The first
edition of 'The Nation' was published on 15th October 1842..........The
founders of the Nation newspaper were three young men - two of whom
were Catholics and one a Protestant, but all free from the 'slightest
taint of bigotry and anxious to unite all creeds and classes for the
country's welfare.' They were Charles
Gavan Duffy who became editor; Thomas
Osborne Davis and John Blake Dillon.
The following
was said of the Nation in 'The Young Irelanders' written by T.F. O'Sullivan
and published in 1944.
"There
has never been published in this, or any other country, a journal, which
was imbued with higher ideals of nationality, which attracted such a
brilliant band of writers in prose and verse, which inspired such widespread
enthusiasm, or which exercised a greater influence over al classes of
its readers, which after a time included every section of the community.
The Nation
preached a nobler and more self-sacrificing Gospel of Nationality than
Irishmen and women had been accustomed to hear for many years.
It sought,
not only to disinfect the political life of the country, but to raise
the whole standard of national self-respect based on the inalienable
right of people to guard their own destinies; to inculcate a sentiment
of pride in Ireland and everything Irish -in our history, legends, language
and literature; in our music and in our art; in our magnificent contributions
to the culture and civilisation of other countries; in our sacred ruins
scattered throughout the land and in lonely islands off our coasts,
silently preaching silent sermons on Irish sanctity, learning and foreign
rapacity; in our heroic struggle for Freedom throughout the ages; in
the brilliant achievements of our soldiers on the continent of Europe
and in America, where they helped the oppressed colonists to achieve
their independence - and it strove to regenerate the motherland intellectually,
spiritually, socially and nationally.
The Nation
was a great educational agency - the greatest that ever was conducted
from a newspaper office in Ireland. "It wound itself into the fibre
of the Irish heart" - quote Sir Charles Gavan Duffy - one of the
three founders of the Nation - "The poor peasants clubbed their
pence that they might hear on their only day of rest what they could
do for the Cause; the young tradesmen to whom it had become almost as
necessary as their daily bread, clung to it. The Conservative students
enjoyed it as a stolen pleasure, trembling to be caught in an act of
Patriotism; the Irish exiles in England or France, or felling forests
in Canada, or digging railways in the Western Republic, who still longed
like their predecessors two generations earlier, to hear, 'how was old
Ireland, and how did she stand'; the poor Irish soldier who stole into
a secret place with his treasure; the young priest who judged it with
his own brain and conscience, not by the word of command, cherished
it the more for the dangers that it ran"
In inspiring
prose and soul-stirring verse the great epic events in Ireland's history
and distinguished Irish people who had achieved fame in all walks of
life - saints, sculptors, authors, scholars, national leaders, martyrs,
dramatists, novelists, orators and wits were made familiar to Irish
people.
Irish
antiquities were invested with a new interest. Crumbling shrines were
once more filed with holy men and saintly women and the clash of arms
and fierce battle cries were heard again on many battlefields long since
the graveyards of brave men - of savage Viking, of armoured knight and
of Irish gallowglass. Cairns, beehive cells, cromlechs, Ogham stones
and battered castles took on new meaning. Irish history became a fascinating
romance, with some dark episodes of foreign tyranny and native treachery.
The nobility
of sacrifice in the national interest was preached as a cardinal virtue.
The slave mind and the anti-Irish Irishman were held up to contempt
and the responsibility of our countrymen for their own enslavement emphasised.
The right
to nationhood of a people long submerged industrially, commercially,
politically and socially was boldly proclaimed, and the crimes and intrigues
of the invader exposed. At the same time, it was pointed out that the
people should make themselves fit for freedom, and that they had duties
to discharge, one to the other, and all to the nation, as well as rights
to gain. Every phase of Irish life was critically examined and remedies
suggested where weaknesses were revealed.
Above
all, the Nation brought a message of hope and encouragement to the Irish,
taught them self reliance, gave them a higher conception of nationality
and urged union of all Irishmen - Catholic, Protestant, Dissenter, Orangeman
and Repealer - in order to achieve definite national objectives.
It is
not surprising that a paper of such a character should make an earnest
appeal to thinking Irishmen and women who had not lost all sense of
national self-respect; and that it's appearance wach week should be
looked forward to with keenest interest in all parts of the country,
and that its influence should be felt in the castle and in the cottage."
