LECTURE ON LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 208, 30 March 1877, Page 7

LECTURE ON LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD.

The third lecture for the season of St. Kevin's Branch of the Catholic Union was delivered at the lecture-hall, Camden street, Dublin, on the 21st ultimo, by Michael Carter O'Meara. Mr. O'Meara apologised for the necessary incompleteness of the sketch which he intended to give. He had rather selected this subject in order to bring before them the education and surroundings of the youth and early manhood of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, to show he never could have organised or consented to take part in the insurrectionary movement with which his name was inseparably connected if it had really been the wild and impossible scheme it had been so often represented ; and that the fact of his, a man of position and family, having thrown himself into the agitation was complete proof, if such proof were wanted, that by reason of the policy adopted towards his country by the British Minister it was an impossibility that Ireland could have escaped passing through the ordeal of an insurrection. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was born on October 15th, 1763, being the fifth son of the Duke of Leinster. In the latter part of 1780 a lieutenancy was purchased for him in the 96th Regiment, and in a year after, at the age of eighteen, he was first introduced to the horrors of war at a battle fought in the American War of Independence, where he received a severe wound, and was left for dead on the field. A negro found him and carried him off to Charleston. In after life Lord E dward regretted the part he had taken in this war, and said on one occasion that he had been fighting against liberty. Of him Major Doyle wrote about this time — " I never knew a more loveable person, and every man in the army, from the general to] the drummer, would cheer the expression. . . . He had great animal spirits, which boro him up against all fatigue, but his courage was entirely independent of those spirits — it was a valour sui generis." In 1783 he returned from America, and was returned member for Athy. Iv October, 1792, while in Paris, he attended a meeting to celebrate the victories of the French armies, and among the toasts were — " The armies of France : may, the example of its citizen-soldiers be followed by all enslaved countries till tyranny be extinct;" and another, still more Republican — "The speedy abolition of all hereditary and feudal distinctions." For this ho was dismissed from the army. In 1793, when a vote of thanks was being moved to the Viceroy for a proclamation for dispersing all unlawful assemblies, Lord Edward rose and said, " I give my most hearty disapprobation to that address, for I do think that the Lord-Lieutenant and the majority of this house are the worst subjects the King has." A perfect tumult followed, and when called on for an ex^ planation he said — " lam accused of having declared that I think the Lord-Lieutenant and the majority of this house the worst subjects the King has — I said so, it is true, and lam sorry for it." It was needless to say this explanation was rejected. In the summer of 1796, the United Irishmen determined on appealing to arms ; it was then Lord Edward joined the society, and was elected Com-mander-in-Chief. The lecturer then detailed the events connected with the rising of '9S, so familiar to every reader of Irish history, down to the arrest of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, on May 19, 1795, at the house of Mr. Murphy, in Thomas street, when, after a gallant resistance, he was captured by Major Swan and Captain Ryan, of infamous memory, and conveyed to the Castle. There he was subjected to undignified, barbarous, and disgraceful cruelties which were fully stated in a letter from Lord Henvy Fitzgerald, his brother, to Lord Camden; and on June 4, 1795, Lord Edward Fitzgerald died. Reviewing genei-ally the state of things at that period, the lecturer concluded : — For myself I may say I would echo the words of "Wolfe Tone — " I would rather be Fitzgerald in his rebel grave than Pitt at the head of the British Empire."