The O'Briens and the O'Flaherty's — Sydney Morgan

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1827 edition. Excerpt: ...of being enrolled in their ranks; all sects and all religions united under their banners; and the moral dignity attached to the service created prepossessions, which its imposing exterior was not calculated to diminish. A race, which had ever been deemed comely, became improved by military discipline. The use of arms, while it rubbed off the uncouth awkwardness of the lower orders, gave energy to the languid movements of the highest. Volunteering became a vogue, as well as a principle. The women (and Ireland was then deemed the Corinth of Europe) took them under their special protection, presented their banners and dictated their devices. Gallantry and patriotism were never in a more strict alliance; and national vanity, occasionally supplying the place of national feeling, enlisted many in the volunteer corps, whose natural vocation, by birth and caste, lay all another way. To defend the land from foreign invasion had been the original motive which armed the volunteers of Ireland; but this was only a temporary remedy, applied to a temporary evil. The result, the important result, was an effort to emancipate the nation from six centuries of unmitigated suffering, and to re-open those sources of national prosperity, which had so long been dried up, or turned aside. The impulse gave a new spring to the spirit of this military body; and an armed association of thirty thousand citizens, assembling by their representatives, struck terror into minds inaccessible to the suggestions of sound policy, or of fair dealing. The eloquence of men, with arms in their hands, was not to be resisted. A free trade, the rejected prayer of ages, was conceded; Ireland's legislative independence, the long, but hopeless aspiration of millions, was acknowledged, and. the...