Speeches from the Dock, Part I by Various
page 79 of 276 (28%)
page 79 of 276 (28%)
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the reign of terror that swallowed up the majority of their compatriots,
and, when milder councils began to prevail, they were permitted to go forth from the dungeon which confined them into banishment. The vision of Irish freedom was not permitted to dawn upon them in life; from beyond the sandy slopes washed by the Western Atlantic they watched the fortunes of the old land with hopeless but enduring love. Their talents, their virtues, and their patriotism were not unappreciated by the people amongst whom they spent their closing years of life. In the busiest thoroughfare of the greatest city of America there towers over the heads of the by-passers the monument of marble which grateful hands have raised to the memory of Addis Emmet. In the centre of Western civilization, the home of republican liberty, the stranger reads in glowing words, of the virtues and the fame of the brother of Robert Emmet, sculptured on the noble pillar erected in Broadway, New York, to his memory. Nor was he the only one of his party to whom such an honour was accorded. A stone-throw from the spot where the Emmet monument stands, a memorial not less commanding in its proportions and appearance, was erected to William James M'Nevin; and the American citizen, as he passes through the spacious streets of that city which the genius of liberty has rendered prosperous and great, gazes proudly on those stately monuments, which tell him that the devotion to freedom which England punished and proscribed found in his own land the recognition which it merited from the gallant and the free. [Footnote: The inscriptions on the Emmet monument are in three languages--Irish, Latin, and English. The Irish inscription consists of the following lines:-- Do mhiannaich se ardmath Cum tir a breith |
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