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THE LIFE, 
 
 OPINIONS, CONVERSATIONS AND ELOQUENCE 
 
 <~F 
 
 Daniel O'Connell. 
 
 WITH A PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 
 
 THOMAS CLARKE LUBY, Esq., A.B.T.C.D. 
 
 "Hatred produced by lengthened recollections of Injustice, by the murder of our fathers, 
 brothers and kindred, and which will not be extinguished In our time nor in that of our sons.' 
 
 Letter of Donald O'Neill to the Popb. 
 
 " Privilege's shall have an end, but the people Is eternal."— Mirabeau. 
 
 MAC DAVITT & CO., 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
Entered aocordlng to Act of Congress, In the year 1872, by 
 
 McMENAMY, HESS & CO., 
 in Ue o'Jlce of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
The Life of Daniel O'Connell 
 
 Co&/&> 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 
 
 Relations of Ireland to England the source of Irish misery — Independence neces- 
 sary to Ireland's happiness — Aims of O'Connell's life — How far he succeeded— 
 Where he failed, and why — Exaggeration of his theory of moral force — Ire- 
 land's capabilities — Rapid survey of Irish history down to the year 1775. 
 
 >fT is now more than seven hundred years since the day on which 
 M English invaders first set foot upon the soil of Ireland. Ever 
 cM since that fatal event Ireland has been more or less subject to 
 \k>fl the yoke of England, and more or less miserable. At times, 
 P indeed, she has been regarded, equally by friend and foe, as the 
 most unfortunate island of the sea, though, from the gifts lavished 
 alike on her soil and people by the bounteous hand of Nature, she might 
 be reasonably expected to prove the most fortunate. And wretched 
 her destiny must ever remain while her connection with England lasts. 
 There are many who ask, Why must this be so? Does she not share 
 the benefits of the glorious and envied constitution of Britain ? Is she 
 not represented in the British legislature? Are not the Irish people, in 
 short, now part and parcel of the great British nation — participators in 
 all the blessing's of British law and British justice? Most Englishmen, 
 and Irishmen of the West-British stamp, would fain answer these ques- 
 tions in the affirmative ; but the views of all such on " the Irish ques- 
 tion " are entirely fallacious. If, indeed, the Irish were really one people 
 with the English — similar in race, feeling, character, traditions and 
 interests — the present connection with England would ensure their hap- 
 piness. With or without members in the British legislature, Ireland 
 would, in this case, see her interests cared for, would be virtually repre- 
 
 Ul 
 
 66 
 
11 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CUJS'KELL. 
 
 sented. The representatives of Shropshire and Sussex would be as solici- 
 tous about the honor and interests of Tyrone and Tipperary as about 
 those of Durham and Dorset, or even their own. But the two nations— 
 not being homogeneous ; on the contrary, differing widely in race, feel- 
 ing, character, traditions and interests — are altogether incapable of 
 amalgamation. The representation of the weaker in the united legisla- 
 ture must ever be a delusion and a sham. Even if Ireland had an 
 equal number of representatives with England (and this she could not 
 reasonably claim), England, being wealthier and more powerful, would 
 have the advantage in various ways. But Ireland having, as a matter 
 of course, only a small minority in the united legislature, it necessarily 
 follows that, whenever a conflict 0/ interests takes place between the two 
 countries, her representatives must be swamped and her interests must 
 go the wall. This would be inevitable if Irish members of Parliament 
 were all as incorruptible as Aristides. But it is hardly necessary to 
 point out the facilities England possesses for corrupting Irish members 
 of Parliament ; and her desire to corrupt equals her ability. 
 
 Some, indeed, there are who argue that if a democratic republic were 
 proclaimed in the British islands, it would no longer be necessary for the 
 Irish people to seek even the restoration of their separate legislature. 
 The representatives of the English democracy would at length give tardy 
 justice to Ireland. No more thorough fallacy than this was ever uttered. 
 A democratic government and legislature may be just and beneficent to 
 their own people, but to a subject nation, or to a population whose 
 interests differ from those of their own immediate countrymen, they are 
 sure to be unjust and tyrannical. If the principle be true that men are 
 seldom or never just judges in their own case, a democracy or sovereign 
 people will always trample under foot whatever interests come in collision 
 with its own. An odd indivividual may judge justly in his own cause — 
 aggregates of men can hardly ever do so. Indeed, political philosophers 
 have maintained that the rule of an absolute monarch may be more 
 likely to render justice to a subject province than that of a democratic 
 government, If the despot be a tyrant, he will, at least, tyrannize impar- 
 tially over all lands under his sway. If, on the other hand, he should 
 chance, like Trajan and a few others, to be a father of his people, the 
 blessings of his paternal rule will thine on all his provinces alike ; for 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OE IRISH HISTORY. uj 
 
 liis interest and glory are augmented by the prosperity of every part of 
 his empire. ' 
 
 In truth, Ireland, being a distinct nation, can never be happy pr pros- 
 perous while her connection with England subsists. No matter what 
 the form of government common to the two countries may be — whether 
 monarchical, aristocratical or democratic — Ireland, bound to England, 
 must always be miserable and inglorious; living from hand to mouth 
 by temporary shifts and expedients ; the beggar of nations ; the scorn 
 of the civilized world. To enjoy the full advantage of her teeming re- 
 sources, the riches of her soil and the various gifts of her people, Ireland 
 must cast her connection with England to the winds and once more take 
 her place among the free nations of the earth. 
 
 Through the whole of his long career, Daniel O'Connell, the marvel- 
 ous and - instructive story of whose active and varied life I am about to 
 narrate, was manifestly actuated by a strong conviction of the truth of 
 the principles which I have been endeavoring to enunciate. Setting aside 
 for the present all his lesser aims, this illustrious Irishman, from the be- 
 ginning to the end of his public life, kept three grand objects constantly 
 in view : 1st. He desired to emancipate his co-religionists of the 
 Catholic faith, and also the dissenting Protestants, from the civil dis- 
 abilities that oppressed and degraded them ; in other words, he sought 
 to win religious liberty for the vast majority of the Irish people and 
 even for the minority of the English and Scotch. 2d. He aimed at 
 uniting Irishmen of all races and religions into one strong nation. 
 But, 3d, His greatest and noblest ambition was to regain the legislative 
 independence of his country — to make Ireland a free nation once 
 
 again. 
 
 He succeeded in accomplishing the first of these objects. The method 
 by which he conquered was original. Instead of resorting to arms and 
 overthrowing his opponents in the field, he assembled his countrymen 
 in vast public meetings, and brought an immense pressure of public 
 opinion to bear on the hostile government and legislature. But let us 
 bear in mind that ever and anon, behind this peaceful array of popular 
 might, was heard the half-uttered menace of war. If, by a delay of 
 redress of grievances, the patience of the oppressed were at length 
 worn out. why then the people could and would strike. Amid all 
 
IV THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 * ' ■ - ■- . i — ■■--■- - ■ ■ ^ 
 
 O'Connell's pacific protestations and professions of loyalty, ominous 
 words of this sort continually startled his opponents^so much so that, 
 when finally yielding to the demands of the great agitator, the duke of 
 Wellington frankly admitted that he only conceded emancipation to 
 avoid the inevitable alternative of civil war. When I come to relate 
 the story of emancipation in detail, I may suggest to the reader some 
 doubts, at least, as to whether it were not, after all, a misfortune for 
 Ireland that the British government yielded emancipation quietly. In 
 truth, if the Irish people had been obliged to fight for it, some evil con- 
 sequences, that have resulted from the way in which emancipation was 
 achieved, might have been avoided, and the benefits springing from the 
 national victory would in all probability have been far wider in their 
 scope, more ennobling and more durable. 
 
 O'Connell met with only partial success in his endeavors to unite 
 all the various jarring elements of the Irish nation. But in his efforts 
 to achieve the third and noblest object of his ambition he failed com- 
 pletely. After a vast and imposing display, continuing for months, of 
 multitudinous popular masses and of the marvelous dominion, which 
 his transcendent abilities had given him over the popular mind, the 
 seeming might of the repeal movement gradually dwindled away, and, 
 at last, the whole organization dissolved into thin air "like the baseless 
 fabric of a vision;" while the aged chieftain, broken alike in health and 
 heart and power, retired to a foreign land to die. 
 
 And this failure could not be otherwise; seeing the means adopted by 
 O'Connell to achieve his end. His early triumphs, which were won by 
 agitation, caused him to push his theory of " moral force " (to use his 
 own term) to the utmost pitch of exaggeration. If England conceded 
 emancipation peacefully, it was because it really took no power from 
 her ; it simply brought the Catholics within the pale of the Constitu- 
 tion ; perhaps, in certain ways, it rather increased England's power. 
 Besides, a rich and influential portion of the English people participated 
 in the straggle. In the reform agitation the majority of the people of 
 England, Scotland and Ireland united in demanding a reform bill from 
 the government. But the case of repeal was altogether different. This 
 was an international question. England was asked to surrender her 
 dominion over Ireland. Power is seldom or never yielded save to force. 
 
 .J 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 
 
 And what force, adequate to the task of wresting the legislative inde- 
 pendence of Ireland from England, could be found in the mere expres- 
 sion of the public opinion of trampled Ireland ? No portion of the Eng- 
 lish people would help to strengthen this array of Irish public opinion 
 so as to bring the requisite pressure on the hostile majority in parlia- 
 ment. The English populace, supposing they had possessed the power, 
 would have served themselves at the expense of Ireland, and, perhaps, 
 trampled on her rights even more readily than the English aristocracy 
 or middle classes. Besides, toward the close of the agitation for repeal, 
 O'Connell brought forward an abstract proposition which, acted on in 
 good faith, should necessarily deprive the " agitation " system of the only 
 force it ever had — that of the threat held in reserve. The proposition 
 was to the effect, "that, under no circumstances, would an oppressed 
 nation be justified in resorting to arms against the oppressor unless 
 first attacked." In short, the Irish people, naturally one of the most 
 martial upon God'& earth, were called upon to swallow the monstrous 
 and even laughable delusion that England could be induced by mere 
 force of reason and persuasion to give up her hold on Ireland. If the 
 Irish people could possibly have come to believe and act on this princi- 
 ple, the British government need only avoid attacking and they might 
 continue oppressing the Irish to the end of time. His determination to 
 act on this exaggerated theory of " moral force " blighted the closing 
 scenes of O'Connell' s career and ruined the cause of Ireland for the 
 time — so much so that we must hesitate whether, upon the whole, we 
 should deem the life of this most illustrious of all Irish political leaders a 
 success or a failure. In truth, in the history of this "moral-force" delu- 
 sion are to be found the saddest, but not the least instructive, lessons 
 of his extraordinary life ; the chief moral to be derived from which is, 
 that Ireland, to be happy, must be independent, and that to be inde- 
 pendent she must place her sole trust in the God of battles and her 
 own manhood marshaled in the field ! 
 
 Nor can any one reasonably doubt or deny that Ireland has all the 
 elements requisite to form an important independent state. Indeed, few 
 countries are more richly endowed by nature than Ireland with the ele- 
 ments of prosperity and even greatness. She boasts, in the first place, 
 the excellence of her geographical position, so admirably fitted for com- 
 
VI THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 mercial purposes. Indeed, if it be true that nothing in creation exists 
 without design, this position of Ireland would seem to indicate that 
 future generations of Irishmen are destined to a career of commercial 
 activity and greatness. Her situation, placed as she is between the Old 
 World and the New, is one which, like that of Egypt, must remain, for all 
 coming time, in the highest degree adapted for commerce. Ireland is 
 not, in this respect, at the mercy of circumstances, like Venice, whose 
 maritime greatness declined after the discovery of the passage by the 
 Cape of Good Hope. Surely this fortunate position was not given to us 
 in vain. 
 
 Perhaps, if we duly consider the peculiarity of her geographical 
 position, we may be enabled to see why greatness has hitherto been 
 denied to Ireland. Had Ireland become great prior to the discovery and 
 colonization of America, and the subsequent growth of the numerous 
 transatlantic States to maturity, she could have derived no especial 
 profit or advantage from her geographical position, and thus her great- 
 ness would have been imperfect. 
 
 The case to-day is very different. The western world is now full of 
 civilized and powerful States. Ireland might now reap the full advan- 
 tages of her geographical position. 
 
 But Ireland has numerous other advantages. She boasts her splen- 
 did harbors, unequaled by those of most other lands ; her noble rivers ; 
 a favorable climate ; a fertile soil ; scenery of the most varied loveliness ; 
 a vast amount of unemployed resources ; but, above all, she boasts the 
 possession of a hardy population, naturally brave, generous, adven- 
 turous and energetic, gifted with an intelligence of no common order. 
 Indeed, it is impossible for an unprejudiced person to have much inter- 
 course with the Irish, and not to perceive that they are a people singu- 
 larly gifted by nature. The variety and rapid succession of their ideas, 
 their apparent fertility of resources, their readiness of wit, their genial 
 humor, their vivacity of imagination and their facility of expression can- 
 not but strike the most superficial observer. It is no exaggeration to 
 say that the most educated mind might occasionally derive valuable 
 hints and suggestions from the conversation of an Irish peasant, prompted 
 only by his shrewd native intelligence or mother-wit. Viewing this 
 happy combination of natural advantages with which Ireland is blessed, 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. Vli 
 
 it is hardly rash to infer that a just Providence has destined he) 1 , come 
 when it will, for a career of unexampled glory and good fortune ; though 
 up to the present, all her blessings have been turned to no account, and 
 (he contrast between the brilliant gifts of Ireland and her people and the 
 misery of their fate be one of the most singular and unaccountable in all 
 history. 
 
 I shall not waste much time in endeavoring to refute the opinion of 
 those who think, or pretend to think, that Ireland would, under no cir 
 cumstances, be able to win her independence. The question, Whethei 
 Ireland be able to throw off the yoke of England? has been discussed 
 over and over nsquc ad nauseam. From the days of Tone and Emmet to 
 those of Davis and O'Brien, and even to the present time, numbers o ( 
 Irish patriotic writers of the greatest ability have shown conclusivcl'" 
 that the idea of regaining our independence, so far from being chimeri- 
 cal, is in reality the only practical idea for Irishmen to entertain, if they 
 wish to make their country what she ought to be — prosperous, happy and 
 renowned. In connection with this subject I shall only make three 
 additional observations : 
 
 1st. Ireland is still, after all the drain of emigration (such is the 
 recuperative power of the Irish race), relatively one of the most popu- 
 lous countries in the world. Absolutely, she is still more populous than 
 the following independent states of Europe — Belgium, Holland, Den- 
 mark, Greece, including the Ionian isles, Portugal, Switzerland, and 
 Sweden and Norway taken together. I omit mentioning some European 
 countries not independent; also many barbarous or semi-barbarous 
 states in Asia and Africa. As in population, so in superficial extent. 
 Ireland exceeds all the states I have mentioned, save the kingdoms of 
 Sweden and Norway, and perhaps Portugal. She is even nearly a fourth 
 larger than Holland and Belgium taken together. 
 
 2d. I shall shortly observe that, even to the most careless and super- 
 ficial of historical students, from numerous examples of past history, the 
 broad general principle must be manifest, that' nations of less extent 
 than Ireland, or less populous, or both, when fired by patriotic enthu- 
 siasm, can resist the might of colossal empires and wrest from them, not 
 merely privileges and rights more or less important, but even inde- 
 pendence itself. 
 
Vlll THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 3d. It is hardly necessary to add that, if Ireland once succeeded in 
 achieving her independence, she could have no difficulty in maintaining 
 it, permanently. When Prussia, in the last century, under Frederick the 
 Great, bore up, for the most part single-handed, against all continental 
 Europe, and not merely maintained her independence, but held fast her 
 conquests in an iron gripe, her population and resources were as nothing 
 compared to what an independent Ireland would have ; and the configu- 
 ration of Prussia, so far from being, like that of Ireland, favorable for 
 defensive purposes, is precisely the reverse. 
 
 In order to enable the reader to grasp the full significance of his 
 career, I deem it necessary, before I commence the biography of Daniel 
 O'Connell, to take a rapid survey of some of the principal features of 
 Irish history from the earliest period, but more especially from the Eng- 
 lish invasion, in the twelfth century, to the year 1775 — the year when 
 O'Connell was born. Once, however, I commence the biography prop- 
 erly so called, reflection and disquisition must give way to narrative. 
 As far as it may be practicable, I shall make O'Connell tell his own tale, 
 and, for the most part, leave the reader to draw from the story his own 
 moral. 
 
 ' Nearly all writers agree that the great curse of Ireland, in every age, 
 lias been her disunion. Long before the Anglo-Norman invasion, even 
 before the Danish invasions, while Ireland was yet untrodden by the 
 loot of hostile stranger, her people were rent asunder and weakened by 
 intestine strife. The ard-righ (supreme monarch) was generally at war 
 with one or more of his rebellious tributary chieftains. The chieftains, 
 when not in rebellion against the ard-righ, were fighting with each 
 other and devastating each other's lands. The history of Ireland for 
 centuries is a history of endless predatory incursions of tribe against 
 tribe, continual aggressions and continual retaliations. The ard-righ 
 so far from laboring, on all occasions, to suppress this internecine strife, 
 was himself frequently the chief promoter of discord. So hopelessly 
 unsettled was the state of society, so devoid were the chiefs and people 
 of just notions of subordination and government, of obedience in ex- 
 change for protection, of the necessity, for the general weal, of uniformly 
 supporting the ruler out of the national resources, that it is possible the 
 supreme monarchs came, at length, to view it as a matter of interest 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. ix 
 
 and even absolute necessity, to wring, by the strong hand, whatever 
 i hey could from their insolent and lawless tributaries. Indeed, it is 
 hard to explain the reigns of many of these monarchs on any rational 
 principle. A king succeeds to the throne by murdering his predecessor. 
 Issuing from Meath (or whichever territory may be his immediate patri- 
 mony), he successively invades all the other provinces; plunders and 
 ravages Ulster, Minister, Leinster and Connaught impartially ; fights a 
 number of battles ruinous to the interests of the whole country, and, 
 from every rational point of view, utterly inglorious. He occasionally 
 gives a little variety to a career of slaughter by robbing and burning a 
 few churches. His death is in keeping with his life. He is either 
 knocked on the head in battle, or is else assassinated by the prince 
 destined to succeed him, who is the son of his murdered predecessor and 
 the representative of the second branch of the royal race. This prince, 
 in his turn, goes through a similar career of slaughter and sacrilege, to 
 meet a similar fate. This picture can hardly be called an overcharged 
 one. Long periods of the history of Ireland, prior to the English inva- 
 sion, present little more than a monotonous and dreary repetition of this 
 tale of murder, battle and wholesale plunder. Sometimes it requires a 
 considerable effort of the imagination to understand how any rational 
 being could consent to assume the unquiet, thankless, fatal office of ard- 
 righ of Ireland. But, after all, man seeks, at any cost, even the shadow 
 of supreme dignity ; and, once he becomes familiarized Avith them, he is 
 easily reconciled to almost any circumstances or condition of life ; he 
 even manages to find himself at home and indifferent in prison or amid 
 pestilence. Perhaps our ancient princes came gradually to view a vio- 
 lent death as the natural close of an Irish king's career. Be this as it 
 may, few of thein died in their beds. When not murdered or killed in 
 battle, these peculiarly unlucky sovereigns were almost sure to be 
 drowned or to meet their deaths in some other accidental way. It is 
 perhaps somewhat touching to read that, among the small minority 
 who escaped violent deaths, a few, wearied out by their violent lives, 
 sought, in their latter days, quiet, and rest, and reconciliation with their 
 God in the seclusion of the cloister. 
 
 In truth, even to a very recent period the Irish people have seldom 
 or never been able to grasp in their minds the large idea of a united 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 Irish nation. The want of this broad and comprehensive idea is at the 
 root of all their misfortunes, both of ancient and modern date. Though 
 the patriarchal clan system of our forefathers was more or less suitable 
 to a primitive age ; though, looking at its poetic side, the life and 
 manners it developed were more or less genial and picturesque ; though 
 many of the kings and clan chieftains, however tierce and rugged, were, 
 at least, genuine men, fit for then- time, stout, manly and true, — yet, in 
 spite of these bright and attractive features, it had, among many other 
 serious delects, the ruinous one of a perpetual tendency to break up the 
 nation into smaller and smaller fragments. It was generally easy 
 enough for one of the younger scions of a chieftain's house, if aspiring 
 and energetic, to gather around him a portion of the clan and set up on 
 his own account a chieftaincy more or less independent. Thus all 
 cohesion was nearly at an end. Nor did even the presence of a common 
 enemy on their soil suffice to band the Irish people in a common strug- 
 gle for freedom, either when the Danes or the Anglo-Normans invaded 
 their country. Properly speaking, indeed, one can scarcely say that an 
 I pish people existed in the days Ave speak of, for each clan hardly looked 
 beyond the narrow compass of what it deemed its own immediate inter- 
 ests. Hence the tribes hardly ever scrupled to form alliances with the 
 stranger against their own countrymen, if only they fancied they could 
 profit themselves by so doing. They seemed to regard the foreigners 
 merely in the light of an additional clan with which they might, from 
 time to time, have to join battle or strike up a league. Occasionally we 
 find even the supreme monarch joining, without any apparent hesita- 
 tion, in an alliance with the Danes against his tributary chieftains and 
 their clans. 
 
 No doubt the history of various other countries, in many periods, has 
 been disfigured by the frequent occurrence of scenes of internal discord ; 
 but, nevertheless, it may be doubted if, anywhere, disunion and domestic 
 strife occurred incessantly as in Ireland. One is tempted to regret that 
 the Romans, in their ages of victory and conquest, did not come to 
 Innisfail and subdue it like the rest of Europe. A conquest by the 
 Romans, consolidated in their usual fashion, would, at least, have abol- 
 ished the independent jurisdiction of the chiefs and the almost separate 
 existence of the clans. Even if the Danes had succeeded in completely 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. xi 
 
 subjugating the island and establishing a Danish dynasty on the Irish 
 throne, a similar unification would have been brought about, and the 
 fortunes of Ireland might have turned out better. Lord Lyttleton, in 
 his history of Henry II., suggests that in this case Ireland might have 
 proved a formidable commercial rival to England. Doubtless the effects 
 of such a conquest would, at the worst, have been far less disastrous 
 than those which have resulted from the Anglo-Xorman yoke. As the 
 conquerors, or their immediate posterity, at all events, would inevitably 
 have ceased to own allegiance to the distant realms of Scandinavia, 
 Ireland would at least have enjoyed a separate existence. 
 
 Lest I may be thought by some to have exaggerated in these 
 general statements the extent of the disunion that prevailed among 
 our forefathers, I shall here give, as concisely as I can, a few in- 
 stances in support of my assertions, which will be found to apply 
 equally to the semi-mythical as to the authentic portions of our 
 histoiy. To begin with the more ancient and dubious periods, we 
 may read in one place of eight successive kings, each gaining the 
 throne by the murder of his predecessor, and, a little after, of thirteen 
 monarchs in succession meeting violent deaths. Coming down to 
 Ugony the Great, we find that after a long and victorious reign of forty 
 years he was slain by Badblihchadh. He, in turn, was immediately 
 slain by Laeghaire Lore, the son of Ugony. Again, Laeghaire Lore was 
 slain two years after, at Wexford, by Cobthach Cael Breagh. The reign 
 of this latter prince was long, but finally he was defeated and killed 
 near Leighlin bridge, on the west bank of the Barrow. His conqueror, 
 Labraidh Loingseach, a celebrated hero of tradition, succeeded, but he, 
 too, was slain ; and the fate of his five immediate successors was similar. 
 The next king, Connla the Comely, was peculiarly lucky, for he man- 
 aged to die in his bed, in the old seat of Milesian royalty, Tara, after 
 reigning twenty years. He did not, however, transmit his luck to his 
 four immediate successors, who all met violent deaths. Another fortu- 
 nate prince succeeded, Aengus by name, who reigned long and died 
 quietly in Tara. His four successors also were slain. Then Kory the 
 Great reigned long and died a natural death. But his six successors 
 perished by the sword ! 
 
 Passing over a long period, during which the throne is generally won 
 
I — 
 i r 
 
 Xll THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CCXNNELL. 
 
 by some deed of violence, and during which few kings die in their beds — 
 passing over the strange story of a revolution which is said for a time 
 to have given the mastery of the island to a serf-race, called the Atta- 
 cotti, and in the course of which the Milesian nobility are said to have 
 been almost exterminated — passing over, too, the great hero of legendary 
 tradition, Conn of the hundred battles, who had the usual fate of an 
 Irish king, having been treacherously slain, and a long line of his suc- 
 cessors, who, if they did not lose their lives in battle, by poison, drown- 
 ing, a stroke of lightning (this was the fate of Dathy in the Alps) or 
 some other accidental death, fell by the hand of treachery, like himself — 
 hurrying over the scenes and events of the remoter ages, — we arrive at 
 the era of Christianity, after which Irish history gradually becomes more 
 authentic. 
 
 The life of St. Patrick extends over the latter part of the fourth cen- 
 tury and the greater portion of the fifth. His apostleship in Ireland 
 commenced about the year of our Lord 432, in the reign of King Leagh- 
 aire, and he died toward the end of the fifth century, at an extreme old 
 age. His life was one of singular sanctity and of extraordinary labors 
 for the conversion of the Irish people, nearly all of which were crowned 
 with success the most complete and glorious. There is one peculiarity 
 about the religious revolution which this saint brought about. Strange 
 to say, considering the fierce and stormy scenes and events of our secu- 
 lar history, from beginning to end it was altogether peaceful in its prog- 
 ress. Singular contrast! but so it was. In the early stages of the 
 saint's mission, when his followers were but few, the pagans made no 
 attempt to persecute the scanty band of Christians. Nor, when the 
 Christians triumphed and in their turn rose to power, did they make 
 the least attempt to root out the remnant of the pagans by violence, but 
 trusted for their eventual conversion to mildness and persuasion. Ire- 
 laud, indeed, is one of the few countries (I had almost said the only one) 
 that received Christianity peacefully. An unique glory this ! What a 
 wonderful contrast between the introduction of Christianity into pagan 
 Ireland and its early struggles in pagan Kome, Avhere not merely em- 
 perors, who were human monsters, like Nero, but good rulers, like Tra- 
 jan, and wise ones, like Diocletian, tried the Church with no less than 
 ten fiery persecutions.' This absence of burnings, tortures, massacres, 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. siii 
 
 on the part either of the pagans or Christians, during the conversion oi 
 the Irish, reflects equal honor on saint and people. The whole aspect 
 of the revolution and its results show clearly what mildness, amiability, 
 temper, tact, judgment, persuasive power and goodness of every kind St. 
 Patrick must have possessed, otherwise he could never have prevailed 
 over so many fierce and haughty princes and their warlike people so 
 easily. Doubtless the old Druidical paganism must have been well- 
 nigh worn out. Doubtless, too, the patriarchal chiefs once won over, 
 their clansmen or children would be likely to follow their example. 
 Still the difficulties were great ; and these difficulties were vastly en- 
 hanced by the fact that the Irish were a peculiar and primitive people, 
 totally ignorant of the Roman customs, language and letters, to which 
 St. Patrick and his followers were used from their birth. The calm 
 nature of the revolution proves also that, however unfortunate circum- 
 stances came to render the history of Ireland a long series of scenes ^»f 
 turbulence and disorder, too often red with the blood of mutually- 
 destroying kinsmen, still the character of the Irish people was at bot- 
 tom amiable and good-hearted. The late Count de Montalembert, in 
 the very interesting life of our countryman, Saint Columbanus, the great 
 restorer of religious purity in France, given in his admirable work, " The 
 Monks of the West," dwells with the warmest praise on the purity im- 
 planted in the Irish character by the teachings of the venerable Gaulish 
 apostle. He calls it a purity unparalleled in other nations. He dwells 
 on the fact that this primitive purity of manners, so deeply rooted in the 
 souls of the Irish, has, along with their incomparable faith, been preserved 
 unstained from the time of St. Patrick to the present day, and this 
 through the most terrible trials of fire and sword. How deeply im- 
 planted must have been the saint's teachings ! Is it any marvel that 
 his name and memory are still as freshly cherished as ever in the heart 
 and on the lips of the Irish people? The simple, straightforward, 
 earnest men of the early ages are the heroes that live longest in the 
 popular mind of nations. Even mythical beings of the hoary traditions 
 of eld are loved as real men, for they, at least, represent earnest and 
 heroic ideas, and even deeds. When the names of numberless highly- 
 vaunted heroes of the more artificial jieriods, of whose lives volumes of 
 minute detail have been written, sound in men's ears only as faint and 
 
far-off echoes of a forgotten past, the name of St. Patrick, of whose life 
 few details in comparison are known, will still exercise over the Irish 
 nice the potent influences of a spell. 
 
 Count de Montalembert dwells also on the missionary impulse given 
 to the Irish by St. Patrick's teachings — an impulse which remained in 
 full vigor for more than a century. In truth, during this time Ireland 
 was the abode of learning and the most famous school of learned mis- 
 sionaries. One would expect to find the whole history of the people 
 assuming a milder aspect, but the facts disappoint all such expectation. 
 Unhappily, the old strife and disorder continue in spite of advancing 
 arts and learning. And it is curious that the learning and the arts 
 were able to exist and struggle on in spite of the strife and the disorder. 
 
 During the life of St. Patrick, King Oilioll Molt, the son of Dathy 
 and successor of Leaghaire, was slain at the battle of Olha, in Heath, 
 by Lughaidh, the son of Leaghaire, who then mounted the throne. II 
 was in the fifteenth year of the reign of Lughaidh that the saint died. 
 Like Dathy, this prince was killed by a flash of lightning. The next 
 prince was burned to death, and several successive monarchs also per- 
 is! icd by violent deaths. Such was the uniform aspect of the history 
 of Ireland in the years that followed the introduction of Christianity, in 
 spite of its humanizing influences, and such our history continued down 
 to the ninth century. Two or three kings may have died in their beds. 
 Nial Frosach dies a monk in Iona. Flaithbheartach also wearies of the 
 rough career of king, and seeks the quiet of monastic life at Armagh. 
 But nearly all are slain. Of course we have any amount of internecine 
 raids and combats. We hear of O'Neills ravaging Leinster five times 
 in one year. Ard-righ Congall makes a raid, on a large scale, on his 
 tributaries of Leinster, and paternally exacts tribute and spoil from 
 them ; he also defeats his liegeman of Cinel Eoghain. Ard-righ Aedh 
 Allan vanquishes the Ulidians and kills their prince at Faughard, in 
 Louth. He crushes Leinster in the great battle of Ballyshannon, not 
 far from Kilcullen, in Kildare county. His forces kill, they say, 
 9000 Leinster men; he himself slays in single combat the son of his 
 tributary, the king of Leinster. Finally, Aedh Allan loses life and 
 crown in a battle at Kells. Another paternal ard-righ, Donchad, the 
 son of Domhnall, ravages Leinster and Hunster, one after the other, 
 
r — " — ■ 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. XV 
 
 with fire and sword, and also favors the midland and northern districts 
 with predatory incursions. This fortunate prince contrives, however, to 
 reign twenty-seven years, and to die, at the sufficiently ripe age of sixty- 
 four, in the odor of sanctity. Such were events till the close of the 
 eighth or beginning of the ninth century. By this time hordes of Scan- 
 dinavian pirates had begun to visit our shores, and of course matters 
 grew infinitely worse, for the Danes, wherever they came, ravaged with- 
 out mercy, sparing neither sex nor age, and the Irish, Aveakcned and 
 worn-out by domestic strife and disorders, were hardly in a condition to 
 repel invaders. 
 
 During the calamitous period of the Danish invasions learning and 
 the arts, as was only natural, began to decline. The pictures presented 
 by our annals grow blacker at every page. The Danes make sudden 
 descents, and plunder monasteries, shrines, churches. They commit 
 wanton massacres without ruth. Yet Irish chiefs, for selfish ends, 
 repeatedly join with them against their countrymen, and sometimes 
 e\ en rival them in pillaging churches. Such a one was Cineadh, lord 
 of Cianachta-Breagh. He, aided by these sea-rovers, rose against King 
 Malachy, in 848, and robbed the churches and ravaged the lands of the 
 Hy-Niall from the Shannon to the sea. Next year, however, he met 
 with fitting poetic justice, for he was drowned in the Nanny, a small 
 river of Meath that flowed through his own land, by the followers of 
 the king. We find even supreme monarchs, during this gloomy time, 
 instead of trying to band their people against the stranger, still warring 
 against and wasting their tributaries. Thus, in 804, King Aedh Oir- 
 nidhe devastates Leinster twice in one month. In 815 he overran 
 Meath and Ulidia, and again invaded Leinster. It may be here 
 remarked that not till this prince's reign were Irish ecclesiastics 
 exempted from miltary service in these predatory hostings. Flan Sinna, 
 another ard-righ, and apparently a prince not without high and gener- 
 ous qualities, was not even content with plundering his tributaries ; he 
 went so far as to join the foreigners in ravaging expeditions against 
 Minister and the North. Battles, massacres, burnings, maraudings and 
 sacrilege fill the picture of the times. Learning, indeed, though declin- 
 ing fast, sometimes tried to rally. It was in the year 908 that Cormac 
 Mac Cuileannan, the learned and good though rash king and bishop 
 
X\l THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 of Minister, unfortunately perished in one of those miserable scenes of 
 internecine strife. 
 
 Doubtless the supreme kings were not always to blame for these 
 attacks on their tributaries. They were often provoked by insubordina- 
 tion. And, at all events, it should not be forgotten that several princes 
 endeavored to do their duty in these dark times more or less success- 
 fully. 
 
 The Danes were wholly unable to effect a thorough or permanent 
 conquest of the island. The names of Malachy, in the ninth century, 
 and, above all, of the magnanimous Muircheartach Mac Neill, prince of 
 Aileach and heir-elect to the ard-righ Donchad, in the tenth, deserve 
 to be held in honorable recollection. The former regained or saved the 
 independence of the country; the latter endeavored to subdue the North- 
 men and their provincial allies. He seemed to have some idea of an 
 Ireland presenting a united front to the foreigner. He also gave an 
 example of subordination (the thing most wanted in Ireland) by being 
 loyal to the weak ard-righ Donchad. Unfortunately, the virtues of this 
 generous, gallant and large-souled prince brought him no superior for- 
 tune, for on the 26th of March, 943, he was slain at Ardec, by Blacaire, 
 son of Godfrey, king of the invaders. 
 
 But we now arrive at the age of another Malachy, great-grandson of 
 Flan, and his great contemporary and rival, Brian Boroihme. Both 
 these princes were able and patriotic — the latter, indeed, a man of 
 energy and talents of the highest order. We find Malachy sometimes 
 like former kings, attacking his tributaries, but we see him more fre- 
 quently in arms against the Danes. For a while we find him in alliance 
 with Brian against these foreigners ; this alliance, however, is of short 
 duration ; jealousy rises between the two. But the star of Brian 
 becomes the lord of the ascendant ; after a struggle for a time of vary- 
 ing fortune, Brian compels Aedh O'Neill, heir-apparent to the throne, to 
 confess his supremacy and Malachy to yield him the crown of Ireland. 
 
 Brian Boroihme seems to have made a nearer approach to the con- 
 solidation of the monarchy than any former king. The petty princes 
 were reduced to subordination. Many wise and good regulations were 
 made. The tributes necessary to sustain his power were exacted, but, 
 on the other hand, obedience was conciliated by profuse hospitably and 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. XY11 
 
 liberal gifts. Brian's death, at an advanced age, was worthy alike of a 
 king and a patriot. He fell, victorious over the foes of his country, at 
 Clontarf, on Good Friday, the 23d of April, 1014. On this day of tri- 
 umph and of grief for Ireland, which witnessed sueh a glorious termina- 
 tion of Brian's reign and life, the power of the Danes in Ireland and 
 their hopes of conquest were broken for eYer. A few of their settle- 
 ments on the coasts remained, but. they were no longer menacing, and 
 no successful, or even very formidable, Danish in\ r asion occurred alter 
 Clontarf. Indeed, long before the close of the century the Danes had 
 altogether ceased to pursue the career of sea-roYers. 
 
 JS T o other permanent good result, however, followed from the vigorous 
 reign of Brian. Indeed, Dr. Petrie, Moore and others appear even to 
 think that his usurpation, or at least assumption, of the dignity of ard- 
 righ went far to destroy the last feeble bond of union or cohesion that 
 existed in the political system of Ireland, inasmuch as it interrupted, or 
 rather put an end to, the regular succession of the two branches of the 
 royal dynasty. Brian was, indeed, worthy of the position he won; and 
 if he had succeeded, during his lifetime, in a thorough unification of Ire- 
 land, and had established the succession in his family, and if his pos- 
 terity had possessed anything like his own vigor of character, his so- 
 called usurpation would have been a blessing to Ireland for genera- 
 tions, perhaps for ever. But, unfortunately, he established no dynasty. 
 On his death his rival Malachy, apparently with general approval, 
 resumed the title of supreme monarch. He reigned for eight years after 
 the battle of Clontarf, displaying great valor and energy in his combats, 
 both with his Irish tributaries and the Danish settlers, distinguishing 
 himself also by deeds of charity, showing clearly that he was one of 
 those who could profit by adversity. This venerable monarch died in 
 his seventy-fourth year, on the 2d of September, 1022. 
 
 But after the death of Malachy it became perfectly plain that the 
 regular succession was at an end for ever. Indeed, there were scarcely 
 any more supreme monarchs. We read of an interregnum occurring 
 more than once between the death of Malachy and the English invasion; 
 and when, during this period, princes did assume the title of ard-righ, 
 their right to the supreme authority appears, in most instances, not to 
 have been universally acknowledged. They are generally styled nomi- 
 
XV111 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 nal or resisted kings. For seventy years, at least, this state of things 
 lasted, nor during this period was the Feis or national assembly called 
 together. The mutual jealousies of the chiefs all through the island 
 were more inveterate than ever. In short, the old story is repeated in 
 a worse form. Teigue, son of Brian, is slain through the perfidious 
 prompting of his brother Donchadh. This last prince, after a life of 
 selfish ambition and rapine, retires . to a monastery in Borne. We read 
 of a Diarmid Mac Mael-na-mbo, king of Leinster, called by some a 
 supreme monarch ; a Turlough O'Brien, king of Minister, also claiming 
 the title of monarch of Ireland ; later we read of Muircheartach O'Brian 
 and his powerful rival Domlmall O'Lochlinn, two princes who, along 
 with the fierceness characteristic of the times, possessed many fine and 
 manly qualities. Immediately after these the most stirring character 
 in Ireland is Turlough O'Connor, king of Connaught. All these princes 
 arrogated to themselves, with more or less recognition throughout the 
 island, the dignity of ard-righ, and they all, like the earlier kings, pursued 
 a course of internecine strife and rapine. Roderick O'Connor suc- 
 ceeded his father, Turlough, as king of Connaught. After a long con- 
 test for the supreme power with Muircheartach O'Lochlainn, king of 
 Ulster, who had been acknowledged ard-righ, Boderick finally suc- 
 ceeded in attaining the height of his ambition. Muircheartach. who 
 had qualities deserving of a better fate, was slain in battle, and Bod- 
 erick became undisputed monarch of Ireland. He was our last ard- 
 righ. 
 
 All these disorders necessarily reduced Ireland to an extreme degreo 
 of weakness. It is manifest, then, that few permanent advantages 
 flowed from the reign of Brian Boiroihme, or the great crowning victory 
 of his life at Clontarf. It may not be much out of place to notice here 
 that a whimsical, though clover, English writer of the present day, the 
 Beverend Dr. Kingsley, people's man and court-chaplain, pretends, in 
 his novel of "Hereward," or in a note to a passage of that work, to 
 doubt, or even denies, that any such victory over the Danes was ever 
 achieved by the Irish. What his authority for this denial may be 1 
 know not. Fossibly his blindness to facts is caused by his dislike of 
 the Irish name, which, to judge from many passages in his voluminous 
 writings, is rabid and rancorous. This reverend gentleman has been 
 
1'RELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. xix 
 
 styled the Christian Socialist from some absurd speculations in his 
 novel of "Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet," one of the most silly and 
 repulsive stories ever written. But returning from this digression con- 
 cerning the reverend courtier and socialist's historical doubts, it is quite 
 plain that the condition of Ireland, when Roderick began to reign, was 
 one of such weakness and exhaustion as left her little strength to repel 
 any fresh invasion that might occur. Agriculture must have been grow- 
 ing less and less every day. A pastoral state of society alone was com- 
 patible with such confusion and strife. Hence, too, the population, if it 
 did not actually dwindle, would remain stationary. Indeed, the whole 
 state of society in Ireland had retrograded greatly since the first incur- 
 sions of the Danes. Letters and the arts had, of course, upon the whole, 
 declined, though, occasionally, learning would seem to rally and even 
 flourish in the monasteries. Students still came to the schools of Ire- 
 land from other lands, and Ireland could yet boast bards and chroni- 
 clers and sainted sages like St. Malachy, the friend of St. Bernard. 
 It has ever been a trait in the Irish character deserving of unqualified 
 praise that, even in an unsettled state of society, and amid civil discord 
 and disturbances of all sorts, the Irish are inclined to respect and pro- 
 tect men devoted to the pursuit of learning. 
 
