Newspaper Page Text
■VOL. 111.
From the Sew Orleans Sunday Times.
“And Yet Forty Days, and Nin
eveh shall be Destroyed.
lIERMINK.
Yet forty days, and this frame-work of life,
This temple of vanity, envy and lust
‘N ath the leveling hand of the angel of
death
May suddenly fall —he laid low in the
dust!
Yet forty days, and this poor heart of clay,
This city, so peopled with sorrow and sin,
May he all destroyed, while the conquer
ing worm,
Through altar and shrine, walks fear
lessly in!
Yet forty days! 0 merciful God!
Thou givest this time for repentance and
prayer.
Like the people of Nineveh, grant we may
turn
From the broad way of evil, the by-way
of care!
Yet forty days! Pride sits like a King
Ruling the heart with tyrannical sway—
Hkrobed and uncrowned, it must kneel at
Thy feet,
Lise its throne and its power shall crum
ble away.
Yet forty days ! In sack cloth and tears,
With hearts keenly bruised ’neath the
penitent rod,
Let us weep o'er the follies and sins of the
past,
Let us grieve o'er the shadow between
us and God!
Yet forty days! Give alms to the poor—
Thy brother forgive, hear the lone or
phan's cry—
Fury contention—spurn malice and pride,
Thus the fiat shall pass—Thy soul shall
not die!
Yet forty days! Ah! the hours will pass
Swift as the river that flows by the shore!
Embalm them with mercy—perfume them
with prayer;
Make them a bond for the pardon in store!
Yet forty days!—and repentance shall win
Peace for the heart —reprieve for the
city!
Though His justice is swift, terrible, vast,
It never can eqaul God’s Infinite Pity.
A w Orleans , Ask-Wednesday, IS7O.
O R A. T I O N
II ON. M. 1\ O'CONN OK,
OF CHARLESTON,
Delivered before the Hibernian Society
of Augusta, March 17 th, 1870.
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS BY ALDERMAN
WALSH.
The orator of the day was introduced by
Alderman Walsh as follows:
Ladies, Countrymen and Fellow-Citizens
of Augusta:
r ihe noblest virlue.whieh characterizes a
people is love of country- We have assem
bled here to exhibit the love and veneration
which we feel lor the land of our fore
fathers and the memory of the illustrious
ft- Patrick. The 17th of March is Ire
nnd’s natal day. It is the great link
w ich unites the present with the past—
wiii' h keeps aglow and aflame in our
; rea'-ts the grand old memories of that
historic and glorit us pasr, when Ireland
p;-d her place as a peer among the na
tions of the earth :
' - heat, glorious and free,
r;rst liovrer of the earth, first gem of the
sea.”
. 1 "fsday is commemorated andreveredby
r ‘ Irish people all over the he hi table globe,
W crover a few of them or their descend
ed are gathered together. In the far off
"P of Ocsanica, in the pampas of
■ idh America,on the slopes of the Pacific,
plains of the West, in the cities of
Last and North, in the Canadas, in
r ovvd sunny land of the South, and in
1 l quarter of the glebe from the rising
.* -he sun to the going down thereof,
' are exiled hearts to day which feci
'• ; bps whi.-h exclaim with fervor and do*
' ( ' !n ' Cod bless and God save Ireland.
• 'f' his day, memory carries back the
AUGUSTA, GA., MARCH 26, 1870.
Irish heart to the old laod —the scenes of
ouf and of We see
again the old thatched roof in the lace,
the Chapel on the hill, the graves of our
sires, the babbling brooks meandering to
the sea, the green, sweet scented meadows
of long ago, where the lark his
matin songs in the deep blue sky of Erin.
We see the hedges where the robinred
breast built his nest, and the blackbird
and the thrush warbled their sweet songs,
and we see what is grander and more glori
ous to us as a people—the rums of abbies.
castles and round towers, which tell the
story of Ireland’s Faith, Ireland’s Civili
zation, and her prowess as a nation.
These memories, my fellow-countrymen
and fellow-cit’zens, come back upon the
exiles of Erin to-day from the tombs of
the storied past. We love to dwell upon
them because they are our heritage ; and
though the heirt may grow sad and tears
bedim the eyes, this day above all days is
cherished and honored by all Irishmen
whose hearts beat responsive to the senti
ment :
“Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said —
This is my own, my native land.”
Asa mark of unfaltering devotion and
a sign of undying love for Ireland, the
Hibernian Society of Augusta has invited
an honored and distinguished gentleman
from the gallant Palmetto State—a native
of the City by the Sea—to pay a tribute
to our Dative land and the great Apostle
whose anniversary we commemorate. I
have the honor, ladies and gentlemen, of
presenting to you the Orator of the Day,
Hon. M. P. O’Connor, a Carolinian by
birth —a man who feels proud ot his
lineage and the birthplace and history of
his ancestors.
