AN ULSTERMAN FOR IRELAND
Victoria" so eagerly passed and hurried over as a dubious kind of form at tenant-right meetings and "Protestant Repeal meetings." I laughed outright here on Tuesday night last at the suspicious warmth with which Dublin merchants, as if half afraid of themselves, protested so anxiously that they would yield in loyalty to none. They, democrats by nature and position, meeting there without a nobleman to countenance them, with the Queen's representative scowling black upon them from his castle, are—they declare it with most nervous solemnity—loyal men. Indeed, it was easy to see that a vague feeling was upon them of the real meaning and tendency of all these meetings of what all this must end in, and to what haven they, and you and we, are all in a happy hour inevitably drifting together.
My friends, the people's sovereignty—the land and sea and air of Ireland for the people of Ireland—this is the gospel that the heavens and the earth are preaching, and that all hearts are secretly burning to embrace. Give up for ever that old interpretation you put upon the word "Repeal." Repeal is no priest movement; it is no sectarian movement; it is no money swindle; nor "eighty-two" delusions; nor puffery; nor O'Connellism; nor Mullaghmast "green cap" stage play; nor loud-sounding inanity of any sort got up for any man's profit or praise. It is the mighty, passionate struggle of a nation hastening to be born into new national life, in the which unspeakable throes all the parts and powers and elements of our Irish existence—our confederations, our Protestant repeal
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