Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1875-08-27
From Wendell Phillips Lecture


| do not think / shoHld exagger-
a.eif l said that God, since he made
Demosthenes, never made man so fit
for the great work as he did O'Con-
nell. You may think l am partial to
to my hero, very naturally. But John
Randolph of Roanoke, who hated an
Irishman almost as much as he did
Yankee-Rhen he got to London and
heard O'Connell, the cid STAKEHOLDER
held up his hands and said: ''This is
the n.an-those are the lips, the
most eloquent that speak English in
my day." And l think he was right.
Webster could address a bench of
judges; Everett could charm a col
lege; Choate could delude a jury;
Clay could magnetize Senate; Tom
Corwin could hold the mob i'll his
right hand, but no one of them could
do more than the one thing. The Won
der of O'Connell was. that he could
outtalk Corwin; he could charm a
college better than Everett; delude
jury better than Choate, and leave
CLAY himself far behind in magnetic
ing Senate. / have heard all the
grand and majestic orators of Amer
lea, who are singularly famed on the
worlds circumference. / know what
was the majesty of Webster; | know
what it was to melt under the mag
netism of Henry Clay; have seen
eloquence in the iron logic of Cal
houn; but all these together never sur
passed, and no one of them ever
eoualed the great Irishman. In the
first place, he had-what is half the
power with a popular orator he had
a majestic presence. God put that
royal soul into a body as royal. He
had, in early youth, the brow of
Jove or Jupiter, and the stature of
Apollo; little O'Connell would have
been no O'Connell at all. Sydney
Smith said of Lord John Russelfs
five feet when he went down to York
shire, after the reform bill had been
carried, the stalwart hunters of York
shire said: "That little shramp! What.
he carry the reform bill?" ''No,no, "
said Sydney, ''no, he was large man;
but the labors of the bill shrunk him. !"
Renewed laughter. Do you remem-
Der the story of Webster, that Rus
sell Lowell tells, when we, i'll Mas
sachusetts, were about to break up
the Wing party? Webster came
home to Faneuil Hall to protest; and
four thousand Wings went to meet
him. He lifted up. that majestic pres
ence before the sea of human faces,
his brow charged with thunder, and
he said; 81 am a Whig-a Massachu'
setts Whig-a revolutionary whig-
a Constitutional Whig-a Faneuil
Hall Whig. And, if you break up the
Wing party, where am to go?" And
Russell Lowell says: "We held brelths
/, thinking where he could 60"
s'But if he had been five feet five"
said Lowell, we would have said:
Well, O'Connell had all that. Then
he had, besides what Webster never
had, and what Clay had, the magnet
ism and grace that melts a million
souls into his. When saw him he
was 66-lithe as boy; his every
attitude was beauty; every gesture
was grace. Macready or Booth never
equaled him. Why, it would have been
delightful even to look at him, If he
had not spoken at all; and all you
thought of was a greyhound. Then
he had-what so few of the Ameri-
can speakers have-a voice that sound
ed the gamut. 1 heard him once in
Exeter hall say: "Americans, / send
my voice careering, like thunder
storm, across the Atlantic, to tell
South Carolina that Gods thunder
butts are hot, and to remind the ne
gro that the dawn of his redemption
is breaking" And l seemed to hear
the answer come re-echoing back to
London from the Rocky Mountains.
And then, with the slightest possible
flavor of an Irish brogue, he would
tell story that would make all Exc
ter Hall laugh; and the next moment
tears were in his voice, ike an old
song, and 5000 men would be in
tears; and he never made an effort.
You would 60 out of the hall, after
hearing Mr.. Sumner, or any orator
and you would say, "What magnifi-
cent effort!" Well, no man would
ever use the word effort with O'Con-
nell. heard him twenty times, and
/ never saw him more than three
times at the full sweep of his power.
You would get provoked that he did
not, and you would say, "Oh,. what
a magnificent creature he wound
be, if he would only but try!" But he
would not "try."