that traverse the sister kingdom. When all the works shall be completed,
which owe their construction to his skill, ingenuity, and industry,
nearly a thousand miles of railway will be due to his enterprise.
William Dargan is not only a railway contractor, but a railway owner, a
steam-packet proprietor, a flax grower, and a farmer. Whilst too many of
his fellow-countrymen have been engaged in destroying--as far as in them
lay--the elements of industry in Ireland, he has laboured to develop her
resources, and to rouse the physical energy and the self-respect of all
classes. He is a patriot, not a partizan--not an Orangeman, nor a
Ribbandman, nor a Repealer, nor a Protestant-ascendancy-man, but a
true-hearted Irishman, a useful citizen, a loyal subject. If Sir Robert
Peel could have counted a dozen Dargans amongst his coadjutors in
Ireland, he would never have had cause to reckon the government of that
portion of the United Kingdom, amongst his insuperable “difficulties.”
The greatest work of the patriotic Dargan remains to be mentioned. He
placed £20,000 at the disposal of the Committee formed in Dublin, for
the construction of a Crystal Palace in that city. Before the Palace was
ready to receive the contributions of all nations, William Dargan had
contributed a much larger sum. He has his reward in the affectionate
gratitude of the Irish people--in the approving smiles of his
sovereign--in the lasting good wrought by his act in the land of his
birth.
[This statue, by J. E. Jones, is at the south end of the nave.]