RESURGENT IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 173, 21 July 1876, Page 14

RESURGENT IRELAND.

('lrishman/ May 13.)

Any utterance of one who has occupied so distinguished a position in Irish politics as Sir Charles Gavan Duffy is sure to receive the i-espectful consideration of his countrymen. Duffy, Davis, O'Brien, Mitchel, Martin, Meagher — these were prominent names in the brilliant epoch of Forty-Eight. Of the earnest men who bore them but one survives to-day, and his words come echoing from beyond the "long wash of Australasian seas" to this, his Fatherland, whose welfare he still places foremost in his heart. Irishmen have, and will ever retain a loving regard for the gallant band who, in those tempestuous andjterrible daysjwhen men's souls were tested by strenuous strivings with the Angel of Death and the Demon, of Despotism, battled foremost in the vanguard of our nation. The giant form of O'Connell led them on, they supplemented and enlarged his work, and if there had been in addition the organising element of former or later days, the period would not have passed without perfect victory. We are blinded to what defects existed in the men or the measures with which they were identified, but because we recognise the errors of action or the defects of condition clearly, we can, with all the more certainty, render justice to their motives, conduct, influence, and deeds. Addressing his audience on St. Patrick's day, in Melbourne, Australia, Gavan Duffy gave an interesting account of his recent visit to Ireland. After a long interval, during which important events had happened in Europe, and some in Ireland, the ex-Pre-mier of Victoria sailed for his native land. During jthat space of time, the population of Australia had more than doubled — whilst the population of Ireland has fallen greatly away, under the blasting breath of Eastern rule. "At this hour," he remarked, " there are fewer Irishmen in Ireland than when the oldest man amongst us was born." The contrast was not formed by these elements only. Whilst the Australians had been prospering greatly under a fostering government, the Irish have been " scourged with scorpions." Kapidly as new homesteads were being built up in Australia, far more rapidly were the homesteads of the Irish people being destroyed by the ruthless hands of exterminating landlords. Coming to a nation so afflicted from a country so favored — to a land clouded by alien rule, from one glowing with the sunlight of selfgovernment — it was natural that the voyager should picture to himsels that Irishmen had lowered their lofty hopes, and shadowed their noble past. He came at a good time to test the truth of tie supposition ; he landed on the eve of the O'Connell Centenary, and " next day," he says, "my fears were at an end." And he adds : " Never did I see the Irish race to greater advantage, more manly in bearing, more confident in spirit, more frank, joyous, and resolute. And their banners, their music, and their cheers, spoke the undying determination that Ireland should be a Nation again. I could not help exclaiming : ' Thank God, Ireland is not dead, but full of vigor and manhood, and sustained with something more precious, than even manly thews and sinews— with soul and spirit/ " Quantum mutatus ! This was not that " corpse " — that murdered corpse — which he had seemed to see " upon the dissecting table," in former days, which it were labor in vain to attempt to galvanise. Nor was it that corpse apparently in corruption which on a latter day lay before him, whilst West British Whigs and Tories, were chaffering for its bones. No, those impressions were mirageB — this presence was the reality. Ireland then lay, exhausted and ensanguined, as a man who throughont a long dark night has been exposed to the depredations of insatiable vampires, and appears ghastly and deathlike in the pale glimmer that precedes the dawn. The corruption with which, on his second glance, he beheld it surrounded, was not its own — but that of the sicklied and foul vultures which had gathered around, their beaks bodies bedraggled with gore and spoil of the grave. Even at that moment, beneath the cold and'pale features of the apparent corpse, the red blood was quickening in the minute vessels that permeate the brain, and far down the great heart was beginning with slowly accelerating throbs, to mark the return of conscious life — the herald of heroic action. Hence, the Ireland, which Gavan Duffy had left an apparent corpse, which he had again beheld as a corpse in the midst of corruption, he now saw once more erect and active, filled with glorious memories, and inspired by glorious hopes. We wonder not that he was thrilled at the sight — but, if moved at this evidence of abounding vigor, how much more profoundly would he not have been stirred and to the very depths of his heart, by the greater evidence given of Ireland's soul and spirit had he but |seen her, when, a few years ago, her marshalled hosts, with neither loudjbandj nor flattering banner, commemorated in solemn silence the majestic memory of her Martyred Dead. Then, in grief and mourning, she raised her manacled arms to heaven ; — and, whilst the glaive of Tyranny threatened her breast, |she invoked Jthe God of Liberty, amid jthe tombs of departed heroes.