When Mr. Walsh had finished speaking
Mr. O’Connor rose and spoke as follows ;
Gentlemen of the Hibernian Benevolent So
ciety and Fellow-Citizens of Georgia :
Fifteen centuries have rolled away since
the Irish people emerged from the dark
ness of Pagan idolatry and the ignorance
of Eastern superstition into the new light
of Christian civilization. It was about the
year 465 that Ireland’s great apostle and
patron saint, the herald of this new dis
pensation, the promulgator of this new
polity, closed his earthly labors, and look
ing down • from his sacred eminence at
Armagh, he beheld the land flourishing
with the fruits of this miraculous conver
sion.
Such an event, so marvellous in its char
acter, so fraught with good to the desti
nies of mankind, resembling the liberation
of God’s chosen people from the bondage
of Egypt, and their escape from Pharoah’s
host through the Valley of the Red Sea,
justly marks an epoch and points a moral
in the history of this truly wonderful peo
ple. It dates the genesis of anew nation,
the regeneration of an ancient and enslaved
race.
To-day, from a thousand altars are as
cending praises to the Most High, and the
solemn chants that resound from as many
choirs, are taken up by millions of voices
around the extended circumference, until the
choruses of religious music are blended with
the melody jof national song- To-day the sons
of Erin meet and r joice on the banks of
the Savannah ; to-day they hunt the
shamrock beneath the snows of the Arctic
and under the sands of the Equator ; to
day they flaunt their. immortal Green,
which proudly waves in every land and
upon every sea, beside the colors cf every
power. The celebration of this day, widen
ing with each returning demonstration,
extending its circle with the increase of
Ireland’s exodus, is like some mighty pro
cession sweeping down the aisle of the
centuries, and recruiting its ranks from all
the nations to the farthest ends of the earth.
What nation has ever perpetuated a cus
tom through so many ages with so much
distinction, honor and renown?
The lives of great men furnish a theme
of commemoration for those who come after
them —indulged to-day, forgotten to-mor
row. Celebrated actions won in national
strife and civic achievements, theornaments
of civililized States, have been preserved in
stoned urn, and recorded in marble and
brass, but monuments enduring even as
the-e have, in the lapse of the ages through
which we this day go back, perished and
mouldered into decay. Marathon and
Platea, balamis and Thermopy’ae. Can
nae’s carnage and Waterloo’s dreadful rout,
are but the school-boy’s tale, the dream of
an hour. The 4th of July, the feast of
America’s famous declaration, is “fast
fading, like a glimmering landscape on the
sight,’’and fewer and fewer are the pilgrims
that wend their way to the Mecca of
America, to pour out their oblations at
the tomb of our own and beloved Wash
ington. Anniversaries such as these, with
all their proud historic recollections and
heraldic precedence, may pass away, but
the morifing star of Erin’s glory, which
this day burst forth in her firmament and
blazed with Christian effulgence, will ever
be saluted by the scattered sons of the
Emerald Isle from the rising to the setting
of the sun. Love of country is a distin
tinguishing trait of the Irish character
that sentiment that is called patriotism—
and which can only exist where truth,
honor and sincerity prevail. In all the
wanderings of that oppressed and expa
triated people, that true filial devotion to
the land of their nativity has never been
wanting, and with what tender emotion
and deep pathos may not the poor emi
grant, as he toils his lonely way westward
over the rugged slopes of the Oregon,
looking back to old Ireland, pour forth this
day the lament of his country’s bard:
“Though the last glimpse of Erin with
sorrow I see,
Yet wherever thou art shaft seem Erin to
me.
In exile thy bosom shall still be my home,
And thine eyes make my climate wherever
I roam.”
Space has not been abl > overcome, nor
time to subdue this spirit* Chilled by no
foreign atmosphere, but communicating
its genial warmth by alliance to other na
tionalities, Ike the vestal fires of old
guarded by the immortal virgins, it has
been kept ever alive and burning by the
purify and chastity of her children.
In attempting to trace the origin of this
small island in the West, history is lost in
the twilight of fable, and the explorations
of science swallowed up in the visions of
man’s imagination. It would seem as if
what had once been a part of a whole and
united country had been, by some sudden
convulsion of nature, rent asunder from
the main to let the surrounding waters
pass through ; or as if the vasty deep, in
its throes, had .upheaved from its stermy
bed a hidden treasure, which, rising like a
coral carved by Neptune’s deities into
beautiful form, and cresting the western
Atlantic, was planted by nature an eternal
sentinel over the waves —an everlasting
beacon to the world —vouchsafed by nature
every blessing—cursed by man’s iniquity
alone.
