Kentucky Irish American. (Louisville, Ky.) 1898-1968, 1898-07-23


contains the journals and memoirs OIL
Wolfe Tone, came across this pas
sage, written by Wolfe Tone in the
town of Rouen, in France, where he
was endeavoring to organize the last
expedition, that fatal expedition on
which he fell into the hands of his
enemies. On June aoh he wrote: "To.
day is my birthday; am thirty-five
years of age. More than half the
career of my life is finished, and how
little have yet been able to do"
What a reproach is contained to
many of us who live in these days
in that entry in the journal of Wolfe
Tone. Great heavens if man now
adays, an Irishman, or man belong
ing to any other race, could claim that
before his thirty-ifth birthday he had
succeeded in achieving the work
which Wolfe Tone had achieved, l
think he would have some fair reason
to be proud of his achievement.
What had he done? Wolfe Tone was
young Irish Protestant brought up
in Trinity College, and among set
which were to a large extent filled
with the same narrow prejudices,
which, / regret to say, exists among
large number of the people of this
city today. He might have trod the
path which was open to every man,
not only of genius, but of ordinary
intelligence in those days; he might
have been wealthy, and he might
have had life of prosperity, but by
the force Of his own genius and the
mighty sympathies of his wide and
all-embracing nature in his earliest
youth, might almost say in his boy
hood, he shook off the shackles and
brushed aside the prejudices Of those
among whom he was brought up, and
he saw that the hope of Ireland lay
in bringing into national movement
the masses of his Catholic fellow coun-
trymen, who, up to that hour, were
outcasts and pariahs in the land that
gave them birth. And early in 1871
Wolfe Tone published that famous
pamphlet entitled can Argument on
Behalf of the Irish Catholics" signed
by San Ulster Whig," which,
taken together with his other pamph-
lets, puts him as a political writer and
statesman on the same level as Jon
athan Swift. That pamphlet was the
from which dated really the
liberties of the Irish Catholics. 1t
was seen by the leaders Of the Cath
olic Committee of that day, who just
at that period had been deserted by
all the Catholic swells. The aristocracy
had walked out and the Catholic Com
mittee were deserted by all the Cath
olic men of property and were in low
water.
They took up Wolfe Tones pamph-
let, and to their everlasting honor,
having got rid of the aristocracy, they
said: "This is our man to carry on
our work." and they found he was
young Protestant out of Trinity Col
lege. They made him the secretary
Of the Catholic Committee, and after
he had worked fer them for three or
four years they placed on record in
the vote Of thanks they passed to him,
that for the services he had rendered
to the Catholics of Ireland, no graft
tude could overrate them and no re-
could ever repay them.
He was soldier, he was statesman,
he was the equal claim it without
fear of contradiction, had happier
future smiled upon him, had he the
same advantages which were given to
the soldiers and statesmen of France
he was the equal of any of their
great men. And shall it be said-no,
God forbid-that we, thefellow-coun-
trymen of Wolfe Tone, because owing
to circumstances which he was unable,
with all his genius, to overcome, he
was denied that success and that fame
which rewarded the revotionaries and
of France, shall it be said
that we, his countrymen, are less proud
Of him because he failed, and died for