 It is not, then, very surprising that when, in 11G9 and the following- 
 year, the treason of Diarmaid Mae Murchadha to his native country 
 brought over Strongbow, Fitzstephen and Raymond le Gros, with the 
 first bands of Anglo-Norman adventurers, those well-disciplined war- 
 riors, acting in concert, skillfully led, in every respect well appointed — 
 the knights and men-at-arms in complete steel of proof; the archers 
 unerring marksmen, — it is not, I say, surprising that those well-trained 
 warriors encountered at first but slight resistance from the disunited 
 clans of Ireland, all armed with indifferent offensive weapons, wanting 
 defensive armor, ill-disciplined and unskillfully led. English writers 
 tell us of Irish hosts defeated by the valor of mere handfuls of the in- 
 vaders, but, in reality, those Irish armies were little better than mobs 
 in our own time ; and considering how small the population of Ireland 
 must have been at that date, the conclusion is inevitable that their 
 numbers have been absurdly exaggerated. To crown the misfortunes 
 of Ireland, she had no patriot leader to whom the whole island could 
 
I — 
 
 i r 
 
 XX THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 look with confidence. The character of King Eoderick seems to have 
 been feeble and vacillating ; he was, at all events, wholly unequal to the 
 crisis. When, in 1171, Henry II. of England landed in person with a 
 large force, Eoderick made no resistance whatever, but tamely sub- 
 mitted and acknowledged the English king as his lord-paramount. 
 
 But almost from the fatal day of this disgraceful submission down 
 to the present hour the history of Ireland and the Irish race has been a 
 history of revolts against the dominion of England. Shortly after the 
 first surprise and panic, Irish valor began to rally and rebel. The 
 country was disputed with the invading race inch by inch. The Nor- 
 man barons, too, from time to time rose in rebellion against the king 
 of England; but for a long period these barons sought, in their revolts, 
 mere selfish, not national, objects. In truth, the English kings were, if 
 possible, less the enemies of the original Irish than the early Norman 
 chieftains of Ireland. In course of time, however, things changed, and 
 many of the Norman families intermarried with the old race, and, adopt- 
 ing their language and customs, are said to have gradually become 
 "more Irish than the Irish themselves." At least, numbers of them 
 struck, century after century, against the English rule as vigorously as 
 the fie "est of the Celts. English power began to reel and give ground 
 before ikose incessant rebellions. Donald O'Brien was one of the ear- 
 liest chiefs who curbed the invaders. He is the most prominent figure 
 among the Irish chieftains in the history of the twelfth century. In the 
 thirteenth century we find O'Neills, O'Connors O'Briens, O'Donnells 
 and other Irish chieftains repeatedly combating the English, some- 
 times victorious, sometimes vanquished; but, unhappily, we also find 
 them repeatedly fighting with each other, and even frequently in alli- 
 ance with the English. In the fourteenth century the English authority 
 in Ireland was far more seriously menaced. In the first half of the century, 
 Robert Bruce, king of Scotland, flushed with his glorious victory of Ban- 
 nockburn, by which he had delivered his country from the same cruel 
 yoke against which the Irish were for ever struggling, listened favorably 
 to the entreaties of the northern Irish chieftains, who proposed, if he 
 would lend them assistance against their oppressors, to confer the crown 
 of Ireland upon his brother, Edward Bruce. On the 26th of May, 1315, 
 the latter prince landed on the coast of Antrim with a force amounting 
 
to about G000 men. The northern Irish rallied round him. lister M-as 
 won. He was proclaimed king of Ireland, and afterward solemnly 
 crowned at Dundalk. His brother, King Robert, came to his aid. For 
 a while everything seemed to promise fairly for Ireland's independence, 
 but fortune turned. The good king Robert was compelled to return to 
 Scotland, and, finally, his gallant and adventurous brother was defeated 
 and slain on the 14th of October, 1318, at the disastrous battle of Fau- 
 ghard, near Dundalk; and thus what appeared a grand opportunity for 
 regaining Ireland's independence came to nothing. 
 
 In the latter part of this century another formidable enemj of Eng- 
 lish power arose. I allude to the celebrated Art Macmorough. From 
 1377, when he succeeded his father as prince of Leinster, to 1J 17, when 
 he died, not without some suspicion of poison, this indomitable chieftain 
 held his own against the common enemies of himself and his country. 
 Art seems to have possessed the noblest and most generous qualities, 
 but though far superior to any Irish leader whom the English had yet 
 encountered, he never, any more than his predecessors or contempo- 
 raries, grasped in his mind the broad idea of an united Irish nation. 
 He strove, indeed, with unconquerable energy and skilful policy, and 
 not without merited success, to guard the independence of his an- 
 cestral principality, and no doubt he felt the keen, fierce delight of a 
 patriot warrior in again and again discomfiting the forces of the hated 
 stranger, but we have few or no grounds for thinking that he ever 
 meditated or hoped to achieve a thorough overthrow of the English 
 dominion in Ireland. Perhaps, indeed, such a design was at the time 
 impracticable, considering the probably diminished numbers of the old 
 race, their increasing misery and disorder, above all, their constant 
 divisions and narrow jealousies. In all these wars only fractions of the 
 Irish people strove against the enemy, and the enemy was generally 
 assisted by other sections of the suffering nation. 
 
 Through the remainder of the fifteenth and early half of the six- 
 teenth centuries similar struggles and similar divisions continue, Irish 
 chieftains battling fiercely against the hated Saxon, Irish chieftains 
 making base alliances with the Saxon ; worse still, members of the same 
 sept arrayed against each other. But a somewhat compensating feature 
 begins to manifest itself. A large proportion of the descendants of the 
 
Xli THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 early and even later Anglo-Norman settlers have become thoroughly 
 Irish, or, as some say, "ipsis Hibernicis Hiberniores" ("more Irish than 
 the Irish themselves"). They have almost wholly abandoned the habits 
 of their forefathers, and adopted, instead, the garb and customs, lan- 
 guage and ideas of the Celts. They adopt fosterage and gossipred; 
 give their children to Irish nurses, and become godfathers to the off- 
 spring of their retainers. In defiance of Saxon law they take to their 
 bosoms Irish wives. They patronize bard and brehon. But, above all, 
 they begin to hate and defy the English foreigner, and take every oppor- 
 tunity to rebel against his authority. We have Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, 
 better remembered as "Silken Thomas," in hot rebellion against Henry 
 VIII. We have the earls of Desmond, the chiefs of the Minister Fitz- 
 geralds, at one time secretly negotiating for an invasion of Ireland with 
 Francis I. of France, at a later period carrying on protracted wars 
 against the sovereigns of England. We have Geraldines of Desmond 
 and Geraldines of Kildare losing their heads on the scaffold. We have, 
 of course, frequent instances of English perfidy. 
 
 But during the fifteenth century even the lords of the pale (as the 
 territory round Dublin that held the English colony was styled) begin to 
 show some occasional signs of disaffection to England. When Sir Eich- 
 ard Edgecomb came to Ireland as king's commissioner in 1488, he pre- 
 sumed to remonstrate, in a menacing tone, with certain refractory lords 
 of the pale, upon which they made the spirited answer that, rather than 
 yield to any arbitrary proposals or restraints, they would take part with 
 the native Irish against their king. Singular to say, London itself was 
 filled with rude alarms by an Irishman during the disturbed reign of 
 Henry VI. Shakespeare has given, in the second part of Henry VI., a 
 wonderfully vivid picture of the revolt, headed by Jack Cade, which for 
 a brief season terrified the citizens of London. As might be expected, 
 Shakespeare's scenes are not merely true as the old chronicles to the 
 whimsical characters and incidents of Cade's insurrection, but they are 
 an image, more or less faithful, of all mob tumults. In Ireland, English 
 power was in those days rapidly dwindling into complete insignificance. 
 In 1423 the Ulster chieftains totally defeated the lord deputy and the 
 English forces. When peace was subsequently made, it was only on the 
 condition that the English should bind themselves to pay a tribute. 
 
I r 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 
 
 XX1U 
 
 called "Black Rent," to the victors. Some time about the year 1471 
 the English settlers were in so precarious a state, and felt their hold on 
 Irish soil so insecure, that they thought it necessary to form a defensive 
 military brotherhood — styled the "Brothers of St. George" — consisting 
 of fourteen loyal men of rank, selected from the four counties of the pale, 
 Dublin, Kildare, Meath and Louth. For a time the captain of the fra- 
 ternity had under his command a standing power of 200 men. But at 
 a later period, from lack of means, it was reduced to 120 troopers, and 
 for the support of even this small band the English settlers were obliged 
 to look for aid to England. 
 
 Indeed, the English pale about 1531, or near four centuries from the 
 so-called conquest, had grown so "fine by degrees and beautifully less" 
 that it could no longer be said to comprehend within its limits even the 
 four counties around Dublin. There is reason to believe that, at this 
 time, English laws, government, organization, language and usages 
 hardly prevailed in any direction beyond twenty miles from Dublin. 
 Nor did the partisans of English rule feel that their hold upon even this 
 limited territory was a bit too secure. They complained that English 
 lords took Irish tenants, and that the "Black Rent" was paid to certain 
 Irish chiefs. Upon the whole, even in the sixteenth century, the old 
 Celtic form of society still held sway in Ireland. Many of the Norman 
 lords, as I have already intimated, spoke the Irish language, adopted 
 Irish habits, and even went so far as to assume Celtic prefixes to their 
 names (thus the De Burghos called themselves Mac Williams) and to be- 
 come veritable chiefs of clans. All attempts to introduce the English 
 innovations, however backed by penal laws or the sword, failed to van- 
 quish the stubbornness with which the people of the ancient race and 
 the Anglo-Norman Irish,.whom they from time to time absorbed, clung 
 to their primitive and unique form of civilization. This Celtic civilization, 
 w T ith its peculiar manners, traditions, literature, music and other arts, 
 bearing little or no resemblance to those of any other country, the old 
 Irish, in the course of long and hoary ages, had with great originality 
 of mind succeeded in working out for themselves, with scarcely any in- 
 debtedness to ancient Greece or Rome, the fountains wdience the other 
 nations of Europe had drawn their nascent civilization. Hence the 
 Irish loved and clung to their own customs with a peculiar fondness. It 
 
XXIV 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 is indeed curious, and illustrative of the Celt's tenacious adherence to old 
 usages, to observe how those forms and features of an antique society 
 and civilization still hold dominion, more or less, over the hearts and 
 lives of our people. 
 
 A new and terrible element of confusion was introduced into Ireland, 
 as into other countries, in the sixteenth century. I allude to what is 
 styled "The Reformation," and to the religious discord it produced. If 
 the country and its inhabitants had been torn asunder by animosities 
 and strife before, society in Ireland now and henceforward became a per- 
 fect chaos of contending evil passions. JS T o one can hope to understand 
 thoroughly O'Connell's career, the struggles that filled his lifetime, or 
 those that agitate Irishmen in our own day, without first comprehending 
 the history of past Irish dissensions, and above all our religious dissen- 
 sions. From these dissensions of the past nearly all the questions that 
 have been vexed, and nearly all the events that have taken place in Ire- 
 land during the present century, derive their origin; so that, if we want 
 to find out their lifting solution or true significance, we can only do so by 
 I tearing in mind and learning to interpret properly our dark and blood- 
 stained past. 
 
 Henry VIII., having succeeded in establishing in England, by acts the 
 most violent and arbitrary, his own supremacy on the overthrow of the 
 papal authority, was impatient to accomplish the same result in Ireland. 
 Accordingly, severe penal enactments were passed by the so-called Irish 
 Parliament (in reality the Parliament of the pale, and wholly subservient 
 to the king's government) against the Catholic religion. All the penal- 
 ties of p'emumre — confiscation and imprisonment during the pleasured 
 the sovereign — menaced those who should dare to defend the authority of 
 the Roman pontiff. Laws were also passed for the suppression of Irish 
 monasteries. Some of these were plundered and desolated; sacred im- 
 ages were profaned. The inmates of the religious houses were perse- 
 cuted and driven into exile, sometimes massacred. At a later period, 
 any one guilty of persistent refusal to acknowledge the religious su- 
 premacy of the king was liable to the penalties of high treason. Those 
 who refused to attend the novel worship were liable to fines and cen- 
 sures. Numbers were enriched by the confiscation and plunder of church 
 property But, in the teeth of every threat and danger, the vast major- 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 
 
 XXV 
 
 ilv of the Irish people clung to the ancient faith of their fathers. In- 
 deed, the perils to which their fidelity exposed them only made their re- 
 ligion dearer to their hearts. It was quite natural, then, that when they 
 beheld the shrines which they were accustomed to venerate desecrated 
 under the sanction of English laws by the profane hand of the spoiler, 
 rilled of their sacred vessels and ornaments, and when, in addition, tin y 
 beheld their holiest men persecuted and banished, if not murdered, 
 while they knew that they were not safe themselves from the same tyr- 
 anny, — it was only natural that their hatred of the foreign race and rule 
 that imposed those tyrannous laws upon their country should be intens- 
 ified day after day. It is in no way wonderful that, about this period, 
 the secret negotiations of the Irish chiefs with foreign potentates should 
 become frequent and dangerous to English rule in Ireland. In the reigns 
 of these sovereigns of the house of Tudor we find the Irish at one time 
 negotiating with the emperor Charles V., the kings of France and Scot- 
 land and the Holy Father, on other occasions negotiating with one or 
 other of these monarchs separately. We find them, in their contests 
 with England, occasionally inviting and getting the aid of Scotch auxil- 
 iaries, and still more frequently receiving assistance from Spanish 
 troops. Unfortunately, these last seldom arrived at the proper time or 
 came in sufficient force to be of any real service. 
 
 Not long before the commencement of the Geraldine war (which I 
 shall notice presently), in Queen Elizabeth's reign, we find Sir James 
 Fitzmaurice, one of the gallant Geraldines of Minister, obtaining a 
 bull from Pope Gregory XIII., in which the Irish were stimulated to 
 fight for their national freedom and faith. Those who should fight in 
 the good cause were promised the same indulgences and spiritual priv- 
 ileges which had been accorded to the Crusaders fighting for the deliver- 
 ance of the Holy Sepulchre. Nor did the pontiff's sympathy with the 
 cause of Ireland end here. Six hundred Italians, intended to co-operate 
 with the Irish, were equipped by him, and placed under the command 
 of an English soldier of fortune, named Thomas Stukely, on whom he 
 conferred many high-sounding but somewhat inane Irish titles. Fitz- 
 maurice also sought and expected help from King Philip of Spain. But 
 his plans were upset ; for the erratic adventurer, Stukely, seduced by Doin 
 Sebastian of Portugal's more magnificent project of invading Morocco, 
 
XXVI THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 without the least scruple broke his Irish engagements, and, flinging 
 away his expectations of Irish marquisates for Moorish principalities in 
 the air, accompanied the Portuguese expedition to Africa. There, in the 
 fierce fight at Alcacarquiver, he perished along with King Sebastian and 
 his host and all their visionary conquests, dignities and spoils. 
 
 What is wonderful in the Catholic Irish of those days is that, unlike 
 all the other nations of that age, although persecuted sorely themselves, 
 they did not in their day of power retaliate on the members of the hos- 
 tile sect. During Queen Mary's reign, while in England the frequent 
 fires of bigotry blazed in Smithiield, and Protestants were burned at the 
 stake by scores, persecution was unknown in Ireland. Some Protestant 
 families, even, that had been obliged to fly from England, found both 
 toleration and shelter in Ireland. But all this humanity failed to secure 
 even moderate treatment for the Catholic Irish when the accession of 
 Elizabeth restored religious sway to the partisans of the Reformation. 
 Mr. Mitchel, in one of the introductory chapters of his admirable "Life 
 of Hugh O'JSTeill," brings together, in one paragraph, an accumulation 
 of horrid facts, giving a vivid picture of the ferocious cruelties and 
 tyranny that, born of the bigotry of the age, then disgraced nearly every 
 country in Europe. In this paragraph he specifies several of the san- 
 guinary acts of religious persecution perpetrated in Ireland by the 
 officials of Elizabeth : " How Patrick O'Hely, bishop of Mayo, and Cor- 
 nelius O'Rorke, a pious priest, were by order of Drury placed on the 
 rack, their hands and feet broken with hammers, needles thrust under 
 their nails ; how they were at last hanged ; how Dermot O'Hurley, arch- 
 bishop of Cashcl, was arrested by order of Adam Loftus (chancellor of 
 the pale and queen's archbishop of Dublin) ; how he was loaded with 
 irons until the Holy Thursday of the following year, dragged before the 
 chancellor and treasurer, questioned, tortured, and finally hanged out- 
 side the city walls before break of day ; how John Stephens, a priest, 
 having been duly convicted 'for that he said mass to Teague Mac Hugh,' 
 was hanged and quartered." Mr. Mitchel adds that " all this and much 
 more may be found in the martyrologists of the time." Indeed, the 
 never-ending scenes of horror, the deeds of unsparing tyranny, some- 
 times on religious and sometimes on civil grounds, " that fill the spa- 
 cious times of great Elizabeth," in Ireland at least, form, taken as a 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. XXVli 
 
 whole, one of the "bloodiest pictures of the book of time." It is in no 
 way astonishing that, during the entire course of Elizabeth's long reign, 
 the fires of Irish rebellion were never wholly extinguished. If they occa- 
 sionally indeed smouldered for a brief time, on the other hand they were 
 generally ablaze over the greater portion of the island. 
 
 The most formidable opponent of Queen Elizabeth in the earlier 
 years of her reign was Shane O'Neill, surnamed Shane the Proud. This 
 fierce chieftain boasted that he had never on any occasion sued to the 
 queen for peace, that she had always been obliged to make the first 
 overtures to him. For a time, in spite of occasional checks from the 
 O'Donnells, his power was dreaded and obeyed by nearly all the tribes 
 of Ulster. But his character and career were fierce and turbulent, lie 
 made bitter and implacable enemies all around him by his lawlessness. 
 He captured the chief of the O'Donnells and robbed him of his fair wife. 
 He crushed and despoiled his neighbors, the O'Reillys, Maguires and 
 Antrim Scots. For long he defied the English and baffled their treach- 
 ery, entertained Sir Henry Sydney, acting as royal deputy, with princely 
 hospitality, but spurned the English titles offered in the queen's name 
 by the earl of Sussex. At the same time he visited the queen in Lon- 
 don, astonishing both court and city with his " gallant train of guards 
 bare-headed, with curled hair hanging down their shoulders, armed with 
 battle-axes and arrayed in their saffron doublets;" but out of this visit 
 eventually came his ruin. He made an alliance with the queen (who 
 secretly swore "by God's death" to destroy him) against the kindred 
 Scotch tribes of Antrim, Mac Donnells and Mac Neills. For a while he 
 waged cruel w r ar against them, slaying and carrying into captivity some 
 of their leading men. At last, too late, he saw what a fatal snare the 
 alliance with England had been. Finding that, on one false pretence or 
 other, the English were encroaching on his territory, he attacked them 
 at Deny, dislodged their garrison from Armagh, burning both church 
 and town. He next invaded the pale, ravaging the lands and razing the 
 castles of the English settlers, but his star of prosperous fortune began 
 to set rapidly. The whole power of the English was turned to his 
 destruction. Maguire and other chiefs, whom his pride and fierceness 
 had rendered hostile, joined in a league against him with the new chief 
 of the O'Donnells, Hugh, brother and successor of Calvagh, the prince 
 
r~ 
 
 XXV111 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 whom Shane had so deeply injured. O'Donnell's forces routed him on 
 the 8th of May, 1567, not far from Letterkenny, driving him back on 
 the river Swilly, where numbers of his men perished in the waves and 
 by the sword. Totally beaten, and deserted by nearly all his followers, 
 his ruin was now complete. He took, however, the bold resolution of 
 seeking refuge among his former enemies, the Antrim Scotch, xit first 
 they seemed inclined to give him hospitality and protection, but one 
 Piers, an English agent, was there to rouse the revengeful feelings of the 
 Mac Donnells. In a brawl, apparently preconcerted, the fierce but gal- 
 lant Shane — a chief great alike "in battle and carouse" — was per- 
 fidiously slaughtered with his small band of followers. The miscreant 
 Piers sent his head "pickled in a pipldn " to the lord-deputy, receiving 
 in exchange blood-monej^ to the tune of one thousand marks. The lord- 
 deputy basely caused the chieftain's ghastly head to be "gibbeted high 
 on a pole," where it "long grinned over the towers of Dublin Castle." 
 
 The reigns of all these Tudor sovereigns are disgraced by repeated 
 instances of the blackest cruelty and treachery on the part of the Eng- 
 lish authorities in Ireland. In the reign of Edward VI. we have, on one 
 occasion, in Dublin, the execution of thirteen of the Fitzgeralds or their 
 partisans. In the reign of Queen Mary, which, like her brother's, was 
 short, we have abundance of slaughter and desolation, and sore oppres- 
 sion of numerous clans, under the administration of Thomas Radcliffe, 
 earl of Sussex, and Sir Henry Sydney ; but in the long reign of Eliza- 
 beth we might, as Mr. Mitchel says, " sup full of horrors." In this place 
 it may be as well to notice briefly a few instances of the treachery which 
 characterized English rule at this period. Walter Devereux, earl of 
 Essex, president of Ulster and earl-marshal of Ireland, arrived in that 
 island in 1573 to try and carry out a scheme of confiscation and English 
 colonization in the northern province. The scheme appears to have 
 been a sort of anticipation of the plantation of Ulster that subsequently 
 took effect in James I.'s reign. This "undertaker," finding that the 
 O'Neills of Claneboy and other Irish chiefs were not inclined to submit 
 to the robbery of their patrimony quite so easily as the interests of 
 British sway demanded — in short, finding himself in a somewhat diffi- 
 cult position — thought a little treachery might help him in his civilizing 
 mission. Accordingly, he perfidiously seized his ally, Con O'Donnell, 
 
and sent, him prisoner to Dublin ; but this was a mere nothing com- 
 pared to another exploit of his. Brian O'Neill and the earl, after being 
 at variance, came to a friendly understanding. Brian, apparently 
 desirous of celebrating the establishment of peace between them in a 
 hospitable Irish fashion, invited Essex to be his guest. The English- 
 man, taking an infamous advantage of the absence of distrust and 
 relaxation of all vigilance and precaution on Brian's part in such a 
 festal time, seized his host and hostess, also Brian's brother, and at the 
 same time caused the attendants, matrons, young men and maidens, to 
 be brutally butchered in their unfortunate master's presence. Then 
 Brian and his wife and brother were brought to Dublin, and there ruth- 
 lessly cut up in quarters. This savage act filled the Irish with horror 
 and the keenest desire of vengeance. 
 
 Even this inhuman act of treachery was, if possible, surpassed by a 
 deed of horror perpetrated in 1577 by the enlightened and politic or 
 crafty Sir Henry Sydney, whom I have already referred to, the father 
 (alas!) of the graceful, the accomplished, the generous, chivalrous and 
 humane Sir Philip Sydney, who later in the sixteenth century died so 
 nobly on the field of Zutphen. Sir Henry was one of the ablest men 
 who ever managed English business in Ireland — an admirable ruler, at 
 all events, from the English point of view, but things look quite different 
 viewed from the Irish point. Doubtless, Sir Henry, like the JSormanbys 
 and Carlisles and Spencers and Gladstones of our own century, knew 
 full well how to play the part of conciliating the Irish ; he could even, 
 on occasion, abolish oppressive taxes. He was great in the interests of 
 peace and order. His greatest exploit, however, in furtherance of the 
 noble cause of English law and order and civilization was performed in 
 the year 1577 at Mullaghmast, near Athy, the scene, in our own times, 
 of one of O'Connell's grandest' monster meetings for " Repeal" — the one 
 at which the celebrated sculptor, John Hogan, crowned him. The prin- 
 cipal men of Offaly and Leix (now the King's and Queen's counties) 
 were invited by the wily and unscrupulous lord-justice, Sir Henry, to 
 come together at the great rath of Mullaghmast for an amicable confer- 
 ence. Confiding in the honor and good faith of this knightly Sydney, 
 about 400 came, free from doubt or misgiving or fear of any sort, but 
 they paid dearly for their trust. Caught in the toils and quickly encir- 
 
cled by a triple line of the royal troops, they were suddenly assailed ; 
 the. pitiless steel of the English soldiery drank their blood. Hardly one 
 escaped to tell the tale. This reminds one of the fate of the entire body 
 of the nobles of the gallant Bashkir nation, in Asia, in the reign of 
 Catherine II., who were too successfully lured to destruction by the Rus- 
 sian governor of Ufa's treacherous invitation to a banquet. All these 
 tales of English treachery and massacre are horrible, but it is still more 
 horrible to read that chiefs of Irish race were sometimes found to help 
 their foreign masters in this bloody work of treachery against their own 
 countrymen. Mac Giolla Patrick, baron of Upper Ossory (for this base 
 minion of English power preferred a Saxon coronet to the Celtic wand 
 of chieftaincy), on the 30th of June, 1578, assassinated the valiant out- 
 law, Rory Oge O'More, who had stoutly and gallantly maintained his 
 independence of English power for eighteen years. 
 
 Of all the many rebellions that occurred in the reign of Queen Eliza- 
 beth, in all probability the one attended with the greatest amount of hu- 
 man suffering was that called the Gcraldinc Avar. I have already spoken 
 of the efforts of Sir James Fitzniaurice to enlist the sympathies of foreign 
 potentates in the cause of Ireland, and to raise an auxiliary force of 
 Italians or Spaniards ; we saw how Stukcly played him false and aban- 
 doned him. As it was plain, however, that the intolerable wrongs and 
 sufferings of the Irish under British tyranny had created for them- 
 selves and their cause a considerable sympathy among all the nations 
 of the Continent that had clung to the old faith, Fitzniaurice persevered. 
 At last arriving in Smerwick Bay with three small ships, a small band 
 of eighty Spaniards, and bearing a consecrated banner from the pope, 
 this enterprising leader made a daring descent on the coast and fortified 
 a tongue of land which was named Fort-del-ore. After this, however, 
 he met with naught save bitter disappointment and swift ruin. The 
 head of all the Geraldines, Earl Gerald, vacillated, and finally declined 
 putting himself at the head of a revolt, though he had grievances enough 
 to spur him on and warrant such a step. It was not so very long since 
 he had escaped from the prison into which Lord-Deputy Sydney had 
 cast him, but he was jealous of, or, at least, disliked, his cousin Fitz- 
 niaurice. In short, we find him even shamefully taking side with the 
 queen, and hunting Fitzniaurice and his own two brothers, James and 
 
SOWS IFHDllLIPffiT GUffilSA^., 
 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. XXXI 
 
 John. The gallant and enduring Fitzmaurice, after pushing on to Tip- 
 perary, is finally surrounded in a thick and lonely wood by the brothers 
 Theobald and Ulick'Bourkc of Castleconnell and some of the O'Briens 
 of Arra. Irishmen (alas!) again pursuing Irishmen to the death, and 
 that, too, for the accursed stranger! But the brave Munster Gcraldine, 
 like the heroic Leinster Gcraldine of '98, sells his life right dearly. In 
 the last fierce fight of despairing valor, Fitzmaurice is wounded by a 
 l»;ill in the chest, but ere he falls he smites the two false Bourkes of 
 Castleconnell. The expiring warrior cleaves with one noble stroke the 
 head of Theobald, and next mortally wounds TJlick. Calmly giving final 
 directions to the faithful few who still stand by him, Fitzmaurice dies. 
 A grieving kinsman cuts off his head and hides the trunk under an old 
 tree ; this a hunter subsequently finds and brings to Kilmallock ; there, 
 swinging from a gallows, it is riddled by the shots of ungenerous ene- 
 mies. This was the end of the adventurous Sir James Fitzgerald, or 
 Fitzmaurice (as he was called from his father, Maurice of Desmond), 
 an able leader and good patriot, generous, brave, prudent, earnest and 
 indomitable. 
 
 And now, when too late, we find Earl Gerald raising the standard 
 of open revolt and joining his outlawed brothers and kinsfolk — reluc- 
 tantly, however, and not till the thanklessness of the English governors 
 for his adhesion to the queen's side was made too manifest. He had 
 given his only son and heir, James, as a hostage for his loyalty to the 
 lord-justice, and in return had been promised a protection. The Eng- 
 lish fulfilled this promise by destroying the cattle of his tenants, plun- 
 dering his crops, laying waste his lands and burning his castles. 1 
 have not space to give any very lengthened detail of the incidents of 
 this calamitous war, which turned the whole south-west of Ireland into 
 a melancholy scene of utter desolation. The English destroyed all the 
 houses and corn within their reach. The Geraldincs themselves, anx- 
 ious to lessen the resources of the foe, helped to increase the devastation 
 of their country. "We find the earl of Ormond, chief of the Butlers and 
 hereditary enemy of the Desmonds, assisting the lord-justice to crush 
 his hapless countrymen, and sparing neither age nor sex. It is still 
 more strange and mortifying to find the great Hugh O'Neill assisting 
 the English in this horrid war. Throughout its whole course this was 
 
XXX11 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 a dreary and almost hopeless struggle for the Irish, checkered with few' 
 passing gleams of success or glory. Sometimes, indeed, the maddened 
 Irish, turning fiercely on their ruthless foes and standing at bay, would 
 slaughter a number of the marauders. A seasonable diversion, too, was 
 made by Eustace, Lord Baltinglass, with the O'Byrnes, O'Tooles, O'Kav- 
 enaghs and others, on the borders of the pale, and at least one glorious 
 victory was won, that of Glendalough in 1580, when stout Fiach Mac 
 Hugh, the mountain-chief of the O'Byrnes, totally defeated the lord- 
 deputy, Arthur, Lord Grey. The Irish drew the English main body, 
 consisting of infantry, into the defile ; then suddenly pouring a volley into 
 them from the surrounding coverts, they darted fiercely with wild battle- 
 cry on their startled and bewildered foes, slaying several of their best 
 captains — Carew, Moore, Audley and Cosby — and 800 of their common 
 soldiers. Grey and his cavalry witnessed the slaughter of their coun- 
 trymen without being able, owing to the broken and difficult nature of 
 the ground, to give them any help. Finally, he had to retreat to Dub- 
 lin, covered with the shame of his rash attempt to force the defile, which 
 seems to have been made contrary to the advice of his most prudent 
 captains. 
 
 But, in spite of such transient gleams of success, the fortune of war 
 was almost wholly against Ireland. The deputy ere long found an 
 opportunity of taking a cruel and ignoble revenge for his discomfiture. 
 Ormond besieged in Fort-del-ore 700 Spaniards and Italians who had 
 landed in Smerwick Harbor in September, 1580, and compelled them to 
 surrender at discretion, according to English authorities, but according 
 to the Irish on sworn articles. Be this as it may, Lord Grey caused 
 them all to be slaughtered in cold blood. Speaking himself of their sur- 
 render and the atrocious deed of wholesale murder that followed, he 
 coolly says, "Then put I in certeyne bandes who streighte fell to execu- 
 tion;" and also, "There were 600 slayn." No wonder that "Grey's 
 faith " became a proverbial phrase of reproach throughout all Europe. 
 
 Even an insurrection in Connaught, in which we find Ulick and 
 John Bourke, sons of the earl of Clanrickard, engaged, together with 
 O'Rourkes, O'Connors and O'Briens, failed to strengthen the cause of 
 Ireland. Some of the leaders give in quickly. Indeed, the history of 
 the greater portion of this war is little else than a chronicle of English 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. XXXUI 
 
 atrocities. In 1581 forty-live persons are hanged in Dublin. In the 
 southern war, Zouch and (sad to say) the celebrated Sir Walter Raleigh 
 signalize themselves by peculiar cruelty and rapacity. The hunted 
 Geraldines still, however, occasionally strike successful blows at their 
 enemies. John of Desmond even overruns the lands of the Butlers and 
 MacCarthy More, sweeping away creaghts of cattle and other spoil. Des- 
 mond, though defeated by Zouch near Aghadoe, rallies, advances to 
 Cashel, captures and plunders it. But, in spite of these partial suc- 
 cesses, the Geraldine cause is lost; reverses follow thick and fast; John 
 of Desmond is defeated by Zouch, and slain. His body hangs in chains 
 for three years at one of the city gates of Cork ; at last, one stormy 
 night, it is blown into the sea. The head is spiked in front of the castle 
 of Dublin. James of Desmond and his two sons are hanged shortly 
 after John's death. Zouch hangs some children he holds as hostages. 
 Still, Desmond himself struggles on with occasional success, but at 
 last he becomes a hunted fugitive. Himself and his countess, in 1582, 
 at Christmas-time, have to stand for concealment up to their necks in 
 water under a river-bank. Through the year 1583 the wretched earl, 
 deserted by all save a small band of gallowglasses, is hunted from 
 place to place, having no longer any secure spot whereon to lay his 
 head. His hereditary enemy Ormond vindictively pursues the fallen 
 earl ; at last, on the 11th of November, 1583, the aged earl is surrounded 
 in a hut, wounded and made captive. His head is sent to England, 
 enclosed in an iron cage, and impaled on London Bridge. His body 
 is interred by the peasantry in the little chapel of Kilnamanagh, near 
 Castleisland, Kerry. Spanish vessels, with men, arms and money for 
 the earl, arrive too late. They immediately return to Spain, for the 
 Geraldine war is evidently at an end. 
 
 Such was the fate of the once powerful earl of Desmond. Indeed, the 
 might of the noble race of the southern Geraldines was extinguished for 
 ever. Some years before, a haughty earl of Desmond, when borne by the 
 victorious Butlers, wounded and a prisoner, from the field of Affane, was 
 tauntingly asked, " Where is now the proud earl of Desmond ?" His 
 answer was a fierce and scornful sarcasm: " Where he ought to be — upon 
 the necks of the Butlers I" But the day of Desmond's pride and power 
 was now past for ever. The Butlers (subservient tools of English 
 
XXXIV THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONKELL. 
 
 dominion) became all-powerful in their stead. The dead earl of Des- 
 mond and 140 of his adherents were attainted ; their estates, to the 
 extent of G0Q,000 acres, were confiscated ; English undertakers were to 
 colonize them. Though this plantation-scheme did not succeed event- 
 ually as well as its originators had hoped it would, yet nothing could 
 equal the misery of the Irish race in Minister and the ruin of their 
 country at the close of this frightful struggle. The words which, we are 
 told by Tacitus, the Caledonian chief Galgacus applied to the Roman 
 conquerors of old, might well be turned against the English oppressors 
 of the Geraldines : " They make a solitude and call it peace !" The icy- 
 hearted but brilliant poet of fancy, Spenser, though, like the old mon- 
 ster oddly surnamed the great earl of Cork, he could contemplate with 
 considerable complacency the idea of utterly rooting out the Irish, can- 
 not help drawing the most vivid and even moving pictures of the scenes 
 of woe and desolation that overspread the fair fields of Munster. He 
 says : " In all that warre there perished not many by the sword, but 
 all by the extremity of famine." The seemingly ideal images of desola- 
 tion presented in the following stanza of " The Faery Queen " are copied 
 from the realities he witnessed in Ireland while living in Kilcolinap 
 Castle and enjoying domains robbed from their rightful owner: 
 
 " He in his furie all shall over-ronne, 
 
 And holy church with faithless hands deface, 
 That the sad people, utterly foredone, 
 
 Shall to the utmost mountains fly apace: 
 
 Was never so great waste in any place, 
 Nor so fowle outrage doeu by living men ; 
 
 For all thy citties they shall sack and rase, 
 And the green grass that groweth they shall bren, 
 That even the wilde beast shall dy in starved den." 
 
 In short, the southern Irish were starved to death. Holinshed says : 
 " The very wolves, the foxes, and other like ravening beasts, many of 
 them lay dead, being famished." Here is another quotation from Spen- 
 ser: "The end will (I assure me) be very short, and much sooner than 
 can be hoped for; although there should none of them fall by the sword, 
 nor be slain by the souldiours, yet thus being kept from manurance, and 
 their cattle from running abroad, by this hard restraint they would 
 quickly consume themselves and devour one another." Again: "in a 
 
 ZLJ 
 
PKEL1MINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 
 
 XXXV 
 
 short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plen- 
 tifull countrey suddainly left voyde of man and beast." The soldiers 
 supplemented the exterminating action of starvation by setting fire to 
 buildings full of men, women and children. Infants they specially 
 destroyed, lest they should grow to "become popish rebels." "Women 
 were found hanging from trees, with their children strangled in the 
 mothers' hair." Spenser, telling us of the famine-scenes, when the 
 poor Irish were forced to feed on carrion, or, like beasts, on roots or 
 watercresses or shamrocks, says that, viewing the emaciated sufferers, 
 " any stony heart would rue the same." Considering his own somewhat 
 stony heart, one is not very much afflicted to read that afterward, in 
 1598, during the rage of rekindled warfare, he was burned out of his 
 castle of Kilcolman, and lost all his ill-got property. The year follow- 
 ing the hapless poet died in London, "for lack of bread." 
 
 It must be admitted that in this reign the Irish, in spite of their 
 fierce resistance, were gradually succumbing to the yoke of England. 
 The old forms of Celtic society, with their strange features — some of 
 which resembled more or less those of the tribe-systems of Syria and 
 Arabia, others, such as the custom of having hereditary bards and bre- 
 hons, etc., not wholly unlike certain features of the Hindoo castes — were 
 giving way at last to the institutions of the stranger. Even during the 
 reign of Henry VIII. a few attempts to Anglicise some of the Irishry 
 had been made, not altogether without success. The Parliament which 
 met in Dublin in June, 1541, during the administration of the politic 
 Sir Anthony St. Leger, conferred the title of king of Ireland on Henry 
 VIII. and his rightful successors. Before this date the English kings 
 had only been styled lords of Ireland. There were idle pomp and foolish 
 joy in Dublin on this occasion. Soon after quite a number of Irish 
 chiefs were cajoled into surrendering their territories and their Celtic 
 appellations of chieftaincy. In return, their estates were given back, 
 and Anglo-Norman titles conferred on them by letters-patent. Mur- 
 rough O'Brien was made earl of Thomond ; Mac Giolla Patrick became 
 baron of Upper Ossory; Mac William (De Burgo), earl of Clanrickard; 
 O'Neill, earl of Tyrone. Some of the smaller dynasts got foreign titles 
 of inferior dignity. Thomond's brothers, indeed, subsequently opposed 
 him, and when he died Donnel claimed succession by the old Celtic law 
 
! 
 
 ! r 
 
 XXXVI THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 of tanistry, and, amid the great enthusiasm of his tribe, proclaimed 
 himself O'Brien. In St. Leger's time, too, Irish soldiers are raised to 
 Qght ior the king in France and Scotland. In 1549, 0' Carroll becomes 
 oaron of Ely. Some Irish chiefs ask the government to arbitrate between 
 them. Many tributary chiefs, too, are declared independent of their 
 superior dynasts. In Mary's reign, in 1550, the Celtic districts of Leix 
 and Offaly are metamorphosed into the Queen's and King's counties, the 
 new names being in honor of Mary and her husband, Don Philip of 
 Spain. New colonists, to keep down the natives, are introduced, and 
 several contumacious Celtic chiefs are hanged or otherwise executed. 
 In 1560 we find writs to return members of Parliament issued to the 
 counties of Dublin, Louth, Kildare, Meath, West Meath, Carlow, Kil- 
 kenny, Wexford, Waterford and Tipperary. In 1569 a Parliament 
 declares the laws of tanistry abrogated. Charter-schools are directed to 
 be established in various dioceses, the teachers to be all English. Mr. 
 Mitchel has the following passage toward the close of his sketch of the 
 Geraldine war: "Thus fell the great earl of Desmond; and thus the 
 fairest province of this island, wasted and destroyed by the insane war- 
 fare of the Irish themselves, lay ready for the introduction of the for- 
 eigner's law, civilization and religion; or, as Dr. Leland has it, 'for 
 effectually regulating and modelling this country upon the principles of 
 justice and liberal policy.' And accordingly a Parliament was soon held 
 for the puipose of vesting in the queen of England all the lands which had 
 been inhabited by the kinsmen and adherents of Desmond. Letters 
 were written to every county in England offering estates in fee to all 
 'younger brothers' who would undertake the plantation of Munster; 
 each undertaker to -plant so many families ; but ' none of the native Irish 
 to be admitted.' " This progress of the conquest continues steadily 
 through the years immediately following the termination of the Ger- 
 aldine war. Seven new counties in the north — Armagh, Monaghan, 
 Tyrone, Coleraine, Donegal, Fermanagh and Cavan — are marked out and 
 furnished with the usual civilizing staff of sheriffs, coroners and commis- 
 sioners of the peace. In 1585 the new lord-justice, Sir John Perrott, 
 tries the conciliatory policy : at least he makes believe that he is rathe] 
 inclined to treat the natives on somewhat equal terms with the dom- 
 inant race. A Parliament assembles, attended by chiefs of nearly all 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. XXXV U 
 
 the Celtic clans. Perrott, in order to pass his laws more easily, even 
 wants to suspend Poyning's Act, which subjects the Irish to the Eng- 
 lish legislature. This, however, is successfully opposed. With all his 
 conciliatory turn, Sir John must do a little in the attainting way. An 
 act is passed attainting Eustace Lord Baltinglass and other so-called 
 rebels. In a second session of Parliament, held the same year, the 
 attainder of Desmond and his partisans, already noticed, is carried 
 through. Also claims of chieftains to impose taxes are annulled. Still, 
 Sir John Perrott becomes unpopular with the English adventurers. He 
 is insulted and thwarted in the council-chamber. Intrigues are got up 
 to set the queen against him. Had he not condemned the conduct of that 
 true and thorough English civilizer, Sir Richard Bingham, who in 1586 
 executed seventy men and women in Galway ; then butchered all the 
 garrison of the castle of Cloonoan in Clare; then hanged several dis- 
 tinguished Burkes ; and next allowed his soldiery to rob and kill, ad 
 libitum, men and women, young and old, in Connaught, himself indulg- 
 ing in massacre and executions without limit ? In disapproving of the 
 brutal Sir Richard (who doubtless was ancestor to the tenant-extermin- 
 ating and civilizing Bingham, styled earl of Lucan, of our own day) Sir 
 John Perrott was unreasonably oblivious of the interests of English civ- 
 ilization and civilizers, which should inevitably suffer if anything like 
 justice or equality were accorded to the mere native Irish. 
 