Though the scourge of the persecutor has
dimmed her green beauties, and the band of
the spoiler has ravaged her fields; though
her valleys are filled with desiitutiun and
famine, and misery stalks upon the moor ;
though her sons now are cantive, and are
weeping like the daughters of Israel by the
waters of Babylon over the fall < f Zion,
still, oh Erin, how soft and beauteous are
thy skies! how lovely and romantic thy
hills! Her monuments and towers are as
ancient as the pyramids; her legends and
traditions as old as the Druids. The line
of her monarchs surpass iu antiquity the
proudest royal houses of Europe. She
wa~ renowned before the Saxon invaded
Britain, or the Frank crossed the Rhine.
From her secluded isolation she has beh Id
the Roman legions pass in triumph the
gates of every capital in Europe, and her
triumphant eagles, sustained by Agricola,
waving over the wall of Antoninus. Gre
cian eloquence is no longer heard in the
Acropolis at Athens, and the turbanned
Tuik now tramples the soil which shook
with the thunders of Macedon. Peace
reigns at Warsaw, and Polish independ
ence slepps forever; while Iredand, prolific
in her children, constantly renewing her
youth in the übiquity of her progeny, is
pregnant with vitality.
During the fifth century Rome had
reached the zenith of her power and her
glory. It was the Augustan age. Her
arms and her arts had spread into every
portion of the Eastern continent, and the
monarchs of mighty kiugdoms.were drag
ging her triumphal chariots, laden with
the spoils of conquest, over the Flaminian
and Appian ways to the gates of the im
perial city, to enrich her temples and
adorn the palaces of her rulers. It was an
age of learning, and the whole horiz >n
glowed with the hues reflected ac
complishments of the scholar. But the
empire was destined soon to pass away.
Luxury and vice bred corruption, corrup
-1 tion engendered and sharpened party an
! imosity, and the sceptre fell from the
| Roman’s hand. The close of this century
! was marked by the most terrible calamities
to the west of Europe. The tide of bar
baric invasion setting in from north
of the Danube, began to roll its billows
from the wilds of Transylvania and th
distant plains of Tartary. The tumuituou
host rushing from the forests ot Scandi
navia, swept with a besom of destruc
tion over the plains of Italy, submerging
the temples of the new religion, and bury
ing in their track the monuments of Roman
pride and Roman valor. “ Sarmatia
soou began to pour her thousands upon
the South. V andalic rage and Punnoniau
fury ravaged and desolated the west and
centre. Very quickly the Saracen swept
the east, raid Moslem infatuation tore
from Africa what the Goth had spared.
Shrouded in her thick raantk, murky
ignorance seemed to brood in stupid satis
faction over the wide spread wastes, and
save where the sacred monastery had col
lected within its massy walls the wrecks of
ancient genius, her empire was generally re
established.” Ireland escaped the deluge,
and reviving Europe turned to her for the
materials out of which to reconstruct the
shattered fabric of her society. She sends
legislators to England and priests to Italy.
She founds colleges in Germany, and art
unions in Paris. She becomes the great
pioneer of progress, the grand missionary
of civilization, aud snatching from the al
tars of the Triune God the torch ot Christi
anity, she lights the world with the prin
ciples of an eternal and unchanging faith.
Her priests penetrate into every zone—
tiny blister their feet on the sands of
Arabia; they confront the Saracen ana
chastise the heathen, rebuke the skeptic
and indifferent, and animate and
encourage by word example
the timid and wavering. The tenacity
with woich the people of Irland have,
under all circumstances, clung to the re
ligion of their fathers, is the shining
mirror which reflects all their nobler
virtues. This transcendent faith is the
brilliant gem in the coronet of Ireland’s
glory.
“Tho’ the gem may be broke
By many a stroke,
There's nothing can cloud its native ray,
Each fragment will cast
A light to thß last.
And bear a lustre within it, that ne’er will
decay.”
Passing over the three centuries that
followed this outbreak, when the seclu
sion of Ireland from the rest of the world
had preserved her soil untouched by the
foot of the invader, we arrive at a crisis in
her history when it was her destiny to
undergo a great and disastrous change.
From the shores of the Baltic there soon
began to is-ue a formidable tribe, who,
after securing themselves in France, land
ed in Britain, and from thence com
menced a series of incursions into the in
terior ot the island. They passed the
Irish channel, took possession and plun
dered her bays and harbors, and ravaged
he entire coast. For more than three
centuries they kept the whole island in a
state ot confusion and alarm, and by
fomenting divisions among the people
even more than by wasting the internal
strength of tho kingdom, prepared the
way for its final subjugation by the English.
