The wonder about O'Connell was that
he could out-talk Corwin, he could charm a college better than Everett,
and leave Henry Clay himself far behind in magnetizing a senate.
It has been my privilege to have heard all the great orators of America
who have become singularly famed about the world's circumference. I know
what was the majesty of Webster; I know what it was to melt under the
magnetism of Henry Clay; I have seen eloquence in the iron logic of
Calhoun; but O'Connell was Webster, Clay, and Calhoun in one. Before the
courts, logic; at the bar of the senate, unanswerable and dignified; on
the platform, grace, wit, and pathos; before the masses, a whole man.
Emerson says, "There is no true eloquence, unless there is a man behind
the speech." Daniel O'Connell was listened to because all England and
Ireland knew that there was a man behind the speech,--one who could be
neither bought, bullied, nor cheated.
When I was in Naples, I asked Thomas Fowell Buxton, "Is Daniel
O'Connell an honest man?" "As honest a man as ever breathed," said he,
and then he told me the following story: "When, in 1830, O'Connell first
entered Parliament, the anti-slavery cause was so weak that it had only
Lushington and myself to speak for it, and we agreed that when he spoke
I should cheer him up, and when I spoke he should cheer me, and these
were the only cheers we ever got.
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