From The Historic Case for Irish Independence by Darrell Figgis
35. O'Connell passed to the Parliament in London, and passed out of the nation's cognisance. The leader, in short, had failed the nation. He there opened a campaign for the Repeal of the Union; but there is no sign that this evoked any national interest. The nation was thinking of other things. By risings through the country the people compelled the Government to disguise the payment of church-tithes by commuting them into a rent-charge; but they took their course as though they had no leader. Therefore, O'Connell returned to undertake a campaign in the country. Again the difference between leader and people was manifest. He desired the revival of Grattan's Parliament; they thought only of National Freedom.
In 1843 he convened vast meetings through the country, to which people came who could not possibly hope to hear the sound of his voice. Men travelled a week to the meetings. Their volume swelled with their progress. The people came, not to hear speeches, but to hear the one word they awaited, and for which they had put aside the war they had opened against their landlords. O'Connell even evoked memories which he did not mean, but which the nation literally interpreted. He convened a great meeting at Tara, the seat of the Nation's Monarchy in its day of Sovereignty. The people sprang to the symbol; the sickle was cast aside; the.people slept hungry on historic ground; and a concourse assembled not a thousandth part of which could hope to hear their leader speak. They came as to an ancient hosting. They meant much more than the words of their leader; but he meant much less than the words he spake. Therefore, when the Government proclaimed his next meeting, at the historic site of the battle of Clontarf, and caused cannon to be trained upon it, he cancelled the meeting, though the people were willing to rally to his word, and had long awaited the day. From that moment his power was broken. He shrank from bloodshed; but there was a horror awaiting the nation that bloodshed at Clontarf could have prevented, and beside which a massacre would have appeared a trivial thing.
Truelove's Journal: A Bookshop Novella
From a sad, comfortless childhood Giles Truelove developed into a reclusive and uncommunicative man whose sole passion was books. For so long they were the only meaning to his existence. But when fate eventually intervened to have the outside world intrude upon his life, he began to discover emotions that he never knew he had.
This is a story for the genuine booklover, penned by an Irish bookseller under the pseudonym of Ralph St. John Featherstonehaugh.
Annals of the Famine in Ireland
Annals of the Famine in Ireland, by Asenath Nicholson, still has the power to shock and sadden even though the events described are ever-receding further into the past. When you read, for example, of the poor widowed mother who was caught trying to salvage a few potatoes from her landlord's field, and what the magistrate discovered in the pot in her cabin, you cannot help but be appalled and distressed.
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger
This book, the prequel to Annals of the Famine in Ireland cannot be recommended highly enough to those interested in Irish social history. The author, Mrs Asenath Nicholson, travelled from her native America to assess the condition of the poor in Ireland during the mid 1840s. Refusing the luxury of hotels and first class travel, she stayed at a variety of lodging-houses, and even in the crude cabins of the very poorest. Not to be missed!
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
Henry Ford Jones' book, first published in 1915 by Princeton University, is a classic in its field. It covers the history of the Scotch-Irish from the first settlement in Ulster to the American Revolutionary period and the foundation of the country.
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
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