Come Here To Me!

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

Arthur O’Connor lived a remarkable life.

Born near Bandon in Cork, he would serve as a member of the Irish Parliament in Dublin’s College Green from 1790 to 1795, while he later joined the Society of United Irishmen and even became a General in Napoleon’s army. In the College Green Parliament that excluded both Catholics and Presbyterians, O’Connor argued boldly for “civil,political and religious liberty”,reminding his fellow parliamentarians that “you are no longer legislating for the barbarous ignorant ages which are gone by, but that you must now legislate for the more enlightened and more intelligent age in which you live, and for the still more enlightened ages which are to come.”

A leading member of the Society of United Irishmen in Dublin from 1796,he was arrested while traveling to France to secure assistance for the movement in Ireland. O’Connor was acquitted, but his companion Father James Coigly was sentenced to death, hanged on 7 June 1798. O’Connor was rearrested following his acquittal, and sent to Fort George in Scotland. It was in light of this that O’Connor penned the following poem. On first glance, it appeared a total abandonment of his political convictions, and a particular condemnation of the radical Thomas Paine, author of the hugely influential The Rights of Man:

The pomp of courts, and pride of kings,
I prize above all earthly things;
I love my country, but my king,
Above all men his praise I’ll sing.
The royal banners are display’d,
And may success the standard aid:
I fain would banish far from hence
The Rights of Man and Common Sense.
Destruction to that odious name,
The plague of princes, Thomas Paine,
Defeat and ruin seize the cause
Of France, her liberty, and laws

And yet, with a little reworking, a totally different sentiment emerges. Taking the first line of the poem and following it with the first line of the second stanza ,and continuing onwards in the same fashion, the poem shows that O’Connor had not abandoned his principles, but was reaffirming them:

The pomp of courts, and pride of kings,
I fain would banish far from hence
I prize above all earthly things;
The Rights of Man and Common Sense.

I love my country, but my king,

Destruction to that odious name

Above all men his praise I’ll sing
The plague of princes, Thomas Paine
The royal banners are display’d
Defeat and ruin seize the cause
And may success the standard raise:
Of France, her liberty, and laws.

 O’Connor’s affection for Thomas Paine should not be surprising. Paine had lodged with Lord Edward Fitzgerald in Paris, and evidently made a strong impression upon the Irishman, with Fitzgerald writing of him as “my friend Paine…the more I see of his interior, the more I like and respect him. I cannot express how kind he is to me; there is a simplicity of manner, a goodness of heart, and a strength of mind in him, that I never a man before possess.” As Tom Hayden has noted, Paine “lobbied the French Foreign Minister to send an expeditionary force to Ireland…After the election of Jefferson, Paine called for the USA to liberate Ireland by force.” In 1792, Paine had been made an Honorary Member of the Society of United Irishmen, and his influence on the organisation (and others like it internationally) was immeasurable.

The Parliament to which Arthur O’Connor had once belonged famously passed an Act of Union in 1800 which doomed it to abolition, with its privileged parliamentarians becoming the turkeys that voted for Christmas. Today, a statue of Paine’s great foe, the statesmen Edmund Burke, stares at the building from the grounds of Trinity College Dublin. With bricked-up windows and the flag of the Bank of Ireland flying from it, it looks somewhat different to how it appeared in O’Connor’s time.

Famously, Burke condemned the terror of the “swinish multitude” on the streets of Paris during the revolution there. If Burke regarded the revolution in France as a disturbing event, Paine would passionately defend it, seeing in it the same hope for the future that encouraged men like Theobald Wolfe Tone and Arthur O’Connor in Ireland. To O’Connor, Paine was the “plague of princes”, and a guiding light. Perhaps it’s time for some small monument to Paine in Dublin too.

Edmund Burke, Trinity College Dublin.