ABSTRACT
The following Oration was delivered by the Hon. Wendell Phillips in the Music Hall,” Boston, Mass., on the centenary celebration of O’Connell’s birth, Aug. 6th, 1875, before an audience of over four thousand people. It has been justly regarded as one of the most eloquent tributes ever offered to the memory of the great Liberator; and as Mr. Phillips was personally acquainted with O’Connell, he has been able to clothe his subject with an interest which few have ever approached:
A hundred years ago, to-day, Daniel O’Connell was born. The Irish race, wherever scattered over the globe, assembles to-night to pay fitting tribute to his memory; one of the most eloquent men, one of the most devoted patriots, and the most successful statesman, that your race has given to history. We of other races may well join you in that tribute, since the cause of constitutional government owes more to O’Connell than to any other political leader of the last two centuries. The English-speaking race, to find his equal among its statesmen, must pass by Chatham and Walpole and go back to Oliver Cromwell, or the able men who held up the throne of Queen Elizabeth. If to put the civil and social elements of your day into successful action and plant the seeds of continued strength and progress for coming times, if this is to be a statesman, then most emphatically was O’Connell one. To exert this control and secure this progress while and because ample means lie ready for use under your hand, does not rob Walpole and Colbert, Chatham and Richelieu of their title to be considered statesmen. To do it, as Martin Luther did,* when one must ingeniously discover or invent his tools, and while the mightiest forces that influence human affairs are arrayed against him, — that is what ranks O’Connell with the few masterly statesmen the English-speaking race has ever had. When Napoleon’s soldiers bore the negro chief, Toussaint L’Ouverture, into exile, he said, pointing back to San Domingo, “You think you have rooted up the tree of liberty. But I am only a branch. I have planted the tree itself so deep that ages will never root it up.” And whatever may be said of the social or industrial condition of Hayti during the last seventy years, its nationality has never been successfully assailed.
