History of Europe, from the Fall of Napoleon, in 1815, to the Accession of Louis Napoleon, in 1852 Volume 7 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1858 Excerpt: ...that that feeling, which is a high personal and civic virtue, is a vice in revolutions. One might as well, I think, not want to influence a man who was going to walk on thawing ice, or to cross a fordless river, as not to desire to keep men right in a political struggle, and to do it with might and main. If I were Smith O'Brien, I would strike out in my own mind, or with such counsel as I valued, a definite course for the revolution, and labour incessantly to develop it in that way. For example, your project of obtaining signatures to the roll of the National Guard, and when a sufficient number were produced, and not sooner, calling the Council of Time Hundred, was one I entirely relied upon; but it has been permitted to fall into disuse, Chap. Widow Cormack's house, under the immediate direction XLin' of O'Brien, was proved beyond dispute, as well as the 1848-unsuccessful attempts made to seduce the police from their allegiance. After a long trial, in which everything that legal ability and eloquence could suggest was exhausted in his defence, he was found guilty, along with all his fellow-prisoners, though they were all recommended to mercy, and they all, along with Meagher, who was tried at Dublin by Chief-Justice Blackmore, received sentence of death. Their conduct on receiving sentence was at once courageous and dignified, and only awakened the most poignant regret that men capable, at such a moment, of uttering such sentiments, should have been so far misled by patriotic and generous feelings as to have engaged in an enterprise which, if successful, could have led only to an aggravation of the misery of their country, and which could the less be forgiven, that at the very moment when they were uttered, five hundred thousand Irishmen, with their famili...