 But though the English power and system were gradually creeping 
 on through the island, yet Irish resistance was by no means finally 
 crashed. In spite of the insidious influences of her crafty policy, the 
 Irish were not going to "give up the old land" to Queen Elizabeth 
 " without another blow." As I have just taken a hasty survey of the 
 most dismal and melancholy, so I shall now give a rapid sketch of the 
 most formidable and glorious, of all those fierce struggles against Eng- 
 land's power that occurred in the long reign of Elizabeth. I need scarcely 
 add I refer to the war in which the politic and renowned Hugh O'Neill 
 and the gallant Red Hugh O'Donnell were the leaders of the Irish race 
 and cause. 
 
 In all probability, Hugh O'Neill meditated a supreme effort to throw 
 off the yoke of England for years before he thought proper to throw off 
 the mask. Possessing, as Camden says, " a profound dissembling heart/ 
 
 L_ 
 
XXXVlil THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 he dissimulated long. Having spent, during Lis early life, much of his 
 time at the court of England, he learned how to fathom thoroughly 
 the policy of the astute statesmen who were the pillars of Elizabeth's 
 throne. He could even return them wile for wile, and circumvent them 
 with their own arts. He determined to lull to sleep all suspicions of 
 his loyalty till the occasion should seem to him ripe and his prepara- 
 tions complete. To attain this end he consented to wear the hated 
 coronet of the earldom of Tyrone, and even, as we have already noticed, 
 went so far as to serve on the queen's side in the Geraldine war. So 
 much did he enjoy the confidence of the queen's government that he was 
 allowed to raise, equip and discipline six companies of soldiers. Taking 
 advantage of this privilege, as fast as one batch of his followers are 
 trained he disbands them and commences training a fresh squad of 
 recruits, until at length his drilled followers count by thousands. He 
 procures a vast quantity of lead for bullets, on the plea that he wants a 
 leaden roof for his new house of Dungannon. Perrott's aid enabled him 
 to humble the Scots of Antrim, who had begun to rival the power of the 
 O'Neills. To compass these ends the crafty earl seems to consent to 
 English supremacy, and even advises that the statutes against assum- 
 ing the name of O'Neill be enforced. The outwitted queen solemnly 
 invests him with the lands of his race ; gradually, too, he deprives Tur- 
 logh Lynnogh, the nominal chief of the O'Neills, of his influence and 
 authority, till at last, at the rath of Tulloghoge, on the stone of royalty, 
 girt by the warriors, bards and ollamhs of Tyr-coghain, having made 
 oath to maintain the old customs of the tribe, he receives the wand of 
 chieftaincy and is recognized as O'Neill. He next complies with the 
 immemorial ceremony of descending from the stone and turning round 
 "thrice forward and thrice backward." 
 
 For a considerable time after this O'Neill continued to dissemble. 
 Meanwhile, several things occurred to favor his designs. The iniquitous 
 murder, by a mock trial l>y jury, of Hugh MacMahon, a northern chief, 
 on a trumped-up charge of treason, the whole villainy having been con- 
 cocted by the corrupt and rapacious lord-deputy, Sir William Fitzwil- 
 liam, filled the entire north with indignation and a fierce thirst for ven- 
 geance. Other villainies of Fitzwilliam fanned the flame. During this 
 period, too, some vessels of the storm-tossed Spanish Armada were 
 
I r 
 i 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. XXXIX 
 
 wrecked on various points of the Irish coasts. Nearly all the chiefs on 
 whose lands the Spaniards were cast treated the war-and-tempest-worn 
 strangers hospitably, and protected them against the English governors; 
 but no one treated the strangers so kindly or paid them such honors as 
 Hugh O'Neill. He foresaw that such courtesy might pave the way for 
 a Spanish alliance, and no doubt he took good care to explain the state 
 of affairs and interests in Ireland to the Spanish officers. He had all 
 this time been busy endeavoring to become reconciled with old enemies 
 and healing all the feuds he could — trying, in short, to realize his noble 
 project of a northern confederation, which no doubt he considered only 
 a step to the creation and consolidation of an independent Irish nation ; 
 for the mind of this great chief seems to have grasped the large idea of 
 a united Ireland. He and his enemy, O'Cahan, became fast friends ; he 
 also formed an alliance with the Ulster Scotch, the Macdonnells of the 
 glens of Antrim. But the circumstance of all others which most favored 
 his plans was the escape, in 1592, from his dungeon in Dublin Castle, 
 of Ked Hugh O'Donnell. 
 
 This gallant young prince had some years before, by a most per- 
 fidious stratagem, planned by that conciliatory and justice-to-Ireland- 
 loving governor, Sir John Perrott, been trapped on board a ship in Loch 
 Swilly and born off captive to Dublin; there he languished long in 
 prison. In 1591 he first escaped, but the Wicklow chief, Felini O'Toole, 
 with whom he took refuge, basely surrendered him through fear. His 
 second attempt, which was made in 1592, about Christmas-time, was 
 more fortunate ; with two fellow-prisoners, Henry and Art O'Neill, sons 
 of Shane, he once more made for the Wicklow Mountains, which were cov- 
 ered with snow. All night he and his two friends, buffeted by a snow- 
 storm, struggled to reach Glenmalure and the protection of the redoubt- 
 able victor of Glendalough, Fiach Mac Hugh O'Byrne ; three days and 
 nights they were lost in the mountains. Poor Art perished. O'Donnell 
 and Henry O'Neill were at last found by some of O'Byrne's clansmen 
 half dead with cold, O'Donnell's feet all frost-bitten. O'Byrne's gener- 
 ous hospitality soon gave them fresh life and vigor. O'Donnell sent a 
 messenger to Hugh O'Neill, who sent him back a trusty guide. After 
 a journey full of peril, O'Donnell reaches Dungannon, where he and 
 Hugh O'Neill interchange confidences, and strike up a lasting friendship 
 
Xl THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 and alliance. He next goes home to Tyrconnell, where his tribe wel- 
 come him joyously ; but he is hardly home when he hurries, with sonic 
 of his father's warriors, to chastise the ruffian soldiery of Bingham, who 
 had just taken and spoiled the Franciscan monastery of Donegal, the 
 abode of learned chroniclers. On the 3d of the ensuing May, at the rock 
 of Dovne in Kilmacrenan, " the nursing-place of Columkille," his father 
 renounces the chieftaincy of the clan, and Red Hugh, now nineteen 
 years of age, is solemnly made The O'Donnell, with the accustomed cere- 
 monies of his race. Thus the two great tribes of the Kinnell Connell 
 and the Kinnell Eoghain were at length under the sway of two Avarlike 
 and vigorous princes, sworn friends of each other and sworn foes of the 
 Saxon. 
 
 Of the two, O'Donnell was the first in the field. He hastened to 
 lend effective aid to Maguire, the hard-pressed chieftain of Fermanagh. 
 O'Neill thought fit to dissimulate a while longer. ' To throw dust in the 
 eyes of the English, he appeared in arms against Maguire, and, in a 
 charge which he made on Maguire's flank, received a wound in the 
 thigh. When Sir William Russell came to rule Ireland as the successor 
 of the greedy and corrupt Fitzwilliam, O'Neill, with singular audacity, 
 even ventured to Dublin to confront his enemies and accusers. It was 
 on this occasion that he defied to mortal combat his brother-in-law, the 
 lord-marshal, Sir Henry Bagnal, whose sister he had induced to fly with 
 him to Dungannon. In spite of the protection he had received, he would 
 in all probability have been treacherously seized, but for the friendly 
 warning of the earl of Ormond, which caused him to fly from Dublin. 
 Not without risk did he manage to pass through the pale and the toils 
 of the enemy that were fast closing round him. 
 
 But the long-looked-for day was at hand when he was to strike a 
 giant's blow for freedom of religion and country. His northern confed- 
 eracy was now complete and strong. By family alliances he had even 
 won over Macgennis of Ivcagh and O'Hanlon of Oricr, two chiefs for- 
 merly under the influence of Bagnal. In Leinster his friends, the 
 O'Byrnes, O'Cavenaghs, and the daring Sir Walter Fitzgerald (sur- 
 named Riagh), who was afterwards caught by treachery and executed in 
 Dublin, were attacking and laying waste the frontiers of the pale. The 
 glorious hour came at last, in 1595, when the dread royal standard of 
 
 L 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. xli 
 
 O'Neill, with "that terrible red right hand upon its snow-white folds." 
 waved defiantly over the hills of Tyr-Owen ! 
 
 The great chieftain's operations in the field were at once attended 
 with the most brilliant success. He began by defeating the queen's best 
 general, the brave Sir John Norreys, along Avith his brother, Sir Thomas. 
 At Clontibret, O'Neill's personal courage was conspicuous, for, in despe- 
 rate single encounter — both combatants first shivering their lances on 
 each other's mail, and then rolling in deadly embrace from their horses 
 to the earth— he slew a gigantic Meathian named Segrave. Throughout 
 this war, O'Donnell, when not fighting on the same fields with O'Neill, 
 was making fierce irruptions into Connaught, laying waste and spoiling 
 the lands of all who supported the English interest. In Leinster, too — 
 in spite of the loss of the heroic chief of Glenmalure, the glorious victor 
 of Glendalough, Fiach Mac Hugh 0' Byrne, who, for tw r enty years with 
 his small clan having stood at bay against the whole power of Elizabeth 
 and, within a few miles from the gates of Dublin Castle, maintained his 
 independence, had finally, at the suggestion of Sir William Russell, been 
 betrayed by the treachery of a kinsman and executed in May, 1597, 
 leaving, however, worthy sons behind him — in spite of this, in the pro- 
 vince of Leinster the general aspect of affairs promised well for the 
 national cause. O'Mores, O'Carrolls, O'Byrnes, O'Tooles, Cavenaghs, and 
 even Butlers, made fierce and sanguinary inroads on the pale. Even 
 Crumlin village was burned, within two miles of Dublin. The chief 
 men of Connaught, too, combined. Later, the confederacy embraced the 
 noblest Celtic and even Norman families of Minister. By O'Neill's 
 authority, James, nephew of Earl Gerald, assumes the title of earl of 
 Desmond. Though we still find traitor Irish fighting on the side of the 
 Saxon — queen's O'Reillys, queen's Maguires, and others — yet the idea 
 of a united Irish nation seems, for the first time, about to animate the 
 minds of the majority of Irishmen. 
 
 Of all our Irish victories in those days, the most glorious was that 
 gained at Beal-an-atha-buidhe, near the river Callan, and two miles 
 north of Armagh, on the 10th of August, 1598, by the combined forces 
 of the northern and Connaught clans under O'Neill and O'Donnell. On 
 the morning of that memorable day a splendid army of veteran English 
 troops, led by O'Neill's personal foe, Sir Henry Bagnal, proudly marched 
 
forth from the city of Armagh to force the intrenched position of the 
 Irish. Stoutly the lord-marshal fought his way through all obstacles — 
 through ambuscades of light-armed troops, guarding the intervening 
 defiles and sending their volleys into his ranks out of thick fir-tree 
 groves — till he was able to form his army on the more open ground in 
 front of the Irish line of battle. This accomplished, he attacks without 
 delay. Nor did the sight of th£ cavalry tumbling headlong, both men 
 and horses, into the treacherous pitfalls which O'Neill had cunningly 
 caused to be dug in front of his defences and covered over nicely with 
 wattles and grass, seriously check the ardor of the British onset. 
 Loudly shouting " St. George for merry England !" the English press on 
 with dauntless obstinacy, battering the intrenchments with cannon. 
 But if the attack is terrible and hard to be resisted, so the defence is 
 fierce and stubborn. Hatred of race inflames both armies; personal 
 animosity also incites O'Neill and Bagnal. At length the bull-dog valor 
 of the English succeeds in forcing, not without great sacrifice, the Irish 
 intrenchments at one point, and the defenders are driven back. But 
 now O'Neill's main body, hitherto skilfully held in reserve, comes to 
 the rescue. The bagpipes sound the charge. Wildly and terribly the 
 Irish battle-cries, " Lamh-dcarg !" and " O'Donnell aboo!" ring in the 
 ears of the Saxon foemen. O'Neill in person " pricks forward " with 
 rage and rancor in his heart, seeking on all sides his deadly foe that 
 he might slay him. But Bagnal falls by a hand less noble. The mar- 
 shal raises the visor of his helmet, the better to mark the aspect of. the 
 field. Straight a ball crashes through his brain. And now, for the 
 English, mishap quickly follows mishap. A cart of gunpowder explodes 
 amid their ranks, blowing numbers into fragments and spreading wide 
 confusion and dismay. The cavalry of Tyr-Connell and Tyr-Owen are 
 on them too in full career. The war-cry of the Tyr-Connell gallow- 
 glasses, "Battaillah aboo!" rises fiercely above the battle din. 'Tis 
 vain to think of standing against that irresistible charge. Before it the 
 whole English army reels and flies in wild disorder and hideous rout, 
 leaving behind them cannon, standards and treasure. 
 
 John Mitchel gives the following graphic description of the flight 
 and pursuit: "The last who resisted was the traitor O'Reilly; twice he 
 tried to rally the flying squadrons, but was slain in the attempt ; and 
 
 J 
 
at last the whole of that fine army was utterly routed, and fled pell-mell 
 towards Armagh, with the Irish hanging fiercely on their rear. Amidst 
 the woods and marshes all connection and order were speedily lost ; and, 
 as O'Donnell's chronicler has it, they were pursued in couples, in threes, 
 in scores, in thirties and in hundreds, and so cut down in detail by 
 their avenging pursuers. In one spot especially the carnage was terri- 
 ble, and the country people yet point out the lane where that hideous 
 rout passed by, and call it to this day the ' Bloody Loaning.' Two thou- 
 sand five hundred English were slain in the battle and fiight, including 
 twenty-three superior officers, besides lieutenants and ensigns. Twelve 
 thousand gold-pieces, thirty -four standards, all the musical instruments 
 and cannon, with a long train of provision-wagons, were a rich spoil for 
 the Irish army. The confederates had only two hundred slain and six 
 hundred wounded." 
 
 After three days' investment in Armagh, 1500 fugitive English sur- 
 rendered to the Irish. Some of the chieftains would fain have slaught- 
 ered them by way of retaliation for the atrocities of the English, but 
 O'Neill's humanity prevailed over these sterner counsels. " The pris- 
 oners were disarmed and sent in safety to the pale. Portmore was 
 instantly yielded, and its garrison dismissed with the rest." Such was 
 the most brilliant passage in the life of Hugh O'Neill. To quote again 
 from Mr. Mitchel: "All Saxon soldiery vanished speedily from the fields 
 of Ulster, and the Bloody Hand once more waved over the towers of 
 Newry and Armagh." 
 
 Of course it is quite impossible in a brief summary like the present 
 to follow O'Neill and O'Bonnell through all the varying incidents of their 
 days of glory and disaster. For long they were victorious over all 
 antagonists. Viceroy after viceroy went down before them. Fitzwil- 
 liam, Eussell, De Burgh (who was defeated and killed at the battle of 
 Drumfluich), Ormond, but, above all, the queen's brilliant favorite, Es- 
 sex, — all these viceroys, together with several generals of distinguished 
 bravery and skill, such as Norreys, Bagnal and Clifford, failed igno- 
 miniously in every effort to subdue the banded tribes of Ireland. Eng- 
 land's star of conquest seemed about to pale before the morning star of 
 a united Ireland. In Mr. Mitchel's life of Hugh O'Neill the reader will 
 find ample details, full of interest and animation, of the many glorious 
 
xliv THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 achievements of O'Neill, O'Donnell and others of the national leaders. 
 There we may learn to estimate O'Neill's skill in warlike stratagems 
 and wiles, from the account given of the singular mock-combat between 
 two bodies of his own troops (one, in the clothes of slaughtered English- 
 men, simulating an English party on their march to relieve leaguered 
 Armagh), which drew forth the garrison to help their imagined friends, 
 whereupon an ambuscade that O'Neill had planted in a monastery on 
 the east of Armagh cut them off from the city. In Mr. Mitchel's book 
 all O'Neill's victories on the Blackwater and elsewhere, from Clontibret 
 to Beal-an-atha-Buidhe, rise vividly before us. We have vivid pic- 
 tures, too, of the victories and fierce raids of O'Donnell, especially of the 
 battle of the Curlew Mountains, where fell his brave antagonist, Sir 
 Conyers Clifford ; and of the terrible foray on the lands of Thomond, on 
 which occasion, during his march homewards, he generously restored to 
 the suppliant bard, Maoilin Oge, his plundered flocks and herds. The 
 brilliant exploit of the brave and faithful Richard Tyrrell — of Norman 
 extraction, indeed, yet an Irishman true as steel — in the defile that ever 
 tsince has borne his name, where he all but annihilated the Meathian 
 detachment of young Barnewall of Trimleston; the equally brilliant 
 exploit of the O'Mores in the Pass of Plumes, where five hundred of Lord 
 Essex's rear-guard were cut to pieces; O'Neill's interview with, that 
 showy but shallow viceroy; the sketches of all these and numerous 
 other scenes and events, with occasional glimpses of the arms and cos- 
 tume of the Celtic tribes, both Irish and auxiliar Highland Scotch, the 
 former "enveloped in long woollen cloaks, which in action they often 
 wound round the left hand," and their footmen fighting with "sharp 
 battle-axes and short swords ;" while the latter, wearing the clan-tartans, 
 wield the redoubtable huge two-handed broadsword, — all these scenes 
 and pictures of the life of our forefathers give variety and movement 
 to Mr. Mitchel's narrative. 
 
 Meagre as this outline of our past history must necessarily be, I shall 
 yet devote a few pages to the scenes disastrous to the Irish cause that 
 fill the closing years of this war, which has left behind it for Ireland so 
 many proud as well as saddening memories. A perception of the true 
 causes of O'Neill's and O'Donnell's final defeat will also give us a 
 perfect insight, both with regard to the policy which England has 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTOKi. xlv 
 
 unvaryingly pursued in her dealings with Ireland, and with regard to 
 the chief perennial source of weakness among the Irish themselves. 
 
 After such a long series of years, in the course of which so many 
 chief governors and military leaders had reaped nothing in their con- 
 flicts with O'Neill and O'Donnell save utter defeat and consequent death 
 or disgrace, at last there came on the scene to assume control over Eng- 
 lish affairs in Ireland a man of altogether different stamp of intellect. 
 This was the celebrated Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, at once a man 
 of learning and an experienced soldier ; in short, a man of superior craft 
 and superior energy, though many, even O'Neill himself, with all his 
 penetration, had, before Mountjoy was tested, been deceived into thinking 
 him too indolent for successful action. In February of the year 1600 
 Mountjoy was appointed lord-deputy. From the moment he landed in 
 Ireland the fortune of war and of the old race began to change. In the 
 south, where the motives of resistance to England were probably more 
 religious than national, he sapped the confederation and seduced men 
 from its ranks by his apparently tolerant views. He showed, in Mr 
 Mitehel's words, "all the liberality, all the tenderness for.Irish Cath- 
 olics, that a British minister has never failed to assume when a storm of 
 Irish wrath was to be weathered or the hope of Irish nationhood to be 
 crushed." He adopted, in short, the policy contained in two pithy pre- 
 cepts of Bacon : to weaken the Irish by disunion, and to cheat them by 
 a temporary indulgence of their worship. Tie fear of persecution began 
 to die out in the south, and with it the great bond of union between the 
 native and Norman Catholics. The same policy, however, would prove 
 inadequate for the work of creating divisions in the confederate ranks in 
 the northern part of the island, where the war was national rather than 
 religious. There the seeds of dissension must be sown by endeavoring 
 to seduce prominent men in the great families, with promises of English 
 •support and recognition, to revolt against their chiefs and set up rival 
 claims of chieftainship. Tims Nial Garbh, "the rugged," enters into 
 traitorous correspondence with Sir Henry Docwra, governor of Deny, 
 revolts against Bed Hugh and lets an English garrison into Lifford. 
 Art, son of Turlogh Lynnogh, becomes the queen's Sir Arthur O'Neill, 
 revolts against the prince of Tyrone, and claims the chieftaincy of the 
 O'Neills for himself. Connor Roe Maguire, also being tampered with, 
 
xlvi THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 stands in the ranks of the enemy as " Queen's Maguire." Nor is this 
 plan considered by any means superfluous in Minister either. There the 
 lord-president, Sir George Carew, ably combines it with the toleration 
 " dodge." He devises means in the most ingenious manner to set the 
 heads of the Irish by the ears, so that " they would prove the most lit 
 instruments to ruin one another." Dermot O'Connor was one of the 
 leading chiefs of the Minister army. His wife, Lady Margaret, was sis- 
 ter to the hapless heir of Desmond, unfortunate Earl Gerald's son, who 
 had for years languished in captivity in England. Carew works on this 
 lady's jealousy of James — Hugh O'Neill's earl of Desmond, known in 
 history as the "Sugan earl" — and wins her to his interests. She in 
 turn gains her husband over, and he agrees "for a consideration" to 
 seize the earl and deliver him to the president. At the same time, to 
 help this nefarious plot, Carew addresses a letter to the earl, in which he 
 makes the most infamous proposals and promises ; he coolly incites him 
 to murder or snare into captivity Dermot O'Connor. The letter is 
 extant ; here is a passage from it : " You may rest assured that promises 
 shall bee kept; and you sliall no sooner bring Dermond O'Connor to me t 
 atire or dead, and banish his bownoghs out of the countrie, but you 
 shall have your demand satisfied, which I thanke God I am both able 
 and willing to performe." This letter was put into the hands of O'Con- 
 nor, that he might say he had intercepted it, and might represent his 
 seizure or assassination of James of Desmond as an act of self-defence 
 against a secret foe. This detestable plot had only partial success. 
 The earl was taken, but escaped for a time. Eventually, however, he 
 was betrayed for a thousand pounds by the White Knight, also a Ger- 
 aldine and his kinsman. He died in the Tower of London. Mr. Mitchel 
 tells us that this rascal "president's secretary and historian details with 
 much candor — rather, indeed, as a matter of triumph — many other dark 
 machinations of his crafty master." I regret that want of space will 
 not allow me to take farther advantage of this delightful English candor 
 and give a few more specimens of Carew' s subornings and other villainous 
 intrigues. I have said enough, however, to enable the reader to compre- 
 hend fully some of the Machiavellian arts by means of which the Eng- 
 glish governors gradually undermined the Irish league in Minister and 
 elsewhere, so that O'Neill could no longer hide from himself the gloomy 
 
I — 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. .XI VII 
 
 fact that the national party was breaking up, at least in the south. 
 Indeed it was now becoming too plain to all, for Oarew "was soon 
 enabled to overrun all Desmond, and to reduce, by force or treachery, 
 the castles of Askeaton, Glynn, Carrig-a-foyle, Ardart, Liscaghan, Lough- 
 gwire, and many others, everywhere driving off the cattle and burning the 
 houses and corn-stacks; so that by the month of December (1600) there 
 was not one castle in all Minister held against the queen, nor, in the 
 language of Morryson, 'any company of ten rebels together.'" During 
 this year (1600), Mountjoy had been lucky in Leinster too. In a skir- 
 mish in Leix the gallant O'More, the hero of "the Pass of Plumes," was 
 slain. Mountjoy this same year cut down green corn which would have 
 grown to be worth ten thousand pounds. Some Leinster chiefs were 
 seduced to become traitors to the cause of their country. Treachery 
 was in the patriot councils — confidence had vanished. 
 
 Indeed, the military measures of Mountjoy were on a par with his 
 civil policy. They were characterized by consummate skill and con- 
 summate cruelty. Large bodies of troops built forts and established 
 garrisons at Deny and Ballyshannon. These and other forts, together 
 with the treacherous revolt of Mai Garbh O'Donnell, curbed and occu- 
 pied Eed Hugh, and prevented him from effecting a junction with 
 O'Neill, and co-operating with him as of old. Deny also helps to keep 
 O'Neill in check. Mountjoy forces his way through the Moyry Pass. 
 He cuts down the woods and clears the country all round that difficult 
 and dangerous defile ; he also builds a fort at its entrance. Contenting 
 himself with this for the present, he retires. On his way to Dublin, 
 O'Neill, for whose head he has just offered a reward of two thousand 
 pounds, falls on him at the "Pass of Carlingford," and inflicts heavy loss 
 on his army ; Mountjoy himself being one of the wounded. Throughout 
 the winter the gallant Tyrrell still holds Meath for O'Neill, and defies 
 the viceroy, who marches to Trim and Athlone, his track being marked 
 everywhere by fire and devastation. 
 
 Next year (1601) Mountjoy again presses hard on O'Neill, and strives 
 gradually to hem him in ; he constructs new or repairs old works. 
 Ulster is filled with his garrisons, strong and abundantly supplied with 
 all necessaries ; these from time to time sally forth to burn and ravage, 
 above all cutting down and trampling the corn. Mountjoy takes 
 
especial care to clear the woods that obstruct the defiles between Newrv 
 and the Blackwater, the scenes of so many disasters to the English in 
 the earlier period of this war. In spite of O'Neill's untiring activity and 
 occasional success in destroying marauding bands of the enemy, even in 
 Ulster the gradual encroachments of the tide of conquest are becoming 
 more visible every day. The advance of Mountjoy is steady — slow, 
 indeed, but sure. Ten thousand English troops are on the soil of 
 Ulster. 
 
 O'Neill has still some expectation of receiving succor from Spain. 
 For years the Irish had been looking to the kindred Spaniards with 
 hope and trust. In 1599 two envoys had come from Don Philip III., 
 who had just mounted the throne of Spain ; they brought twenty-two 
 thousand pieces of gold from the king, and from the poi)e indulgences 
 for those combating against English heresy and a " Phoenix plume 1 ' 
 blessed by the Holy Father ; but now nothing short of a large expedition 
 could serve or save Ireland. At last about three thousand four hundred 
 Spanish soldiers, many of them raw troops quite untrained in the use of 
 arms, landed at Kinsale ; a few years before such a force, making a descent 
 on any part of our coast, might have secured Ireland's independence, but 
 it was now too late for so small an auxiliary force to be of any real ser- 
 vice, especially landing as it did in Minister, Avherc the patriotic struggle 
 had died out completely. Had it landed in the north, it might even yet 
 have given some chance of final victory to O'Neill. It is true that 
 O'Neill and O'Donnell had concurred in the selection of a southern port, 
 doubtless considering such a one most accessible to a Spanish fleet; but 
 it can hardly be doubted that they had expected a much more formid- 
 able expedition. They had also relied on the fidelity of the clan Carrha 
 and their chief, the MacCarthy More ; never dreaming that without one 
 manly blow the entire southern confederacy would in so brief a time 
 have yielded to the corrupt and fraudulent arts of Mountjoy and Carew. 
 
 The worst feature of the Spanish expeditionary force was that Don 
 Juan d'Aguila, the general commanding it, unlike most of the Spanish 
 military chiefs of the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centu- 
 ries — the proud and palmy period of the Spanish monarchy, when Spain 
 boasted that "the sun never set on her empire " — was, if not faint-hearted, 
 at least conceited and incompetent. He was at once discouraged when 
 
~1 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. xlix 
 
 he saw that none of the people of Minister, save O'Sullivan Beare, O'Con- 
 nor Kerry and O'Driscol, had the patriotism or courage to rise and join 
 him. Indeed, some of the high-toned Spaniards conceived an unreason- 
 able contempt for the southern Irish, thinking even that "Christ had 
 never died " for such a people. Don Juan in a short time let himself he 
 shut up in Kinsale by Mountjoy and Carew, who sat down before that 
 town with an army of fifteen thousand men, two-thirds of whom, melan- 
 choly to relate, are asserted to have been Irishmen. The towns of 
 Minister sent their contingents to swell the queen's array. "VYe find the 
 Irish earls of Thomond and Claiirickarde holding high command in the 
 English army. The latter, in some of the succeeding operations, distin- 
 guished himself more, both for bravery and ferocity, than any one else 
 on the English side; he is even said to have killed with his own hand, 
 at the battle of Kinsale, twenty of the Irish, and to have cried out to 
 spare "no rebels." Carew compliments him by saying that "no man 
 did bloody his sword more than his lordship that day." 
 
 At the call of Don Juan d'Aguila, O'Neill, at the head of between 
 three and four thousand troops, and O'Donnell, at the head of two thou- 
 sand five hundred men, at once march southward, in order, if possible, 
 .to raise the siege of Kinsale and form a junction with the Spaniards. 
 O'Djnnell, though he leaves his principality in a state of confusion and 
 peril, hurries on without losing an hour, and arrives first at ITolycross, the 
 place appointed for a rendezvous with O'Neill. Mountjoy, like a skillful 
 general, detaches Carew with a strong force to try and crush O'Donnell 
 before O'Neill can join him. O'Donnell is too weak to give battle, and 
 is reluctant to give up the object of his march southward by retreating 
 on Ulster ; yet how is he to elude Carew by a forced march over Slieve 
 Felim into Limerick, when recent heavy rains have made the mountains 
 and morasses impassable for horses and carriages ? Most luckily, one 
 night's hard frost renders even the boggy places for a brief time pass- 
 able; O'Donnell waits for darkness, and then marches all night; by 
 morn O'Donnell is far away. The escape and prodigious celerity of 
 " this light-footed general" amaze the baffled Carew. However, he fails 
 not to exert himself strenuously, but all his energy is thrown away. 
 The loss is not to be redeemed ; 'tis vain any longer to think of inter- 
 cepting O'Donnell. Cbtow admits that the one day's march of O'Don- 
 
1 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 ncll from 0' Meagher's country to Crome, thirty-two Irish miles, is "the 
 greatest march that hath been heard of." High praise this, coming 
 from so bitter an enemy. 
 
 O'Donnell reaches Castlehaven in time to join seven hundred newly- 
 arrived Spaniards, intended to reinforce D'Aguila. And now some signs 
 of life appear among a few of the southern clans. Donough O'Driscol, 
 Sir Finnan O'Driscol and Donal O'Suilivan receive Spanish garrisons 
 into their castles and declare manfully for their country's cause. Mean- 
 while, the English press the siege of Kinsale vigorously. The Spaniards 
 hold out stoutly ; they make several bold sorties ; numbers are killed 
 on both sides. The English strain every nerve to capture the town, if 
 possible, before O'jSeill can come to relieve it ; the Spaniards strain 
 every nerve to keep the enemy at bay, and keep possession of the town 
 until his arrival. Meanwhile, by extraordinary efforts, the great Ulster 
 chief gets together about four thousand men, and fights his way through 
 Wostmeath ; joined by the untiring Tyrrell, he makes a rapid inarch to 
 the south-west and effects a junction with O'Donnell and a portion of 
 the small body of Spaniards recently landed at Castlehaven. O'Neill 
 and the Irish army now cut Mountjoy off from his supplies ; the besieger 
 is himself besieged. Still, the odds against the Irish are too great;, 
 against Mountjoy's fifteen thousand the Irish cannot muster seven thou- 
 sand men ; yet the English are in a critical position — between two fires, 
 so to speak. The Spaniards are still formidable, the Irish still resolute 
 and animated by the memories of several years of victory. Sickness and 
 the frequent desertions of their soldiers of Irish race thin the ranks of 
 the English army ; the severity of the season, privations, constant skir- 
 mishing are sure to waste them. O'Neill's plan was to persevere in 
 besieging the besiegers till their strength should be exhausted (his 
 own troops, meanwhile, gradually regaining the energy lost in their late 
 fatigues), and that then both Spaniards and Irish, combining their ope- 
 rations, should suddenly fall on the worn-out English and complete their 
 destruction. This was obviously the prudent course for the confederates 
 to adopt, but O'Donnell was too impetuous to bide his time patiently, 
 and Don John, lacking the indomitable will and endurance of a heroic 
 commander, was unwilling to bear the brunt of the siege any longer. 
 The English deluded him with false representations. O'Neill, impor- 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. li 
 
 tuned on all sides, was compelled to give a reluctant consent to attempt 
 a night-attack on the British entrenchments. There is reason to believe 
 that an officer high in his confidence betrayed his plans to the enemy. 
 On the fatal night of the 3d of January, 1602 (new style), the Irish 
 marched in three divisions ; the extreme darkness seemed to favor their 
 design, but the guides lost their way; hence the attack was delayed, 
 till at length morning was approaching. The English were on the 
 alert before daybreak. In short, the Irish, thinking to surprise the Eng- 
 lish, were themselves surprised. Don Juan d'Aguila and his Spanish 
 garrison either failed to sally forth, or did so feebly and without effect. 
 Some of O'Neill's cavalry and the troops under the brave Tyrrell made 
 a gallant stand ; the Spaniards, also, who had joined O'Donnell at Cas- 
 tlehaven, disdaining to fiy, were almost entirely cut to pieces on the field 
 of battle ; but these instances of valor were all unavailing : the Irish 
 army was totally defeated, and the capitulation of Don Juan d'Aguila 
 and his troops followed shortly after. 
 
 Three days after this disastrous battle of Kinsale, O'Donnell took 
 ship for Spain ; there he was received with the highest honors by king, 
 nobles and people ; he did all he could to persuade the king to send 
 a fresh expedition to the aid of Ireland. At first, Philip seemed disposed 
 to accede to his entreaties, but subsequently the preparations for a fresh 
 descent in force were countermanded. Again, with heart and brain on 
 fire, O'Donnell was hurrying to the court of Spain to renew his almost 
 hopeless suit, when, at Simancas, two leagues from Valladolid, "his 
 proud heart broken," he found rest from all further struggles and disap- 
 pointments in death. The king ordered him to be buried with royal 
 honors, and the hero's bones lie in the chapter of the cathedral of St. 
 Francis in the city of Valladolid. 
 
 Meanwhile, Hugh O'jSTeill after his defeat had retreated to the north, 
 where he determined to make his final stand. During the spring 
 Mountj oy was occupied in trying to effect the reduction of Munster, 
 which, with the aid of the perfidious and cruel Carew, he succeeded in 
 accomplishing, in spite of the gallant front shown to the foe by O'Sulli- 
 van Beare and O'Neill's active lieutenant, the valiant and faithful Tyrrell, 
 and the noble defence of O'Sullivan Beare's castle of Dunbuidhe by the 
 indomitable Mac Geoghegan. Once more Munster saw its lands and corn 
 
! r 
 
 Hi THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 wasted and destroyed, its wide extent covered with blood and ashes and 
 desolation ; but Ulster too was about to have her turn of " fire, famine and 
 slaughter." Early in June, Mountjoy advanced northward to Armagh, 
 and thence to Dungannon. O'Neill prepared for his last desperate 
 struggle by setting fire to his town and castle of Dungannon ; then he 
 betook himself to the forest and mountain-fastnesses in the centre of his 
 territory ; 
 
 " And backward to the den of his despair 
 The forest-monarch shrinks, and finds no lair." 
 
 But it is unnecessary in this brief sketch to dwell on the melancholy 
 closing scenes of this noble struggle for Irish independence, which, if it 
 had succeeded, would have made Ireland compact and strong ; for, as I 
 have already said, this great O'Neill had in his capacious soul the large 
 idea of a united Irish nation. There is little reason to doubt that he 
 would, if victorious, have introduced into Ireland the Spanish military 
 discipline, then the first in the world, and would have welded into one 
 great and well-consolidated monarchy the jarring elements of the Irish 
 population. But alas ! this was not to be ; it was otherwise written in 
 the book of fate. Vainly O'Neill gallantly stands at bay for months of 
 sore struggle and sacrifice ; vainly his faithful clansmen resist the gold 
 and treacherous lures of the Saxon, spit upon all offers of reward for his 
 betrayal, and suffer and die heroically for their beloved chief and their 
 dear old Celtic customs and rights. Like fiends incarnate, Mountjoy 
 and his Saxon soldiers — and, worse still, his queen's O'Reillys and 
 queen's Maguires — cut down the green corn, trampling it under foot 
 and leaving it to rot, and devastate the entire country. In the woods 
 of Glan-con-keane, with only six hundred infantry and about sixty horse, 
 O'Neill makes his last stand, and thrusts back the foe through the whole 
 winter ; but he hears that Connaught too is subdued. Where is he now 
 to look for succor? What hope is there remaining of help, either at 
 home or from foreign lands ? Besides, his people are everywhere dying 
 of famine. Moryson, who was with Mountjoy's army, tells us "that 
 no spectacle was more frequent in the ditches of towns, and especially 
 of wasted countries, than to see multitudes of the poor people dead, with 
 their mouths all colored green by eating nettles, dock and all things 
 they could rend up above ground." Chichester and Sir Robert Moryson 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. liii 
 
 on one occasion this winter " saw a horrible spectacle — three children, 
 the eldest not above ten years old, all eating and gnawing with their 
 teeth the entrails of their dead mother, on whose flesh they had fed for 
 twenty days past." Again : Moryson tells us, on the authority of Cap- 
 tain Trevor, one of the English officers, how some old women are making 
 a fire in' a field near Newry, "and divers little children driving out the 
 cattle in the cold mornings, coming thither to warm them, are by them 
 surprised and lulled and eaten." Is it then wonderful that O'Neill, 
 seeing his land and people a prey to such desolation and horrors, at last 
 despairs ? Surely all immediate prospect of winning his country's lib- 
 erty is at an end. The sole chance left for Ireland is to save the rem- 
 nant of the old race for better times. On the 30th of March, 1603, 
 O'Neill, now sixty years old, worn in frame and stricken in heart, on 
 bended knees submitted to the lord-deputy at Mellifont. Ireland seems, 
 at last, about to be Anglicised and her conquest made complete. 
 
 Yet O'Neill surrendered on good terms, all things considered. The 
 queen was anxious to win his submission at any price, for, even reduced 
 to such terrible straits, he was still a formidable foe. Just about this 
 time the illustrious virgin-vixen died. James VI. of Scotland, who suc- 
 ceeded her as James I. of England, confirmed the favorable conditions 
 granted to O'Neill. He, indeed, and the chiefs his allies, were to give up 
 their Celtic chieftainships and surrender their lands to the crown ; but 
 they were to receive full pardon, and with certain reservations to have 
 the whole of the lands held by their several clans regranted to them by 
 royal "letters-patent." O'Neill, restored in blood in spite of attainder 
 and outlawry, was reinstated in his earldom of Tyrone. Koderick 
 O'Donnell, Red Hugh's brother and successor, was created earl of Tyr- 
 Connell. The enjoyment of full and free exercise of their religion was 
 granted alike to chiefs and people. Such was the termination of Hugh 
 O'Neill's memorable struggle for Irish freedom. 
 
 But I need hardly add that all these conditions were before long vio- 
 lated by the English; robbery and persecution were soon "let slip" 
 again upon the Irish. In 1607 a charge of conspiracy, real or pre- 
 tended, was trumped up against O'Neill and Earl Roderick; they felt 
 that their lives were in danger. O'Neill had before this complained of 
 the base espionage to which he was subjected — " that he had so many 
 
eves watching; over him that he could not drink a full carouse of sack 
 but the state was advertised thereof a few hours after." It was hard for 
 the proud spirit of O'Neill to have to endure a state of things like this ; 
 still, he yielded to necessity, and bore on in peace till, in 1607, he and 
 Earl Roderick, finding their lives in jeopardy, decided on flying from 
 their country. They, their relatives and numerous other friends, em- 
 barked at Rathmullen, on the shores of Lough Swilly, on the 14th of 
 September, 1607, and gazed from the ship, for the last time, on the land 
 for which they had fought so many battles. Landing in Normandy, they 
 afterward visited Flanders; finally, the weary-hearted exiles found 
 refuge in Rome. Here they lived on a pension from the pope and the 
 king of Spain. In his old age the illustrious chief of Tyr-Owen became 
 blind ; he died in the year 1616. 
 
