Further Reminiscences
by Henry Mayers Hyndman (9781459099487)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER 11 MICHAEL DAVITT Of all the men possessed of no conspicuous mental ability, and with no advantages of birth to aid them, who gained great influence over their fellows during the last century, by sheer force of moral worth and nobility of character, it seems to me that Giuseppe Garibaldi and Michael Davitt stand in the front rank. The former has always been fully appreciated in this country: the latter has not as yet gained the position in public estimation which is his due. This, perhaps, is natural. The great Italian fought gloriously for the complete emancipation of his country from foreign rule, in such wise as to gain for himself the cordial admiration, not to say the affection, of all Englishmen of advanced views. Even the governing minority here, as they lost nothing by Garibaldi's success and the creation of a United Italy, could afford to admire heroism and self-sacrifice in a cause which cost them cheap sympathy only. But the great Irishman was also engaged throughout his life in one continuous endeavour to overthrow an equally pernicious dominance over Ireland. This was quite another matter. Carrying on his uphill and almost hopeless struggle against Great Britain, under conditions where open fighting on the field of battle was hopeless and even impossible, political and socialconspiracy he thought at first was the only means of achieving his end. The Irish patriot, therefore, found himself not only opposed to the British rule in Ireland but in bitter antagonism to the interests of the landlords in England, who felt that the threat to landed property across the Irish Channel might soon jeopardise their private ownership of the soil in England, Wales, and Scotland. The antagonism to Davitt, consequently, was even more economic than political. Home Rule i...

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