Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 2

[54] with eight millions whom he loved; he stood with & peasantry at his back meted out and trodden under foot as cruelly as the Magyar; he stood with those behind him who had been trampled under the horses' feet of the British soldiery in 1782 and 1801; he knew the poverty and wretchedness, he knew the oppression under which the Irish groaned: but never for a moment, would he consent to lift Ireland,--whose woes, we may well suppose, rested heavily on the heart of her greatest son, --by the sacrifice of the interests or the freedom of any other portion of the race. “When,” said the friend who told me this anecdote, in conclusion,--“when there were no more than two or three of us in the House of Commons, O'Connell would leave any court or any meeting to be present at the division, and vote on our side.” That is the type of a man who tries by its proper standard the claims of all classes upon his sympathy. He did for Ireland all that God had enabled him to do; but there was one thing which God had not called upon him to do, and that was to speak a falsehood, or to belie his convictions. He did not undertake to serve his country by being silent when he knew he ought to speak, or by speaking in language that should convey a false impression to his hearer.

Kossuth is filled with overflowing love for Hungary, which lies under the foot of the Czar. Now let us suppose a parallel case. Suppose that Lafayette were now living, and that the great Frenchman had seen his idea of liberty for France go down in blood. We will suppose that, despairing of doing anything at home, he had concluded to appeal to some foreign nation for aid; that Fayette, with his European reputation, considered the great apostle of human liberty, and his voice the seal and stamp of republican principles,--Fayette goes to Vienna for help. He goes to Austria for help on his