benefactor to humanity instead of being, as she is now, the meanest beggar in the world-to restore to her her native powers and her ancient constitution-this has been my ambition, and this ambition has been my crime.

Judged by the law of England, I know this crime entails upon me the penalty of death; but the history of Ireland explains that crime and justifies it. Judged by that history I am no criminal, you [addressing Mr. McManus] are no criminal, you [addressing Mr. O'Donoghue] are no criminal, and we deserve no punishment; judged by that history the treason of which I stand convicted loses all its guilt, has been sanctified as a duty, and will be ennobled as a sacrifice.

With these sentiments I await the sentence of the court. I have done what I felt to be my duty. I have spoken now, as I did on every other occasion during my short life, what I felt to be the truth. I now bid farewell to the country of my birth of my passions-of my death; a country whose misfortunes have invoked my sympathies-whose factions I sought to quell—whose intelligence I prompted to a lofty aim -whose freedom has been my fatal dream.

To that country I now offer, as a pledge of the love I bore her, and of the sincerity with which I thought and spoke and struggled for her freedom, the life of a young heart; and with that life, the hopes, the honors, the endearments of a happy, a prosperous, and honorable home.

Proceed then, my lords, with that sentence which the law directs-I am prepared to hear it-I trust I am prepared to meet its execution. I shall go, I think, with a light heart before a higher tribunal, a tribunal where a Judge of infinite goodness, as well as of infinite justice, will preside, and where, 'my lords, many, many of the judgments of this world will be

reversed.

THE GLORY OF IRELAND

FROM AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN THE PEOPLE'S THEATRE, VIRGINIA CITY, ON ST. PATRICK'S DAY, 1866

Ο

N this day, nearly thirteen hundred years ago, the

lurid fire of the Druid began to pale, and the Cross

appeared in the kindly Irish sky. The celebration we Irishmen make to-day is the celebration of love, of pride, of sorrow. Were Ireland an ill-favored country-were it sterile, bleak, inhospitable-were there no scenes there to delight the eye and captivate the heart-were there no sweet valleys, no laughing rivers, none of the graces and grandeur of nature such as have inspired the melodies of Moore and given to the pencil of Maclise some of its finest themes; had the country no picturesque history, no great name illuminating her annals, no halls that had echoed to a superior eloquence, no fields on which heroism had fought for libertywere it a desert in the light of an unpropitious sun, and a blank in the literature of the world-even so, as the place of our birth—as the place where we first knew a mother's smile and a father's blessing-we should love it, be jealous of it, and cling to it all the more devotedly on account of the deprivations with which it had been stricken.

But our love for Ireland has no such rigorous conditions to test and vindicate it. Heaven has been most bountiful to that land. As it came from the hand of God, it has all the raro excellence that makes it a singularly favored land. Under a government of its own sons-partial and generous as they would be to it-no land would be happier-no land be more profitable to its people; for it has been endowed with all ad

vantages serenity of climate and wealth of soil, safe and spacious harbors indenting the whole circle of its coast, the more essential minerals and superabundant water—all which, under a genial administration and favoring laws, would not only make it prosperous, but give it greatness.

I have spoken of the means which Ireland abundantly possesses to be a strong and prosperous nation. Her intellectual wealth is fully commensurate with her physical. The fame of her more gifted sons revolves with the planet, and it is no exaggeration to say that it has a recognition which is coextensive with civilization. Has not the "Vicar of Wakefield" gone round the world?

Does not Edmund Burke loom up in political history with a stature too colossal not to be seen from every quarter of the globe? "Lalla Rookh " has been translated, and is a volume of gold in the land of the Fire Worshippers themselves. Sheridan has written his name in letters of inextinguishable light upon the desecrated temples and plundered palaces.

Never in any country was there so superb an assembly of orators and wits, statesmen and gallant gentlemen, as the Irish Parliament was in the few years of independence. There was Harry Flood, of whom it was grandly said by his great rival that, like Hercules, he failed with the distaff, but with the thunderbolt he had the arm of a Jupiter. There was Henry Grattan, of whom Lord Brougham declared that no orator of any age was his equal, and who communicating to Ireland the pentecostal fire with which he himself was inflamed, beheld his country, to use his own magnificent phrase, rising from her bed in the ocean and getting nearer to the sun. There was Curran—the most thorough Irishman of them all the exhaustless wit, the dauntless and defiant advocate, whose marvellous eloquence threw over the darkest

cause the most copious streams of splendor and enchantment, and who was as true to Ireland as he was to the saddest client who sought the shelter and defence of his blazing shield.

In art Maclise has won an imperial crown. Davis said of him that his pencil was as true as a sunbeam. Barry was in his studio what Burke was in the senate-a prodigy of genius. In his vast painting of the "Last Judgment" he has "shaken one world with the thunders of another."

But it is said that the educated intelligence, to say nothing of the property of Ireland, has, unless in some eccentric instances, become imperialized, and that to the independence of the country it is haughtily hostile. Here an argument is advanced against Irish independence. With me that argument goes for nothing. Shall a nation postpone her liberty in deference to an erudite slavery? Is the liberty of a nation a usurpation unless the menials of political life, the painted butterflies of fashion, varlets, harlequins, and vassals, concur in the claim?

Give me the people-the democracy-the men who till the fields, the men who build ships and cities, the men who subjugate the wilderness, train and rear it into a noble civilization, and, so far, consummate the Divine purpose of creation. From this element have some of the most powerful intellects and potentates of the world sprung. Homer, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, the great jurists of England, the great statesmen of America, the marshals of Napoleon, were from the democracy.

Give me the people, the democracy of Ireland! Should they demand the liberty of Ireland, I shall not wait on any lord or pedant, or on any lord's or pedant's flunkey, to ratify the claim. Give me the peasantry-the reviled, scorned,

ignored peasantry of Ireland! Their wretched cabins have been the holy shrines in which the traditions and the hopes of Ireland have been treasured and transmitted. In the adverse days—in the days of cowardice, debasement, and despair-the spirit of Ireland has lived in them and become immortal. In the fiercest storms they have never once winced or wavered. In the bloodiest times they have been dauntless and heroic. The hills of Wexford, the plains of Kildare, the mountain passes of Wicklow-all are vital with their desperate courage under the shock and scourge of battle.

Never, never let the Irish heart give up the hope of seeing, on Irish soil, the fatal destiny of centuries reversed, and a restored nation, wisely instructed and ennobled in the school of sorrow, planted there. Think, think, what this hope has been to Ireland. It has been the light of her darkness, the jewel of her poverty, the music of her tribulation, the bright companion of her exiles. It has been the main nerve of her industry abroad; on the field of death it has been the fire of her heart and the magic of her flag.

Now comes the question—is this festival of love, of pride, of sorrow, celebrated here, incompatible with Irish loyalty in America? The question-an ignominious one-would not surely emanate from me were it not that there are some vicious bigots-men of small brains and smaller hearts-men of more gall than blood-who, even here, assert that love for Ireland, devotion to her cause, active sympathy with the protracted contest for her redemption, involve an equivocal allegiance to the United States.

Out upon the bastard Americanism that spews this imputation on the gallant race whose blood, shed in torrents for its inviolability and its glory, has imparted a brighter crimson