 After the flight of the earls all their vast possessions were seized by 
 the crown ; six counties in Ulster were confiscated. Grants of lands 
 were made to a host of Scotch and English " undertakers." Vast estates 
 were parceled out among London companies and guilds. This " plan- 
 tation of Ulster," as it was called, was the origin of the great admixture 
 of Scottish blood which we find in all the counties of Ulster. To this 
 day we hear in that province a modification of the Scotch accent, and 
 we can trace in the inhabitants some of the peculiar traits of the Scot- 
 tish character and habits ; yet the old Celtic element still preponderates. 
 If any projects for exterminating the natives had been entertained, they 
 failed miserably ; the natives in their depressed state increased and mul- 
 tiplied more than the favored colonists. James I. also granted lands to 
 the Established Church and to Trinity College — two institutions thor- 
 oughly anti-Irish in their tendency ; the latter had been founded in the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth, during the viceroyalty of the corrupt Fitzwil- 
 liam, on the site of the suppressed monastery of All-Hallows. The great 
 and peculiar hardship of these Irish confiscations consisted in the fact 
 that not merely the chiefs, who became obnoxious to the English rulers, 
 were thereby despoiled of their estates, but all the people composing 
 their tribes were robbed at the same time, and reduced to penury ; for, 
 by the old Irish law, all the lands ruled by each chief, so far from being 
 bis exclusive or absolute property, Avere the property of the entire tribe, 
 and liable on certain occasions to redistribution. A system like this, 
 
BUB. 
 
r™' 
 
 l r 
 
 PRELIMINAR"* SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 
 
 w anting fixed appropriation of land, seems not very favorable to agri- 
 culture. Indeed, some writers, considering these old Celtic land tenures 
 and certain other Celtic customs to be incompatible with a high state 
 of refinement and civilization, seem, in reviewing these wars of Ireland, 
 always to regard the English as the champions of civilization, and the 
 cause of Ireland as identical with that of barbarism, if not savagery, 
 and consequently to look upon its loss or ruin as something not to be 
 regretted by the wise. Sir Archibald Alison, as might be expected, 
 talks of the Irish as always resisting civilization ; but it is somewhat 
 strange to find even Moore, while he cannot withhold a certain amount 
 of sympathy from the patriotic struggles of his countrymen, at the same 
 time seeming to be troubled with some misgivings as to whether he 
 ought not to contemplate with satisfaction the successes of England as 
 the triumphs of civilization; he seems, in short, for ever in doubt 
 whether he should call the Irish, fighting for their own, patriots or 
 rebels. Apparently it seldom or never occurs to these "philosophic 
 historians" that a country like Ireland pays a trifle too dearly even for 
 civilization if the price be the extermination of her brave children ; t r 
 that if she should succeed in throwing off the yoke and driving out her 
 civilizing oppressors, her own sons might compensate her for the loss of 
 a foreign by the development of a high and refined native civilization. 
 If O'Neill, for instance, had succeeded in his efforts for Irish independ- 
 ence, why might not he and his successors have gradually abolished 
 such Celtic institutions as stood in the way of what is nicknamed 
 "progress," and developed a new Irish civilization, better adapted to 
 modem ideas and requirements than the old forms could be ? In the 
 portion of his "Norman Conquest" that refers to our grand struggle for 
 more than seven hundred years against the English sway, the great 
 French historian Thierry shows a far profounder insight and knowledge 
 of the real spirit and teaching of Irish history, and manifests broader and 
 more generous sympathies with our people, than any other historian, 
 whether foreign or Irish. He glorifies that noble struggle of our race, 
 only paralleled by the Spanish struggle of nine hundred years against 
 the Moors ; calls the fidelity of generation after generation of Irishmen 
 to a cause ever lost, the son with little hope of success taking up and 
 bearing aloft in battle the standard trampled on by the foe in the days 
 
W' THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'eONNELL. 
 
 of his sire, and then, when defeated in turn, still handing down the old 
 quarrel to his son, — Thierry, I say, calls this unconquerable tenacity of 
 the Irish, this immortal clinging to the hopes of one day winning theii 
 independence, one of the noblest and most touching things in all history. 
 He quotes with applause the heroic words of Donald O'Neill in his lettei 
 addressed to Pope John XXII. in the fourteenth century: "Hatred pro- 
 duced by lengthened recollections of injustice, by the murder of oui 
 fathers, brothers and kindred, and which will not be extinguished in our 
 time nor in that of our sons." From the days of this "plantation of Ul- 
 ster " the war of races in Ireland, which Thierry places in so clear a light, 
 became more and more envenomed. Religious rage and hate, too, waxed 
 bitterer. The only actual rebellion, however, during James I.'s reign, 
 was the revolt of the gallant young chief of Innishowen, Sir Cahii 
 O'Dogherty, who met with considerable success at first, but was killed 
 a few months after he took the field. 
 
 I have dwelt on the rebellions of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and the 
 consequences that flowed from them, longer than to some may appeal 
 warrantable in a brief summary like the present. If I have done so, it 
 is because I am inclined to think that in these wars all the glorious 
 and all the hideous features of Irish history are more conspicuous than 
 in any of the struggles of earlier or more recent date. In the Eliz- 
 abethan wars you have the most shining examples of Irish patriotic 
 resistance, the most striking illustrations of that great curse of the Irish 
 race, dissension, and the most vivid pictures of English fraud and fero- 
 city. Moreover, in the events of Elizabeth's and James's reigns the 
 seeds of the most important occurrences of later generations were sown. 
 In the reigns of the Tudor sovereigns and in that of James I. a total 
 revolution gradually took place in the forms of Irish society. The old 
 Celtic usages and manners and costume disappeared, and the found- 
 ations of our modern society, with its very different customs, were laid. 
 English laws superseded the Brehon code. The English language began 
 its struggle with the Gaelic. The distinction between the pale and the 
 Irish territories virtually disappeared, though we still sometimes hear 
 the lords of the pale spoken of. Theoretically, at least, the mere Irish 
 are at length presumed to be entitled to the rights and privileges of the 
 king's subjects of English blood. In short, in James's reign, for the 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OK IRISH HISTORY. ivil 
 
 first time, Ireland, superficially at least, wears tlic aspect of a subdued 
 and Anglicised country. I may here observe that the union of the Scot- 
 tish and English crowns was undoubtedly a great misfortune for the cause 
 of Irish independence. An independent Scotland would occasionally 
 prove ail ally to Ireland or create for Irish insurgents a seasonable 
 diversion. 
 
 It is by no means necessary, then, that I should do much more than 
 refer to the subsequent wars of 1641 and those that arose out of the 
 Revolution of 1688. The tyrannical but able administration of Went- 
 worth, better known as the earl of Strafford, by intensifying the sense 
 of intolerable wrong in the hearts and souls of the Irish, prepared the 
 way for the outbreak of 16-11. Strafford's extortions, frauds and tyran- 
 nies in Ireland also enabled the English House of Commons to swell the 
 charges which served them as a pretext for bringing him to the scaffold 
 when they commenced their memorable quarrel with his equally ill-starred 
 master, Charles I. The wars in Ireland which followed the insurrection 
 of 1641 are, in a great degree, a repetition of the old story. We have 
 atrocities on both sides. We have fractions of the Irish race giving tne 
 English, assisted by other sections of the Irish race, the utmost trouble 
 to subdue them. We have, indeed, in these campaigns, a most extraor- 
 dinary amount of "confusion worse confounded." We have two English 
 parties in Ireland in arms against the native Irish party, and at the 
 same time hostile to each other — that of the kino; and that of the Ene;- 
 lish Puritan Parliament. We have a section of the so-called Irish reb- 
 els professing loyalty to the king and hostility to the English Parliament. 
 We have another section open enemies to every person and thing Eng- 
 lish. The pope's legate, Rinuccinni, is chiefly sustained by this subdi- 
 vision. I omit to notice all minute shades and distinctions of party. 
 The myth of the famous "Kilkenny cats" is almost realized. At one 
 time, in the course of this struggle, we find in Ireland about fourteen 
 armies in the field. This war was the natural result of " the plantation 
 of Ulster." Bishop Mant, however, in his Church history, can only see 
 in (he outbreak of 1641 an instance of the retributive justice of Prov- 
 idence on account of the guilty connivance at popery on the part of 
 English rulers in Ireland during a portion of the administration of 
 Blount (Lord Mountjoy). Among the principal military leaders who 
 
lvJii THE LIFE OF DAJS'IEL : COIS T JS*ELL. 
 
 appeared in this war three are conspicuous. Two of these are Irish ; 
 the third English. Of the Irish, the marquis of Ormond, like most of 
 the race of the Butlers, fights for the king of England against the cause 
 of Ireland. The other eminent Irishman, Owen Roe O'Neill (a truly 
 great man, even according to the admission of writers in no degree 
 friendly or just to the Irish or their cause), rivals the most glorious of 
 Ireland's patriots and chiefs of every age. He wins a victory over 
 Munro and his Scots greater and more memorable than any victory over 
 British troops won in Ireland before or since. I allude to the victory of 
 Benburb, achieved on the 5th of June, 1616, which gave Owen Boe pos- 
 session of all Ulster. At one period of this war Ireland seemed indeed 
 on the point of assuming the aspect of a nation. The Confederation of 
 Kilkenny at first appears to promise glorious results. The General 
 Assembly wears the short-lived semblance of a veritable National 
 Assembly. A great seal is struck; a mint is established; there are 
 printing-presses for publication of ordinances; some admirable enact- 
 ments for encouragement of foreign commerce are passed ; arrangements 
 for the management of internal affairs, both military and civil, are made; 
 some of these are judicious ; others, such as the division of the Catholic 
 army of Ireland into several independent commands, fatal. With all 
 the shortcomings of the Confederation of Kilkenny, during the sitting 
 of the General Assembly towards the close of 1612 Ireland was more 
 like a nation than she had ever been before. But, as usual, accursed 
 dissension ruined everything; and, most unfortunately for the Irish 
 cause, Owen Roe dies at Cloughouter Castle, in Cavan, on the 6th of 
 November, 1649, not without suspicion of poison. After his death 
 there remained no one in Ireland tit to cope with Cromwell, the terrible 
 and renowned general of the English Parliamentarians. He mercilessly 
 crushes, for the time, the Irish and their cause in blood and fire. Fain 
 would he send the whole Irish race "to hell or Connaught." Famine 
 and the sword once more mow down the Irish. Fresh confiscations, on 
 an enormous scale, follow Cromwell's triumph. Fresh seeds of hatred 
 and vengeance are sown in the souls of the Irish. Additional memories 
 of wrong are borne along on the stream of time, even down to our own 
 days. The hostility of rival races and religions is keener than ever. 
 In the reign of Charles II. little was done to repair the violence and 
 
wrong inflicted on the Irish by the Commonwealth. The acts of settle- 
 ment and explanation gave scant justice to Catholics ; indeed, it is said 
 that about this period live thousand Catholic Irish, never outlawed, were 
 shut out by law from possession of their lands. In this reign the judicial 
 murder of the venerable and exemplary Oliver Plunkett, the Catholic 
 primate of Ireland, took place in London. 
 
 After the Cromwellian wars we begin to hear of the Irish tories and 
 rapparees, of whom Redmond O'Hanlon and Galloping O'Hogan were 
 among the most famous or notorious. These tories and rapparees are 
 not to be classed with ordinary robbers or brigands ; they are, in truth, 
 the last remains of the patriotic resistance of those times, Celtic valor 
 reduced to a half-combative, half-fugitive condition ; soldiers gradually 
 acquiring the predatory habits of the ordinary outlaw. There are many 
 parallel cases in the history of other lands and times ; thus, as Thierry 
 in his "Norman Conquest" shows, Here ward, and later, Robin Hood 
 and others, with their bands of outlaws, were the last remains of the 
 more regular Saxon resistance to the Norman conquest. Perhaps some 
 of the bands of Neapolitan brigands in Murat's reign were of the same 
 stamp ; Rob Roy Macgregor too and his clan are to be looked on rather 
 as waging an irregular warfare of vengeance against rulers and laws and 
 a society, in short, that had ruthlessly proscribed and tyrannized over 
 them, than in the odious light of an ordinary captain and band of rob- 
 bers; probably, if Napoleon the Great had succeeded in conquering 
 Spain, many of the guerilla corps in that country would have gradually 
 degenerated till they became in time little better than mere predatory 
 bands. The rapparees seem to have taken part in the Williamite wars 
 on the side of James II. as partisan troops. 
 
 On the English side a far more repulsive class of individuals arose in 
 Ireland in those sad times — a class which then, Or at a later period, re- 
 ceived the hideous appellation of the head-cutters ; we find some of them 
 so late as the early part of the eighteenth century ; these wretches used, 
 for various amounts of blood-money, to hunt to the death tories, rappa- 
 rees and other persons of Irish race obnoxious to the British government, 
 and bring in their heads. Captain Adam Loftus and Lieutenant Fran- 
 cis Rowleston earned money in this diabolical way; Johnstone, of the 
 Fews, in Armagh, and one Pepper, the murderer of Patrick Fleming, 
 
I — 
 i r 
 
 lx THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'OOKKELL. 
 
 the last baron of Slane, are two of the most notorious among the head 
 cutters. 
 
 The Williamite wars present to our view most of the principal fea- 
 tures of former Irish wars against the English. In the first place, we see 
 a portion of the Irish nation contending once more for freedom against 
 the might of England, assisted by a different section of Irishmen ; on 
 this occasion England has also a powerful auxiliary force of foreigners ; 
 yet against all these odds Ireland for three years bore up so gallantly 
 that it was with the utmost difficulty England finally prevailed over 
 her. When in all these Irish wars we see a fraction, greater or less, of 
 the Irish race contending with the whole power of England, assisted by 
 other Irish, and yet winning many victories and keeping the English 
 forces at bay for long years, and in the end hardly conquered, the ques- 
 tion irresistibly forces itself on us, What would have been the result of 
 any one of those struggles if Ireland had been united? If the Irish 
 were to-day, or at any period, united as one man against the English, 
 England's hold on Ireland would not be worth one month's purchase, 
 seeing that a mere fraction of the race can always put British suprem- 
 acy in the greatest peril. We have even seen the small tribe of the 
 O'Byrnes in the glens of Wicklow, under Fiach Mac Hugh, maintaining 
 their independence in the teeth, so to speak, of Dublin Castle, centuries 
 after Henry II.'s invasion, and even during the vigorous reign of Eliz- 
 abeth. SchamyTs defiance for years in our own century of 200,000 
 Muscovite soldiers in the Caucasus was not a greater feat than this, rela- 
 tively. A district equal to the whole of Wicklow would not be missed 
 out of Rhode Island, the smallest State of the American Union, and 
 of Wicklow the territory of the O'Byrnes formed only a portion. It 
 may then be boldly affirmed that Ireland, if true to herself, ought at 
 any time to be able to drive the English garrisons into the sea, The 
 wars of William Avere attended, like former Irish wars, with varying for- 
 tune. Derry and the Boyrte are boasted of by the English party. The 
 first siege of Athlone, and, still more, the first siege of Limerick, are the 
 pride and glory of the Irish. The second siege of Limerick and the bat- 
 tle of Aughrim, in spite of the final event in each case, are perhaps more 
 glorious for the Irish than for the English. Aughrim, it is next to cer- 
 tain, would have been an Irish victory but for the chance ball, if chance 
 
it were, that carried oft* the head of the marquis of St. Euth. A few 
 moments before the fatal stroke lie declared that the Irish infantry were 
 immortalizing themselves, and that he would speedily drive the English 
 before him to the gates of Dublin. In this Avar the English were some- 
 what less bloody and cruel than in their other Irish wars. However, it 
 was followed by the usual amount of confiscations. The treaty of Lim- 
 erick, which brought the struggle to a close, seemed at first to secure 
 protection and the free exercise of their religion to the Catholies of Ire- 
 land. But its conditions were subsequently most shamefully violated. 
 In breach of all good faith the terrible penal code was established, which 
 for almost a century deprived the Catholic body of Ireland of all civil 
 rights. During the greater part of the eighteenth century they were ab- 
 solutely deprived of political existence ; in fact, throughout that dreary 
 time the real Irish nation disappears from history, except as soldiers in 
 the ranks of foreign armies. During this period Irish adventurers (the 
 '■wild-geese" as they were styled) reaped immortal laurels in the cele- 
 brated " Irish Brigade " in the service of kindred France, and on Fonte- 
 noy and other hard-fought battle-fields of Continental Europe drove the 
 tanks of their hated hereditary foe before them in wildest rout and ruin. 
 After I commence O'Connell's life I shall find occasion to speak in detail 
 of the various penal enactments and their subsequent relaxation ; also, 
 to give some pictures illustrative of the manner in which they colored 
 and influenced life in Ireland while they remained in force. Hardly any 
 relaxation of this grim and infernal code had taken place when O'Con- 
 nell was born, in 1755. 
 
 Reverting for a moment to the Williamite wars, the episode of the 
 arrival of Baldeargh O'Donnell and his enthusiastic reception by the 
 people of Donegal as chief of Tyr-Connell, after an interval of more than 
 eighty years since the flight of their last chief, Earl Roderick, is singu- 
 larly illustrative of the Celtic tenacity of old traditions and memories. 
 Macaulay, in his usual style of caricature or ridicule, gives an account 
 of this restoration of a dynasty, as he sneeringly calls it. He says, 
 however, that the interest felt by the Irish in the fortunes of Baldeargh 
 was much more lively and genuine than that which they felt in King 
 .lames II. By the way, it is curious enough that, in spite of the strong 
 dislike and prejudice which Macaulay entertains towards Ireland and 
 
kii THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'tJONNELL. 
 
 the Irish, almost the only person in his great work whom this Lesage 
 of history shows in a truly honorable light is the gallant Sarsfield. 
 Macaulay never once denies the manliness, honor, generosity, patriot- 
 ism and courage of Sarsfield, while for nearly all the remarkable Eng- 
 lish soldiers and sailors and statesmen and divines he has little better 
 appellations to bestow than liar, rogue, scoundrel, double-dyed traitor 
 and coward. In truth, his book might justly be called a sort of his- 
 torical Gil Bias, for its main interest consists in its profusion of brilliant 
 and spicy sketches of the profound rascality of nearly all the English 
 public characters, Whig as well as Tory, in the clays of the "happy and 
 glorious " Revolution of 1688. 
 
 And indeed, it may be reasonably doubted whether Maeaulay's is not 
 the only way to make the larger portion of modern English history 
 really interesting, particularly the history of 1688. There are fewer 
 lofty and magnanimous characters in English history than in almost 
 any other. But there was an especial dearth of noble men in England 
 about the epoch of this Revolution of 1688. Even Mordaunt, after- 
 wards earl of Peterborough, was more grandiose than truly grand. 
 Besides, he was crooked in mind. To write, then, the history of that 
 time in a strain of enthusiasm would be quite an absurd mistake, the 
 like of which Macaulay rarely falls into. In the case of the trial of the 
 seven Church-of-England bishops, indeed, he tries to lash himself into an 
 elevated vein, but the enthusiasm is hardly genuine. How could it be so ? 
 Those bishops did not care one sixpence for popular liberty ; in truth, 
 as their subsequent conduct showed, they disliked it, and we're prepared 
 to oppose revolution at almost any personal sacrifice. As patriots they 
 were thorough shams. They were complete slaves to the abject doctrine 
 of the indefeasible divine right of kings. If, for a brief space, they 
 ventured to resist an arbitrary mandate of James, it was simply because 
 he had wounded and roused to a high pitch of wrath their feelings of 
 bigotry against Catholics and other non-conformists by trying to force 
 them to read to their congregations his letter or declaration of toleration. 
 In short, Maeaulay's rhetoric in telling the story of the bishops wants 
 the genuine ring of sincerity ; and he hits on the true method of mak- 
 ing his history of the Revolution of 1688 interesting when he imitates 
 the subject-matter and style of a Spanish pkaresco novel. 
 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. lxii' 
 
 In concluding this summary, I may remark that, according to some 
 calculations, the whole soil of Ireland has been confiscated about six 
 times over. In a land so tormented with civil strife and liable to changes 
 of all sorts, the new landed proprietors, introduced by each fresh revo- 
 lution, would naturally feel the possession of their ill-got estates inse- 
 cure. Hence they would make haste to wring all they could from their 
 wretched tenants. No sentiments of sympathy or kindliness would 
 grow up between landlord and tenant. The mutual bad feeling would 
 be inherited from their sires by succeeding generations of proprietors 
 and tenants. The antagonism of race would thrive more and more each 
 day. And thus it came to pass in Ireland that even when the time 
 arrived in which his possession was perfectly secure, the Irish landlord 
 continued to oppress and extort from his tenant, and at the same time 
 to fear the "wild justice" of his revenge. 
 
The Life of Daniel O'Connell 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Birth — Family — Scenery of Ireland in general, and of Kerry in particular. 
 
 ANIEL O'CONNELL— one of the most illustrious, if not the 
 most illustrious, of the public men of Ireland — was born in Car- 
 hen House, the residence of his father, Mr. Morgan O'Connell, 
 ^|H near the small town of Cahirciveen, in the county of Kerry, on the 
 w? Oth of August, 1775. When, long years after, the flippant "Times " 
 commissioner said derisively of Cahirciveen that "there wasn't a pane 
 of glass in the whole town," O'Connell replied humorously in behalf of 
 a town that might almost be called his birthplace, " If the commissioner 
 had as many pains in his belly, his tongue would be more veracious and 
 his wanderings less erratic." There now remains not a vestige of the 
 house in which O'Connell was born. One morning, when already an 
 old man, he stood with his friend and secretary, Mr. O'Neill Daunt, on 
 the high ground at Hilgrove, overlooking the spot where he first saw the 
 light. He pointed to the crumbling ruins of Carhen House, and spoke 
 thus : "I was born there, but not in the house whose ruins you see. I 
 was born in a house of which there is now no vestige, and of which the 
 materials were .used in constructing the edifice now dilapidated. Do 
 you see that stream ? Many a trout I have caught in it in my youthful 
 days. Those meadows near the river were always good land, but beyond 
 was very unprofitable, boggy soil. My father always grew enough of wheat 
 for the use of the family. Those ash trees behind the house on the other 
 side of the river stand where there was once an old grove of much grosser 
 ash trees. They were worth one hundred pounds, and my father one day 
 thought proper to sell them for fifteen pounds. My uncle, General O'Con- 
 nell, left Ireland to enter the French service at the age of fourteen, and 
 he rose so rapidly that I was inspired by his example with an ambition 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 to distinguish myself. I always had one object in my ambitious views, 
 and that was to do something for Ireland. My family had ever been 
 Jacobites, as was only natural from the persecution the Catholics suf- 
 fered. But they committed no overt acts of Jacobitism, their zeal 
 extended no farther than keeping a print of the Pretender in the house. 
 When the first emancipation acts passed, in 1778 and 1782, their spec- 
 ulative JaCobitism was very much melted away as they saw the pros- 
 pect opening to them of doing well under the reigning dynasty." 
 
 O'Connell was very much displeased with "Mask," an anonymous 
 writer who described his origin as humble. He states himself that his 
 father's family was very ancient, and that his mother was a lady of the 
 first rank. O'Connell was a Celt of pure blood ; his mother's maiden 
 name was Kate O'Mullane; she was the daughter of Mr. O'Mullane of 
 Whitechurch, near Cork, the representative of an old Catholic family and 
 proprietor of a fair estate, which subsequently passed by purchase into the 
 hands of the O'Connells. For this mother O'Connell seems to have 
 felt all that unbounded love and veneration of which his large, exu- 
 berant and loving nature was capable. He delighted in giving expres- 
 sion to these feelings. Long after her death, when he was himself a 
 grandfather, he writes of her to the " Belfast Vindicator " of the 20th of 
 January, 1841, in the following terms : " Yes, I ought to respect the sex 
 in a peculiar manner. I am the son of a sainted mother, who watched 
 over my childhood with the most faithful care. She was of a high order 
 of intellect, and what little I possess has been bequeathed by her to me. 
 I may in fact say, without vanity, that the superior situation in which 1 
 am placed by my countrymen has been owing to her. Her last breath 
 was passed, 1 thank Heaven, in calling down blessings on my head, and 
 I valued her blessing since. In the perils and the dangers to which I have 
 been exposed through life, I have regarded her blessing as an angel's 
 shield over me, and as it has been my protection in this life, I look for- 
 ward to it also as one of the means of obtaining hereafter a happiness 
 greater than any this world can give." 
 
 From this it will be seen that O'Connell was of opinion that he in- 
 herited his abilities from his mother, and that the splendid success 
 which crowned his efforts during so long a portion of his career, and 
 which caused him to occupy so vast a space in the minds of his country- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 men, and even of foreigners, was mainly due to her. The great Napo- 
 leon held much the same opinion respecting his mother. He believed 
 that the marvelous energy of his character was derived from her. 
 Goethe and numbers of other great men believed that they owed a 
 similar debt of gratitude to their mothers. Indeed, though it be not 
 universally the case, the instances in biography and history are striking 
 and of frequent occurrence in which great men are under obligations to 
 their mother for the possession of their highest gifts and energies, both 
 intellectual and moral. 
 
 Yet, however large may have been the share of his solid or more 
 brilliant qualities which O'Connell owed to his mother, he must likewise 
 have derived many strong features of his character from the paternal 
 side, for the O'Connclls who came before him were no common stock. 
 They possessed both energy and shrewdness in a high degree. The 
 latter quality appears to have enabled them to steer their way rather 
 adroitly through the long ages of strife and intrigue and warfare and 
 proscriptions and confiscations and penal laws that passed away from 
 the invasion of Henry II. to the birth of the future "liberator." 
 This craft or shrewdness at least helped them to preserve a far goodlier 
 portion of landed property, indeed, a better share of the world's goods 
 in general, than what many families far more renowned in Irish history 
 were able to retain. Indee:!, as a rule (and we might naturally expect 
 that it would be so), the powerful Irish families and those most illus- 
 trious for stern heroic resistance to the encroachments of the foreigner 
 suffered the greatest reverses. We see this in the history of the varying 
 fortunes of the O'Neills, O'Donnells, MacCarthys, O'Byrnes, MacMahons, 
 O'Connors, O'Reillys, Fitzgeralds of the south, and numbers of other 
 tribes. The families that prospered were generally families of time- 
 servers and deserters from the national cause. The O'Connells (or 
 O'Conals) of old times, if not exactly lukewarm in their country's cause, 
 and too ready to serve the stranger, at least possessed a good deal of 
 worldly prudence, or, in other words, something of the wisdom of the 
 serpent. Originally driven from Connelloe in Limerick, they became 
 chiefs of Iveragh in Kerry. Generally speaking, they prospered. In 
 1337 we find King Edward III. authorizing Hugh O'Connell to 
 reduce to submission, by force of arms, certain clans in the county of 
 
Limerick. This chief's son, another Hugh, vigorously defends the lands 
 of his clan against the invasions of the Munster Geraldines, and also 
 mixes the blood of the O'Connells with the illustrious race of Brian 
 Boiroihme, by contracting a marriage with Marguerita, daughter of the 
 prince of Thomond. Jeffery O'Connell (the son of Hugh and Mar- 
 guerita), whose name appears as chief of his "nation " in a royal order 
 on the Irish exchequer bearing date 1372, married Catherine O'Connor, 
 whose father was chieftain of Traghty O'Connor. Their son Daniel is 
 mentioned as chief in a treaty dated 1421. He married a daughter of 
 the gallant house of 0' Sullivan Beare. Their son, a third Hugh, was 
 knighted by Sir Richard Nugent, who subsequently became lord-deputy 
 of Ireland. King Henry VII. rewarded this chief for promoting the 
 interests of England. By Hugh's marriage the house of O'Connell was 
 able to boast another splendid family alliance, for Mary, his bride, was 
 the daughter of MacCarthy More. Maurice, their son, took sides 
 against King Henry VII. with Perkin Warbeck when that impostor or 
 adventurer landed in Ireland to assert his claim to the sovereignty of 
 England and Ireland, in his assumed character of duke of York and 
 son to King Edward IV. Somehow, Maurice managed to procure a 
 pardon from Henry VII. on the 24th of August, 1496. Later we 
 rind Morgan O'Connell paying crown-rent in acknowledgment of the 
 authority of Henry VIII., and figuring as Edward VI.'s high- 
 sheriff for the county Kerry. Richard, son of Morgan, served in the 
 army of Queen Elizabeth during the wars of Desmond. During the 
 commotions and wars that followed the outbreak of 1641, Daniel O'Con- 
 nell of Aghgore, in Iveragh, contrived to preserve his estate by carefully 
 abstaining from taking any part in the rebellion. It is agreeable to 
 find that in the Williamite wars the O'Connells took the side of their 
 country ; Maurice O'Connell, of the county Clare, was brigadier-general 
 and colonel of the king's guards ; John O'Connell, the lineal ancestor of 
 "the liberator," and possessor of the very place which was bequeathed 
 to him by his uncle, Darrynane Abbey, raised and commanded a com- 
 pany of foot, which was embodied in this regiment of royal guards ; Cap- 
 tain John O'Connell fought, not without distinction, at Derry. the Boync 
 and Aughrim ; he was included in the capitulation of Limerick. O'Con- 
 nell, in the face of considerable stupid and unmeaning uproar and inter- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 ruption, told an amusing anecdote of tins military ancestor of his to that 
 whimsical body of legislators, the English House of Commons, which, 
 though on most occasions sufficiently observant of the decorum that 
 befits grave deliberative assemblies, occasionally takes a fit of transform- 
 ing itself into an uproarious and unruly mob. In spite of " their beastly 
 bellowings," to use the language by which he characterized their vocife- 
 rations on sundry occasions, he told this anecdote of Captain John: 
 " On the morning of the battle of Aughriin, an ancestor of mine, who 
 commanded a company of infantry in King James's army, reprimanded 
 one of his men Avho had neglected to shave himself. ' Oh, your honor/ 
 said the soldier, ' whoever takes the trouble of cutting my head off in 
 battle may take the trouble of shaving it when he goes home.' " 
 
 The captain's son was named Daniel. He was "the Uberator's" 
 grandfather. "The liberator's" father, Morgan, appears to have pos- 
 sessed all the shrewdness of the race. In spite of the obstacles which 
 the penal laws (concerning which detestable enactments I intend pres- 
 ently to speak more at large) threw in the way of all inheritance, acqui- 
 sition or testamentary devising of landed property by Catholics, Morgan 
 contrived to acquire a small estate by purchase. This estate w r as held 
 in trust for him by a Protestant, and so the prohibitory enactment was 
 evaded. O'Connell on one occasion observed very justly, in reply to a 
 priest w T ho expressed wonder that the operations of the penal laws "left 
 any Catholic estates in possession of their rightful owners," that "there 
 would not have been any, only that individual Protestants were found a 
 great deal honester than the laws. The Freeman family of Castlecor 
 were trustees for a large number of Catholic gentlemen in the county of 
 Cork. In Kerry there was a Protestant named Hugh Falvey who acted 
 as trustee for many Catholic proprietors there. In Dublin there was a 
 poor Protestant in very humble circumstances who was trustee for several 
 Catholic gentlemen, and discharged his trust with perfect integrity." 
 All this surely is veiy honorable to human nature in general and to 
 Irish nature in particular. 
 
 Mr. O'Neill Daunt, in his interesting "Personal Recollections of O'Con- 
 nell" — to which I may here observe I am indebted for the above partic- 
 ulars, and to which I shall be under a large amount of indebtedness 
 before I reach the conclusion of the present biography — tells us that 
 
O'Connell had an estate called Glencara, near the lake of Cahara, which 
 had been in the O'Connell family from days anterior to those of the penal 
 code. When Mr. Daunt expressed astonishment that Glencara had 
 escaped confiscation, O'Connell replied, " Oh, they did not find it out. It 
 is hidden among Avild mountains in a very remote situation, which was 
 wholly inaccessible in those days from the want of roads, and thus it 
 escaped their clutches." On another occasion O'Connell said to O'Neill 
 Daunt, "If ever I took a title it would be earl of Glencara." 
 
 In Dr. Smith's history of Kerry, strange to say, there is hardly any 
 mention of the O'Connell family. But this can be satisfactorily accounted 
 for. It appears that Dr. Smith once visited Darrynane, and spent some 
 days with O'Connell' s grandfather. The old gentleman entertained the 
 historian most hospitably, and gave him many interesting details of local 
 and family history. Dr. Smith, pleased with the particulars communi- 
 cated to him, announced his intention of giving a conspicuous place in 
 his history to the traditions of the O'Connell tribe. But his host 
 entreated him not on any account to carry out this flattering idea. "We 
 have peace in these glens, Mr. Smith," said old Mr. O'Connell, "and 
 amid their seclusion enjoy a respite from persecution. We can still in 
 these solitudes profess the beloved faith of our fathers. If man is against 
 us, God assists us. He gives us wherewithal to pay for the education of 
 our children in foreign lands and to further their advancement in the 
 Irish Brigade ; but if you make mention of me or mine, these seaside 
 solitudes will no longer yield us an asylum. The Sassenagh will scale 
 the mountains of Darrynane, and we too shall be driven out upon the 
 world without house or home." Dr. Smith complied with the wishes of 
 the venerable head of the O'Connells. In his history there is only a 
 slight mention of the O'Connell clan. 
 
 John O'Connell of Ashtown, near Dublin, one of O'Connell's family, 
 brother of a lineal ancestor, "proved his good affection" to Oliver Crom- 
 well in the year 1655, became a Protestant, and by this unworthy time- 
 serving saved his property from confiscation. " I saw his escutcheon," 
 says O'Connell, speaking towards the end of the year 1840, "on the wall 
 of St. James's Church in Dublin, some twenty years ago ; I don't know 
 if it be there still." 
 
 But it was in foreign lands that the O'Connell family acquired the 
 
HIE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 greatest lustre during the eighteenth century. Throughout the horrid 
 reign of " brutal Brunswick's penal laws " the bold and aspiring youths 
 of Catholic Ireland could find no theatre at home for the gratification of 
 their ambition or the development of their noblest energies. There or 
 in England the portals of the temple of glory were rudely closed against 
 them. But in the camps and courts of other lands the avenues leading 
 to renown were open to the Irish Catholic adventurer. Speaking of the 
 penal days, Lord Macaulay says: "There were indeed Irish Roman 
 Catholics of great ability, energy and ambition, but they were to be 
 found everywhere except in Ireland — at Versailles and at Saint lldefonso, 
 in the armies of Frederick and in the armies of Maria Theresa. One 
 exile became a marshal of France; another became prime minister of 
 Spain. If he had stayed in his native land he would have been regarded 
 as an inferior by all the ignorant and worthless squireens who drank the 
 glorious and immortal memory. In his palace at Madrid he had the 
 pleasure of being assiduously courted by the ambassador of George II., 
 and of bidding defiance in high terms to the ambassador of George III." 
 Don Ricardo Wall was the Irish prime minister of Spain to whom Mac- 
 aulay here alludes ; the marshal of France was O'Brien, count of Tho- 
 mond. knight of the order of the Holy Ghost and commander of Langue- 
 doc. The brave but unfortunate Count Lally commanded the forces of 
 the French monarchy in Hindostan. In the Imperial services of Aus- 
 tria and Russia, Irish marshals were to be found. Don Alexander O'Reilly, 
 jne of the most talented men of his time, a soldier of high renown, 
 became a Spanish viceroy. Irish generals of merit served the kings of 
 Naples and Sardinia. Even Protestant Prussia in the days of the great 
 Frederick, disdaining to imitate the narrow-minded bigotry of England, 
 was glad to have in her ranks Irish officers of distinction. Titled 
 descendants of many of these distinguished Irishmen are to be found 
 in our own days in most of the countries of Continental Europe. Thus 
 the most trusted marshal of France to-day is a MacMahon. Not many 
 years ago we saw Marshal O'Donnell, at once prime minister of Spain 
 and commander of her army in the field, reviving the old Castilian g!o ■ 
 ries and carrying her victorious arms into the barbaric empire of Morocco. 
 The greatest scenes, however, of Irish glory during the dark penal days 
 were those wherein the celebrated " Irish Brigade " of the French army 
 
won everlasting renown. The Abbe MacGeoghegan, in the eloquent 
 dedication of his history of Ireland " to the Irish troops in the service 
 of France," takes a rapid survey of their principal exploits. I cannot 
 refrain from quoting here the greater portion of this animated address : 
 "Gentlemen," writes the abbe, "to you I owe the homage of my 
 labor ; you owe to it the honor of your protection. The history of Ire- 
 land belongs to you as being that of your ancestors ; it is their shades 
 that I invoke in a foreign land ; it is their glory that I recall. The 
 records of their exploits and virtues, which fill a space of so many ages, 
 I here bring to your review. 
 
 " Europe, towards the end of the last century, was surprised to see 
 your fathers abandon the delights of a fertile country, renounce the ad- 
 vantages which an illustrious birth had given them in their native land, 
 and tear themselves from their possessions, from kindred, friends, and 
 from all that nature and fortune had made dear to them ; she was aston- 
 ished to behold them deaf to the proposals of a liberal usurper and fol- 
 lowing the fortunes of a fugitive king, to seek with him in foreign climes 
 fatigues and danger, confer^ with their misfortune as the seal of their 
 fidelity to unhappy masters." 
 
 * # H : * '■';• % % H= * 
 
 The abbe* goes on to say that France "gladly opened to them a gen- 
 erous bosom, being persuaded that men so devoted to their princes 
 would not be less so to their benefactors, and felt a pleasure in seeing 
 them march under her banners ; your ancestors have not disappointed 
 her hopes; "Nervinde, Marseilles, Barcelona, Cremona, Luzara, Spires, 
 Castiglione, Almanza, Villa Viciosa and many other places, witnesses of 
 their immortal valor, consecrated their devotedness to the new country 
 which had adopted them. France applauded their zeal, and the great- 
 est of monarchs raised their praise to the highest pitch by honoring them 
 with the flattering title of ' his brave Irishmen.' 
 
 " The example of their chiefs animated their courage ; the viscounts 
 Mountcashel (MacCarthy) and Clare (O'Brien), the count of Lucan (Sars- 
 field), the Dillons, Lees, Eoches, O'Donnells, Fitzgeralds, Nugents and 
 Galmoys (Butlers) opened to them on the banks of the Meuse, the Rhine 
 and the Po the career of glory ; whilst the O'Mahonys, MacDonnells, Law- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 lesses, the Lacys, the Bqurkes, O'Carrolls, Croftons, Comerford, Gardiner 
 and O'Connor crowned themselves with laurels on the shores of the 
 Tagus. 
 
 "The neighboring powers wished to have in their services the chil- 
 dren of those great men. Spain retained some of you near her throne ; 
 Naples invited you to her fertile country ; Germany called you to the 
 defence of her eagles. The Taaffes, the Hamiltons, O'Dwyers (General 
 O'Dwyer commanded at Belgrade), Browns, Wallaces and O'Neills sup- 
 ported the majesty of the empire, and were entrusted with its most im- 
 portant posts. The ashes of Marshal Brown are every day watered with 
 the tears of the soldiers to whom he was so dear, whilst the O'Donnells, 
 Maguires, Lacys and others endeavored to form themselves after the 
 example of that great man. 
 
 " Russia, that vast and powerful empire — an empire which has passed 
 suddenly from obscurity to so much glory — wished to learn military dis- 
 cipline from your corps ; Peter the Great, that penetrating genius and 
 hero, the creator of a nation which is now triumphant, thought he could 
 not do better than coniide that essential part of the art of war to the 
 Field-marshal de Lacy, and the worthy daughter of that great emperor 
 always entrusted to that warrior the principal defence of the august 
 throne which she rilled with so much glory. Finally, the Viscount Fer- 
 moy (Roche), general officer in the service of Sardinia, has merited all 
 the confidence of that crown. 
 
 " But why recall those times that are so long past? Why do I seek 
 your heroes in those distant regions ? Permit me, gentlemen, to bring- 
 to your recollection that great clay, for ever memorable in the annals of 
 France ; let me remind you of the plains of Fontenoy, so precious to your 
 glory — those plains where, in concert with chosen French troops, the 
 valiant count of Thomond being at your head, you charged with so much 
 valor an enemy so formidable. Animated by the presence of the august 
 sovereign who rules over you, you contributed with so much success to 
 the gaining of a victory which till then appeared doubtful. Lawfeld lie- 
 held you, two years afterwards, in concert with one of the most illustrious 
 corps of France (the King's Regiment) force intrenchments which appeared 
 tp be impregnable; Menin, Ypres, Tournay saw you crown yourselves 
 with glory under their walls; whilst your countrymen, under the stand- 
 
10 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 ards of Spain, performed prodigies of valor at Campo Sancto and at 
 Velletri. 
 
 " But whilst I am addressing you a part of your corps (the regiment of 
 Fitzjames) is flying to the defence of the allies of Louis; another (Count 
 Lally and his regiment) is sailing over the seas to seek amidst the 
 waves, in another hemisphere, the eternal enemies of his empire — the 
 British. 
 
 " Behold, gentlemen, what all Europe contemplates in you ; behold 
 here (in the abbe's history) the qualities which have gained esteem for 
 you, even from your most unjust enemies. Could a compatriot to whom 
 the glory of Ireland is so dear refuse to you his admiration? Accept, 
 gentlemen, this small tribute of it. 
 
