Excerpt from Anniversary Address: Delivered Before the Hibernian Society of Columbia, South Carolina, on the 17th March, 1854

Shall I tell how she, who in later times has been made the victim of an avowed, systematized plan of moral and intellectual debasement, threw Open her seminaries of learning and piety, and, without money and without price, labored for the regeneration of the darkened mind-and the purification of the degenerate heart, when the nations of Europe were blighted and desolated by the devastating incursions of northern hordes, and men were fast relapsing into the ignorance and vice of their barbarian conquerors? Shall I relate the glories of Brian the brave, and enumerate the glowing deeds of valor that distinguished the warriors Of Erin throughout two hundred years Of unremitting warfare with their ferocious invaders? Shall I speak of the Parliament at Tara, and thus trace to distant ages, the foundations of Ireland's claims for that legis lative independence, Of which she has been despoiled, and for the resto ration Of which she now struggles? It would be a grateful task to dwell on these topics, but the limited space that custom has assigned to an ad dress Of this character, admonishes me to pass on. Yet many a proud, though beggared, child of Erin roves in imagination, this day, through the flowery field Of the past; and his heart swells with grand emotions as he sees thus early and conspicuously exhibited those virtues of generosity, bravery and native independence, which have ever been, through evil and through good report, the time-honored and world-renowned traits of Irish character.

It is well known that Ireland lost her liberties through the strifes and dissensions of her own people. Unhappily, the flames of civil war were enkindled the weaker party entreated the aid Of the English monarch, and he availed himself of the pretext to carry out a plan long meditated. The exhaustion consequent upon her protracted conflict with the Danes, added to the weakness engendered by internecine divisions, left her an easy prey to the invading forces of Henry, who, on partial conquest and the submission of some of her recreant sons, thus laid the foundations of that dominion, from whose despotic rule she has never been able to free herself.

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