The Irish standard., 1914-03-07

III memory 10 the Stirrlng
y Emmett. Ninety-eight had
. p dream, but I need not tell
- ,trebellion like'hope never dies
ih> .and. The gibbet and the dun
geon had had their victims; and, worst
of all, the native though not national
parliament, was sold and surrendered.
Ireland" in the fine words of Cur
ran, "was kneeling like bastinadoed
elephant at the feet of its paltry rid
er." Like many an English Act of
Parliament-if you can apply the term
to nations annihilation-the Act of
Union was baited with fat bribes, not
ably with that of Catholic emancipa-
ton. The Catholic Bishops were told
that if they accepted the Act of Union
their grievances on the score of tithes
and religion would be satisfactorily
and finally settled. To put it mildly
those good Bishops failed to reckon
with the pliancy of an English minis
ter and the per6dy of an English king.
Betrayed the people may not have
been, befooled they certainly were.
They had lost the native parliament: {:
they had not yet an Irish party in the
English one. The outlook before them
was the same as that before their
fathers, and their only equity still re-
sided 'in the wild justice of revenge" !"
1t was among this state of things, a
condition in which legislative treach-
cry had been piled on executive tyran-
ny, that Robert Emmett grew up. The
political lessons of his environment
were supplemented by the patriotism
of noble father, that father to whose
shade for vindication he appealed in
the dock, and the sacrifice of a rebel
brother. Those lessons and that FAM
lily environment he took with him,
while yet a mere boy, into Trinity
College, Dublin. This institution Of
learning, while inflicting upon ireland
in every generation the staunchest
henchmen of British Ascendancy, has
never been without an under-current
of personal patriotism and political
pride. And why should it not be so?
By the side of its portals stand the
figures of two of its Alumni, Oliver
Goldsmith and Edmund Burke-the
genii of poetry and craftsmanship
keeping sentry over its venerable walls
and facing the front, with arm out
stretched as if in mute appeal to its
nobler instincts, is the speaking statue
of the immortal Grattan. Across the
street is the old pile whose unique
architecture to this day rivals the
memories of its matchless eloquence,
where Curran thundered and the
voices of Flood and Grattan and
Plunkett rolled, and among whose
Ionic colonnades hovered the last ac-
cents of a dying freedom. Those ac-
cents haunted our young dreamer, and
there and then he resolved, with the
keen daring of an intellectual boys en-
thusiasm, that the feebleness of those
accents should grow again into a
mighty war-cry under the resurgent
banner of green and gold.
And so his voice began to be heard
in the college historical society-the
nursery of much that has been famous
in Irish oratory-with such startling
effect that the authorities of Trinity
thought it prudent to send among the
young debaters professors whose ex-
perience and influence should arrest
the reviving doctrines of the United
Irishmen within the walls. From the
defiant enthusiasm of the debating
hall, young Emmet would go to the
rooms of his College companion
Thomas Moore, to nurse, this time
not in the heat of debate but in mel
ody most musical, the master-passion
of his soul. Little Tom,'' as Emmet
loved to call him, was fond of playing
the old Irish airs which his lyric muse
subsequently welded with immortal
verse; and one evening as the future
author of the "Melodies" was strik-
ing the the chords Of the "Red Fox
since known as "Let Erin Remember
his fellow-student leaped to his feet
exclaiming, 20, that I were at the head
of 10000 men marching to that ARR
The two young friends and their as
sociates were not long without vis'-
tation from the College authorities;
and, horror of horrors, here in the
very nest of the Elizabethan founda-
ton, where the Tudor rose was tied
to the Orange lily by Cromwelllan
string, young Papists were playing
rebel songs and young Protestants
were spouting arrant treason. The
result of this inquiry was that Emmett
withdrew from Trinity, the first dis
grace that made him dear to ireland.
They have sort of tradition ovef
in ireland that no mans education is
complete until he has gone abroad
France was at the time we are in
terested in the Mecca of the Irish stu
dent and the refuge Of the Irish out.
law. In France were the exiles OF 9e
and the scattered remnants OF the
United Irishmen: in France was "th<
ancient foe of lreland's foe;" ii
France above all was Napoleon Bona
o..<. Eor MANY a LONG wear. Subse