 " Honor with your support a history which the love for my country has 
 caused me to undertake ; your protection and patronage will render this 
 ■work respectable, and may merit some indulgence for its defects; it 
 should have none were my labor and zeal capable of rendering it worthy 
 of those to whom I dedicate it." 
 
 No one can reasonably assert that the glowing praises which the abbe 
 lavishes on his compatriots in the various services of Continental Europe, 
 especially on the warriors of the far-famed brigade in the service of 
 France, at all exaggerate their merits or their glory. The celebrated 
 Vendome, who was stoutly aided by them in many of his battles and vic- 
 tories, professed to hold the Irish in particular esteem. He even con- 
 fessed that he felt surprise at some of the tremendous deeds of arms 
 which he saw " those army-butchers " (as he was wont to call them) per- 
 form. The number of Irishmen said to have been entered on the mus- 
 ter-rolls of the French army from the first organization of the brigade, 
 towards the end of the seventeenth century, to the termination of its 
 existence in the mighty host of France, towards the end of the eigh- 
 teenth century, is something enormous, and even almost incredible. In 
 these foreign services the O'Connells were well represented. Morgan 
 O'Connell of Ballybrake, second cousin of "the liberator," joined the 
 Austrian army, became a lieutenant-colonel, and was made "gold key" 
 or chamberlain to the emperor, a dignity held by the Germans in the 
 highest estimation. But far away the most distinguished of all the 
 O'Connells who served in foreign armies was General Count O'Connell, 
 
'the liberator's" uncle. This able officer entered the French army at 
 the tender age of fourteen. The friendship of another Irish soldier of 
 merit, the Chevalier Fagan, was of great service to him at the com- 
 mencement of his military career. His first commission was that of 
 sons-lieutenant in Clare's regiment. This was in the year 1759. Twen- 
 ty-three years afterwards, in 1782, we find him serving with great dis- 
 tinction at the memorable siege of Gibraltar, when the French and 
 Spaniards made a desperate but unavailing effort to wrest that famous 
 fortress from the hands of the English. On this occasion, in command 
 of one hundred men acting as marines, he served on board the ship of 
 the French admiral, whose object was to prevent the English admiral, 
 Lord Hood, from relieving the besieged stronghold. O'Connell had vol- 
 unteered for this service. As a reward for the valor of which he gave 
 signal proof during the awe-inspiring scenes of that terrible siege, King 
 Louis XVI. made him colonel-commandant of the German regiment in the 
 French service, known as the regiment of " Salm-Salm." This regiment, 
 about 2400 strong, was ill-disciplined and altogether in an inefficient state 
 when Colonel O'Connell assumed the command of it. But under his vig- 
 orous direction its discipline soon became perfect, so that it was ere long 
 considered one of the finest, if not the finest regiment in the whole army 
 of France. Gifted as he was with a great talent for military organiza- 
 tion, it is in no degree surprising to find our gallant Irish exile appointed, 
 in 1788, to the high and important position of one of the inspector-gen- 
 erals of French infantry. That tide in his affairs had now flowed in on 
 Colonel O'Connell " which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." The 
 following passage from the writings of Sir Bernard Burke, referring to 
 O'Connell's appointment as inspector-general of infantry, shows that 
 this was the turning-point of the Irish soldier's military career: "The 
 French government resolved that the art of war should undergo revis- 
 ion, and a military board was formed for this purpose, comprising four 
 general officers and one colonel. The colonel selected was O'Connell, 
 who was esteemed one of the most scientific officers in the service. With- 
 out patronage or family he had risen to a colonelcy before he had attained 
 his fortieth year. Only a few meetings of the board had taken place 
 when the superior officers, struck with the depth and accuracy of infor- 
 mation, great military genius and correct views displayed by Colonel 
 
12 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 'O'Connell, unanimously agreed to confide to liim the renewal of the 
 whole French military code ; and he executed the arduous duty so per- 
 fectly that his tactics were those followed in the early campaigns of rev- 
 olutionized France, adhered to by Napoleon and adopted by Prussia, 
 Austria, Russia and England." 
 
 General Count O'Connell commanded the foreign regiments that 
 were brought up to Paris in 1789 for the protection of the monarchy 
 during the opening scenes of the terrible drama of the great Revolution. 
 The action of the royal forces was, however, paralyzed by the vacillation 
 of the amiable but also feeble monarch, and the want of energy or judg- 
 ment in the majority of the courtiers who surrounded and misled him. 
 The populace and their leaders were neither conciliated nor suppressed. 
 The career of the Revolution went on with ever-increasing velocity and 
 violence ; a monarchy venerable and illustrious with the old age and 
 heroic associations of thirteen hundred years was prostiated in the dust; 
 four royal heads belonging to a dynasty that had reigned with great 
 renown for eight centuries fell on the scaffold. During those scenes of 
 more than tragic horror Count O'Connell and the Irish Brigade preserved 
 their military fidelity inviolate; years after these momentous occur- 
 rences the count was wont to say that if the foreign troops in the service 
 of France had been permitted to act with vigor in obedience to the 
 promptings alike of their inclinations and courage, they would have suc- 
 ceeded in restraining the revolutionary movement and preserving the 
 monarchy. 
 
 "When, however, it became clear that "the Irish Brigade" could no 
 longer render any substantial service to the royal cause by remaining in 
 France, General O'Connell and his brave companions in arms decided on 
 leaving that noble land. For a hundred years the exiled warriors of Ire- 
 land had served it gloriously on more than a hundred bloody and famous 
 fields ; during a great part of this long period their distinguished bravery 
 had earned them double pay, but the hour of parting from the royal 
 family and the French service had now arrived ; the king was repre- 
 sented by his brother; the farewell scene was interesting and even 
 affecting ; the prince advanced to the front of the gallant band of Irish- 
 men ; the officers encircled him ; his manner towards them was full of 
 courtesy, and it was not without generous emotion that he uttered his 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 13 
 
 final adieux. "We acknowledge, gentlemen," said the prince, "the in- 
 valuable services which France during the lengthened period of one 
 hundred years has received from the Irish Brigade — services which we 
 shall never forget, though totally unable to repay ; receive this standard, 
 a pledge of our remembrance, a token of our admiration and respect ; and 
 this, generous Hibernians, shall be the motto on your spotless colors: 
 '1092-1792, Semper et ubique fi 'deles' ('Always and everywhere faith- 
 ful ')." Such was the parting of the soldiers of the far-famed Irish Brig- 
 ade from France and the house of Bourbon. The standard which his royal 
 highness presented to them was embroidered with a fleur-de-lis and a 
 shamrock. 
 
 After this General Count O'Connell served for a brief space in the 
 allied forces against the revolutionary army ; this was during the cam- 
 paign which terminated in the defeat of the duke of Brunswick and the 
 first anti-Gallican coalition. We next find the count inducing the Brit- 
 ish government to receive the heroic brigade into the service of England; 
 this was probably the most unlucky proceeding of his entire life ; at all 
 events, in its final issue it was fraught with ruin to the noble band of 
 warriors whom it chiefly concerned. The rulers of England, with that 
 utter lack of magnanimous sentiment, or rather with that Machiavellian 
 policy which they ever pursue in their dealings with Irishmen (and, in- 
 deed, with all those whom they w T ant to get the better of), decided on 
 sending this last generation of the Irish Brigade to the British West 
 Indian isles, there to do battle with a deadlier and more insidious foe 
 than they had ever encountered on the battle-fields of France — the fever- 
 fiend of that tropical clime. Soon the veterans, who had passed un- 
 scathed through the fiery ordeal of many a terrible field of fight, were 
 decimated by the angel of death that for ever breathes destruction over 
 those flower-perfumed but treacherous islands. At last the poison- 
 breathing, fever-laden gales blew over the graves of nearly all those Irish 
 soldiers. Their standard still waved or drooped in lonely and melan- 
 choly decay in an old neglected church in one of those fatal isles, but 
 the warriors who had so often rallied round it "shoulder to shoulder," 
 and planted it fast when the red and maddening waves of the battle 
 swept by, were gone for ever. England had achieved one more success 
 over Ireland — an unmistakable one, too, if ignoble. Henceforward there 
 
need be no apprehension lest the Irish Brigade, or any portion of ft, 
 might form the nucleus of an Irish national army. 
 
 General Count O'Connell escaped from the fever-havoc. He married 
 a Creole lady of St. Domingo ; his wife had claims on the French govern- 
 ment for some property ; to assert these claims he returned to France 
 after the peace of Amiens. When the war between France and England 
 was renewed, as the government of Napoleon regarded him in the light 
 of a British subject he was kept a prisoner in France among the English 
 detenus of that day. On the fall of the great emperor, and consequent 
 restoration of the Bourbons, the count Avas reinstated in his rank of gen- 
 eral in the French army; at the same time he retained his rank as 
 colonel in that of England. He seems to have drawn pay from the two 
 governments; a singular enough case. He lived to a very advanced 
 age, for when the veteran died in 1831 he was in his ninety-first year. 
 This gallant old chief was generous, courteous, honorable and pious. He 
 spent much of the wealth which lie had honorably won in works of use- 
 fulness and charity. He appears to have endowed schools and other 
 benevolent institutions in his native Iveragh ; he was in accent and 
 manner a thorough Irish gentleman of the best type of the old school; 
 he might fairly be called " the last of the Irish Brigade." May the hero 
 sleep in peace ! 
 
 O'Connell tells us that his " grandmother had twenty-two children, 
 and half of them lived beyond the age of ninety." His father had ten. 
 Of some of his immediate relatives — his father, for instance, and his 
 uncle Maurice, who left him Darrynane Abbey — I shall have occasion 
 to speak again. In examining the pedigree of the O'Connells we find, 
 as in most families, certain favorite names continually recurring, such as 
 Daniel, Maurice, Morgan, John. These family names are carefully 
 kept up among the O'Connells, even in our own times. Thus the " lib- 
 erator's " four sons were Maurice, Morgan, John and Daniel. His grand- 
 son and representative, the present owner of Darrynane Abbey, is also 
 Daniel. The motto of the O'Connells is an Irish phrase signifying 
 "judgment and power." The family claim to derive their name from an 
 Old- World prince of the royal house of Heber, one of the sons of Milesius. 
 According to the old Irish method of spelling it, the name is O'Conal. 
 On one occasion, in the latter portion of his life, O'Connell himself, in 
 
. 
 
 
r~ 
 
 r 
 i 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 15 
 
 the course of a conversation with sonic friends, speaks thus in reference 
 to the old form of the name: 
 
 " ' I regret that when emancipation passed I did not henceforth write 
 my name O'Conal; it is the original Irish mode of spelling it.' 
 
 " ' Yes,' said Mr. Fitzpatrick, one of his most attached and devoted 
 supporters, 'the present mode of spelling it is plainly an English inno- 
 vation.' 
 
 " O'Conncll said he had felt very proud the first time lie had ever seen 
 the family name in print. It was in an announcement that the four fol- 
 lowing colonels had been selected to lead the Vendean expedition : Dela- 
 cherrois, De la Chasse, Conway and O'Connell. 
 
 " ' My name is better known now than it was then. That's a good story 
 John O'Brien tells of the postilion at Heidelberg in Germany. O'Brien 
 asked him had he ever heard of O'Connell. " I did," said the postilion ; 
 " he is the meat tvho discovered Ireland." ' Do you know,' continued O'Con- 
 nell, ' that three persons voted in 1830 to make me king of Belgium ?' 
 
 ' ' You might have had a good chance if you had offered yourself,' 
 said Fitzpatrick. 
 
 " ' I should have a better chance if the election took place now' 
 replied O'Connell, 'as I am far better known than I was in 1830. If 
 the Revolution hadn't happened till now, and if I stood against Leopold,' 
 he added, laughing, 'I think I'd run the fellow close enough.' " 
 
 "The liberator" was the finest "flower" and noblest "outcome" of 
 the O'Connells. While he lived and flourished, exulted and triumphed 
 in the fresh exuberance of his vigorous manhood, the most characteris- 
 tic qualities of that far-descended race, intellectual, moral and j)hysical, 
 blended with the traits of his mother's nature, found a superabounding 
 development in O'Connell. You might trace the intensified spirit and 
 the semblance of his ancestors in his subtle, brilliant and powerful intel- 
 lect; in his commanding will; in his now thunder-crashing, now silver- 
 sounding tones and honey-dropping or mocking or soul-scathing words; 
 in his generous, huge and loving heart; in his humor-twinkling, insinu- 
 ating eyes of richest luminous blue; in his well-curved, plastic, kindly- 
 natured mouth; in his jovial, beaming face and sly but sunniest smile, 
 and in his stalwart, kingly form. 
 
 No doubt too the traditions of the O'Connell clan influenced the growth 
 
16 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 of his ideas and the formation of most of his habits of thought and 
 action. Then the bold mountain-scenery of his native Kerry, in the 
 bosom of which his youthful days, like those of so many generations of 
 his forefathers, were spent, must also (I may safely hazard this assertion) 
 have influenced the development of his mind, just as the health-inspiring 
 mountain-breezes braced his nerves and spirits and invigorated his frame. 
 
 It may not be amiss here, before I proceed any farther, to devote a 
 few sentences to a general description of the scenery of Kerry, especially 
 of the wondrous Killarney district. Indeed, it may not be altogether out 
 of place to say a little about the scenery of Ireland in general ; for the 
 infinitely varied scenery and ever-changing shies of Ireland are deemed 
 to have more or less analogy to the singularly versatile character and 
 suddenly-changeful temperament of the Irish race; and of the whole 
 Irish race O'Connell was, in his own day at least, the colossal type or 
 representative man. John Mitchel, in his usual happy style, observes 
 that "Daniel O'Connell, by virtue of being more intensely Irish, carrying 
 o a more extravagant pitch all Irish strength and passion and weakness 
 than other Irishmen, led and swayed his people by a kind of divine or 
 else diabolic right." 
 
 Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the scenery of our 
 supremely beautiful Ireland is its extraordinary variety. There are, 
 indeed, general characteristics of Irish scenery, but along with those fea- 
 tures, to be found, in a greater or less degree, in most parts of the island, 
 each province or even each county has peculiar features of its own ; and 
 even within these smaller tracts the variety of scenery is sometimes end- 
 less and marvelous beyond all expectation ; in short, there is in our island 
 little or none of that monotony to be found in so many other countries of 
 the same or even vastly greater extent ; thus the rivers and lakes and bays 
 and mountains and glens and plains of Ireland are not merely beautiful, 
 but their beauty is of the most diversified kind. The luxuriant loveliness 
 of the southern Blackwater has no resemblance to the beauty of the 
 stately Shannon, with its spacious estuary, its wide-extended lakes and 
 its rapids of Doonass or Castleconnell, raving and racing past the beau- 
 tiful sloping banks crowned with villas and ornamented with groves. 
 How different each from the other— the broad Lough Neagh, Lough Erne 
 with its isles, Lough Corrib with the okl castles and abbeys near its ^ 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 17 
 
 shores, and Killarney lakes with their myriad beauties bewitching alike 
 to the eye and the soul ! how unlike the mouth of the Lee to Dublin Bay. 
 and yet how wondrously lovely are both ! how different, too, the jagged 
 and castle-like crags of Ireland's Eye and Howth from the caverned and 
 wave-pierced cliffs of Kilkee, or the precipitous basaltic columns of the 
 Giant's Causeway ! what small resemblance there is between the Wick- 
 low Mountains and the Knockmeildown Mountains or the Comeraghs ! 
 how dissimilar the rotund form of Slievenamon from the lofty chain of 
 the Galtees ! how little both resemble the serrated and rocky range of the 
 Magillicuddys ! Some of our mountains are heath-covered and boggy, 
 oihers bristle with massive tower-piled cliffs. How foreign in aspect the 
 glens of Wicldow — the Scalp, the Dargle, Luggelaw, Glencrea, Glenda- 
 lough, the Glen of the Downs, Glenmalure, the Devil's Glen and the Vale 
 of A voca — -are to each other ! Still more are they unlike to Glounshichaun 
 in Waterford, to the Black Valley, Glounaheely, or the gap of Dunloe in 
 Kerry, or to Glengariff or Keimaneigh in Cork. All these glens have 
 charms unspeakable; most of them are more or less romantic and pic- 
 turesque, but all vary widely from each other- — some sombre and sublime 
 some rugged, arid and austere, some softly-beautiful. 
 
 The rich pasture-plains of Meath, the wide expanse of the Curragh of 
 Kildare dotted with myriads of white-fleeced sheep, and the rich plain 
 visible from some of the hills of North Tipperary, stretching away into the 
 county Limerick, waving with golden grain and laughing in the summer 
 sunshine — the Golden Vale, in short — all these are distinguished from each 
 other by strongly-marked individual features. In the north of Meath 
 and portions of Ulster there is a strange, peculiar but agreeable style of 
 landscape. To borrow the expression of the late John Fisher Murray, 
 you find " armies of little soft rounded hills like as one e»;2: to another." 
 "Walking among those cultured hills, your horizon all around is close to 
 you. On such ground rifles of long range would be of slight service to 
 you. In the hollows between you find yourself shut in from the rest of 
 the world ; and if you ascend one of those hills, you see naught all round 
 you but similar little hills. Quite easily you might lose your way. 
 
 In short every province, every county of Ireland can boast some pecu- 
 liar charm of its own. Shame, then, on the Irish flunkey-tourists and 
 hunters after the picturesque who rush off to every point of the compass, 
 
18 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 seeking beauties in foreign lands, while they neglect the ten thousand 
 enchantments of their own isle of beauty, resembling nothing so much 
 as those coxcombs with lovely wives whose fickle eyes are constantly 
 seeking out charms in objects of far inferior attraction. 
 
 This extraordinary variety of Irish scenery has been dwelt on by John 
 Fisher Murray and other Irish writers. But in no part of Ireland is this 
 variety more wonderful than in 0' Council's native Kerry, and particularly 
 the Killarney district. I once heard one who had an admirable eye for 
 scenery, and who had seen many countries, remark that that portion of 
 the south-west of M'unster lying between Dingle and Bantry Bays, which 
 includes the lakes of Killarney and other scenes of ravishing loveliness 
 in Kerry, and the fairy scenery of Glengariff in Cork, contains natural 
 beauties in greater profusion and in more endless and amazing variety 
 than any district of similar size throughout the spacious earth. When I 
 first viewed the surpassing loveliness of this part of Ireland myself, I 
 could not help exclaiming that if the Irish were pagans and worshipped 
 natural objects — as the Peruvians and the ancient Persians worshipped 
 I he sun, and the old Arabians the stars — they could not imagine divinity 
 in any works of the Creator more unearthly in their beauty than the 
 scenes around Killarney. Indeed, looking on the scenery of that region 
 of enchantment, I learned more easily to comprehend and feel the pro- 
 cess by which the intellects and imaginations of a people like the Greeks 
 of old might gradually glide into nature-worship, so as finally to con- 
 found the Deity with His divine creation. And indeed, without being in 
 the slightest degree tainted with pagan superstition, one might well view 
 Killarney with something of a religious sentiment, for everything around 
 speaks eloquently and gloriously of God, and lifts the soul and all its 
 thoughts above the ordinary and sordid things of earth. If every Irish- 
 man having in his soul a single spark of innate nobility could be bound 
 to make a pilgrimage at least once in his life to Killarney, as the spot 
 surrounded and hallowed by the loveliest scenes in his natire isle, while 
 his Christian fidelity would "moult no feather," but rather wax stronger, 
 his love and loyalty to his country and her cause would for the rest of his 
 life soar aloft on prouder and bolder wing. Even Lord Macaulay, in his 
 very anti-Irish history, speaks of the scenery of the Killarney district in 
 the following terms of unqualified admiration : 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 1U 
 
 " The south-western part of Kerry is now well known as the most 
 beautiful tract in the British isles ; the mountains, the glens, the capes 
 stretching far into the Atlantic, the crags on which the eagles build, the 
 rivulets brawling down rocky passes, the lakes overhung by groves in 
 which the wild deer mid covert, attract every summer crowds of wan • 
 derers sated with the business and the pleasures of great cities. The 
 beauties of that country are, indeed, too often hidden in the mist and 
 rain which the west wind brings up from the boundless ocean ; but on 
 + he rare days when the sun shines out in all his glory, the landscape has 
 a freshness and a warmth of coloring seldom found in our latitude ; the 
 myrtle loves the soil, the arbutus thrives better than even on the sunny 
 shore of Calabria, the turf is of livelier hue than elsewhere, the hills 
 glow with a richer purple, the varnish of the holly and ivy is more 
 glossy, and berries of a brighter red peep through foliage of a brighter 
 green. But during the greater part of the seventeenth century this para- 
 dise was as little known to the civilized world as Spitsbergen or Green- 
 land." 
 
 Wondrous, indeed, are the ever-changing aspects which the landscape 
 assumes at every turn of the road, as, travelling from Kenmare to Killar- 
 ney, and leaving the Black Valley to your left, you pass along by the entire 
 chain of lakes, past Derrycunnihy Cascade, Tork Mountain and water- 
 fall, and Mangerton on one side, while on the other side of the lakes you 
 see the purple mountain, the Eagle's Nest and Carntual towering over all ; 
 the mountains here thickly covered with woods of the most diversified 
 foliage, there dotted with innumerable rocks, numbers of which appear 
 as though curiously and quaintly carved by the cunning hand of some 
 giant artificer. In the windings of the shores, in the gleaming of the 
 wavelets, in the skies they reflect, in the lights that play upon every 
 object, in the outlines of the woods, in the groupings of the rock-clusters, 
 in the islands that dot the waters, in the glancing and flashing of the 
 cascades through the trees, — in all there is infinite variety of more than 
 magical effect. What enchantment of scenery is wanting in Killarney ? 
 In the Black Valley and the Gap of Dunloe you have something awe- 
 inspiring, if not sublime ; in Glenagh Bay and Innisfallen Isle yen have 
 the most lavish prodigality of the softest, sweetest, richest, most bewitch- 
 ing beauties; Sullivan's Cascade is lonely and romantic, and the haunt 
 
of the old Irish red deer; the Eagle's ISTest not merely has picturesque 
 attraction to delight the eye, but its weird music entrances the ear. 
 Hearken to those bugle-notes from that boat ! A hundred echoes take 
 them up : they are repeated near you first ; higher and higher they mount 
 aloft, gradually growing fainter and fainter till they are lost in the far 
 distances of heaven, just as if Jacob's ladder were let down from the 
 skies, and on it "angels ascending and descending," and their heavenly 
 music repeated from rank to rank upwards, till the angelic sounds would 
 seem to die out amid their divine dwellings beyond the clouds. Such 
 scenes and sounds fascinate alike soul and sense, and make one " daz- 
 zled and drunk " with beauty ; nor is even the element of the grotesque, 
 with the contrasts it produces, wanting to Killarney. Fantastic rocks 
 rise above the waters of the lakes in a hundred whimsical and uncouth 
 shapes ; the guides and boatmen, tracing in them fanciful resemblances, 
 call one group the library of O'Donohoe, the legendary chieftain whose 
 spirit haunts those waters ; another curious rock is styled O'Donohoe's 
 horse ; and several other specimens of this odd nomenclature run on in 
 similar fashion. Here I may observe that I could never agree with the 
 somewhat prevalent notion that the peasantry around Killarney have no 
 appreciation of the glorious scenes amid which they live; doubtless, 
 being familiar with them from childhood, the scenes want for them the 
 charm of novelty which they possess for strangers ; hence they talk less 
 about them, but it does not follow that they are insensible to their beau- 
 ties. The nomenclature I have just referred to shows a capability of 
 analyzing the features of the scenery ; even if the theory were proved 
 that the beauty we see in external nature wholly depends on associa- 
 tions, peasants, as well as cultured persons, might have their souls peo- 
 pled, so to speak, with enough of associations to produce the liveliest 
 and most varied sensations of external beauty. Children are frequently 
 in no way deficient in appreciation of the charms of scenery. 
 
 The only scenery I have seen that at all approaches Killarney in 
 beauty is that of Glengariff. The gracefully-formed mountains around 
 the glen and bay, with their crags of most elaborate but fantastical carving; 
 the agreeable loveliness of the well-wooded glen ; the infinite labyrinth- 
 ine windings of the channels between the graceful little islands and 
 along the beautiful shores encircling the bay, causing a constant succes- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 21 
 
 sion of strange and ever-varying, pleasant surprises, — all these features 
 give endless delight. Indeed, Glengariff's inferiority to Killarney is more 
 in the quantity than the quality of its beauties ; and this arises simply 
 from its more Limited space. 
 
 Besides the far-famed lakes of Killarney. the south-west of Kerry can 
 boast of many other beautiful and impressive scenes, less generally known, 
 mdeed, and celebrated, but which in any other district might be deemed 
 almost unrivalled. Such are sequestered Glounaheely, lonely Comasarn, 
 Kenmare Bay, with its variety of aspects, the secluded lakes of Cloonee, 
 and others, — all beautiful, though their beauty be aided by few or no arti- 
 ficial adornments. Kerry has even a wealth and profusion of almost 
 unknown loveliness ; in short, hundreds of lakes and tarns and fairy- 
 haunted dells and wild rocky heights and passes uncelebrated, yet worthy 
 of poet's song beyond some of the most talked-of and belauded places in 
 foreign lands. 
 
 Such a man as Daniel O'Connell could hardly have grown up amid 
 the scenery of such a county without receiving a thousand impressions 
 from the matchless visions of the beautiful around him. His love of 
 country necessarily became intensified a hundred-fold. Kerry was a 
 divine revelation to him. In his orations we can see with what enthu- 
 siasm he gloried in the majesty of external nature, especially as it 
 appeared in the scenery of Ireland. In his mountain-home he was, as 
 Shiel says, " encompassed with the loftiest images of liberty on every 
 side." There he could hearken to the voices of the mighty Atlantic and 
 watch the wild billows — which he tells us in one of his speeches he 
 imagined to roll across from the shores of Labrador — as they burst in 
 foam and spray upon our rock-girded shores.* 
 
 * The principal writers to whom I am indebted in writing this first chapter are John Mitchel 
 Mr. O'Neill Daunt ("Personal Recollections of O'Connell"), Fagan ("Life of O'Connell"), the 
 abb6 MacGeoghegan, Lord Macaulay, John Fisher Murray, Thomas McNevin (" Plantation of 
 Ulster "), Sir Bernard Burke. I have also been assisted by an able " Life of O'Connell," pub- 
 lished by John Mullany, 1 Parliament street, Dublin, written, I have heard, by a gentleman long 
 and well known on the Irish Press, who suffered some years of imprisonment on a charge of 
 " treason-felony." 
 
CHAPTEE U 
 
 The penal laws — First slight relaxations of this hosrid code — Curiot's anecdotes anc 
 illustrations of life during the days of the penal law's — geoghegan of london's ode 
 
 RECANTATION — KEDAGH McGeOGHEGAN AND HIS HORSE — CASE OF FATHER S:IEEHY — CVRjt.->N'a 
 FIRST SIGNAL SUCCESS AT THE BAR — CAPTAIN St. LeGER AND THE OLD PRTEST — O'CoNNJ." J.'s 
 ANECDOTES OF STRANGE CONVERSIONS TO PROTESTANTISM — His AMUSING STORIES OF FATHER 
 
 O'Grady — The priest's narrow escape from the fangs of British law — A Kerry brig- 
 and in Flanders — The Orangemen and Jack of the Roads — O'Leary's Catholic and 
 Protestant son — Catholic petition — Berkeley's Querist. 
 
 W(|?p| UCH was the paradise in which O'Connell was born, but if the 
 1,/fclPli outward world appeared to the eyes of his childhood in its love- 
 Is^f liest aspect, far different was the moral and political world around 
 fejP" jjj m jj e was born in the days of those accursed penal laws, 
 ]figf when bigotry and intolerance of the narrowest and most malignant 
 type held sovereign sway in Ireland ; when the Irish Catholics — in other 
 words, the old Irish race — were so completely prostrated beneath the 
 ignoble tyranny of Protestant ascendency that they may be safely said 
 to have lost all civil existence, and even, in a certain sense, to have 
 almost disappeared from history. The Protestant minority of the pop- 
 ulation of Ireland (of Scotch or English blood for the most part) were 
 not merely a dominant race ; they monopolized everything. The Cath- 
 olics, although they were to the Protestants as five to one, were excluded 
 from every honorable walk in life. If a few of them, indeed, contrived 
 to retain property by evasion of the law, the overwhelming majority were 
 virtual serfs, the merest hewers of wood and drawers of water, degraded 
 outcasts or pariahs in the land of their fathers. I shall commence this 
 chapter with some account of the growth of the penal laws, and then I 
 shall give a variety of anecdotes illustrative of the state of society and of 
 life in Ireland during their gloomy reign. 
 
 No doubt Irish Catholics had been obliged to endure more or less 
 religious persecution during the generations that passed away between 
 the epoch of what is called the Reformation and the date of the treaty 
 
 22 
 
I r- 
 
 i i 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 of Limerick. During this period they had at times been grievously and 
 even intolerably oppressed. But still no elaborate system of tyranny 
 and deprivation of all civil and political rights like the penal code of the 
 eighteenth century had grown up. They had enjoyed intervals of some- 
 thing like repose — even moments of triumph. At the worst, they had 
 always managed to retain some share of rights and more or less influ- 
 ence. But the fall of Limerick, on the 3d of October, 1091, scaled their 
 doom. It is true, as I remarked in the historical sketch prefixed to this 
 biography, that the treaty of Limerick had at first seemed to secure for 
 the Catholics the free exercise of their religion and other rights. But 
 hardly was the ink of signature dry on the parchment when it was vio- 
 lated by the English Parliament. The Irish army had gone to France, 
 the Irish nation was exhausted by the struggle, so that British perfidy 
 had no longer anything to fear on the soil of Ireland. The English Par- 
 liament, using its power of binding Ireland by acts passed in London, 
 enacted a law providing that no one should sit in the Irish legislature, 
 noi hold any Irish office, civil, military or ecclesiastical, nor practice law 
 or medicine in Ireland, till he had taken the oaths of allegiance and 
 supremacy, and subscribed the declaration against transubstantiation. 
 This bill received the royal assent. 
 
 Shortly after the conclusion of the treaty, Doctor Dopping, bishop of 
 Meath, preached before the lords-justices in Christ's Church Cathedral, 
 Dublin. Although one of the great charges (a false one, doubtless) 
 made by Protestants against Catholics lias ever been that they arc prone 
 to teach the abominable doctrine that faith should not be kept with 
 heretics, this enlightened and conscientious Protestant prelate did not 
 scruple, on this memorable occasion, to preach the equally detestable 
 one that no terms of peace ought to bo observed with so perfidious a 
 people as he alleged the Irish to be. For the honor of Protestantism it 
 is somewhat pleasant to be able to add that a few Protestant divines 
 disavowed his odious teachings on the next Sunday. Doctor Morcton, 
 bishop of Kilmore, dwelt strongly on the obligation of keeping the pub- 
 lic faith; Dean Synge also, on the third Sunday, in the same church, 
 preached on the side of justice and good faith, but with an advocacy less 
 distinct and forcible ; it was all the same, however, to the Irish Catholics 
 whichever side the preachers took, for in less than two months alter 
 
24 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 the capitulation the treaty was flagrantly violated, and in defiance of 
 its articles the Catholics saw themselves shamefully maltreated and 
 robbed. 
 
 In 1692 the first Irish Parliament of William III.'s reign met; some 
 Irish Catholic peers and commoners attended and took their seats, but 
 the act passed by the English legislature in 1691 was at once put in 
 force ; by means of the oath of supremacy, which declared the king of 
 England head of the Church and the sacrifice of the mass damnable, the 
 Catholic peers and commoners were excluded. In 1695 an act was 
 passed "for the better securing the government by disarming the pa- 
 pists ;" they were required to deliver up, by a certain day, all their arms 
 and ammunition to the justices or other civil officers; after that day 
 their houses might be searched for concealed arms and ammunition; 
 the search-warrant might be granted by any two justices, a mayor or a 
 sheriff. Any Catholic suspected of having concealed arms might be 
 compelled to appear before these functionaries and answer the charge or 
 suspicion upon his oath ; the penalties were to be fine and imprison- 
 ment, or, if the court willed, the pillory and Hogging. The condition of 
 the Catholic under the operation of this act was worse than that of 
 persons under the surveillance of the Inquisition during its worst days 
 in Spain ; a Protestant enemy could easily make him a mark for sus- 
 picion. Mr. Mitchel, in his valuable continuation of the abbe MacGco- 
 ghegan's history, says, " Any neighboring magistrate might visit him at 
 any hour of the night and search his bed for arms; no papist was safe 
 from suspicion who had any money to pay in fines, and woe to the papist 
 who had a handsome daughter !" 
 
 The same Parliament passed laws prohibiting education; as Catho- 
 lics were already prevented from becoming tutors or teachers, many 
 young Catholics were sent abroad for their education. A law then was 
 enacted " that if any subjects of Ireland should, after that session, go or 
 send any child or person to be educated in any popish university, col- 
 lege or school, or in any private family, or if such child should, by any 
 popish person, be instructed in the popish religion, or if any subjects of 
 Ireland should send money or things towards the maintenance of such 
 child or other person, already sent or to be sent, every such offender, 
 being thereof convicted, should be for ever disabled to sue or prosecute 
 
any action, bill, plaint, or information in law or equity, to be guaidian, 
 administrator or executor to any person, or to be capable of any legacy 
 or deed of gift; and, besides, should forfeit all their estates, both real 
 and personal during their lives." It was also enacted that "no papist, 
 after the 20th of January, 1695, shall be capable to have or keep in bis 
 possession, or in the possession of any other to his use or at his dispo- 
 sition, any horse, gelding or mare of the value of five pounds or more." 
 Clauses were added to tempt Protestants to become informers and tc 
 cause searches to be made. The horses were to become the property 
 of the finders. 
 
 This Parliament also enacted "that all popish archbishops, bishops, 
 vicars-general, deans, Jesuits, monks, friars, and all other regular popish 
 clergy, and all papists exercising any ecclesiastical jurisdiction, shall 
 depart this kingdom before the first day of May, 1698." Should any 
 remain after that, or return, they were to be transported. If they re- 
 turned again, they became liable to the penalties of high treason. The 
 same Parliament passed a law imposing a fine of two shillings (and in 
 default of payment a whipping) upon every common laborer being hired 
 or other servant retained who shall refuse to work at the usual and 
 accustomed wages upon any day except the days appointed by this 
 statute to be kept holy — namely, all Sundays in the year and certain 
 days named therein. 
 
 It was also enacted that " a Protestant marrying a Catholic was dis- 
 abled from sitting or voting in either house of Parliament." Also an act 
 was passed " to prevent papists from being solicitors." It is an amusing 
 instance of the hypocrisy of the British faction in Ireland that this infa- 
 mous Parliament, while violating the treaty of Limerick " by so many 
 ingenious laws," had the brazen impudence to "gravely and solemnly" 
 pass a law "for the confirmaticn of articles made at the surrender of the 
 city of Limerick, or so much thereof as may consist with the safety and 
 welfare of Your Majesty's subjects in these kingdoms." This was the 
 jargon of the preamble of the act. It is somewhat agreeable to find 
 that this base bill was vigorously though vainly resisted in the House 
 -.if Lords, and that on its final passage a protest was entered against it 
 ny tne following lords: the lords Duncannon, Londonderry and Tyrone, 
 the barons of Limerick, Howth, Ossory, Killaloe, Kerry, Strabane and 
 
20 TIIE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Kingston, and the bishops of Deny, Elphin, Clonfort, Kildare and Kib 
 lala. The act disgusted even these Anglican prelates. 
 
 In the early part of Queen Anne's reign a terrible bill was passed 
 •'to prevent the further growth of popery;" this was during the vice- 
 royalty of the duke of Ormond, the head of that powerful Irish family 
 too often anti-Irish in their politics — the Butlers. Mr. Mitchel gives 
 the following summary of the chief provisions of the bill, which he justly 
 designates as " the second formal breach of the treaty of Limerick " : 
 " The third clause enacts that if the son of a papist shall at any time 
 become a Protestant, his father may not sell or mortgage his estate, or 
 dispose of it or any portion of it by will. The fourth clause provides 
 that a papist shall not be guardian to his own child, and further, that 
 if his child, no matter how young, conforms to the Protestant religion, he 
 reduces his father at once to a tenant for life ; the child is to be taken 
 from its father, and placed under the guardianship of the nearest Prot- 
 estant relation. The sixth clause renders papists incapable of pur- 
 chasing any landed estates or rents or profits arising out of land, or 
 holding any lease of lives or any other lease for any term exceeding 
 thirty-one years, and even in such leases the reserved rent must be at 
 least ' one-third of the improved annual value ;' any Protestant who dis- 
 covers being entitled to the interest in the lease. The seventh clause 
 prohibits papists from succeeding to the property of their Protestant 
 relations. The tenth clause provides that the estate of a papist who 
 has no Protestant heir shall be gavelled ; that is, parceled in equal 
 shares between all his children. Other clauses impose on Catholics the 
 oath of abjuration and the sacramental test to qualify for any office or 
 for voting at any election. . . . The fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth 
 clauses carefully deprive the citizens of Limerick and Galway of the 
 poor privilege promised them in the treaty of living in their own towns 
 and carrying on their trade there, which, it will be remembered," adds 
 Mr. Mitchel, " was grievously complained of by the Protestant residents 
 as a wrong and oppression upon them." 
 
 To this infernal piece of legislation a clause was added, at the express 
 suggestion of Queen Anne's government in England, leveled against the 
 Irish Protestant dissenters, who had grown to be numerous and wealthy 
 in Ulster. This clause declared that, to qualify any person in Ireland 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 27 
 
 for any public office or any position "in the magistracy of any city," it- 
 was necessary he should receive the sacrament according to the rites of 
 the Church of England. This was in accordance with the English Test 
 Act, which up to this had never been imposed upon Ireland. 
 
 In spite of the diabolical cruelty of its provisions, and in spite of the 
 able pleadings at the bar of the Commons of Sir Toby Butler, Counsellor 
 Malone and Sir Stephen Rice — three Catholic lawyers who had hitherto 
 been "protected persons" within the meaning of the Articles of Lim- 
 erick, and who on this occasion were pleading their own as much as the 
 cause of the clients who had retained them — in spite of everything, the 
 shocking bill became law. It was in vain Sir Toby denounced it as unnat- 
 ural and unjust. "Is not this," cried he, "against the laws of God and 
 man — against the rules of reason and justice, by which all men ought to 
 be governed ? Is not this the only way in the world to make children 
 become uhdutiful, and to bring the gray head of the parent to the 
 grave with grief and tears ?" Sir Toby also calls the act " such a law as 
 was never heard of before, and against the law of right and the law of 
 nations." 
 
 It would appear that a desire on the part of the Ascendency faction 
 to be able to rob the Catholics of Ireland had more to do with these 
 enactments than any sincere desire to cunvert them to Anglicanism. For, 
 in spite of its being contrary to the "Act of Uniformity," "a bare tole- 
 ration," to quote Mr. Mitchel again, "was allowed to Catholic worship, 
 provided that worship were practiced in mean and obscure places, pro- 
 vided there were no clergy in the kingdom but simple secular priests, 
 who were also compelled to register their names and parishes ' of which 
 they pretended to be popish priests ' — the penalty for saying mass out 
 of those registered parishes being transportation, and, in case of return, 
 death." A late writer makes the following reflection on this hypocritical 
 system of persecution : " It may be a circumstance in favor of the Prot- 
 estant code (or it may not), that whereas Catholics have really per- 
 secuted for religion, 'enlightened Protestants' only made a pretext of 
 religion, taking no thought of what became of Catholic souls if only 
 they could get possession of Catholic lands and goods. Also, we may 
 remark that Catholic governments in their persecutions always really 
 desired the o inversion of misbelievers (albeit their methods were rough) ; 
 
i r 
 
 28 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 but in Ireland, if the people had universally turned Catholic it would 
 have defeated the whole scheme." Mr. Burke, in his tract on the penal 
 laws, thus compares the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV., 
 which has been bitterly denounced by English writers as a heinous 
 instance of the persecution of Protestants by Catholics, with the Irish 
 system of the penal laws : " This act of injustice " (the edict of Nantes) 
 "which let loose on that monarch (Louis XI Y.) such a torrent of invec- 
 tive and reproach, and which threw so dark a cloud over all the splen- 
 dor of a most illustrious reign, falls far short of the case in Ireland. 
 The privileges which the Protestants of that kingdom enjoyed antece- 
 dent to this revocation were far greater than the Roman Catholics of 
 Ireland ever aspired to under a contrary establishment. The number 
 of their sufferers, if considered absolutely, is not the half of ours ; if 
 considered relatively to the body of each community, it is not perhaps 
 a twentieth part ; and then the penalties and incapacities which grew 
 from that revocation are not so grievous in their nature, nor so certain 
 in their execution, nor so ruinous, by a great deal, to the civil prosperity 
 of the state as those which were established for a perpetual law in our 
 unhappy country." 
 
 It is worthy of remark here that whenever the fortune of war on the 
 Continent seemed adverse to England — in fact, whenever any difficulty or 
 danger of any sort menaced her interests at home or abroad — the repre- 
 sentatives and supporters of her rule in Ireland would be sure to show 
 some slight tendency to relax the severity of the penal code, but the 
 crisis once passed the zeal for persecution would immediately become as 
 eager as ever. England's day of prosperity is ever Ireland's day of 
 disaster. 
 
