The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1905-03-25

tempting to bring to his harrassed
countrymen measure of relief, Robert
Emmett lived. devoted his young life.
land died! His friend. Tom Moore, has
isung expression of Ireland's then con-
dition.
Thus freedom now So seldom wakes.
The only throb she gives
Is when some heart indignant breaks
To show that she still lives.
To appreciate why he should die
SO young. so hopeful. with so much of
life's pleasant promise before him and
in his grasp. to appreciate why that
heart should indignant break" to
|prove that the spirit of freedom was
not dead in his country, we must look
| backward and forward from his birth.
This day is near the anniversary of
his birth. but we look instnctively
from his cradle to his scalfold-from
that Scatfold to the unlettered slab
which covers his ashes-from that
grave to the cause for which he died.
and made scatfold and grave land
marks in history forever.
Robert Emmett was born March 4.
11I7S-his body passed from the sight
of men on September 90, 1SO3-his
name and memory will never die.
With such an heritage of immortal
ity. after but twenty-five and one-half
years of living, the story of this man
glows with the lights and shadows of
4 poem.
He came into the world when it
was racked by the most nomentous of
political commissions. The farmers had
| fired upon the kings men at Concord
and Lexington. And the reverberation
! of that shot had been heard around the
globe. And Emmett. reaching manhood.
dreamed wild dreams of other farmers
and other republics.
He was born to the purple-he grew
up to be the peasants friend
Entitled to all the privileges of the
ruling classes in an age when that
meant everything. he heard the cry of
the oppressed, and in attempting to
answer it died on the @allows ut the
hands of his own order.
a Protestant, from conviction, in life
and in death. he gave all for his des-
pissed Catholic countrymen: and in
turn has been made by them All un-
canoniZed saint.
What he undertook was desperate.
SO was the feat by which Arnold
Winkelried opened path for freedom,
by impaling in his own body score
of Austrian spears, through which his
countrymcn over that body forced
their way through the pass ut Sam
pach.
The heralds of freedom are always
the dreamers-they who count the cost
are always where they belong-in the
rear.
And so to judge this man properly,
or even justly, we should know some
thing of the times in which he lived,
of the past from which he drew his
inspiration.
Ireland, grateful for the smallest
recognition of her national rights, had
given of her best blood to sustain the
lettering fortunes of King james. And
after the royal Stuart had fed the
land she made n heroic effort at the
lose of the seventeenth century to save
his lost cause behind the walls of Linn
erick.
Sarsfeld-prince of soldiers and
prince of gentlemen-had snatched vic
tory from the very depths Of despair.
So gallant had been that fight that
William of Orange gave the Irish SOL
dier the most honorable terms ever
given defeated leader. Not only was
every honor Of war accorded Sarsfield
and his gallant army-but the famous
treaty of Limerick was signed.
History has no parallel to this side
of the picture-Sarsfield defeated, yet
debating terms to the king, not alone
for himself and his army, but for all
the Irish people. By that treaty the
English sovereigns guaranteed to their
Catholic subjects in Ireland their civil
and religious rights.
And history has no parallel to the
other side For the honor Of the Eng
lish king was ruthlessly broken, ere
the scroll on which was written his
princely promises had dried.
For the first half Of the eighteenth
century, after the broken treaty, the
ingenuity of the devil himself would
be puzzled to equal the methods Of per-
secution practiced by the English rul-
"rs in Ireland towards its Catholic
people. An English historian has said
tl'eir very atrocity finally defeated the
penal laws. The proud patience of the
people triumphed.
And when in the last quarter of that
century Emmett grew to manhood, he
read in the immediate and bloody past
what an English kings royal word WIS
worth when pledged to Ireland. He
heard the matchless eloquence of Flood
nd Grattan. He saw the volunteers rise