Granada under one government, to be known as the Republic of Colombia, of which Bolivar was made president.

Bolivar was now at the head of the grandest army he had ever commanded. The Royalists, under Morillo, having been beaten at several points, induced Bolivar, at Truxillo on November 20, 1820, to consent to an armistice for six months, which he did; no doubt with the hope that meantime a treaty of peace might be effected and the war thus brought to an end.

Subsequent events, however, gave strong reasons to believe that the armistice was a mere ruse to gain time while Morillo could be recalled and General Torre placed in command. Bolivar, no doubt incensed by this apparent trick, determined, upon the expiration of the armistice, to strike a blow that would not soon be forgotten; which he did at Carabolo, by attacking and completely routing General Torre's command, compelling the fleeing fragments to seek shelter in Puerto Cabello, where two years after they surrendered to Paez. This practically closed the war in Venezuela. On August 30, 1821, the constitution of Colombia was adopted amid great rejoicing, with Bolivar as president and Santander as vice-president. But there was more work to do, and no one could do it so well as Bolivar. He determined that nowhere should the Royalists have a foothold in the whole country. He attacked them at Pichincha, in Ecuador, and after a desperate struggle they were forced to retreat in disorder, while victorious Bolivar with his enthusiastic followers triumphantly entered Quito, June 22, 1822. Next Lima was taken, but owing to the dissensions among the Republican factions in Peru, Bolivar was compelled to abandon the city, which was again occupied by the Royalists, while he withdrew to Truxillo.

Having thoroughly reorganized his forces, and gotten everything in good condition for an aggressive warfare, he again assaulted the Royalists with unrelenting vigor, driving them before him, and finally administering a crushing defeat on the plains of Junin, August 6th; after which he returned to Lima, leaving Sucre, who had already displayed great military skill and bravery, to complete the work. This he did, by gaining a great victory at Ayacucho, which completely dispersed the Royalists, reducing their possessions in Peru to the Castles of Callao, which Rodil, after a little over a year's successful resistance, was compelled to surrender.