 The natural tendency of the penal laws was gradually to demoralize 
 alike the oppressor and the oppressed ; the Protestant was continually 
 tempted to seek to discover violations of the law by Catholics, and to 
 inform on them ; the Catholic began to acquire the slave's suspicion and 
 false subtlety ; the perennial hostility of the old and new races in the 
 island increased ; mutual distrust and dislike widened the gulf between 
 them ; rarely did Catholic and Protestant feel the kindly feeling of neigh- 
 bors towards each other, yet there were occasional instances of mutual 
 generous and friendly feeling. In the last chapter reference was made to 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Protestants who held estates in trust for Catholics, and showed the highest 
 fidelity and honor ; it should be remembered that Protestants ran great 
 risk by this sort of generous conduct. Thomas Moore, in his " Life of 
 Captain Eock," tells the story of a Protestant barber "who, though his 
 own property. did not exceed a few pounds in value, actually held in fee 
 the estates of most of the Catholic gentry of the county in which he 
 lived. Let me add," continues Moore, "for the honor of human nature 
 and periwig-making, that, though the legislature had set a high premium 
 on perfidy, this Protestant barber was never known to betray his trust, 
 but remained the faithful depository of this proscribed wealth, which an 
 honorable ' hint to the law-officers would have made his own for ever." 
 This is a creditable set-off to other Protestant conduct in the penal 
 times, such as that of the mayor, sheriffs and Protestant aldermen of the 
 city of Limerick in 1695, in the reign of William III. and viceroyalty 
 of Lord Capel, who petitioned Parliament, complaining that " they were 
 greatly damaged in their trade by the great numbers of papists residing 
 there, and praying to be relieved therein." The poor fellows did, it 
 seems, get relief from the sympathetic legislature. Here is another 
 petition which was in sober seriousness presented to Parliament : " A 
 petition of one Edward Sprag and others, in behalf of themselves and 
 other Protestant porters in and about the city of Dublin, complaining 
 that one Darby Ryan, a papist, employed porters of his own persuasion." 
 The petition of this interesting victim, Mr. Sprag, was referred to the 
 " Committee on Grievances." 
 
 Turning again to the reign of Queen Anne, on the 17th of March, 
 1704, the Commons unanimously passed a resolution "that all mag- 
 istrates and other persons whatsoever who neglected or omitted to 
 put it in due execution were betrayers of the liberties of the king- 
 dom." In June, 1705, they resolved that the saying or hearing of 
 mass by persons who had not taken the oath of abjuration tended 
 to advance the interests of the Pretender; the magnanimous Com- 
 mons next resolved, unanimously this time also, " that the prosecuting 
 and informing against papists was an honorable service to the gov- 
 ernment." In this reign of Queen Anne, who, like Bess, has, I believe, 
 been facetiously termed "good," a pitifully mean act of Parliament 
 was passed against pilgrimages to holy wells or those assemblages 
 
30 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 of country-people called patrons ; a penalty of ten shillings' fine (whip- 
 ping in default of payment) was to be inflicted on every individual " whc 
 should attend or be present at any pilgrimage or meeting held at any 
 holy well or imputed holy well." Persons building booths or selling ale 
 and victuals at patrons were to be fined twenty pounds, and to be im- 
 prisoned till payment of the fine. This precious act "requires all mag- 
 istrates to demolish all crosses, pictures and inscriptions that are any- 
 where publicly set up, and are the occasions of popish superstitions." An- 
 other act of 1708 enacts "that from the first of Michaelmas term, 1708, 
 no papist shall serve or be returned to serve on any grand jury in the 
 queen's bench, or before justices of assize, oyer and terminer, or jail 
 delivery or quarter sessions, unless it appear to the court that a sufficient 
 number of Protestants cannot then be had for the service ; and in all 
 trials of issues (by petty juries) on any presentment, indictment or in- 
 formation, or action on any statute, for any offence committed by papists 
 in breach of such laws, the plaintiff or prosecutor may challenge any 
 papist returned as juror, and assign as a cause that he is a papist, which 
 challenge shall be allowed." Mr. Mitchel very justly remarks that the 
 spirit and practice of this enactment, as also the spirit and practice of 
 the disarming act already referred to, survive in Ireland still, though in 
 altered shapes. The Irish Catholic Celt is still disarmed by British law, 
 and during the state prosecutions of recent years the Irish Catholic juror, 
 unless he were " a lion-and-unicorn " trader, was almost invariably chal- 
 lenged by the Crown and set aside. 
 
 But Ave now come to the second "act to prevent the further growth of 
 popery." It was an act to explain and enlarge the powers and sweep 
 of the former one. A papist is not any longer to be capable of holding 
 or enjoying an annuity for life. I quote Mr. Mitchel : " Upon the con- 
 version of the child of any Catholic, the chancellor was to compel the 
 father to discover upon oath the full value of his estate, real and per- 
 sonal, and thereupon make an order for the independent support of such 
 conforming child, and for securing to him, after his father's death, such 
 share of the property as to the court should seem fit ; also to secure 
 jointures to popish wives who should desert their husband's faith. - ' 
 This act was to plant the seeds of distrust and discord in every family 
 and to poison the sacred happiness of the domestic 1 fireside. A papist 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 31 
 
 *vas not to be allowed to teach as tutor or usher, even as assistant to a 
 Protestant schoolmaster. A clause of the act offered thirty pounds per 
 annum to any popish priest conforming to the Established Church. Any 
 informer discovering an archbishop, bishop, vicar-general, or other per- 
 son exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction, was to have fifty pounds. For 
 the discovery of a monk, friar, or any secular clergyman not duly regis- 
 tered, twenty pounds; and ten pounds for discovering a popish school- 
 master or tutor. Justices could summon all papists over eighteen years 
 of age, examine them on oath as to when they last heard mass, names 
 of parties present, and the names of any popish. priest or schoolmaster. 
 Should the witness refuse to give evidence, he was liable to a fine of 
 twenty pounds or a year's imprisonment. In the same year a procla- 
 mation was issued commanding all registered priests to take the abjura- 
 tion oath before the 25th of March, 1710, under the penalty of prema- 
 nire. These were the days of the priest-hunters. For a first violation 
 of these laws priests were transported, but any bishop who had once 
 been transported was hanged if caught again. The profligate viceroy, 
 Lord Wharton, was thanked by the Commons for his zeal in hastening 
 this infamous "explaining and amending" act. In 1709 a colony of 
 871 Protestant Palatine families from Germany were settled in Ireland. 
 Some of their descendants still remain. But, in spite of colonies and 
 persecutions, the Catholic Irish of the old race arc still the overwhelm- 
 ing majority of the population. All the intruders, enjoying exclusive 
 privileges, dwindled rather than increased, while, in conformity with 
 a law loiown to those who have deeply studied the theory of popula- 
 tion, the impoverished and persecuted Celts increased and multiplied. 
 All the efforts to extirpate them recoiled on their ill-doers. In 1713 the 
 Commons ordered that " an address should be made to Her Majesty, to 
 desire that she would be pleased to grant licenses to papists to return 
 into the kingdom." In the same year an order was made " that the 
 sergeant-at-arms should take into custody all papists that were or should 
 presume to come into the galleries of the House of Commons." 
 
 During the reign of George I. the laws against Roman Catholics 
 were enforced with great ferocity — chapels shut up, priests dragged from 
 their places of concealment, or sometimes even from the altar, and ban- 
 ished. The Catholics were presumed to have no existence, save as 
 
32 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 objects of punishment. In the reign of George II., Lord Chancellor 
 Bowes declared from the bench "that the law does not suppcse any 
 such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic." Chief-Justice Robin- 
 son spoke to the same effect. With regard to the infamous class of 
 priest-catchers, the following passage from Brennan, the ecclesiastical 
 historian, is curious : "To the credit of those times, it must be remarked 
 that the description of miscreants usually termed priest-catchers were- 
 generally Jews Avho pretended to be converts to the Christian religion, 
 and some of them assumed even the character of the priesthood for the 
 purpose of insinuating themselves more readily into the confidence of the 
 clergy. The most notorious among them was a Portuguese Jew named 
 Gorzia (or Garcia). By means of this wretch seven priests had been 
 apprehended in Dublin and banished the kingdom. Of this number, 
 two were Jesuits, one was a Dominican, one a Franciscan, and three 
 were secular priests." Mr. Mitchel reasonably infers that about this 
 time nearly every priest in Ireland, regular or secular, must have been 
 liable to transportation and death, inasmuch as out of one thousand and 
 eighty " registered " priests, only thirty-three ever took the oath of abju- 
 ration, which was then legally obligatory upon the whole of them. 
 
 The duke of Grafton was viceroy in 1723. He was particularly eager 
 to persecute priests. He could not tolerate the notion of their numbers 
 increasing to such a pitch as to exceed " what by the indulgence of the 
 law is allowed." He recommends new laws, "particularly for prevent- 
 ing more effectually the eluding of those in being against popish priests." 
 In truth, the courage and constancy of the Irish priests gave these hate- 
 ful bigots no inconsiderable trouble. The priests, when carrying from 
 Rome communications required by the law of the Church, never feared 
 or hesitated to cross the seas between Ireland and France in fishing- 
 smacks and in the disguise of fishermen. They braved alike the tem- 
 pests of ocean and the penalty of high-treason under British law, inevit- 
 able if they were once caught. When in Ireland they were at one 
 time flying from the priest-hunter, at another lurking like wild beasts 
 in caves. And now, under the auspices of this Grafton, a measure of 
 unheard-of and almost incredible atrocity was proposed. A series of 
 resolutions had been agreed upon in the Commons to the effect that 
 popery had increased, that penal laws had been evaded, that magis- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 33 
 
 fcrates were remiss in their enforcement, "that it is highly prejudicial 
 to the Protestant interest that any person married to a popish wife 
 should bear any office or employment under His Majesty;" for it ap- 
 pears that magistrates who had married Catholic wives were remiss in 
 taking informations against their wives' confessors, being in salutary 
 dread of their ladies' tongues. There was also a resolution that no 
 "convert" should be capable of holding any office, nor even practice as 
 a solicitor, for seven years after his recantation, nor " unless he brings a 
 certificate of having received the sacrament thrice in every year during 
 the said term." Converts were also duly to enroll their certificates of 
 "conversion." Embodying the spirit of these resolutions, a bill was 
 prepared, and a clause of inconceivable vindictiveness and atrocity — a 
 clause which disgraces not merely the proposers and adopters, but human 
 nature itself — was added, that all "unregistered" popish priests caught 
 in Ireland should be castrated. It was argued that a "wholesome" 
 practice of this nature prevailed in Sweden, and was there attended 
 with the most salutary effects. This infernal bill passed both houses of 
 the legislature. It was presented to the duke of Grafton on the loth of 
 November, 1723. He was requested to "recommend the same in the 
 most effectual manner to His Majesty." The English viceroy replied 
 graciously : " I have so much at heart a matter which I recommended to 
 the consideration of Parliament at the beginning of this session that 
 the House of Commons may depend upon a due regard on my part to 
 what is desired." An Irish agent, however, presented a memorial 
 against this infernal act to the duke of Orleans, then regent of France 
 during the minority of Louis XV. Cardinal Fleury, prime minister of 
 France, remonstrated against the atrocity of sanctioning such a law 
 with Walpole, the English first minister. The canting government of 
 " moral England " always winces under foreign criticism. Decent ap- 
 pearances must be maintained, or else England's character for respecta- 
 bility might sink in the world's eyes ; and prestige is everything to Eng- 
 land. In short, Fleury's representations prevailed, and the bill was lost. 
 The humane Grafton tried to comfort the equally humane legislature at 
 the close of the session for their disappointment. He remarked that the 
 preservation of the public peace " would be greatly promoted by the 
 vigorous execution of the laws against popish priests, and that he would 
 
34 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 contribute his part towards the prevention of that growing evil by giving 
 proper directions that such persons only should be put into the commis- 
 sion of the peace as had distinguished themselves by their steady 
 adherence to the Protestant interests." 
 
 When George II., who, prior to his accession, had acquired some 
 reputation for liberality and tolerance, ascended the throne in 1727, the 
 Catholics, through Lord Delvin and some other individuals of the high- 
 est quality among them, sent a humble congratulatory address to His 
 Majesty; it was treated with the utmost contempt, not even noticed, 
 perhaps never even transmitted to the king. In the very year of this 
 liberal king's accession, Primate Boulter, the chief manager of England's 
 business in Ireland at this time, wishing to deprive the representatives 
 of the sort of patriotism that was gradually growing up among the 
 descendants of the English colonists, of the votes of the Catholics at the 
 approaching elections, hurried a bill through Parliament for the entire 
 disfranchisement of "papists." This bill received the assent of the lib- 
 eral and tolerant monarch ; it enacted that " no papist shall be entitled 
 or admitted to vote at the election of any member to serve in Parliament 
 as a knight, citizen or burgess, or at the election of any magistrate for 
 any city or other town corporate, any law, statute or usage to the con- 
 trary notwithstanding." This law took from the hapless Catholics the 
 last remnant of civil right. For sixty-six years from this time thev 
 remained utterly disfranchised. 
 
 At this period, too, another act of injustice was done to certain mem- 
 bers of the Irish Catholic body. An application had been made to 
 George I. for the reversal of some iniquitous outlawries which had 
 reduced some of the oldest, noblest and wealthiest Roman Catholic 
 families of Ireland and their posterity to beggary. The Commons, fear- 
 ing Geora;e II. might wish to redress the grievances of the Catholic suf- 
 ferers, present a petition to him; in this they tell His Majesty "that 
 nothing could enable them to defend his right and title to his crown so 
 effectually as the enjoyment of those estates which have been the forfeit- 
 ures of the rebellious Irish, and were then in the possession of his Prot- 
 estant subjects; and therefore that they were fully assured that he 
 would discourage all applications or attempts that should be made in 
 favor of such traitors or their descendants, so dangerous to the Protestant 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 35 
 
 interest of this kingdom." The liberal king yielded to their Avishes, and 
 at once assured them " that he would, for the future, discourage all such 
 applications and attempts." The Commons, " to make assurance doubly 
 sure," brought in a bill "absolutely disqualifying all Roman Catholics 
 from practicing as solicitors, the only branch of the law profession which 
 they were then permitted to practice. The Commons now no longer 
 dreaded lest the Catholic solicitors might prevail on their clients to 
 renew their applications for a reversal of the unjust outlawries and for- 
 feitures at some more favorable opportunity. The Catholics of Ireland 
 were at length, indeed, under the heel of the oppressor ; it was only in 
 foreign lands they could now achieve rank or distinction — at home they 
 were scarcely treated as human beings. Frequent resolutions of the 
 Commons continued to urge on the enforcement of the hellish penal 
 code ; inflammatory and mendacious sermons were thundered against 
 the heads of the devoted Catholics from the Anglican pulpits ; this was 
 the way chosen by preachers to ingratiate themselves with Primate 
 Boulter, the malignant persecutor of the prostrated Irish race. " If," 
 says Mr. Mitchel, "any pamphleteer desired to make himself con- 
 spicuous as a 'king's servant,' and so gain a profitable place, he set to 
 work to prove that all Catholics are by nature and necessity murderers, 
 perjurers and adulterers." On the 9th of March, 1731, it was unani- 
 mously resolved by the House of Commons "that it is the indispensable 
 duty of all magistrates and officers to put the laws made to prevent the 
 further growth of popery in Ireland in due execution," and " that the 
 members of that house, in their respective counties and stations, would 
 use their utmost endeavors to put the several laws against popery in 
 due execution." 
 
 Such were the terrible penal laws. Is it any wonder that Dr. Samuel 
 Johnson should describe them as more grievous than all the ten pagan 
 persecutions of the Christians? Is it wonderful that the illustrious 
 Edmund Burke should denounce such an infernal code, and term it "a 
 machine of wise and deliberate contrivance, as well fitted for the oppres- 
 sion, impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement 
 in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted 
 ingenuity of man " ? The penal code was the boon which the " glorious 
 Revolution" of 1688 conferred on thi unfortunate Irish race. 
 
At the close of this account of the growth of the penal laws I think 
 it advisable to give the following passages from Scully's "Statement of 
 the Penal Laws." They point out concisely and ably the way in which 
 some of these hideous enactments necessarily operated on the entire con- 
 dition and lives of the miserable Catholics : 
 
 "The advantages flowing from a seat in the legislature, it is well 
 known, are not confined to the individual representative. They extend 
 to all his family, friends and connections, or, in other Avoids, to every 
 Protestant in Ireland. Within his reach are all the honors, offices, 
 emoluments ; every sort of gratification to avarice or vanity ; the means 
 of spreading a great personal interest by innumerable petty services to 
 individuals. He can do an infinite number of acts of kindness and gen- 
 erosity, and even of public spirit. He can procure advantages in trade, 
 indemnity from public burdens, preferences in local competitions, par- 
 dons for offences ; he can obtain a thousand favors and avert a thou- 
 sand evils ; he may, while he betrays every valuable public interest, be 
 at the same time a benefactor, a patron, a father, a guardian angel to 
 his political adherents. On the other hand, how stands the Catholic 
 gentleman or trader? For his own person no office, no power, no emolu- 
 ment ; for his children, brothers, kindred or friends no promotion, eccle- 
 siastical or civil, military or naval. Except from his private fortune he 
 has no means of advancing a child, of making a single friend or of 
 showing any one good quality ; he has nothing to offer but harsh refusal, 
 pitiful excuse or despondent representation." 
 
 The same author describes the condition of the Roman Catholic 
 tradesmen and artisans of the towns under the blasting influence of the 
 penal laws, in the following terms : " They are debased by the galling 
 ascendency of privileged neighbors ; they are depressed by partial im- 
 posts, by undue preferences and accommodations bestowed upon their 
 competitors, by a local inquisition, by an uncertain and unequal meas- 
 ure of justice, by fraud and favoritism daily and openly practiced to 
 their prejudice. The Catholic gentleman whose misfortune it may be to 
 reside in or near any of these cities or towns in Ireland is hourly ex- 
 posed to all the slights and annoyances that a petty sectarian oligarehy 
 may think proper to inflict ; the professional man risks continual in- 
 flictions of personal humiliation ; the farmer brings the produce of his 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. o7 
 
 lands to market under heavier tolls. Every species of Catholic industry 
 and mechanical skill is checked, taxed and rendered precarious. 
 
 " On the other hand, eveiy species of Protestant indolence is cher- 
 ished and maintained, every claim is allowed, every want supplied, 
 every extortion sanctioned; nay, the very name of " Protestant" secures 
 a competence and commands patrician pre-eminence in Ireland." 
 
 The following passages from one of the able election-speeches deliv- 
 ered by the illustrious Burke at Bristol is pertinent to our present sub- 
 ject : " It is but too true that the love, and even the very idea, of genuine 
 liberty is extremely rare ; it is but too true that there are many whose 
 whole scheme of freedom is made up of pride, perverseness and inso- 
 lence ; they feel themselves in a state of thraldom, they imagine that their 
 souls are cooped and cabined in, unless they have some man or some body 
 of men dependent on their mercy. This desire of having some one below 
 them descends to those who are the very lowest of all, and a Protestant 
 cobbler, debased by his poverty, but exalted by his share of the ruling 
 Church, feels a pride in knowing it is by his generosity alone that the 
 peer whoso footman's instep he measures is able to keep his chaplain 
 from a jail." 
 
 Perhaps the following passages from Arthur Young's celebrated 
 "Tour in Ireland," as coming from an Englishman at once honest and 
 gifted with remarkable powers of observation, are still more valuable ; they 
 throw a flood of light on the real nature of the abominable penal laws, 
 and the motives which actuated the Ascendency party in maintaining 
 them: "But it seems to be the meaning, wish and intent of the dis- 
 covery laws that none of them (the Irish Catholics) should ever be rich ; 
 it is the principle of that system that wealthy subjects would be nuis- 
 ances, and therefore every means is taken to reduce and keep them to 
 a state of poverty. If this is not the intention of these laws, they are 
 the most abominable heap of self-contradictions that ever were issued in 
 the world; they are framed in such a manner that no Catholic shall 
 have the inducement to become rich. . . . Take the laws and their exe- 
 cution into one view, and this state of the case is so true that they 
 actually do not seem to be so much levelled at the religion as at the 
 property that is found in it. . . . The domineering aristocracy of five 
 hundred thousand Protestants feel the sweets of having two millions oi 
 
38 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 slaves ; they have not the least objection to the tenets of that religion 
 which keeps them by the law of the land in subjection, but property and 
 slavery are too incompatible to live together; hence the especial care 
 taken that no such thing should arise among them." — Young's " Tour 
 in Ireland" vol. ii., p. 48. 
 
 Elsewhere he says : " I have conversed on the subject with some of 
 the most distinguished characters in the kingdom, and I cannot, after all, 
 but declare that the scope, purport and aim of the laws of discovery as 
 executed are not against the Catholic religion, which increases under 
 them, but against the industry and property of whoever professes that 
 religion. In vain has it been said that consequence and power follow 
 property, and that the attack is made in order to wound the doctrine 
 through its property. If such was the intention, I reply that seventy 
 years' experience proves the folly and futility of it. Those laws have 
 crushed all the industry and wrested most of the property from the 
 Catholics, but the religion triumphs; it is thought to increase." 
 
 In the years following 1731 the unscrupulous calumnies disseminated 
 against the Catholics by the preachers and pamphleteers reached such 
 a frightful pitch of exaggeration, and created in the minds of the igno- 
 rant and narrow-minded bigots who read or listened to them such in- 
 sane and rabid animosity, that projects of exterminating the Catholics 
 were planned and discussed. Dr. Curry tells us that "an ancient noble- 
 man and privy councillor in the year 1743, on the threatened invasion 
 of England by the French under the command of Marshal Saxe, openly 
 declared in council 'that, as the papists had begun the massacre on 
 them about a hundred years before, so he thought it both reasonable 
 and lawful on their part to prevent them at that dangerous juncture by 
 first falling upon them.' " 
 
 Dr. Curry, who lived in those deplorable days, also gives us the fol- 
 lowing statement: "So entirely were some of the lower northern dis- 
 senters possessed and influenced by this prevailing prepossession and 
 rancor against Catholics that in the same year, and for the same de- 
 clared purpose of prevention, a conspiracy was actually formed by some 
 of the inhabitants of Lurgan to rise in the night-time and destroy all 
 their neighbors of that denomination in their beds. But this inhuman 
 purpose was also frustrated by an information of the honest Protestant 
 
"F'H Jj * by -JoJin. C.McRae 
 
 '1B1SIOT ISMMJETF, 
 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL 0'CONNELL. 39 
 
 publican in whose house the conspirators hud met to settle the execu- 
 tion of their scheme, sworn before the Rev. Mr. Ford, a justice of the 
 peace in the district, who received it with horror, and with difficulty 
 put a stop to the intended^inassacre." 
 
 These were the darkest days of the penal laws. The fate of an effort 
 made by the earl of Clancarty, the head of a once-powerful branch of 
 the great house of Maearthy, and others to recover the properties of 
 which they had been robbed in the course of the struggle between Wil- 
 liam and James after the Revolution of 1688, affords an illustration of 
 the almost hopeless prostration of the Catholic body in Ireland at this 
 period. For a time, indeed, in 17-12, the earl seemed to have some 
 chance of procuring a reversal of the iniquitous attainder which kept 
 him out of possession of his honors and vast estates, even then valued 
 at £'()i\0Q0 P er annum. Several other persons, unjustly dispossessed, 
 following his example, instituted proceedings for the recovery of houses 
 or lands. Not less than eighty-seven suits were in progress. But new 
 proprietors had purchased, under confiscation titles, the estates which 
 this Catholic earl and others in a similar predicament now sought to 
 have restored to them. These purchasers, alarmed at the prospect of 
 losing the plundered properties of which they held unrighteous posses- 
 sion, exclaimed against the notion of the Irish Parliament's acting justly 
 and causing restitution to be made. Things would come to a pretty pass, 
 indeed, if Protestants in possession could be disturbed by Catholics, even 
 though the latter might prove that they had been despoiled of theii 
 estates unjustly and illegally ! Such a doctrine would be destructive to 
 the Protestant ascendency, which had originally been founded on rapine 
 and required to be fed and sustained by plunder. The clamors and 
 interest of these holders of the stolen property prevailed. The Com- 
 mons passed a string of resolutions which denounced all the proceedings 
 in progress as a disturbance of the public welfare, and declared that all 
 who instituted such proceedings or took part in them in the capacity of 
 lawyer or attorney were public enemies. This reassured the partisans 
 of the Protestant interest, and so, for some time longer, a Catholic could 
 indulge in no reasonable hope of procuring the scantest justice or any 
 redress of his grievances. As for the once-flourishing house of Clan- 
 carty, it became extinct, and their title was subsequently conferred on 
 
40 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COUNELL. 
 
 the anti-Irish family of- Trench. It has been well remarked, that " there 
 is scarcely a Catholic family in Ireland whose story, if impartially told, 
 would not illustrate the misrule by which the prosperity of the country 
 has been overthrown and its genius nullified. From the beginning to 
 the end of the last century, to have been born a Catholic was a stigma 
 which no talent could efface, no patriotism remove." In a word, during 
 the fell regime of the penal laws, at home in his own land the Catholic 
 Irishman was civilly a nonentity, whether he were highly born or lowly ; 
 whether he were poor or rich (and in those evil days few Catholics could 
 be rich) ; whether he were endowed with the light of genius and the treas- 
 ures of learning (and few Catholics under such laws could acquire learn- 
 ing), or the most ignorant of brainless blockheads. 
 
 But the darkest hour is that before dawn. This old familiar saying 
 was verified in the present instance. I have already observed that 
 English difficulty or disaster generally produced some slight relaxation 
 of the enforcement of the penal laws; then, as now, "England's diffi- 
 culty was Ireland's opportunity." On Tuesday, the 11th of May (new 
 style), 17-15, the English were not merely in difficulty, but their army 
 was totally defeated on the memorable battle-field of Fontenoy ; there 
 the " Saxon soldier " learned by bitter experience that, if his government 
 had trampled under foot the Irish serf at home, on the other hand the 
 Irish warrior abroad could plant foot on his neck and trample his vaunted 
 flag in the dust. On that glorious day of Fontenoy " the Irish Brigade " 
 swept the "shattered ranks" of "Butcher Cumberland's" terrible col- 
 umn of reserve in wildest rout before them to the fierce battle-roar of 
 "Revenge! remember Limerick ! dash down the Sassenach ! " But ad- 
 ditional causes of vexation and dismay to the English "powers that be" 
 quickly follow. In the same year that witnessed Fontenoy, Charles 
 Edward, "the young Pretender," grandson of James II., attended by 
 only seven companions, among whom were three Irish officers, makes his 
 adventurous descent on the coast of Scotland, determined to strike a 
 final blow to recover the throne of his ancestors. Joined by the hardy 
 Gaelic tribes of the Scotch Highlands, he swoops down on the English 
 army, under Cope, at Prestonpans, takes Edinburgh, marches into Eng- 
 land, and even when finally obliged to retire into Scotland punishes 
 another English army, under Hawley, at Falkirk. The English govern- 
 
mcnt are in consternation till his defeat and ruin next year at Culloden. 
 All this time the famous "'arbiter elegant iarum," Lord Chesterfield, was 
 viceroy in Ireland. Without the repeal of any portion of the detestable 
 code, its enforcement was greatly relaxed ; the people now went to holy 
 wells without fear of being fined or getting a whipping; a priest might 
 walk from his own "registered" parish into another, and, fearless of 
 informers, without dread of handcuffs or transportation, might perform 
 some religious rite ; bishops and vicars-apostolic might cross the sea and 
 quietly ordain priests and confirm children in Ireland with impunity. 
 In vain the bigots of the Ascendency faction tried to alarm the popular 
 viceroy with idle stories and rumors of popish machinations. The gay 
 old gallant of fifty-two would always laugh aside their tales of terror 
 with some pleasant, airy jest. One bigoted fool came to give his Excel- 
 lency warning of the startling fact that Ids own coachman used to go to 
 mass. "Is it possible?" cried Chesterfield ; "then I will take care the 
 fellow shall not drive me there." Another silly courtier rushed into his 
 apartment one morning, while he was sipping his chocolate in bed, with 
 the portentous news "that the papists were rising in Connaught." 
 "Ah!" said the old viceregal wag, looking at his watch, "'tis nine 
 o'clock — time for them to rise." What a provoking viceroy, indifferent 
 alike to the perils of the " Protestant interest " and the wicked machina- 
 tions of murderous papists! He even said that the only "dangerous 
 papist" he had met in Ireland was Miss Ambrose, a lady of great 
 beauty whom he greatly admired. 
 
 As soon as England's danger had passed over, the conciliatory Ches- 
 terfield was recalled, and some inclination was manifested to renew the 
 severities of the penal code. From this time forward, however, the cause 
 of the Catholics was not in so hopeless a state; still, acts of insult, and 
 even of atrocious tyranny, took place from time to time, almost as bad 
 as those seen in the worst days of the penal laws. We find such acts 
 taking place even in the viceroyalty of the duke of Bedford, who was 
 instructed to adopt in the interests of England the conciliatory policy. 
 He arrived in Dublin in September, 1757 ; next year a Catholic merchant 
 named Saul was prosecuted under the following circumstances : Some 
 friends of a young girl named O'Toole importuned her to conform to the 
 Anglican Church ; to escape their persecution she took refuge with Said. 
 
who was a relative of hers. One of her Protestant connexions took legal 
 proceedings against Saul, who was told from the bench that papists had 
 no rights, as " the law did not presume a papist to exist in the kingdom, 
 nor could they so much as breathe there without the connivance of 
 government." 
 
 At this time, too, new acts against the Catholics were menaced, but 
 the time had at last come when the Catholics began to show some slight 
 signs of a reviving spirit of resistance to oppression. Some meetings of 
 Catholics were held, in which two factions appeared ; this was somewhat 
 vexatious, but men so long unused to act like freemen were necessarily 
 disorganized ; at length, however, a meeting took place in Dublin, at 
 which Charles O'Connor of Balanagar, Dr. Curry, author of the " His- 
 torical Review of the Civil Wars," Mr. Wyse, a merchant of Waterford, 
 and Lords Fingal, Taafe and Dclvin were present ; they founded the first 
 "Catholic Committee." This occurred in the year 1758, and may be 
 called the commencement of the Catholic "agitation" which O'Connel] 
 long after directed with so much renown and made triumphant in 1829. 
 In 1750 this committee, when some apprehension of a Jacobite invasion 
 arose, prepared an address of loyalty, written by Charles O'Connor, and 
 signed by three hundred of the most respectable Catholics of Dublin, to 
 be presented to the House of Commons. For the first time since the 
 close of the seventeenth century, Catholic advances were received with- 
 out insult ; the address and those presenting it were even treated with 
 civility ; the lord-lieutenant sent them a gracious answer, which he 
 caused to be printed in the Dublin Gazette, thus "officially recog- 
 nizing," to use the words of Mr. Mitchel, " the existence (though hum- 
 ble) of persons calling themselves Catholics in Ireland." Mr. Ponsonby, 
 the Speaker of the House of Commons, also said to Mi". McDermot and 
 Mr. Crump, the gentlemen who had presented the address, "that he 
 counted it a favor to be put in the way of serving so respectable a body 
 as the gentlemen who had signed that address." This was the first 
 public and official recognition of the very existence of Catholics since 
 the violation of the treaty of Limerick. 
 
 King George II. died in the year 1760 ; his reign was a terrible one for 
 the old Irish race ; if towards its close things began to look a little better 
 for the Catholics, through the best part of it their condition was wretched 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 43 
 
 and degraded beyond all conception and precedent. Mr. Mitehel justly 
 remarks that "on the whole this was the era of priest-hunting, of 'dis- 
 coveries,' and of a universal plunder of such property as remained in 
 the hands of the Catholics. In this pitiful struggle the wild humor of 
 the race would sometimes break out, and often desperate deeds were 
 done by beggared men." We shall presently give some illustrations of 
 this. 
 
 Through the whole reign of George IT. fathers were liable to be 
 robbed of the free possession and control of their properties by unduti- 
 ful or profligate children, who would make a hypocritical show of con- 
 forming to the Established Church. Unprincipled wretches of this 
 stamp brought ruin and despair on many ancient and wealthy families, 
 and, in the words of a very " humble petition and remonstrance " ad- 
 dressed by the Irish Catholics to George II. — which, however, it is prob- 
 able he never received — " brought many a parent's gray hairs with sorrow 
 to the grave." But not merely were the Catholics robbed of real estate, 
 but of personal property too. In the same document the Catholics com- 
 plain " that new and forced constructions have been of late years put 
 upon these laws (for we cannot think that such constructions were ever 
 originally intended), by which, on the sole account of our religion, we 
 are in many cases stripped of that personal property by discoverers and 
 informers — a set of men, most gracious sovereign, once generally and 
 justly despised amongst us, but of late grown into some repute by the 
 increase of their numbers, and by the frequency, encouragement and 
 success of their practices. 
 
 "These and many other cruel restrictions (such as no Christian peo- 
 ple under heaven but ourselves are made liable to) are, and have long 
 been, greatly detrimental not only to us in particular, but also to the 
 commerce, culture and eveiy other improvement of this kingdom in 
 general; and, what is surely a melancholy consideration, are chiefly 
 beneficial to the discoverers and informers before mentioned, who, under 
 color of these laws, plunder indiscriminate])' parents, brethren, kins- 
 men and friends, in despite of all the ties of blood, of affection and con- 
 fidence, in breach of the divine laws, of all former human laws enacted 
 in this or perhaps in any other kingdom for tlie security of property since 
 the creation of the world." 
 
The petitioners then show conclusively that no argument of necessity 
 can be pleaded for the continuance of the penal laws, after which they 
 observe : "Nor can (we humbly presume) that only pretext now left for 
 continuing them in force — viz., their tendency to make proselytes to the 
 Established religion — in any degree justify the manifold severities and 
 injuries occasioned by them. For, alas ! most gracious sovereign, there 
 is but too much reason to believe that proselytes so made are, for the 
 most part, such in appearance only, in order to become what all sincere 
 Christians condemn and detest, undutiful children, unnatural brethren 
 or perfidious friends; and we submit it to your Majesty's great wisdom 
 and goodness whether motives so repugnant to the public interest, and 
 to all social, moral and religious duties, are fit to be confided in or longer 
 encouraged." 
 
 During the greater portion of George II.'s reign Catholic worship 
 had to be celebrated in a stealthy, "hugger-mugger" sort of way. All 
 ecclesiastics lived in continual apprehension. The parochial priests 
 were somewhat less exposed to danger than other ecclesiastics. lib- 
 eral local proprietors had it in their power to render their existence 
 more secure. As the priests educated in foreign universities — such as 
 Salamanca, Louvain and others — were frequently refined and accom- 
 plished men, equal, if not superior, in manners and culture to the Prot- 
 estant rectors, who in those days were often, indeed, coarse and unintel- 
 lectual, their society was, in numbers of cases, sought and relished by 
 those of the gentry who had literary tastes and polished manners ; and 
 this circumstance would naturally be a source of additional protection 
 to them. It was far more dangerous for the regular clergy to venture to 
 live in Ireland ; yet they braved the danger, and in the face of the sus- 
 picion and hatred of the Ascendency faction were to be found in Ireland 
 during the most perilous days of the penal laws. It required no small 
 amount of courage to defy the bigoted fury that raged against monks, 
 friars and priests in those "no-popery" days. The archbishops and 
 bishops, too, were in a special manner exposed to danger. As they were 
 at all times liable to transportation and the penalty of ])reiminire, it was 
 only by a sort of connivance that they were permitted to confirm and 
 confer orders. Though they continued to exercise their sacred functions 
 during this terrible period with courageous zeal and fidelity, yet all through 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 45 
 
 they had to observe the greatest caution and secresy. Their vigilance re- 
 quired to be unsleeping. In Brennan's " Ecclesiastical History" we are 
 told that in the reign of George II., Bernard MacMahon, Roman Cath- 
 olic primate, " resided in a retired place named Bally mascanlon, in the 
 county of Louth. His habitation was little superior to a farmhouse, 
 and for many years he was known through the country by the name of 
 Mr. Ennis. In this disguise, which personal safety so strongly prompted, 
 he was accustomed to travel over his diocese, make his visitations, ex- 
 hort his people and administer the sacraments." The same work tells 
 us that another primate, named Michael O'Reilly, "lived in a humble 
 dwelling at Turfegin, near Drogheda, and died here about the year 
 1758." It is ludicrous to find some writers, and even some servile 
 Catholic writers among the rest, talking of the house of Hanover as friends 
 to the principles of toleration. Nothing could be more hideous than the 
 persecutions that terrorized Catholic Ireland during the earlier reigns of 
 that intolerant and brutal dynasty, when priests used to be regularly 
 indicted at assizes, " for that they had, at such times and places, nol 
 having the fear of God before their eyes, but moved and seduced by the 
 instigation of the devil, said mass and did other functions of a popish 
 priest against the peace of our lord the king, and contrary to the stat- 
 utes in that case made and provided." In the early part of the reign 
 of George I., in the year 1715, during the Highland-Scotch rebellion in 
 favor of the claims of the first " Pretender," James III., the earls of An- 
 trim and Westmeath, Lords Netterville, Cahir and Dillon, with a great 
 number of untitled gentlemen, were suddenly pounced upon and impris- 
 oned in Dublin Castle "on suspicion." They were released when the 
 Scotch rebellion was over. These peers and gentlemen were Catholics : 
 they were of course suspected of leaning towards the dethroned house 
 of Stuart. Such was the enlightened tolerance of the princes of the 
 house of Brunswick ! 
 
 In the early years of George III.'s reign the TVhiteboy riots took 
 place in the south of Ireland. They were chiefly provoked by the hor- 
 rible extortions of tithe-proctors and the infringement on the part 
 of certain landlords in Minister of the right of commonage, which the 
 poor raekrented tenantry had hitherto enjoyed. ls T ow the landlords 
 began to enclose those commons, and thereby deprived the tenants of 
 
the only compensation which they had to enable them to live under the 
 yoke of their hard tenures. The people formed secret associations, and 
 rose occasionally in a tumultuous and desultory manner. Sometimes 
 they pulled down the fences that had been made round the commons, 
 sometimes they resisted church-rates, and occasionally they cut the ears 
 off a greedy and cruel tithe-proctor. This Whiteboy movement lasted 
 for a considerable time. The Cromwellian bigots endeavored to persuade 
 the government that it was a regular popish rebellion in the interests 
 of "the Pretender," inspired by French counsels and supported by 
 French gold. The absurd and mendacious representations of the Crom- 
 wellian squirearchy so far prevailed that ere long a system of militaiy 
 coercion and landlord violence far more lawless than the worst out- 
 breaks of the Whiteboys tortured the Catholics of Minister and deprived 
 them of all legal protection. It was during the course of these troubles 
 that the persecution of Father Sheehy, which terminated in his judicial 
 murder, and of which I shall presently give a few details, occurred. 
 Few incidents in Irish history have sunk deeper into the hearts and 
 memories of the peasantry than the melancholy fate of this brave and 
 generous priest. 
 
 But in spite of the Whiteboy agitation and "the reign of terror" 
 which landlord influence had established in Minister, the dawn of a bet- 
 ter day was appearing, " the thin end of the wedge " was about to be 
 introduced; in a word, the first blow was about to be dealt to the 
 accursed fabric of penal legislation. On the 25th of November, 1763, a 
 Mr. Mason moved for leave to bring in a bill to empower papists to lend 
 money on mortgages of real estate. In Queen Anne's reign they had 
 been deprived of the power of taking landed security by way of mort- 
 gage for money lent. This was inconvenient to the Protestants as well 
 as to the Catholics, for many Protestants wanted to borrow money, and 
 many Catholics had money to lend, if only they could get security for it ; 
 intelligent Catholics in Ireland, shut out, like the Jews of that clay all 
 over the world, from all the paths of high and honorable ambition, had. 
 like the Jews, concentrated their faculties on the pursuit of gain; and 
 thus many of them who were thrifty as well as industrious had amassed 
 large sums of money ; but now the penal restrictions compelled them to 
 invest all their accumulations abroad, and it was even said that these 
 
I r 
 i i 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 47 
 
 funds had occasionally furnished supplies for Jacobite invasions. Thus, 
 then, the partisans of British power and the Protestants in general had 
 a selfish interest in redressing at least this one Catholic grievance ; yet on 
 this occasion bigotry triumphed once more. Protestant prejudice against 
 the Catholics was still stronger than even self-interest In vain Mr. 
 Mason argued that if a papist could become a mortgagee he would have 
 a local stake in the country which would make it his interest to support 
 the government, that his security for his money would be good while the 
 government was able to maintain itself, that it would become at least 
 doubtful in case of a subversion of the existing government ; he even ven- 
 tured to say that if papists were to be admitted to all the privileges of 
 Protestants there would hardly be a practical Jacobite among them, what- 
 ever there might be in theory. In conclusion (referring to a similar bill 
 that had passed the session before, but had been cushioned by the English 
 Privy Council), he said : " I should therefore be glad that the bill should 
 have another trial, and shall move for leave to bring in the heads of a 
 bill to empower papists to lend money on the mortgage of land and to 
 sue for the same." But everything he could urge proved unavailing lo 
 persuade the House of Commons to pass the bill. A Mr. Le Ilunte 
 argued that it would make papists proprietors of great part of the landed 
 interest of the kingdom; that so their influence would be extended; that 
 they might make a bad use of this; that they w T ere not to lie trusted; 
 that it was dangerous to act on the assumption that their interests 
 would overcome their principles ; that the act of the preceding session 
 was only carried by artful management, having been brought in on the 
 last day of the session, when there was only a small house of sixty-two. 
 He asked for a postponement of Mr. Mason's motion, that they might 
 have time for consideration and a fuller house; he thought Mr. Mason 
 ought not to have brought in the heads of the bill, as it was cruel to raise 
 expectations which would probably be disappointed. 
 
