THE O'CONNELL CENTENARY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 106, 8 May 1875, Page 7

THE O'CONNELL CENTENARY.

On the Sixth of August Ireland will celebrate the O'Conneli. Centenary, and the world will watch eagerly the manner of that celebration. It must be worthy of the Nation ; it must be worthy of the Hero. There is no better test of the character of a people than the honour in which it holds the memory of its illustrious dead. There never existed a Nation which owed so much to one man as Ireland does to O'Connell ; so her gratitude and her reverence ought to exceed that of all other nations for their patriots. Too often the Tribune is only the chief of a faction, too often he is only the embodiment of national ambition or partisan zeal. It was the peculiar glory of O'Conneli, " like some tall cliff, to lift bis awful form " above the rage of parties and the struggles of nationalities — to be the Champion of Freedom the wide-world over — the Foe of Oppression in whatever garb, or guise, or form it raised its accursed crest. The same voice which planted in the breasts of his own people the undying lessons of Nationhood and Freedom was lifted up for the English Dissenter and the Jew, for the Indian Ryot and the African Slave ; the same hand that struck the fetters off the Irish Catholic was raised against the European despot who trod down his subjects, or the American who held the infamous doctrine that man can hold property in man. O'Connell is at once a National and a Cosmopolitan hero. The services he did his countrymen are unrivalled ; he found them oppressed and despised Pariahs, he left them a proud and hopeful Nation. But his services to Liberty were as splendid as his services to Ireland, and if the latter made him the^rnost loved and honored of Irishmen, the former gave him one of the most famous names in European history. The generation of Irishmen who have grown up since 1847 cannot imagine what a thrill ran through all Christendom from the death-bed in G-enoa. "The Hero of Christianity" is gone, exclaimed the great Pope who had just assumed the tiara under the ever-honoured and illustrious title of Pixrs the Ninth. "Who but O'Conneix," said Wilxiam Henry Seward, " ever brought Papal Rome and Protestant America to burn incense at the same, tomb ?" In the history of the second quarter of the nineteenth century no figure loomed larger before the European imagination than that of the great Irishman whose body restß at Glasnevin. "We repeat, then, that we owe it not alone to ourselves, to the glorious dead, but to our national character and good name, that the O'Conneli Centenary should be kept in a manner worthy of all three. Better would it be to pass over in cold and apathetic silence the Centenary, than that it should be celebrated with maimed rites and halting honours. We have now little time to lose. In fives clear months, August will be upon us, and a Centenary celebration is not a thing to be organised in a day. To prevent disappointment it would be well to keep separate the ideas of the Monument and the Centenary. If the noble group of the O'Conneil Monument is raised in the streets of Dublin on the 6th of August next, why, so much the better. But monument or no monument, we must haye — if our national name is not to become a byword — a Centenary celebration worthy of the great occasion. We rejoice to see that the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor has adopted an idea well calculated to secure the success of the day. He purposes to hold in Dublin a conference, at which delegates from the provinces should attend, and at which the details of the celebration should be arranged. Of course, the ceremonial of the Centenary will take place in Dublin, in the beautiful city O'Connbll loved so well, the city in which are to be found his Home,_his Prison, and his Tomb. At the

grand celebration in Dublin every city aud town and village of Ireland ought to be represented. O'Connell loved the whole land with equal love, and the festival should be as universal and as national as were Ms services and his achievements. Nay, more, we trust to see at the Centenary delegates from the greater Irelands beyond the sea. Let us hope that at the great celebration of the 6th of August we will see in Dublin, not alone delegates from every district in Ireland, but delegates from where the Empire City watches the marriage of the Hudson and the sea ; delegates from where, above the golden gates*of the Gulf of California,, the towers of San Francisco shine 5 delegates from where the warm Austral sun lights up the fair city of Melbourne. We cannot believe that Ireland will fail in her duty at this crisis in her history. We are confident that we will have to chronicle, first, a successful conference largely attended by gentlemen from every district of the country, at which the details of a befitting ceremonial will be arranged with care and wisdom. We are confident that we shall then have to chronicle such a celebration of the Centenary as will mate the 6th of August the brighest day in the history of Dublin ; that on that day the whole Irish race will, in a memorable manner, show to the -world how steadily burns the flame of gratitude to him whose life was sanctified and consumed by love for Faith and Fatherland — who web, indeed — —Freedom's chatnpion, one of those, The few in number, who had not o'erstept The charter to chastise which she bestows On such as wield her weapons ; he had kept The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o'er him wept. — Dublin JPreeman.