MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN HISTORY VOL. XIII JUNE, 1885 No. 6 I REMEMBER Mr. O'Conor almost as long as I remember anything. His father and mine were acquaintances, and my recollections extend over more than sixty years, forty of which I have passed upon the bench of a court where, for many years, he was almost constantly before me. I mention this long acquaintance, not to enhance the interest of what I may have to say, but because having known him so long, and seen him under such a variety of circumstances, it enables me to confirm in the outset all that has been said in the public journals at the time of his death respecting his high integrity, his scorn of everything mean, his strong sense of justice, his generosity, benevolence, tenderness, self-sacrifice, and, I may add, what is but little known, his modesty in respect to his own acquirements and position as a lawyer. It may interest those who value genealogical inquiries, to know that Mr. O'Conor was a lineal descendant of Roderick O'Conor, the last king of Ireland, a ruler who, from being king of one of the provinces, ultimately became monarch of the whole island, and afterward transferred the suzerainty of it to Henry II., King of England, by a treaty, the validity of which the Irish for seven centuries have denied, and the English have as tenaciously insisted upon. A direct line of descent from the twelfth century is a long lineage, even in Europe; but Mr. O'Conor's ancestry went even further back, and is traceable in the Irish annals up to the fourth century. In the many conversations I have had with him upon Irish history and antiquities, a subject upon which he was well informed, I do not remember his ever mentioning the name of Roderick O'Conor, or even alluding to the disastrous period of Irish history in which he reigned. Thoroughly republican in his political sentiments; disliking the British government, which he invariably called a government by the British gentry; and indignant at its misrule in Ireland, * An address delivered at the request of the New York Historical Society, of which Mr. O'Conor was one of the Vice-Presidents. VOL. XIII.-No. 6.-34 |