 Accordingly, the motion was post] toned till the 3d of February, 1704. 
 On that clay the house rejected (138 for the rejection, 53 against it) heads 
 of a bill presented by Mr. Mason " to ascertain what securities might be 
 taken by persons professing the popish religion for money lent or to be 
 lent by them, and also what remedies they might enforce." Another 
 motion to bring in a bill enabling them to take securities upon lands, 
 
48 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 but in such a manner that they could never meddle with the possession 
 thereof, was at once negatived by a majority of 44. Thus we find that 
 the first attempt to procure some relaxation of the diabolical penal code 
 was a failure ; and yet in this failure a certain element of virtual success 
 was involved, for it was a sign, unmistakable though faint, of a certain 
 advance in liberality of views and sentiments to see a bill for even so 
 slight a relaxation introduced into the Protestant legislature at all, and 
 discussed with something like moderation of tone ; insult at least was 
 absent on this occasion. Manifestly, the Catholics were at length begin- 
 ning to lift up their heads from the dust, and their cause was gaining 
 ground, however slowly. 
 
 But at last, in the session of 1772, during the viceroyalty of that 
 witty demoralizer of Irish legislators, the marquis Townshend, it suited 
 the government and the venal Parliament to grant a slight concession to 
 the Catholics. An Act to Encourage the Reclaiming of Unprofitable Bogs 
 was passed. By this enactment, notwithstanding the laws then in force, 
 any Catholic was allowed "to, take a lease of fifty plantation acres of. 
 such bog, and one-half an acre of arable land adjoining thereto, as a site 
 for a house, or for the purpose of delving for gravel or limestone for 
 manure, at such rent as should be agreed upon between him and the 
 owner of the soil, as also from ecclesiastical or other bodies corporate; 
 and for further encouragement the tenant was to be free, for the first 
 seven years, from all tithes and cesses; but it was provided that if half 
 of the bog demised were not reclaimed at the end of twenty-one years, 
 the lease should be void; and no bog was to be considered unprofitable 
 unless the depth of it from the surface, when reclaimed, were four feet at 
 least ; and no person was to be entitled to the benefit of the act unless 
 he reclaimed ten plantation acres ; and the act was not to extend to any 
 bog within one mile of a city or market-town." This was the first slight 
 relaxation of the penal code ; low indeed must have been the condition 
 of the Catholics when the donors could make a boast of their generosity 
 in conceding such a miserable boon ! 
 
 In the same session, too, an act was passed of the old bigoted stamp 
 as a set-off to this mighty and magnanimous concession. The thirty 
 pounds per annum provided by the 8th of Anne as a maintenance tor 
 any popish priest becoming a convert to the Established religion was, 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 49 
 
 by the new act, increased to a yearly allowance of forty pounds. The 
 act recited "that the former act had not answered the purposes intended, 
 especially as the jwovision made as aforesaid for such popish 2>ricsts is in 
 no respect a sufficient encouragement for ]><>]>ish priests to become converts.''' 
 Nor did these " Townshend's golden drops," as the Irish nicknamed the 
 new stipends, encourage the priests to become renegades a whit better. 
 
 In the year 1773 leave was given to bring in the heads of two bills 
 favorable to the Catholics — one, on the 9th of November, to empower 
 papists, upon certain terms and provisoes, to take leases of lives of 
 lands, .tenements and hereditaments ; the other, on the 10th of Novem- 
 ber, to secure the repayment of money that should be really lent and 
 advanced by papists to Protestants on mortgages of lands, tenements 
 and hereditaments. But the bigotry and injustice of the Protestant 
 Ascendency faction prevented these two bills from proceeding at that 
 time. Next year, however, as the gathering storm-cloud of the American 
 Revolution was every day growing blacker and more menacing to Eng- 
 land, the British ministry sent the viceroy, Lord Harcourt, absolute com- 
 mands to force through the Irish legislature some measure calculated to 
 conciliate the Catholics. The ministers of England began to dread lest 
 the heart of the old race of Ireland might be so roused by the exam- 
 ple of the American colonists as to kindle with something of its pris- 
 tine glow. Irish Catholics might at last lose patience, pluck up their 
 courage suddenly and strive to snatch, by force of arms, the justice 
 refused to respectful and even humble petitions. O'Connell's maxim 
 was as true of those as of later clays — "England's difficulty is Ireland's 
 opportunity." On the 5th of March, 1774, "leave was given to bring- 
 in a bill to enable His Majesty's subjects, of whatever persuasion, to 
 testify their allegiance to him." This paltry bill passed without oppo- 
 sition. It remitted in no degree the actual severity of the infernal 
 penal code. Still, it was a further recognition of the legal existence of 
 Catholics, so long outrageously denied. Hence it tended, in some small 
 measure, to remove some of the badges of slavery and ignominy, and 
 so might be regarded as a slight rehabilitation of our race. Some, 
 indeed, may regard it more in the light of an insult. John Mitchel 
 seems inclined to take this view. If it had been more favorable, it 
 would no doubt have encountered violent opposition from the malignant 
 
50 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 bigots of the Ascendency faction, or probably it would have been thrown 
 out altogether. The historian, Plowdcn, speaks of it in these terms: "It 
 gratified the Catholics, inasmuch as it was a formal recognition that they 
 were subjects, and to this recognition they looked up as to the corner 
 stone of their future emancipation." 
 
 Such were the paltry beginnings of that long struggle to overthrow 
 the grim and terrible system of persecution and penal laws under which 
 generations of the Irish race were forced to groan, "unrespited, unpitied, 
 unrepiieved," that at last, in 1829, more than half a century later, under 
 the skilful leadership of Daniel O'Connell, was crowned with tr-iumph. 
 No farther relaxation of the penal code took place prior to the birth of 
 O'Connell. During his earliest years, Catholics were not even allowed 
 to become members of that profession of which he was subsequently 
 such a glorious and resplendent light. Mr. Mitchel maintains that all 
 the earlier indulgences granted to the Catholics "were carefully calcu- 
 lated to prevent them from getting any hold upon the land." In short, 
 ho considers that " the controlling idea in all the policy of the Ascend- 
 ency was simple greediness." This view is somewhat at variance with 
 that of an illustrious Irish statesman who lived in those days, whose 
 authority is of the highest, and who ascribes the policy of the Ascend- 
 ency to mere insolence and an arrogant avarice of power. Edmund 
 Burke, in a letter written in 1775, says: "From what I have observed, 
 it is pride, arrogance, a spirit of domination, and not a bigoted spirit of 
 religion, that has caused and kept up those oppressive statutes. I am 
 sure I have known those who have oppressed papists in their civil 
 rights exceedingly indulgent to them in their religious ceremonies, and 
 who wished them to continue in order to furnish pretences for oppres- 
 sion, and who never saw a man by conforming escape out of their 
 power but with grudging and regret. I have known men to whom I 
 am not uncharitable in saying, though they are dead, that they would 
 become papists in order to oppress Protestants, if being Protestants it 
 was not in their power to oppress papists." It is pleasant to find that 
 the greatest minds of the Irish nation abhorred the penal laws, and 
 sought to destroy them as far as in them lay. Bishop Berkeley, the 
 subtlest of metaphysicians and the most amiable of men ; Brooke, the 
 author of the "Fool of Quality" and " Gustavus Vasa," a lover of free- 
 
dom and a truly religious Protestant ; Edmund Burke, a splendid orator 
 and one of the profoundest, if not the profoundest, of political philoso- 
 phers; and Henry Grattan, the most glorious of modern orators and the 
 soul of high-toned, chivalrous honor, — all these illustrious men hated the 
 hellish code, and, as circumstances allowed them, set their face against 
 its existence. On the other hand, it is melancholy to find such patriots 
 as Henry Flood and Lord Cliarlemont on the side of bigotry. 
 
 In order to make this picture of the penal days complete, I shall now 
 give a few anecdotes and sketches illustrative of life in Ireland in those 
 evil times. They will all, I doubt not, be found more or less interesting, 
 especially as most of them will be given in the words of Daniel O'Con- 
 nell himself, as he told them to his friend, Mr. O'Neill Daunt, in the 
 course of various conversations. 
 
 I will first, however, give the stories of the two Geoghegans, as 
 related in a work entitled "The Irish Abroad and at Home." 
 
 " Seventy or eighty years ago there resided in Soho Square, London, an 
 Irish Roman Catholic gentleman known among his friends as ' Geoghe- 
 gan of London.' Pretending to be, or being really, alarmed lest a rela- 
 tive (Mr. Geoghegan of Jamestown) should conform to the Protestant 
 religion, and possess himself of a considerable property situate in AVest- 
 meath, he resolved upon a proceeding to which the reader will attach 
 any epithet it may seem to warrant. 
 
 "He repaired to Dublin, reported himself to the necessary authori- 
 ties, and professed, in all its required legal forms, the Protestant religion 
 on a Sunday, sold his estates on Monday and relapsed into popery on 
 Tuesday. 
 
 " He did not effect these changes unostentatiously, for ' he saw no 
 reason for mauvaise horde,' as he called it. He expressed admiration of 
 the same principle of convenient apostasy which governed Henri 
 IV.'s acceptance of the French crown. 'Paris vaut bien une inesse' 
 (' Paris is well worth a mass'), said that gay, chivalrous but somewhat 
 unscrupulous monarch. Thus, when asked the motive of his abjuration 
 ot Catholicism, Geoghegan replied : ' I would rather trust my soul to 
 God for a day than my property to the fiend for ever.' 
 
 "This somewhat impious speech was in keeping with his conduct at 
 Christ Church, where he made his religious profession ; the sacramental 
 
i r 
 
 52 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 wine being presented to him, he drank off the entire contents of the 
 cup. The officiating clergyman rebuked his indecorum. ' You need not 
 grudge it me/ said the neophyte; 'it's the dearest glass of wine I ever 
 drank.' 
 
 " In the afternoon of the same day he entered the Globe Coffee-room, 
 Essex street, then frequented by the most respectable of the citizens of 
 Dublin; the room was crowded. Putting his hand to his sword and 
 throwing a glance of defiance around, Geoghegan said : 
 
 " ' I have read my recantation to-day, and any man who says I did 
 right is a rascal.' 
 
 "A Protestant with whom he was conversing the moment before he 
 left home to read his recantation said to him, ' For all your assumed 
 Protestantism, Geoghegan, you will die a papist' 
 
 " ' Fi done, mon ami !' replied he ; ' that is the last thing of which I 
 am capable.' " 
 
 The story of the other Geoghegan gives as curious a sample of the 
 operation of the penal laws. 
 
 "Mi. Geoghegan had a relative, Mr. Kedagh Geoghegan of Donower, 
 in the county of Westmeath, who, though remaining faithful to the creed 
 of Ills forefathers, enjoyed the esteem and respect of the Protestant resi- 
 dent gentry of his county. Notwithstanding that his profession of the 
 Roman Catholic religion precluded his performing the functions of a 
 grand juror, he attended the assizes at Mullingar regularly, in common 
 with other gentlemen of Westmeath, and dined with the grand jurors. 
 
 " On one of those occasions a Mr. Stepney, a man of considerable 
 fortune in the county, approached him and remarked : ' Geoghegan, that 
 is a capital team to your carriage. I have rarely seen four finer horses, 
 nor better matched. Here, Geoghegan, are twenty pounds ' (tendering him 
 a sum of money in gold). ' You understand me ; they are mine.' And he 
 moved towards the door, apparently with the intention of taking posses- 
 sion of his purchase. The horses, not yet detached from Mr. Geoghe- 
 gan's carriage, were still in the yard of the inn close by. 
 
 "'Hold, Stepney!' said Geoghegan. 'Wait one moment. I shall 
 not be absent more than that time.' He then quitted the room abruptly, 
 and was seen running in great haste towards the inn at which he always 
 put up. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 "There was something in the scene which had just, occurred which 
 shocked the feelings of the witnesses of it, and something in the man- 
 ner of Geoghegan that produced among them a dead silence and a con- 
 viction that it was not to end there. Not a word was yet spoken, when 
 the report of four pistol-shots struck their ears, and in a few seconds 
 afterwards Geoghegan was perceived coming from the direction of the 
 inn laden with firearms. He mounted to the room in which the party 
 were assembled, holding by their barrels a brace of pistols in each hand. 
 Walking directly up to Stepney, he said, ' Stepney, you cannot have the 
 horses for which you bid just now.' 
 
 " ' I can and will have them.' 
 
 "'You can't. I have shot them; and, Stepney, unless you are as 
 great a coward as you are a scoundrel, I will do my best to shoot you. 
 Here, choose your weapon and take your ground. Gentlemen, open if 
 you please, and see fair play.' 
 
 " He then advanced upon Stepney, offering him the choice of either 
 pair of pistols. Stepney, however, declined the combat and quitted the 
 room, leaving Geoghegan the object of the unanimous condolements of 
 the rest of the party, and overwhelmed with their expressions of sym- 
 pathy and of regret for the perversion of the law of which Mr. Stepney 
 bad just sought to make him the object. 
 
 " In tendering twenty pounds for horses that Avere worth twenty 
 times that sum, Stepney was only availing himself of -one of the enact- 
 ments of the penal code, which forbade a papist the possession of a horse 
 of greater value than five pounds. 
 
 " Notwithstanding this incident, old Kedagh Geoghegan continued to 
 visit Mullingar during the assizes for many years afterwards ; but, to 
 avoid a similar outrage, and to keep in recollection the cruel nature of 
 the popery laws, his cattle thenceforward consisted of four oxen." 
 
 I have already referred to the terrible tragedy which involves the fate 
 of the brave Father Sheehy. No picture of life in Ireland under the penal 
 rigime can be complete without at least an outline of the story of this 
 priest's murder. Nicholas Sheehy was the priest of the parish of which 
 the village of Clogheen forms the heart. The village is situated in a valley 
 that lies between the Galtees and the Knockmeildown Mountains in the 
 county Tipperary. Much of the surrounding scenery is wdd ; indeed the 
 
! I 
 
 54 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 scenery is perfectly in keeping with wild and tragic deeds. I have seldom 
 looked on a gloomier or lonelier lake than that named Baylough, which is 
 not far from the little town or village of Clogheen. Father Sheehy came 
 of a good Irish stock, and had the advantages of a French education. He 
 had defied British law, both in going to France to be educated, and in 
 returning to go on the mission at home. He had a generous precipi- 
 tance of soul, which your timid or over-prudent folks would call rash- 
 ness. Dr. Curry calls it " a Quixotic cast of mind towards relieving all 
 those within his district whom he fancied to be injured or oppressed." 
 In short, his blood boiled at the acts of oppression he saw perpetrated 
 by the Cromwellian brood all around him. If he felt strongly, he de- 
 nounced as strongry the villainies he witnessed. He said openly and man- 
 fully that there should be no church-rates in the neighboring parish of 
 Newcastle, where there were no Protestant parishioners. Why should 
 Protestant clergymen take tithes from Catholics, when they could return 
 them no value for their money ? Why should tithe-proctor Dobbyn, who 
 farmed the tithes of Parsons Foulkes and Sutton, assert a novel claim, 
 demanding from the Catholics of the district five shillings for every mar- 
 riage performed by a priest ? The people resisted this imposition. It 
 fell heavily on Father Sheehy's flock, and therefore he was the more 
 eager to denounce it publicly. This bold assertion of the rights of the 
 Catholic people of the old race enraged the Cromwellian upstarts ; they 
 determined to destroy him. The Whiteboy disturbances were agitating 
 Minister at this time. Sir Thomas Maude, William Bagnell and John 
 Bagnell, Esquires, and Daniel Toler. father or uncle of the infamous Lord 
 Norbury and high sheriff of the county, were among the most active of 
 the persecutors of the Catholic people. These sanguinary local tyrants 
 were active in causing arrests to be made, and in securing a proper 
 amount of judicial murders. Father Sheehy was again and again ar- 
 rested, and even tried as a " popish priest," but evidence of his celebra- 
 tion of mass could not be procured against him. He was also indicted 
 for being present at a Whiteboy gathering in 1763, and it was alleged 
 that he forced a man named Ross to swear that he would never appear 
 as a witness against the Whiteboys. Another priest, Father Scanlan, 
 was arraigned at the same time. 
 
 Father Sheehy was acquitted on the charge of being a "popish 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 55 
 
 priest." Dr. Curry says his acquittal was his great misfortune, " for 
 had he been convicted, his punishment, which would be only transporta- 
 tion, might have prevented his ignominious death, which soon after fol- 
 lowed." This reflection of the Catholic historian illustrates forcibly the 
 abject condition of the Catholics at the time. Father Sheehy's life for 
 two whole years was as painful as persecutions of the most relentless 
 kind could make it ; he continued to baffle prosecution. Sometimes he 
 would owe his narrow escape from the toils of the law-officers of the 
 Crown to want of sufficient evidence ; occasionally he would be forced to 
 hide in the wild glens of the mountains, like a hunted outlaw as he was. 
 All this time a reign of terror prevailed throughout the surrounding dis- 
 tricts ; the tyrant landlords, conspirators almost against the very exist- 
 ence of the unfortunate people, aided by military coercion, crammed the 
 dungeons and the docks; nor were they satisfied save when their vic- 
 tims swung from the gibbets. In 1765 the enemies of Father Sheehy 
 induced the government to issue a proclamation against him, denouncing 
 him as guilty of high treason and offering a reward of three hundred 
 |M)unds for his capture. Hearing of this in his retreat, he at once wrote 
 up to Secretary Waite, " that as he was not conscious of any such crime 
 as he was charged with in the proclamation, he was ready to save to the 
 government the money offered for taking him- by surrendering himself 
 out of hand, to be tried for that or any other crime he might be accused 
 of; not at Clonmel, where he feared that the power and malice of his 
 enemies were too prevalent for justice, but at the court of King's Bench 
 in Dublin." This proposal was accepted, he was brought up to Dublin, 
 and, after a severe trial of fourteen hours, acquitted. 'The witnesses 
 against him were a boy of bad character, an accused thief and a prosti- 
 tute; these witnesses were all brought from Clonmel jail and bribed to 
 swear against him. 
 
 But his enemies still thirsted for his blood, and, what is worse, were 
 determined to have it. A vile informer named Bridge, who had brought 
 some of the Whiteboys to the scaffold, had disappeared. Some said that 
 the friends of his victims had murdered him, and accordingly a rewad 
 was offered for the supposed murderers ; but there was strong reason to 
 believe he had in reality left the country ; at all events, his body could 
 never be found. Father Sheehy was indicted for the murder of this 
 
56 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 missing wretch, and in violation of the terms of his surrender sent to 
 Clonmel to be tried ; a troop of horse surrounded the court-house on the 
 day of trial, who kept out whomsoever they pleased. Sir Thomas Maude 
 at the head of other troopers scoured the streets, breaking into inns and 
 houses, questioning those who entered the town whenever he thought lit, 
 striking terror into Father Sheehy's friends, backing his enemies. On 
 the perjured evidence of the same bribed and disreputable witnesses, 
 whose testimony had been deemed unworthy of credence in the trial at 
 Dublin, he was found guilty. In vain was it proved by the evidence of 
 a respectable and trustworthy witness, Mr. Keating, that on the night 
 of the alleged murder Father Sheehy slept in his house and never left it, 
 so that it was impossible lie could have been present at it, if the alleged 
 murder really occurred. A parson named Hewetson was not ashamed 
 to stand up in court and denounce Mr. Keating as one of a party con- 
 cerned in the killing of a corporal and sergeant on the occasion of a rescue 
 of some Whiteboys. Mr. Keating was carried off to Kilkenny jail, loaded 
 with irons, thrown into a gloomy and noisome dungeon ; he was subse- 
 quently tried and honorably acquitted. Meanwhile, Father Sheehy lost 
 the beneiit of his testimony. It is a curious fact, and sIioavs clearly the 
 nakire of the justice dealt out to Father Sheehy on his trial, that the 
 Aery evidence, which sufficed to condemn him, was rejected as contra- 
 dictory and unworthy of credit in the case of Mr. Keating at Kilkenny. 
 Such was the insatiable vindictiveness of Father Sheehy's persecu- 
 tors that, even after he was sentenced to death, his attorney was obliged 
 to steal away from Clonmel and make his escape to Dublin. The mai- 
 tyred priest died bravely, protesting his innocence of the charges alleged 
 against him to the last. At the place of execution, among other things, 
 he said, " that he never heard an oath of allegiance to any foreign prince 
 pi'oposed or administered in his lifetime, nor ever knew anything of the 
 murder of Bridge until he heard it publicly talked of, nor did he know 
 that there ever was any such design on foot," Such was the lamentable 
 fate of the generous and brave Father Sheehy ; it was his love for his 
 1'ock and the peasantry of the neighboring districts, and his courageous 
 fidelity to what he deemed their interests, that roused the implacable 
 hatred of the bigoted Cromwellian tyrants, who never rested till they 
 hunted him to the death. Hence it may be said with truth that he died 
 
for his people; his name still lives freshly in the traditions of the Tippe- 
 rary peasantry — indeed, it is fondly remembered all over Ireland. 
 
 The ruthless Sir Thomas Maude was not even satisfied with his signal 
 success in making the forms of law mere instruments of foul play in 
 carrying out his vengeance against Father Sheehy ; his insolence and 
 bloodthirstiness grew apace; he loudly and fiercely demanded fresh vic- 
 tims. Edmond Sheehy, known by the appellation of "Buck Sheehy," a 
 cousin of the martyred priest, and a fine, gay, gallant, warm-hearted 
 Irishman, full of exuberant life and animal spirits, together with James 
 Buxton, James Farrel and others, were tried by commission as principals 
 or accomplices in the alleged murder of the informer Bridge. In obe- 
 dience to the imperious summons of Sir Thomas Maude, all the gentry 
 of the county attended at the commission; this was done to overawe the 
 people and even the judges themselves ; before such a tribunal there was 
 no hope of fair play to the hapless prisoners. The old worn-out evidence 
 was brought forward ; in order to buttress it up (for it was now gener- 
 ally exploded) two of the prisoners, Herbert and Bier, were intimidated 
 into becoming approvers. Though perfectly innocent of any murder such 
 as that alleged, thej consented to secure their own safety by falsely 
 accusing themselves and bearing testimony against the other prisoners. 
 Herbert had actually come to Clonmel to give evidence on behalf of the 
 murdered priest. It was then, with a view to deprive Father Sheehy of 
 the benefit of his testimony, that a charge was trumped up against him 
 and his arrest ordered. Need I add that Edmond Sheehy and his fel- 
 low-prisoners were found guilty ? In vain trustworthy witnesses — -James 
 Prendergast, Esq., among others— were brought on the table, who swore 
 that on the night of Bridge's assumed murder Edmond Sheehy was at 
 certain places at certain hours, so as to render it impossible that he 
 could have participated in any such crime as that alleged. On Satur- 
 day morning, May 3d, 1766, the condemned men were hanged and 
 quartered at Clogheen; they denied firmly that they were guilty; they 
 stated that certain gentlemen, whose names they mentioned, had tam- 
 pered with them, trying to induce them to earn their pardon by making 
 " useful discoveries," and by accusing certain Catholics of being engaged 
 in a conspiracy and a scheme of massacre, but, above all, by saying that 
 Father Nicholas Sheehy died with a lie in his mouth. The prisoners in 
 
53 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 their last moments showed a Christian spirit of forgiveness to their ene- 
 mies; all died devoutly and cheerfully. Edmond Sheehy, indeed, leaped 
 from the death-cart with something of the fervid spirit of the old 
 martyrs. By the way, Edmond Sheehy was grandfather to the well- 
 known Lady Blessington. 
 
 But if at the time of their execution any unprejudiced person 
 doubted their innocence of Bridge's murder, the question was set at 
 rest by a subsequent confession of the approver Bier to the ordinary of 
 Newgate, Dublin. To that functionary Bier stated, in a dangerous fit 
 of sickness which attacked him some time after his removal from Clon- 
 mel to Dublin, and with apparent marks of genuine remorse, " that, for 
 anything he knew to the contrary, the before-mentioned Edmond Sheehy, 
 James Buxton and James Farrel were entirely innocent of the fact for 
 which they had suffered death ; and that nothing in this world but the 
 preservation of his own life, which he saw was in the most imminent 
 danger, should have tempted him to be guilty of the complicated crimes 
 of perjury and murder, as he then confessed he was, when he swore away 
 the lives of those innocent men." 
 
 .And now, after four years of military executions and judicial trials, 
 aided and carried through by a system of organized perjury and brute 
 force— the whole prompted and controlled by a foul conspiracy of the 
 unscrupulous faction of the Ascendency — this dominion of terror and 
 persecution gradually died out, and in its stead the quiet of despair 
 reiffned over Minister. In 1707, indeed, though arrests were made, no 
 executions took place, because benevolent individuals — among whom our 
 own great countryman, Edmund Burke, shone conspicuous — sick of those 
 horrid scenes, subscribed considerable sums of money in order to procure 
 for the accused the benefit of the ablest counsel. 
 
 I cannot refrain from here giving Dr. Curry's reflections on these 
 dreadful scenes and occurrences : " Such, during the space of three or 
 four years, was the fearful and pitiable state of the Roman Catholics of 
 Munster, and so general did the panic at length become, so many of the 
 lower sort were already hanged, in jail or on the informers' lists, that 
 the greatest part of the rest fled through fear, so that the land lay un- 
 titled for want of hands to cultivate it and a famine was with reason 
 apprehended. As for the better sort who had something to lose (and 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 5U 
 
 who for that reason were the persons chiefly aimed at by the managers 
 of the prosecution), they were at the utmost loss how to dispose of them- 
 selves. If they left the country, their absence was construed into a 
 proof of their guilt; if they remained in it, they were in imminent 
 danger of having their lives sworn away by informers and approvers, 
 for the suborning and corrupting of witnesses on that occasion were fre- 
 quent and barefaced to a degree almost beyond belief. The very stews 
 were raked and the jails rummaged in search of evidence, and the most 
 notoriously profligate in both were selected and tampered with to give 
 information of the private transactions and designs of reputable men, 
 with whom they never had any dealing, intercourse or acquaintance ; 
 nay, to whose very persons they were often found to be strangers when 
 confronted at their trial. 
 
 " In short, so exactly did these prosecutions in Ireland resemble in 
 every particular those which were formerly set on foot in England for 
 that villainous fiction of Oates's plot, that the former seem to have been 
 planned and carried on entirely on the model of the latter, and the same 
 just observation that hath been made on the English sanguinary pro- 
 ceedings is perfectly applicable to those which I have now in part 
 related — viz., ' that for the credit of the nation it were indeed better to 
 bury them in eternal oblivion, but that it is necessary to perpetuate the 
 remembrance of them, as well to maintain the truth of history, as to 
 warn, if possible, our posterity and all mankind never again to fall into 
 so shameful and so barbarous a delusion." 
 
 The story of one of the earliest forensic triumphs of that most humor- 
 ous, witty and eloquent of all our advocates, the celebrated John Phil pot 
 Curran, presents a most striking illustration of what a member of the 
 Ascendency- faction might dare do to a Catholic, and of what a Cath- 
 olic, however venerable and sacred by reason of his years and office, 
 might be obliged to endure in the clays of the penal laws. The incident 
 I am about to relate is remarkable, too, as being one of the first in- 
 stances in which — in a case between a scion of a Protestant aristocratic 
 house on the one part and a poor and uninfluential member of the 
 trampled Catholic body on the other — a court of law in Ireland did some- 
 thing like justice; more singular still, the complainant whose grievance 
 was redressed in this instance belonged to that despised and hated and 
 
60 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 persecuted class, the Catholic priesthood of Ireland. Well might llio 
 aged Father Neale's advocate feel proud of winning this triumph. 
 
 The circumstances of this memorable case were these: Some time 
 previously, St. Leger, Lord Doneraile, seduced a country girl ; her brother 
 in some manner incurred the censure of his bishop ; at the persuasion 
 of his concubine, Lord Doneraile determined to interfere in the affair; 
 Attended by Mr. St. Leger, his kinsman and an ex-captain of dragoons, 
 he rode to the humble cabin which was the dwelling of the parish priest, 
 Father JSeale, a man both old and poor. The haughty nobleman with an 
 imperious voice summoned forth the good old man ; interrupted at his de- 
 votions, the pious priest rose from his knees and tottered forth bareheaded, 
 holding his breviary in his hand. He stood submissively by Lord Done- 
 raile' s stirrup ; his lordship commanded him to remove the censure from 
 the poltroon, who was probably base enough to feel proud of the lordly pat- 
 ronage purchased by his sister's infamy. The feeble old priest would fain 
 avoid defiance of the " great man's " anger as long and as far as his con- 
 science would allow him; he tried to make excuses, "he wished to — and, 
 but for the bishop, he would — remove the censure." This failed to satisfy 
 (he insolent aristocrat; he reiterated his mandate. The poor old priest, 
 however desirous to turn aside his wrath, could yield no farther; his 
 conscience forbade him to evade danger by violating the vows and rules 
 of his order, and finally gave him strength of mind to brave the tyrant. 
 Firmly, in the teeth of Doneraile's furious threats, he refused to obey him. 
 In a moment, regardless of his gray hairs and feebleness, the titled mis- 
 creant raised his horsewhip, rained blows upon the defenceless old 
 priest, and drove him into his cabin staggering and covered with blood. 
 
 The old man sought protection from the laws. He commenced proceed- 
 ings against Lord Doneraile. At first his chances of gaining any redress 
 seemed all but hopeless. Every barrister on the circuit refused to plead 
 for him ; such and so narrow-minded, so lost to all sense of justice, so 
 ignoble in every way was the bigoted feeling of the time, till the brave 
 and fiery-souled Curran volunteered to take up his cause. 
 
 And right nobly and manfully he struggled in the cause of justice, 
 so shamefully outraged in the person of the old priest. He boldly de- 
 nounced Doneraile, holding up to withering scorn the character of that 
 scoundrel noble. He called Captain St, Leger "a renegade soldier" and 
 
" dmmmod-out dragoon." Out of their own mouths he covered with 
 shame and ridicule the servile witnesses of Doneraile. His words, rush- 
 ing forth full of life and all aglow from the generous heart and tire- 
 touched lips of genius and true manhood, were irresistible. Appealing 
 to the jury as men — Protestants and partisans of the Ascendency as 
 they were — he made them thrill with men's natural indignation at 
 wrong and outrage. Their nobler feelings and sense of justice were 
 roused from sleep. Forgetting all else for the time but truth and right 
 and the sacredness of their oath, they gave a verdict for Father Neale. 
 
 Thirty guineas' damages to Father Neale ! The sum in itself was 
 little enough ; but when we consider the circumstances of the case, the 
 period and the persons concerned — a poor, old, despised and unprotected 
 priest against a powerful peer, the jury full of all the prejudices of the 
 time against the priest's creed and class and race — the triumph of Cur- 
 ran must be regarded as at once splendid and surprising. Under the 
 spell of his inspired speech the demon of bigotry was, for a brief space 
 at least, exorcised from the souls of those who listened to him. 
 
 The hostility of the Doneraile family to Curran was the natural result 
 of this trial. Captain St. Leger called him out — they fought a duel. 
 All this, however, gave him little trouble. On the other hand, the 
 fiery and now famous little advocate had gained the universal praise and 
 trust of his countrymen. Better still, he felt the consciousness of having 
 spoken and acted right bravely and nobly, and the solemn dying bless- 
 ing of the aged priest, which he received a few weeks later, was some- 
 thing also to prize and to remember for ever. 
 
 I shall now give the reader a few anecdotes told by O'Connell him- 
 self about the penal days in the course of some of his conversations 
 with his friend, Mr. O'Neill Daunt. I shall begin with an after-dinner 
 conversation which took place at Darrynane on the 10th of November, 
 1840, of which we find a tolerably full account in Mr. Daunt's "Personal 
 Kecollections of O'Connell :" 
 
 " A capital day's hunting on the mountains. O'Connell detailed the 
 exploits of his dogs with infinite glee after dinner. Although at this time 
 he totally abstained from wine himself, yet he hospitably pressed its cir- 
 culation among all who chose to drink. A party to the islands of Scar- 
 riff was proposed for the following day, and some ancient tombs in the 
 
I — 
 i r 
 
 62 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 islands were named as being worth a visit. O'Connell mentioned that 
 in Cromwell's time a friar was murdered for saying mass at Scarriif l>y 
 some of the soldiers of the Protector's army. A sword-cut severed the 
 top of the skull, and the piece has been ever since preserved in the 
 O'Connell family. 
 
 " The fate of the poor friar led us to speak of the penal laws, respect- 
 ing the operation of which O'Connell detailed some very curious anec- 
 dotes. I mentioned an incident illustrative of the effect of those laws 
 in inducing hypocritical conformity to Protestantism. A Mr. Jervois, a 
 Catholic proprietor of land, was threatened with a 'bill of discovery.' 
 In order to save his estate he immediately resolved to turn Protestant. 
 Proceeding to the Protestant parish church to read his recantation, he 
 fell and broke his collar-bone against a tombstone. The misfortune 
 appeared to him ominous, and deterred him from renouncing the Cath- 
 olic religion ; but although he shrank from the spiritual risks of such a 
 step himself, he made his eldest son abjure popery, and thus contrived 
 to preserve the estate in his family. 
 
 " ' The records of those times,' said O'Connell, ' have a painful interest. 
 
 In Kerry there was old James B of W ville, who had been bred 
 
 a Catholic, and became a Protestant and a parson from the inducements 
 held out at the period ; when asking two of his Catholic parishioners for 
 tithes they said, " Do not be so hard on us, your reverence." He answered 
 involuntarily, " It is a great deal harder upon me ;" and very likely he was 
 right. To another parishioner he said, "My tomb will probably be the 
 only Protestant tomb in the churchyard ; I have but one favor to ask, 
 and it is this: when I am dead never say, 'That is the minister's tomb;' 
 only say, 'That is Mr. B 's tomb.' " ' 
 
 " ' The temptation to apostatize,' continued O'Connell, ' was strong, 
 and, alas! was too frequently yielded to. There was a Mr. Myers of the 
 county Roscommon, who was threatened that a bill of discovery should 
 be tiled against him ; he instantly galloped off to Dublin in a terrible 
 fright and sought out the Protestant archbishop. The archbishop, on 
 learning that his visitor's object was to turn Protestant, examined him 
 upon the points of difference between the two churches, and found that 
 he knew nothing at all about the matter; he accordingly said that he 
 could not receive him into the Anglican Church unless he should get some 
 
££f£& 
 
 
r 
 i 
 
 THE LIFE OF DASIEL O'COXNELL. Go 
 
 previous instruction, and politely offered to commit him to the care of 
 the rector of Castlerea, who chanced to be in Dublin at the time. This 
 proposal delighted Mr. Myers, for the rector had long been a hunting and 
 drinking companion of his own in the country ; with the rector, therefore, 
 the pious convert arranged to dine every day until the ensuing Sunday. 
 upon which day, as time ran short, it was absolutely necessary that the 
 recantation should be publicly made. Myers and the rector bad a jovial 
 boe.se — six bottles each at the least — and their jollification was repeated 
 every day until Sunday; when the archbishop, on receiving an assurance 
 from the jovial rector that Myers was on fait, at the theology of the case, 
 permitted him to make his solemn public abjuration of the errors of 
 popery and to receive the Protestant sacrament. In order to celebrate 
 the happy event, the prelate invited Myers and several zealous Protestant 
 friends to dinner; when the cloth was removed his Grace thus addressed 
 the convert: "Mr. Myers, you have this day been received into the true 
 Protestant Church, and renounced the corruptions of popery; for this 
 you should thank God with all your heart. I learn with great pleasure 
 from our worthy friend the rector of Castlerea that you have acquired an 
 excellent knowledge in a very short time of the basis of the Protestant re- 
 ligion; will you be so kind as to state, for the edification of the company, 
 the grounds upon which you have cast aside popery and embraced the 
 Church of England?" " Faith, my lord," replied Myers, " 1 can easily do 
 that; the grounds of my conversion to the Protestant religion are two thou- 
 sand five hundred acres of the best grounds in the county Roscommon." 
 
 It appears that "The Dublin University Magazine," some years ago, 
 boasted of the large number of the gentry of Ireland who from time to 
 time conformed to the tenets of the Churcn of England ; it must be ad- 
 mitted that the magazine is right as regards the question of fact, but 
 how were they converted ? Did their conversion arise from sincere con- 
 viction ? No such thing. These gentlemen, as a rule, conformed through 
 fear of losing their property or through some other worldly motive, either 
 of ambition or avarice. After Catholics began to be admitted into Trinity 
 College quite a multitude of students abandoned the Catholic religion for 
 the sake of scholarships and fellowships. " The University Magazine " 
 has little reason to boast of Irish conversions to Protestantism ; any one 
 who cares for the dignity of human nature ought rather to blush at the 
 
mention of such instances of human meanness and indifference to every 
 consideration of principle. In this conversation, that occurred at his 
 table on the 9th of November, 1810, O'Connell goes on to observe on tht; 
 subject of these conversions to " Church-of-Englandism :" 
 
 That " under these iniquitous laws it was not sufficient that a man 
 born of Catholic parents should merely }yrofess Protestantism ; it was 
 also necessary that the convert should go through the legal forms of 
 abjuring popery and receiving the sacrament during * service in some 
 Protestant church. I heard of a very curious case, in which the son of 
 Catholic parents, early in the last century, entered Dublin College, pro- 
 fessing to be a Protestant, His talents in due time procured for him a 
 fellowship, from which he retired upon a rich college living. He amassed 
 great wealth, bought an estate, and left it at his death to his son, when, 
 behold ! a bill of discovery was filed against the son as inheriting from 
 a man who in the eye of the law had been a papist, inasmuch as he never 
 had made a formal, public, legal abjuration of popery; so that the Angli- 
 can parson, the F. T. C. D., the rector of a college living, who had been 
 in Anglican orders for thirty or forty years of his life, — this man, notwith- 
 standing all his Protestantism, was leyat/y a papist, because he had 
 omitted the performance of some legal formula. 
 
 " It often happened, too, that points of objection to the legal Protest- 
 antism of apostates were raised by reason of inaccuracy in the certifi- 
 cate of the apostate's abjuration. These certificates often bore that the 
 conforming party 'heed received the sacrament during divine service,' whereas 
 the sacrament in the Anglican Church is administered not during service, 
 but after it, There were frequently needy or dishonest persons to watch 
 for and pounce upon flaws of this sort "' 
 
 In this conversation O'Connell made some remarks, which I have 
 already given, about the honesty of certain Protestants who held Catho- 
 lic estates in trust, and so saved them for their rightful owners. It was on 
 this occasion, too, that he referred to that estate of his called Glencara, 
 which during all the troubles of the country had escaped confiscation. 
 I believe this was the estate which he used to say the family had held 
 from such a remote period that they hadn't any title-deeds to show for it. 
 
 * O'Connell, as reported by Mr. Daunt, speaks inaccurately here ; lower down, it will be seen, he 
 speaks quite accurately. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 65 
 
 On the evening of the 20th of November, 18-10, O'Connell, still 
 in his mountain-home at Darrynane Abbe} 7 , related some amusing 
 reminiscences of the penal times to Mr. Daunt and some other friends. 
 The weather was cold and windy, the mountains were covered with 
 snow. All this no doubt made the bright lights and the cheerful blaze 
 of the tire within doors doubly pleasant. It was just the sort of night 
 on which a good-humored party of guests would be sure to listen with 
 proper relish to O'Conneirs anecdotes of old times and memories. 
 
 "My poor old confessor, Father Grady," quoth the veteran agitator, 
 " who was priest of this parish and resided with my uncle here when I 
 was a boy, was tried in Tralee on the charge of being a popish priest, 
 but the judge defeated O'Grady's prosecutors by distorting the law in 
 Ins favor. There was a flippant scoundrel who came forward to depose 
 to his having said mass. 
 
 " ' Pray, sir,' said the judge, 'how do you know he said mass?' 
 
 " ' Because I heard him say it, my lord.' 
 
 " ' Did he say it in Latin ?' asked the judge. 
 
 " 'Yes, my lord.' 
 
 " ' Then you understand Latin ?' 
 
 '"A little.' 
 
 " ' What words did you hear him say ?' 
 
 " ' Ave Maria.'' 
 
 " 'That is the Lord's Prayer, is it not?' asked the judge. 
 
