Robert Emmet – Nationalist and Orator

 

Robert Emmet’s short, dramatic life came to a tragic end on September 20, 1803. However, although his life was short and his struggle in vain, his efforts, vision and idealism left a mythic mark on Irish and on the world history.

Born in Dublin in 1778 into a fairly-well-to-do Protestant family, Emmet was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. With high ideals of fraternity and equality, Robert, like his elder brother Thomas, became involved with the United Irishmen, an organization formed in 1791 by Wolfe Tone, James Tandy, and Thomas Russell to achieve Roman Catholic emancipation and, with Protestant cooperation, parliamentary reform.

From 1800 to 1802, Emmet resided on the continent with leaders of the United Irishmen who had been exiled from Ireland following the rebellion of 1798. While there, Emmet attempted to enlist French support for an insurrection against British rule. With the promise of French military aid secured, Emmet returned to Ireland in 1802 and began to organize and arm the country in preparation for the French landing. However, Emmet’s hand was forced in July 1803 when an explosion at one of his arms depot’s compelled an early call for insurrection on July 23. His plan now awry, the ill-timed insurrection ended in confusion as various factions failed to receive or failed to heed the call to arms, and the promised French invasion failed to materialize.

Determined and undaunted Emmet, wearing a green and white uniform, marched a small band against Dublin Castle. On their way, the group happened upon Lord Kilwarden, the Lord Chief Justice and his nephew. Emmet’s followers seized them from their coach, piked them to death and then began to riot in the streets. Disillusioned by his followers’ behavior and realizing the cause was lost, Emmet escaped and hid in the Wicklow Mountains.

From there, Emmet moved to Harold’s Cross to be near Sarah Curran, his bride-to-be (Thomas Moore’s songs, “She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps” and “Oh breathe not the name” were inspired by Emmet’s love for her). Emmet had hoped to escape to America but was captured on August 25, 1803 and imprisoned at Kilmainham. He was tried for high treason in Green Street Courthouse where he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

When asked if he had any thing to say in response to this sentence, Emmet gave what is considered to be one of the most famous speeches of the period. Emmet’s speech to the court (The Speech from the Dock) could be regarded as the last protest of the United Irishmen:

“I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world – it is the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph. No man can write my epitaph, for as no man who knows my motives and character dares now to vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them rest in obscurity and peace until other times and other men can do justice to them. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then shall my character be vindicated, then may my epitaph be written.”

Although he held out hope for a rescue, on September 20, 1803, he was executed. Out of deference to his aristocratic background, Emmet was hanged and beheaded but was not subsequently disemboweled – as such a sentence usually involved. His burial site remains a mystery to this date.

Charles Stewart Parnell

 

The Great Famine of 1845 to 1849 left over 1 million dead with a further 1 million emigrating over the following 10 years. One of the effects of the disaster was to demonstrate to ordinary Irish people that the English government had failed them in their time of need and that they must seize control of their own destiny.

Out of the Famine grew several revolutionary movements which culminated in the 1916 Easter Rising. In the second half of the nineteenth century the main concern of the Irish people was their land and the fact that they had no control whatsoever over its ownership.

Charles Stewart Parnell was the son of a Protestant landowner who organised the rural masses into agitation against the ruling landlord class to seek the 3 Fs: Fixity of Tenure, Freedom to Sell and Fair Rent.

Violence flared in the countryside but Parnell preferred to use parliamentary means to achieve his objectives and the result was a series of Land Acts which greatly improved the conditions under which the Irish agricultural class toiled.

Parnell’s main ambition was Home Rule for Ireland (local government) and he led the Irish Party, deposing Isaac Butt in the process to achieve this aim. He and colleagues such as Joseph Biggar made a science out of ‘fillibustering’ and delayed the English parliament by introducing amendments to every clause of every Bill and then discussing each aspect at length. His popularity in Ireland soared to great heights.

Trouble loomed for Parnell, however, in his private life. He had secretly courted a married woman, Kathleen O’Shea, the husband of whom filed for divorce, naming Parnell as the co-respondent. He tried to ignore the scandal and continued his public life. Public pressure in Ireland and from Gladstone in England eventually brought his downfall and he died shortly afterwards, in 1891. The Home Rule Bill that he had forced Gladstone into introducing was passed in the House of Commons, but defeated in the House of Lords.

In his last speech in Kilkenny in 1891 he said: “I don’t pretend that I had not moments of trial and of temptation, but I do claim that never in thought, word, or deed, have I been false to the trust which Irishmen have confided in me.”

But perhaps he will be most remembered for the quotation that can be found on his statue at the junction of O’Connell Street and Parnell Street in Dublin City Centre:

“No man shall have the right to fix the boundary to the march of a Nation”.