The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1892-07-16
A GREAT ORATOR
Who From Being a Poor Irish Boy
Has Risen to the Front
Rank Of Speakers.
WILLIAM BOURKE COCHRAN
The New York Lawyer who Spoke
for Tamnany in the Chicago |
Democratic Convention. /


Mr.. William Bourke Cockran'e histor,
is not only interesting is instructive
curious, extraordinary. 1t illustrates
the grand possibilities of American life
the scope of Individual achievement
where brains and bulldog pertinacity are
united with the divine gift of eloquelce
Bourke Cockran-for few designate
him in any other way--is an Irish lad
Had he remained in the land of his ma:
tivity his oratorical powers might have
been recognized just the same. His
name might have bsen listed with the
| long line of Irish orators revered by
Irishmen and honored the world over:
but in this turbulent era of Ireland'e
checkered history it would more likely
have been coupled with English jails
! and the disgraceful factional rotten egg
| club-lime-paving stone weapons with
which lrishmen are in these m 1dern
times won't to greet their leaders who dis
agree with them. For Bourlxe Cochran
bears in his broad bosom the spirit Of
the fighter, the undaunted soul that
glories in opposition and gains strength
by the bitterness of the antagonism.
I saw him in the midst of the intellec-
tual battle of 1884 at the Convention of
the National Democracy held in Chicago;
/ saw him in the great struggle at the
Chicago Convention of ton days ago,
says writer in the New York Herald.
Two things were prominent in my mind
-one the wonderful courage and power
OF this man in the face of a bitterly hos
tile audiences; the other the triumph OF
peaceful tolerance in that audience, four
fifths OF whom were radically opposed to
that which the speaker advocated. The
political leaders of the earth who would
face such an audience for cause always
desperate and at the moment already
lost are probably few, and yet, other
than Bourke Cochran, I cannot name
any of them.
The country where such an audience
of twenty thousand excited people could
be held together in peace to listen to a
man under such circumstances is not
within my geographical knowledge,
Certain it is that the impetuous patriots
of MIR. Cockran'e birthplace, who club
and stone and blind with lime and GIN
gerbread the Gladstones, Parnells, the
McCarthys, the O'Briens, and any and
all other political orators, high and low,
who disagree with them in the method
of restoring Irish liberty, might learn a
wholesome lesson from this treatment of
the Irish orator in the land where liberty
is assured That is the object lesson of
Bourke Cochran and Chicago for the
rest of the world, and especially for that
portion of it which would fain enjoy the
freedom and form of self-government
that we enjoy. And that is one thought
that impressed me greatly in "a and '92,
at Chicago, when I sat beneath the magic
spell of Cockran's eloquence and saw him
not only walk calmly among the crowds
of partisans to his hotel unharmed and
consciously free to come and go without
insult or molestation, but that even the
bitterest foe greeted him with looks and
words of admiration. The dense crowds
of men from all sections of the country,
heated and wrangling over factional dis
putes, parted with respect before the
man who had abused their cause most
and whom they most feared. That is
the tribute of honor Americans pay the
orator and their own free institutions.
Practically, nothing is extraordinary
or impossible in this country. Men who
are poor so-day are rich to-morrow-men
who were unknown last week are famous
or infamous this. Nevertheless, there is
something in the rise of Cochran that
attracts even our divided attentions. If
there we're any of the elements of sensa-
tionalism about 1t the impression would
doubtless be deeper in the public mind.
But there are none. 1t is chiefly because
this generation has been bred to the
newspaper and. to regard the days Of
spontaneous oratory as OF the past that
Cochran is now great. From the extern
.poraneous eloquence OF Stephen A.
Douglas, and Henry s. Lane, and Thad-
deus Stevens, and Charles Sumner and
others of the many who charmed us upon
the hustings and in the halls of Congress
with the exquisite thralldom Of speech
we have fallen upon an era wherein the
.oratorical utterance is but the cold,
studied and polished expression Of the
pen.