Dai k aud revolting as are the details of
this period, marked with the worst ex
cesses of foreign aggression, and still more
deeply disgraced by the stain of domestic
treachery and strife, there are bright spots
on this dark page to relieve the eye of the
reader ot Irish history. The memorable
field of Clontarf, which drank the blood of
t housands of the brave defenders of Ireland,
whose setting suu on good Friday veiled
in gloom the standards of Brian Boroihme,
the brave Chief, looms out in history a
monument of Irish valour, inscribed with
the heroic deeds of her sons, and dedicated
to the memory of the most illustrious of
her race The strength of the nation was
destroyed with its unity, and she fell an
easy prey to the rapacity ot her .neighbor. (
Henry the Second effected the annexa
. ion ot Ireland with hngland. The gates
of Dublin Castle and Belfast Tower were
opened to the royal intruder; and from
that day forward, dark and more dark
grows ihe catalogue of crimes that were
perpetraieci against that innocent and un
offending people. It is true that, as yet,
no laws had been enacted interfering with
the rigors o! conscience, for then the same
form of worship prevailed on either side ot
the Chau ei; but the day of religious trial
tor Ireiand was near at hand. The po
litical grievances which toe Irish people
were compelled to suffer during the reign
of the Piantagenets, were aggravated when
the unprincipled and merciless Henry the
Eighth ascended the English throne. To
appease his wrath against Rome, and at
the same time urging the plea of state
necessity for his measures, he lit with his
own hand the fires of religious persecution.
The rights of conscience were subordi
nated to the prerogatives of the crown,
and he blotted out in the blood of his
subjects the principles of a free Church
and a free State. He pretended as Eng
land’s anointed and God’s vicegerent to
wield the powers of earth and the thun-
ders of heaven, and exacted of his sub
jects the homage that was due alone to
the Great Creator of us all. The baleful
fires ot religious. bigotry and intolerance
lighted up the entire Kingdom, and when
his imperious daughter, the haughty
Elizabeth, England’s proud Queen, seized
the sceptre, the gates of Mercy were closed
against mankind. It was made a crime to
be A Catholic, and she selected as victims
of her wrath the most venerable for their
age, and the most renowned for their
sanctity and wisdom from all ranks and
classes of the people. Many of the ancient
churches of Ireland were destroyed, and
their tabernacles robbed of their t acred
vessels. Those ancient stately cathedrals,
gray with the moss of age, along whose
vaulted roofs and groined arches once
reverberated the grand symphonies of
Palestrina, and the tender strains of the
When the head of the First
rolled from the block, and England ac
knowledged the sway of the usurper, the
fires of persecution burned fiercer, and
Ireland was doomed to drink deeper than
ever the cup of sorrow and huiniliatior*
Her people were outlawed ; driven into
exile ; sold into slavery ; sent to Con
naught ; their bodies trampled by Crom
well’s brutal dragoons, or carried oq the
spears of his savage pikemen. Terrible
picture in the book of time, that sends a
shudder through the gener\tions that be
heli it. Well might we join in the wail of
her minstrel:
“But, alas, for his country ! her pride is
gone by,
And that spirit is broken which never
w T ould bend ;
O’er the ruin her children iu secret must
sigh,
For ’tis treason to love her and death to
defend.
Unprized are her sons, till they’ve learned
to betrays
Undistinguished they live, if they shame
not their sires ;
the torch that would light them thro’
dignity’s w r ay,
Must be caught from the pile where their
country expires.”
Irishmen of America! native and adop
ted sons of the South, you who have made
your habitations under the vine of Georgia,
the remembrance of your recent heavy
calamities and the experience of your
present political degradation, must fill you
with the profoundest emotion in reading the
sad history of this nation’s travail. —
Methinks I hear the tramp of hostile ar
mies re-echoing from your now peaceful
mountains. I see the giant of invasive
warfare scattering his thunderbolts of de
struction, and sweeping with his countless
host over the devoted plains of Geor
gia. I see Rome burning; Atlanta in
flames, and Savannah humbled to the
dust—from Lookout Mountain to the
Ogeechee, a deep furrow has plowed your
fields, marked at every step by ruin and
desolation. Foremost in the fight I see
the gay plume of the immortal Patrick
Cleburne in the light wind dancing, as sur
rouuJed by the Old Guard of the Com
monwealth, he bravely stems the tide ol bat
tle that is dashing against the gates ofAtalan
ta. The shades of Bartow, Cobb and Polk
arc passing in sad review before me ; their
garments dyed—the evidences of their un
timely doom—while from the consecrated
soil of your great State is ascending the
blood of more than a thousand martyrs,
who fell fighting in the cause for Southern
independence. Their heroic deeds will be
treasured for generations to come “though
their monuments have become the tombs
of their nationality.”
The sanguinary and proscriptive policy
initiated by Henry and Elizabeth, and
consummated by Cromweii, was followed by
a short interval of repose, when James the
Second ruled tne destinin' Great Britain.
This weak and vacillating Prince was soon
overreached by t he daughter of the house of
Brunswick,and abandoned oy his courtiers
at Guildhall and his favorites at Windsor,
he was soon an exile from his kingdom.
[CONTINUED ON I’AGE B.]
3STO. 2,