At the graveside demonstration, Mr. Thos.  J. Clarke presided and said it was a gratifying thing that numbers of their fellow-countrymen were to-day swinging back to the old fighting line and taking pride in the old Fenian principles.  He introduced Mr. P.H.  Pearse, B.A.

Mr. Pearse then came forward and delivered an eloquent and impressive oration, first speaking in Irish.  Speaking in English, he said they had come to the holiest place in Ireland, holier to them than that sacred spot where Patrick sleeps in Down.  Patrick brought them life, but Wolfe Tone died for them.  Though many had testified in death to the truth of Ireland’s claim to Nationhood, Wolfe Tone was the greatest of all that had made that testimony; he was the greatest of Ireland’s dead.  They stood in the holiest place in Ireland, for what spot of the Nation’s soil could be holier than the spot in which the greatest of her dead lay buried.  He found it difficult to speak in that place, and he knew they all partook of his emotion.  There were no strangers there for they were all in a sense own brothers to Tone (hear, hear).  They shared his faith, his hope still unrealised and his great love.  They had come there that day not merely to salute this noble dust and to pay their homage to the noble spirit of Tone, but to renew their adhesion to the faith of Tone and to express their full acceptance of the gospel of which Tone had given such a clear definition.  That gospel had been taught before him by English-speaking men, uttered half-articulately by Shan O’Neill, expressed in some passionate metaphor by Geoffrey Keating, and hinted at by Swift in some bitter jibe, but it was stated definitely and emphatically by Wolfe Tone and it did not need to be ever again stated anew for any new generation.  Tone was great in mind, but he was still greater in spirit.  He had the clear vision of the prophet; he saw things as they were and saw things as they would be.  They owed more to this dead man than they should be ever able to repay him by making pilgrimages to his grave or building the stateliest monuments in the streets of his city.  They owed it to him that there was such a thing as Irish Nationalism; to his memory and the memory of ’98 they owed it that there was any manhood left in Ireland (hear, hear).  The soul of Wolfe Tone was like a burning flame, a flame so pure, so ardent, so generous, that to come into communion with it was as a new optimism and regeneration.  Let them try in some way to get into contact with the spirit of Tone and possess themselves of its ardour.  If they could do that it would be a good thing for them and their country, because they would carry away with them a new life from that place of death and there would be a new resurrection of patriotic grace in their souls (hear, hear).  Let them think of Tone; think of his boyhood and young manhood in Dublin and in Kildare; think of his adventurous spirit and plans, think of his glorious failure at the bar, and his healthy contempt for what