That gallant Jacobite, Patrick
Sarsfield, Burke, Grattan, Flood, and Robert Emmet stand shoulder to
shoulder with three Fenian gentlemen, names Allan, Larkin, and
O'Brien, known in ultra-Nationalist circles as the 'Manchester
martyrs.' For some years after this trio was hanged in Salford
jail, it appears that the infant mind was sadly mixed in its attempt
to separate knowledge in the concrete from the more or less abstract
information contained in the Catechism; and many a bishop was
shocked, when asking in the confirmation service, "Who are the
martyrs?" to be told, "Allan, Larkin, and O'Brien, me lord!"
Francesca says she longs to smuggle into Mr. Jordan's library a
picture of Tom Steele, one of Daniel O'Connell's henchmen, to whom
he gave the title of Head Pacificator of Ireland. Many amusing
stories are told of this official, of his gaudy uniform, his strut
and swagger, and his pompous language. At a political meeting on
one occasion, he attacked, it seems, one Peter Purcell, a Dublin
tradesman who had fallen out with the Liberator on some minor
question. "Say no more on the subject, Tom," cried O'Connell, who
was in the chair, "I forgive Peter from the bottom of my heart."
"You may forgive him, liberator and saviour of my country," rejoined
Steele, in a characteristic burst of his amazingly fervent rhetoric.
"Yes, you, in the discharge of your ethereal functions as the moral
regenerator of Ireland, may forgive him; but, revered leader, I also
have functions of my own to perform; and I tell you that, as Head
Pacificator of Ireland, I can never forgive the diabolical villain
that dared to dispute your august will.
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