 " ' Yes, my lord,' was the fellow's answer. 
 
 " ' Here is a pretty witness to convict the prisoner!' cried the judge. 
 ' He swears Ave Maria is Latin for the Lord's Prayer !' 
 
 "The judge charged the jury for the prisoner, so my poor old friend, 
 Father Grady, was acquitted. I w T ish that I could remember all the 
 oddities and drolleries of Grady. Some of them were amusing enough. 
 When he lived at Darrynane he slept in an office near the house. One 
 rainy night, when he returned wet and weary from a distant station, lie 
 went to bed, and had not been asleep an hour when a servant aroused 
 him, saying that Mrs. McSweeney had just been confined — that, as the 
 infant was sickly and probably would not live till morning, his rever- 
 ence must christen it instanter. Grady accordingly put on his wet 
 clothes, went through the rain to the dwelling-house, christened the 
 
66 TUB LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 child, and returned to his bed. In another half hour he was summoned 
 again ; the lady had just produced a second child, puny like its pre- 
 decessor, and requiring to be immediately christened. Grady again put 
 on his wet clothes, ran across to the house through the rain, christened 
 the second infant, and returned to bed. Half an hour had scarcely 
 elapsed when he was a third time summoned, for a tuird child had just 
 been produced, requiring, like the others, instant baptism. Poor Grady's 
 equanimity was somewhat disturbed. He got up and christened the 
 brat, but, instead of returning to bed, went straight to the stable, sad- 
 dled his horse, and was riding away when old Maurice O'Connell hailed 
 him and asked him what on earth he was about. 
 
 " ' I'm going, dear,' ruefully answered the priest, 
 
 " ' Going ! Where can you possibly be going such a night and at such 
 an hour ?' 
 
 " ' Anywhere at all out of this place, dear. Mrs. McSweeney has 
 some spite against me, and if I stay here she'll be horning young 
 raavcns every half hour till morning.' 
 
 "And, notwithstanding all that Maurice could say, his reverence 
 departed, and got a bed at some other parishioner's house. 
 
 "At that time," continued O'Connell, "there were faction-fights be- 
 tween the Lynes and the Eagers at Killarney. One day Father Grady 
 sold a pair of heifers for twelve shillings at the Killarney fair which were 
 well worth two pounds. He did so out of sheer simplicity. Presently 
 afterwards a faction-fight took place, the Lynes raising the war-whoop 
 of 'Five pounds for the head of an Eager!' On the following day one 
 of the Eagers, a professed wag, attempted to quiz the priest for his sim- 
 plicity in selling his heifers so much below their real value. 
 
 " ' I hear, Father Grady,' said he, ' there were very tine prices for 
 beasts at the fair, especially for heifers.' 
 
 " ' In troth, dear,' retorted Grady, ' I can't say I found it so. Ali 
 beasts went cheap enough except the Eagers, but I heard live pounds a 
 head bid for them.' 
 
 " Father Grady was at Louvain at the period of the wars in Flan- 
 ders, and found himself reduced to the utmost distress, his profession 
 not affording him the means of subsistence. He begged his way to the 
 coast in the hope of meeting some ship that might take him to Ireland, 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 67 
 
 and, amongst other adventures, he fell in with a band of robbers. One 
 of the robbers was a Kerryinan named Denis Mahony, who for his coun- 
 try's sake gave the priest the means of proceeding to Ireland. Father 
 Grady used always to say, ' God be merciful to poor Denis Mahony ! I 
 found him a very useful friend in need; but troth, dear, it might not 
 have been very convenient to have him as a neighbor.' 
 
 " The young men who met Grady at Darrynane amused themselves 
 quizzing him upon his suspicious connection with Denis Mahony, and 
 intimated that what he represented as the robber's voluntary gift was 
 in fact Grady's share of the bouty." 
 
 To account for the fact of a Kerryman's having been found among a 
 band of robbers in Flanders, O'Connell conjectured that Denis Mahony 
 might have been a deserter from the duke of Marlborough's army, and 
 miolit then have joined the Flemish band of robbers in the lack of any 
 honest mode of gaining a livelihood. 
 
 The two last anecdotes can hardly be said to have any direct con- 
 nection with the subject of the penal laws, but as O'Connell related 
 them on the particular evening referred to, and as they are rather 
 amusing, I thought that I might as well give them here. 
 
 The spirit begotten of the penal laws, as every one is aware, lived far 
 into the nineteenth century. Indeed, it is far from being quite extinct 
 to-day. On another occasion O'Connell told the following story, which 
 illustrates the fell spirit that occasionally animates the Orangemen of 
 Ireland. In the earlier part of the century there lived a poor, half-wit- 
 ted Creature nicknamed "Jack of the Roads," who used to run alongside 
 the Limerick coaches. In the words of O'Connell, "He once made a 
 bet of fourpence and a pot of porter that he would run to Dublin from 
 Limerick, keeping pace with the mail. He did so ; and when he was 
 passing through Mountrath on his return, on the 12th of July, 1807 or 
 1808, he flourished a green bough at a party of Orangemen who were 
 holding their orgies ; one of them fired at his face, his eyes were de- 
 stroyed, he lingered and died, and there was an end of poor Jack." 
 
 "Was the ruffian who tired at him punished?" 
 
 "Oh no!" replied O'Connell; "to punish such ah affair as that was 
 not precisely the policy pursued by the government of that day. Well, 
 blessed be God! things are better now." 
 
i r 
 
 G8 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 On another occasion, at his son John's table, having mentioned a Mr, 
 O'Leary who was shot in the year 1773 by Morris of Dimkettle, near 
 Cork, lie said : " That man's son was the father of two fine boys ; he 
 brought up one of them a Protestant and the other a Catholic ; the poor 
 children early showed the belligerent spirit of religious hostility ; they 
 were always squabbling ; the Catholic brother would say, 'We'll get 
 emancipation in spite of you.' 'No, you rascal!' the Protestant brother 
 would answer, ' we'll keep our foot upon your necks.' " 
 
 During the penal days the dominant Church naturally became 
 thoroughly corrupt; the prelates of highest rank were more eager to 
 advance the interests of England as politicians than to propagate the 
 doctrines of their Church. Indeed, it may be doubted whether England 
 or the Ascendency faction really desired to bring the Irish Catholics 
 within the fold of the Church of England. Bishop Fitzgerald of Killaloe 
 some years ago — I think in I860 — in the debate on the Clerical Subscrip- 
 tion Bill, complained in the House of Lords that the English government 
 had prevented the last Irish Convocation from translating the Bible and 
 ♦he Book of Common Prayer into Irish ; he also complained that sim- 
 ilar interference on the part of the English government had on other 
 occasions damaged the efficiency of the Irish Church. As far as I under- 
 stand what the bishop then said, he seemed to insinuate that the English 
 government had always looked upon the Irish branch of the Church of 
 England as a mere political machine, and that, so far from ever having 
 been zealous for what is called the conversion of the Catholic population, 
 they had, in point of fact, been rather inclined to throw obstacles in its 
 way. If this were the bishop's meaning, I quite agree with him. As the 
 English government wish the Irish people to be divided, they naturally 
 desire to see a certain portion of our population profess the creed of the 
 Church of England, but they would no more like to see the whole popu- 
 lation Church-of-Englanders than they would like to see them Roman 
 Catholics or Presbyterians; they know that if the entire nation were 
 of one creed British power would soon be at an end. The Irish Prot- 
 estants, who act on the belief that English sway over Ireland is the bul- 
 wark of their religion, are really the "catspaws" of their own enemies 
 and their country's. 
 
 In short, all through the penal times the Church of England in Ire- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. f,<) 
 
 land was unprogressive and destitute of all religious zeal. England could 
 more easily oppress an Ireland divided into hostile sects; the partisans 
 of the Ascendency desired to have serfs on whom they might trample. 
 About the clergy of the Establishment there was little or nothing holy; 
 this was the age of profligate politicians enthroned in the high places of 
 religion. During a portion of the eighteenth century unhappy Ireland 
 was virtually ruled by that corrupt and malignant persecutor of the 
 Catholic Irish, Primate Boulter ; later in the same century the primacy 
 was filled by the notorious George Stone, a still more infamous political 
 intriguer; this primate is asserted to have baited his palace near Dublin 
 with the choicest vintages of sunnier lands and with beautiful, bewitch- 
 ing wantons. The weak, evanescent patriotism of the gay young Irish gen- 
 tlemen of town and country yielded to the dissolute archbishop's sparkling 
 wines and obliging women ; Boulter and Stone were both Englishmen. 
 Towards the close of the century a third Englishman, the earl of Bristol, 
 flourished on the episcopal throne of the rich diocese of Deny ; he was 
 every whit as unclerical as the other two. but his whimsical and right 
 reverend lordship thought proper to become a staunch supporter of the 
 Irish patriot party ; for a while he was the darling of the people, whom 
 he dazzled with his princely state and profusion ; he was a curious com- 
 bination of the magnificent nobleman and the turbulent demagogue, the 
 direct opposite to every thing sacerdotal. 
 
 Nor did the lesser clergy manifest any greater signs of holiness than 
 their superiors; rectors enjoying fat livings — in many instances unbur- 
 dened with souls to be cared for, all the parishioners being Roman Cath- 
 olics — led the lives of sportsmen and convivialists ; nor were the assist- 
 ant curates in those days particularly zealous. In truth, the Established 
 Church in Ireland began to be looked on as a mere field for supplying 
 blockheads or ignoramuses, who were fit for no other profession, with a 
 means of livelihood ; anybody in those times would do to make a parson 
 of. One of the amusing anecdotes O'Connell used to tell furnishes an ex- 
 cellent, albeit laughable, illustration of this fact, and of the episcopal good- 
 nature occasionally to be met with in the days of our grandfathers and 
 great-grandfathers. It seems a Mr. Barry, a younger brother of Lord 
 Barrymore, some time in the last century became desirous of qualifying 
 himself, by taking holy orders, for the enjoyment of a fine fat living in 
 
tho gift of his titled brother; the bishop, to whom Mr. Barry applied for 
 ordination, expressed some doubts whether that gentleman's theological 
 attainments were sufficient to enable him to fulfill, with even common 
 decency, the ordinary duties of a clergyman, and accordingly recom- 
 mended him to pursue a further course of sacred study ; shortly after- 
 wards Barry was ordained, and Lord Barrymore appointed him to the 
 living. A friend, who knew him thoroughly, inquired how he had man- 
 aged to pass his examination. " Oh, very well indeed," replied the 
 reverend gentleman; "the bishop was very good-natured (!), and did 
 not puzzle me with many questions." "But what did he ask you ?" 
 inquired the other. "Why, he asked me who was the great Mediator 
 between God and man, and I made a rough guess and said it was the 
 archbishop of Canterbury!" Things are changed for the better now 
 with the Irish branch of the Anglican Church, but in the penal days, 
 while it was bent on persecuting the unfortunate Catholics, and allowed 
 itself to become a mere political engine to help England's unrighteous 
 domination over Ireland, by a just and natural retribution the self- 
 degraded Establishment lost all sacredness — it became, alike within and 
 without, "of the earth earthy." 
 
 It is by no means wonderful to find that the physical condition of the 
 Irish people, all through the terrible days of the penal laws, was miser- 
 able to a degree ; in every past age of British rule Ireland has been poor 
 and miserable. To-day, under the same accursed blight of her thral- 
 dom, she is poor and miserable, and her destiny in the future, should 
 her connection with England continue, is to be poor and miserable still ; 
 but during the penal times she had to endure special poverty and 
 special misery; the depth of her physical wretchedness was only 
 equalled by that of her moral degradation. And what better state of 
 things under such circumstances could the Irish race hope to expe- 
 rience ? Famine and pestilence were frequent and natural, even neces- 
 sary, visitants and scourges of the ill-starred isle and its down-trodden 
 inhabitants. After a dreadful and recent visitation of this kind the 
 amiable and patriotic Protestant bishop of Cloyne, Dr. George Berkeley, 
 an illustrious and pure-souled exception to the corruption that then dis- 
 graced the clergy of the Establishment, the man whom Pope the poet 
 complimented by the line — 
 
r 
 
 l i— 
 
 i i 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 71 
 
 "To Berkeley every virtue under heaven" — 
 
 this admirable prelate writes thus to Mr. Thomas Prior of Dublin, under 
 date of the 19th May, 1711 : " The distresses of the sick and poor are end- 
 less ; the havoc of mankind in the counties of Cork, Limerick and some ad- 
 jacent places hath been incredible; the nation probably will not recover 
 this loss in a century. The other day I heard one from the county of 
 Limerick say that whole villages were entirely dispeopled; about two 
 months since I heard Sir Richard Cox say that five hundred were dead 
 in the parish, though in a county, I believe, not very populous. It were 
 to be wished people of condition were at their seats in the country during 
 these calamitous times, which might provide relief and employment for 
 the poor. Certainly, if these perish, the rich must be sufferers in the 
 end." 
 
 The good bishop in those days wrote a patriotic little pamphlet called 
 "The Querist," which is very famous among Irishmen who hold the 
 national creed. It may be remarked here that Berkeley, though his 
 near progenitors were English, looked upon himself as an Irishman. 
 "The Querist," in the form of unanswered questions, puts the bishop's 
 views of the grievances under which his country suffered, and the meas- 
 ures best calculated to redress those grievances, in a sufficiently clear 
 light. He asks, among other queries, "Whether there be upon earth 
 any Christian or civilized people so beggarly wretched and destitute as 
 the common Irish?" "Whether, nevertheless, there is any other people 
 whose wants may be more easily supplied from home?" "Whether a 
 great quantity of sheepwalk be not ruinous to a country, rendering it 
 waste and thinly inhabited?" "Whether it be a crime to inquire how 
 far we may do without foreign trade, and what would follow on such a 
 supposition?" "Whether, if there were a wall of brass a thousand 
 cubits high round this kingdom, our natives might not, nevertheless, 
 live cleanly and comfortably, till the land and reap the fruits of it?" 
 " Whether a foreigner could imagine that one-half of the people were 
 starving in a country which sent out such plenty of provisions?" 
 "Whether it is possible the country should be well improved while our 
 beef is exported and our laborers live upon potatoes ?" " Whether trade 
 be not then on a right foot when foreign commodities are imported 
 only for domestic superfluities?" "Whether the quantities of beef 
 
72 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 butter, wool and leather exported from this island can be reckoned the 
 superfluities of a country where there are so many natives naked and 
 famished?" It is clear that Berkeley saw that the wretchedness of 
 Ireland resulted from the oppressive yoke of England, which degraded 
 the people by penal laws, and robbed them of subsistence by fettering 
 and regulating their industry and commerce for England's exclusive 
 profit. Thus Ireland's woollen trade had been destroyed for England's 
 benefit; thus, when it suited England, the Irish were forbidden to 
 export black cattle to that country, and sheep-farms were encouraged 
 that Yorkshire might be supplied with the raw material of its staple 
 manufacture; thus subsequently, when a different system suited her, 
 England turned Ireland into a general draw -farm for agricultural pro- 
 duce of every kind ; thus, to-day, the British cry is to let Irishmen per- 
 ish off their native soil that sheep and cattle may thrive for England. 
 
 No wonder the English government of Berkeley's day took good care 
 not to select him to fill the vacancy for the primacy that occurred the year 
 after he wrote "The Querist." What I though he were the most learned 
 man in the Irish Church — nay, the most illustrious of all the Anglican 
 bishops of the day, in or out of Ireland ? — was he not also friendly to the 
 unfortunate land of his birth and to her people ? He, then, was no fit 
 instrument for the carrying out of penal laws. Clearly it would never 
 do to make such a man "primate of all Ireland," inasmuch as the prin- 
 cipal duties of that exalted office in those days consisted, not in per- 
 forming works of charity and ministering to souls, but in managing all 
 the political, dirty and bloody work of England. 
 
 Such were the terrible days of the penal laivs!* 
 
 * The works to which I am chiefly indebted for the materials of the foregoing chapter are — 
 John Mitchel's "Continuation of MacGeoghegan," a work which Mr. Mitchel modestly calls a 
 compilation, but which may safely be termed the most interesting and valuable work on Irish his- 
 tory in the English language ; Introduction to Mitchel's " Jail Journal ;" Scully's " Statement of 
 the Penal Laws ;" Edmund Burke's " Writings and Speeches;" Plowden's " History of Ireland ;" 
 Brennan's " Ecclesiastical History of Ireland ;" Curry's " Historical Review of the Civil Wars ;" 
 Young's "Tour in Ireland;" Maddea's " United Irishmen;" " The Irish Abroad and at Home;" 
 Davis's ' Life of Curran;" O'Neill Daunt's "Personal Recollections of O'Connell ;" Berkeley's 
 works. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Childhood of O'Connell — Paul Jones off the coast of Kerry — O'Connell masters 
 
 THE ALPHABET QUICKLY — His FEAR OF DISGRACE — CAPTAIN Cook's " VOYAGE ROUND THE 
 
 World " — Nomadic gentry — Early Anticipations of greatness — O'Connell's uncle 
 Maurice, surnamed "Hunting-Cap" — His love of old ballads — Encounter with a 
 mad bull — Active habits — The Crelaghs and the Kerry " colonels " — His father 
 attacked by a band of robbers — Private theatricals — His early religious train- 
 ing — Protestant visitors and holy water — His uncle Maurice's coffin — MacCar- 
 thy More and the priest — The American war. 
 
 JfofN" a former chapter I said O'Connell was born in 1775. By a 
 |^|l^)| remarkable coincidence this was the year that the illustrious 
 MIr% Henry Grattan, Ireland's most splendid orator, and perhaps 
 \l0fl her greatest patriot too, first took his seat in the Irish House 
 r of Commons, and commenced his glorious career of patriotism. 
 This year also was signalized by the skirmish of Lexington, the battle 
 of Bunker's Hill, the leaguer of Boston, — in a word, the uprising of the 
 American colonists in that memorable revolt against English taxation 
 and tyranny, that was destined not merely to humble the pride of 
 Britain by transforming her colonies into a mighty young republic, but 
 to shake the foundations of the worn-out institutions of the Old World 
 and lead the way to tremendous revolutions, which, if they have failed to 
 cause any veritable progress in the affairs of mankind in general, at least 
 have opened the path of liberty and glory to many down-trodden nations, 
 and, in their remote results, have tended in a great degree to modify the 
 forms of society and government and life in general in all civilized and 
 many uncivilized countries First and foremost, this American war was 
 sure to benefit Ireland, for it placed England in a position of difficulty 
 and humiliation. Even in the third year of the war a British army, com- 
 manded by a man of genius, the poetic lieutenant-general Burgoyne, 
 was forced to surrender. To repeat O'Connell's oft-uttered saying, 
 " England's difficulty is always Ireland's opportunity." 
 
 Every one has heard of the celebrated Paul Jones, who, if he cannot, 
 
 7.1 
 
74 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 in strictness, be said to have been the first who hoisted the " star-span- 
 gled " banner on board an American ship-of-war, was at least the first 
 who made the American navy a terror to the foes of the thirteen repub- 
 lics. Paul Jones was hovering off the coast of Kerry in the year 1778; 
 one of O'Connell's earliest recollections was associated with this cruise 
 of the redoubtable Paul ; the great Agitator was then a child in his 
 nurse's arms ; she carried the little fellow down to the shore, where he 
 beheld, no doubt with curious and wondering eyes, the two boats' crews 
 whom Paul had sent off with towing-ropes to get his vessel out of shal- 
 low water ; these fellows had been prisoners of war at Brest ; the choice 
 had been offered them of either sailing with Jones or staying in prison; 
 they had agreed to sail with the bold sea-rover, with a mental reserva- 
 tion to escape at the earliest opportunity that presented itself; here, off 
 the coast of Kerry, they found the opportunity ; they cut the towing- 
 ropes and rowed ashore ; immediately on landing they went to the near- 
 est public-house to have a jolly carouse in sailor's fashion, leaving some 
 firearms in the boats. Some peasants found the guns and drenched 
 them, and the sailors were arrested by orders of Mr. Hassett and brought 
 to the jail of Tralee, the county town of Kerry ; they exclaimed loudly 
 against their incarceration, maintaining, not without a show of justice, 
 that they had neither been guilty of, nor intended to commit, any breach 
 of the laws, and that consequently the authorities had no right to con- 
 sign them to "durance vile." O'Connell, referring to the occurrence in 
 after years, said, " I well recollect a tall fellow, who was mounted on a 
 gray horse, remonstrating angrily at this coercion. No legal charge, of 
 course, could be sustained against them, and accordingly, in the end, 
 they were released." The tall fellow "seemed to be the lawyer of his 
 party." 
 
 It is no wonder that this occurrence fixed itself deeply in O'Connell's 
 memory. Adventures and adventurers of the sea have been at all times 
 dear to the imaginations of children. The boys of antiquity no doubt 
 delighted alike in the mythical voyage of Jason and the Argonauts For 
 the golden fleece; in the poetic legends of the wanderings and ever- 
 varying adventures of Ulysses and ^Eneas; in the authentic accounts 
 of the voyages of Hanno and Nearchus, and in the sea-tights of Phor- 
 mion and the Athenian navy. In modern times, the stories of the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 7,1 
 
 actual voyages of Wasco do Gama, of Columbus and his companions, of 
 Magellan, La Perouse and Cook — in short, the exciting tales of the sea- 
 roamings of the long series of hardy and enterprising navigators, begin- 
 ning towards the close of the fifteenth century and ending with Ross, 
 MacClure and MacClintock (the two last Irishmen) in our own day — have 
 been devoured by boys with as much avidity as the imaginary voyages of 
 Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver or Sinbad. The sea-fights of the old Scandi- 
 navian sea-kings ; the exploits of Drake, Raleigh and Cavendish in the 
 sixteenth century; the daring deeds of Montbar ''the exterminator," 
 Sir Henry Morgan and the other piratic or semi-piratic chiefs of the 
 Buccaneers "and Flibustiers; and the surprising achie ements of l)u 
 Guay Trouin and Jean Bart in the seventeenth ; the fortunate cap- 
 tures of Acapulco or other galleons richly freighted with treasures of 
 Mexican and Peruvian mines, and bound for old Spain, by Commodore 
 Anson or the bold privateer, Woods Rogers, in the eighteenth century ; 
 the wild deeds of the Greek and Mussulman corsairs in the Mediterra- 
 nean and Archipelago down almost to our own times — not to speak of the 
 more regular engagements of such heroes as Van Tromp, Tourville, Rod- 
 ney, Nelson, Cochrane, Barry, Macdonough, Perry or Farragut — are as deli- 
 cious to the mind of an eager-hearted boy as the incidents of the most 
 exciting nautical romance of Marryat or Fenimore Cooper. In fact, one 
 may pretty safely assert that every lively boy, at one period or other of 
 his boyhood, longs to be a sailor. 
 
 We may without rashness, then, infer that the exploits of so redoubt- 
 able a sea-rover as John Paul Jones tilled no inconsiderable space in the 
 childish day-dreams of O'Connell. At that period Paul was the terror 
 of every place on the coast of the three kingdoms, from the smallest 
 fishing-village to the largest seaport-town. Hovering incessantly round 
 the coasts of the British islands, at one time he would strike terror into 
 the population of a whole county merely by tumbling a few chimney 
 stacks with his guns (I have talked to Scotchmen who remembered 
 alarms of this sort); at another, by spiking the cannon mounted on the 
 batteries and setting tire to the shipping anchored in the harbors of sea- 
 port-towns like White Haven. When, in the earlier years of the war, 
 he cruised near the shores of America, he harassed and distressed the 
 enemy all the same by capturing rich prizes. Did he not even seize on 
 
board a large armed ship called the Mellisli two British naval officers, a 
 land captain, a company of soldiers and all the supplies of clothing [ten 
 thousand complete suits of uniforms) sent out for General Burgoyne's 
 army ? But after January, 1777, he was most frequently to be heard 
 of off the shores of Britain. Now he would cany off Lord Selkirk's 
 plate, not finding his lordship himself there, from St. Mary's Isle. 
 Anon, off Carrickfergus, this daring captain of the Kanger, after a fierce 
 and sanguinary fight, captures the Drake sloop-of-war, astonishing the 
 boat-loads of spectators who came out to see the Ranger captured. 
 Again, off Flamborough Head, in the crazy, half-sinking Bonhomme 
 Richard, with a crew greatly inferior in numbers to that of his antagonist, 
 with much less weight of metal — many of his guns, too. being honey- 
 combed and far more dangerous to friends than enemies — the bold ad- 
 venturer in that terrible sea-fight, unparalleled for its obstinacy in the 
 history of nautical achievement, conquers the stout Serapis frigate, com- 
 manded by stubborn Captain Pearson, while thousands of spectators line 
 the Yorkshire shore to view the moonlit battle. Now we find Paul writing 
 letters of chivalrous sentimentality to Lady Selkirk and making magnan- 
 imous restitution of the captured family-plate; now a lion in the grand 
 Parisian salon's — a most rare and astounding sea-lion beyond all dispute! 
 This valiant and freedom-loving warrior, of Caledonian birth, the Eng- 
 lish, in their narrow and stupid egotism, for a long time thought proper 
 to style a pirate, apparently for no better reason than that he took side 
 against themselves. Quite as rationally might they have called General 
 Washington or at least General Lee, his lieutenant, who was a native 
 of Britain, a brigand. As, sixty years after the death of Cceur de Lion, 
 to quote the words of Gibbon, "his tremendous name was employed by 
 the Syrian mothers to silence their infants," so, for long after the dread 
 combat off Flamborough Head, British nurses, in all probability, fright- 
 ened froward children by threatening to bring Paul Jones to carry them 
 away To the mind's eye of little O'Connell, no doubt, Paul assumed 
 the formidable port of a sea-warrior as daring as Fineen O'Driscoll in 
 the traditions of his native Minister, while his youthful imagination 
 would work up the marvellous incidents of Paul's stormy career, mag- 
 nified tenfold by terror and the rumors of the hour into a sort of 
 historic romance of the ocean, wild and thrilling as boys' romances 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. i , 
 
 usually are. This is no very rash or far-fetched conjecture, for we shall 
 presently learn from O'Connell's own lips what intense delight he took 
 in poring over books of maritime adventures; and in a subsequent 
 chapter I shall have occasion to notice that O'Connell, once at least, 
 actually thought of writing a romance, on a subject, however, quite dif- 
 ferent from that of John Paul Jones. 
 
 O'Connell, as a child, was quick and persevering to a degree. He 
 mastered the alphabet in an hour. In him the terror of disgrace over- 
 came the natural propensity of a child to indulge in idleness. One day 
 Dan was idle. When he came to say his lesson it was plain that he had 
 learned it imperfectly. The teacher threatens to beat him. Dan shrinks 
 from the indignity. "Oh, don't beat me," exclaims the future "Liber- 
 ator,'' "for one half hour! If I haven't my lesson by that time, beat 
 me then!" The teacher accorded him the respite, and the task — a hard 
 task, too — was thoroughly mastered by him within the time allowed. 
 
 This incident reminds one of the terrible emotion which the great 
 Napoleon is related to have manifested on one occasion, in his boyhood, 
 when he was subjected to a disgraceful punishment at school. He Was 
 even seized with a violent fit of vomiting. It may be remarked that it 
 was one of those itinerant teachers or hedge-schoolmasters who came 
 into existence owing to the prohibitions of the penal code that taught 
 O'Connell his alphabet. Late in life O'Connell remarked to his friend, 
 Mr. Daunt, " I was the only boy who wasn't beaten at Harrington's 
 school ; I owed this to my attention." 
 
 O'Connell says himself, "The first big book I ever read was Captain 
 Cook's 'Voyage Round the World.' I read it with intense avidity. 
 When the other children would ask me to play with them, I used to run 
 away and take my book to the window that is now converted into a press 
 in the housekeeper's room at Darrynane. There I used to sit with my 
 legs crossed tailor-like, devouring the adventures of Cook. His book 
 helped to make me a good geographer ; I took an interest in tracing- 
 out his voyages upon the map. That was in 1784. I don't think I 
 ever met a book that took a greater grasp of me : there I used to sit 
 reading it, sometimes crying over it, whilst the other boys were playing." 
 
 In the old times people in most countries estimated the value of a 
 district of land as supporting so many head of cattle, etc. This system 
 
[ I 
 
 I 
 
 78 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 prevailed in Ireland to comparatively recent times. According to O'Con- 
 nell, it was the natural, in short, the only way, people in those days had 
 of computing the value of their land. It appears that in the remoter 
 parts of Ireland those gentlemen who possessed large estates led a sort 
 of nomadic life, moving from one farm to the other. The gentry and 
 their households would first eat up the food supplied by one farm, then 
 migrate to the next and consume its produce. It was easier and more 
 economical for the different families to move to the food than to live in 
 one principal residence and have the food conveyed to it. The means 
 of carriage were bad, the roads worse. Indeed, in some localities there 
 were neither cars nor anything worthy of being called roads in those 
 days; so that, where a proprietor's farms were, at any great distance 
 from each other, obviously the simplest and best plan was to mount the 
 whole household on horses and transport them all, "bag and baggage,'' 
 to the provisions. Of this plan of living O'Connell had ample experi- 
 ence in his childhood. His family had a house at Logher, and they used 
 occasionally to move there from Darrynane. 
 
 O'Connell tells an interesting anecdote of his early aspirations: "My 
 uncle used to get the ' Dublin Magazine ' at Carhen ; it usually contained 
 the portrait of some remarkable person, with a biographical notice. 
 I was always an ambitious fellow, and I often used to say to myself, ' I 
 wonder will my visage ever appear in the " Dublin Magazine ?" ' I knew 
 at that time of no greater notoriety. In 1810, when walking through the 
 streets soon after some meeting at which I had attracted public notice, 
 I saw a magazine in a shop-window containing the portrait of ' Counsel- 
 lor O'Connell,' and I said to myself with a smile, ' Here are my boyish 
 dreams of glory realized;' though I need not tell you that in 1810 I 
 had long outgrown that species of ambition." 
 
 When O'Connell was only nine years old some friends one day dined 
 at his father's table ; the topics of the day formed the subject of conver- 
 sation; Ireland's leading men were spoken of ; a discussion arose about 
 G rattan's eloquence and services to his country; gradually Dan grew 
 more and more thoughtful. A lady present curiously observed the medi- 
 tative air so unusual in a boy of his tender years ; at last she asks, "What 
 ails you, Dan? what are you thinking of?" The little fellow, sitting 
 cogitating in an arm-chair, turns round and looks at her. "I'll make a 
 
I — 
 
 i r 
 i i 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 79 
 
 stir in the world yet," replies he with the prophetic boldness of preco- 
 cious genius. 
 
 In early boyhood O'Connell was adopted by his uncle Maurice, known 
 throughout Kerry by the sobriquet of "Hunting-cap;" this nickname 
 stuck to old Maurice on account of his fondness for that style of head- 
 gear. As Charles XII. of Sweden seldom or never laid aside his jack- 
 boots and coarse soldier's coat, or Frederick the Great his blue military 
 coat and cocked hat, so Uncle Maurice was hardly ever seen without his 
 hunting-cap. It was this gentleman who defrayed the expense of the 
 boy's education and sent him to the school of that Rev. Mr. Harrington 
 to whom I have already referred; this school was in Long Island, near 
 Cork. It is said that, owing to his tendency to become too much ab- 
 sorbed in study, our hero, when a boy, got the reputation of being some- 
 what cold and distant. 
 
 Mr. O'Neill Daunt, in his " Personal Recollections," tells us that 
 often during their journeys together, O'Connell, after a tolerably long 
 silence, would suddenly "break out with a snatch of some old ballad in 
 Irish or English." One day he sang out — 
 
 " I leaned my back against an oak, 
 I thought it was a trusty tree ; 
 But first it bent and then it broke — 
 'Twas thus ray love deserted me." 
 
 Mr. Daunt expressed surprise that these snatches of old ballads 
 should linger in his memory. " Oh," cries O'Connell, " I liked ballads 
 of all things when I was a boy. In 1787 I was brought to the Tralec 
 assizes. Assizes were then a great mart for all sorts of amusements, and 
 I was greatly taken with the ballad- singers. It was then I heard two 
 ballad-singers, a man and a woman, chanting out the ballad from which 
 you heard me sing that verse ; he sang the first two lines, she sang the 
 third line ; both sang together the fourth, and so on through the whole 
 ballad." 
 
 This stanza, remembered from the Amoebean performance of the man 
 and woman in Tralee, if infinitely superior is certainly less amusing 
 than some verses composed by an unlucky poet of "the kingdom of 
 Kerry," which stuck in a corner of O'Connell's memory among all sorts 
 of metrical odds and ends. The poor bard, being in a starving condition 
 
80 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 in Paris, was recommended to pay his court to the minister Sartine in a 
 strain of panegyric. Here is the first couplet : 
 
 " Yellow Phoebus, inspire my poitrine 
 To sing the praises of Monsieur de Sartine." 
 
 Between Hillgrove and Cahirciveen, O'Connell, when a lad, very nar- 
 rowly escaped losing his life in an encounter with an infuriated bull. 
 The hull, like his namesake, John Bull, in after times, was seized with a 
 mighty great desire to annihilate poor Dan. He ran at him, and Dan's 
 retreat was cut off by a high ditch. The career of the future Liberator 
 seemed about to be prematurely cut short. But it was written in the 
 book of fate, as the great Napoleon would say, that Dan was to speak 
 and do great things. At the moment that his destruction appeared 
 inevitable the brave little fellow faced the taurine monster pretty much 
 in the same courageous Avay he used to face and outface the other formidable 
 Hull in after years. He threw a good-sized stone at the bull's forehead, 
 and stunned him. This gave Dan breathing-time before the brute could 
 recover himself. Meanwhile, a troop of boys came to the assistance of 
 our juvenile hero and pelted the discomfited bull out of the field; and 
 thus Dan was rescued, and lived on to enjoy before he died almost the 
 highest earthly greatness and renown. It were curious enough, if one 
 had time and inclination, to speculate on the very considerable differ- 
 ence it would have made to Ireland and the Irish if that mad bull had 
 succeeded in carrying out his wicked will, and had incontinently tossed 
 young Daniel on his horns and out of existence. 
 
 One can easily guess, after hearing this anecdote, that O'Connell was 
 from his earliest years blessed with a fair share of physical as well as 
 mental energy. He says of himself, " Activity is with me a habit. I 
 was always active, and my brother John was always active. I re- 
 member one morning, when John A\as a lad, seeing him prepare to set 
 off on a walk of several miles at sunrise, after having sat up the whole 
 night dancing and without having gone to bed at all. I said to him. 
 'John, you had better take your mare.' ' Oh,' said John, ' I'll spare the 
 mare ; the walk will do me good.' So off he set, and his mare expired 
 of fat in the stable the very same day. How often have I heard the 
 voice of old John O'Connell calling out at cockcrow under our gate, ' Car 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 81 
 
 a mmigh Shane O'Connell agus an cu'" ("Send out John O'Connell and 
 the greyhound"). 
 
 In a subsequent portion of this biography we shall have occasion to 
 see Daniel O'Connell, even in his old days, on foot, with a leaping-pole 
 in his hand, hunting the deer over his native mountains of Kerry, and 
 with a vigor and activity unsurpassed by the most youthful and indefat- 
 igable of his companions in the chase. 
 
 O'Connell used to tell some very curious and amusing particulars of 
 a class of cow-stealers that existed in Kerry in the days of his child- 
 hood. These anecdotes will give the reader a curious picture of the 
 state of society in Kerry in those wild times antecedent to the repeal of 
 the penal laws. 
 
 " When I was a child " — O'Connell is speaking — " there was a horde 
 of cow-stealers called the Crelaghs inhabiting the mountains of Glan- 
 cara. They used to steal cows in Gralway and Clare and sell them in 
 this part of the country ; and then, with admirable impartiality, they 
 would steal cows here and sell them in Clare or Galway. They were a 
 terrible nuisance to the peasantry, but they received a sort of negative 
 protection — that is, they were left unmolested by the leading Protestant 
 gentry, who then were popularly called 'colonels.' To these 'colonels' 
 they occasionally made presents of cattle. Impunity emboldened them, 
 and at length they stole fourteen cows from my father, who was in indif- 
 ferent health at the time. This was intolerable, and my father collected 
 a numerous party to surround the Crelaghs' hut in one night, in order to 
 take and surrender them to justice. The Crelaghs rushed out and made 
 a desperate defence. Two of them were taken, but the rest escaped. 
 My father shot one man through the hand in the scuffle, but the wounded 
 fellow contrived to get off. Those who escaped still continued their dep- 
 redations, and the power of the few Catholic gentry to check them was 
 sadly crippled by the legal incapacity of Catholics to hold the commis- 
 sion of the peace. 
 
 "The Crelaghs resolved to avenge themselves upon my father, who 
 got information one dark evening, when out riding, that the gang lay in 
 wait to murder him. His informant desired him to go home by a dif- 
 ferent road; he did so and encountered the ruffians, who rushed down the 
 hills to meet him and tired ; his mare, which was very wicked, kicked and 
 
82 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 threw liim. Whilst he was down they fired again, and missed him 
 a second time; he remounted, and, striking spurs in his mare, was 
 speedily beyond their reach, escaping several shots that were fired after 
 him. 
 
 " It was not very easy for a Catholic to interest the law in his behalf 
 even against these pestilent vagabonds ; but at length, by good heck, one 
 of the gang robbed a Mr. Hassett, a Protestant gentleman, of his purse 
 and dress-wig upon the highway ; this incited Mr. Hassett to spirited 
 measures, amongst which was his getting himself made a magistrate 
 and using his justiceship to bring the rogues to punishment. After 
 this the gang was soon dispersed ; three Avere taken and hanged the 
 rest escaped."' 
 
 The Crelaghs, we see, made presents of cattle to the Protestant gen- 
 tly, who, being of the Ascendency faction, could be magistrates or what- 
 ever they pleased to be, and so were objects of terror to these outlaws. 
 The Catholic gentry, on the other hand, few in numbers and deprived of 
 all civil rights, were in no degree formidable ; on the contrary, they were 
 alike incapable of protecting themselves or others. The Crelaghs, then, 
 did not think it worth while to conciliate them by offering them the gift 
 of any portion of their spoils ; of course, if the Catholic gentry had pos- 
 sessed the same inlluence that the "colonels" had, they too would have 
 been tempted to forget their duties to society. Would they have yielded 
 to the bribes of the Crelaghs in the same manner? Truly it was a sin- 
 gular state of society when such despicable bribes could seduce men of 
 rank to a base connivance at the miserable thefts and depredations of a 
 gang of cow-stealers. 
 
 For us, living in the present day, it is surprising to contemplate the 
 great extent to which, in the times I am referring to, the belief in the 
 absolute power of these "colonels" was rooted in the minds of the peo- 
 ple ; in fact, the authority of the law seemed as nothing when cast into 
 the balance against their good will and pleasure. The odd notion even 
 prevailed amongst the predatory gangs which infested some of the wild 
 fastnesses of Kerry that to give validity to a judicial sentence it should 
 be backed by the assent of one or other of these local potentates. Mr. 
 Daunt gives a singular instance in illustration of this : A man was con- 
 victed of horse-stealing at Tralee ; as he seemed epiite careless and indif- 
 
THE LIFE OF DAM EL O'COXXELL. SH 
 
 ferent while the judge was passing sentence of death upon him, a by- 
 stander ashed him, " Do you know what my lord is saying, you stupid 
 omadhawn?" "To be sure I do!" replies the convict, preserving the 
 same surprising air of unconcern, "but I don't care what he says, for 
 Colonel Blennerhassett is looking at me all the time, and he says 
 nothing." 
 
 This would be ludicrous to a degree if the circumstances in which 
 the man stood did not rather make it shocking; in truth, the adminis- 
 tration of the law in Ireland in those wild days is a curious subject and 
 worthy of deep study. In ordinary cases between man and man it was 
 doubtless far worse than it is at present; in all cases, however, of a 
 political complexion, things legal move to-day pretty much in the same 
 groove that they moved in then ; nor do the country-people of Ireland 
 meet with any improved administration of justice worth speaking of in 
 cases of the agrarian kind. Mr. Gladstone's new law of landlord and 
 tenant, though doubtless it has made some improvement on the past 
 condition of the tenant-farmers, has fallen far short of the too-sanguine 
 and even foolish expectations which that minister's accession to the, 
 office of prime minister awoke in the minds of too many gullible Irish- 
 men. We have already had experience enough of the workings of the 
 new act to see clearly that landlords can still make the laws an instru- 
 ment for the oppression, and even extermination, of their tenantry ; in 
 short, Irishmen should receive and lay to heart as gospel truth the 
 memorable maxim uttered by John Mitchel in 1848, and since inculcated 
 over and over by him and by other patriots, that "no good thing, nor 
 even the commencement of a good thing, for Ireland can come out of 
 the English Parliament." 
 
 To return for a moment to "Colonel" Blennerhassett. Shortly after 
 the first accouchement of his lady, a neighbor called at " the big house," 
 and, after some other inquiries, asked how " the colonel was ?" 
 
 "Which do you mean, the young colonel or the old one?" asked the 
 servant in return. This "young ColoneV Blennerhassett was at that 
 moment rather less than one week old. This was belief in the " colonel- 
 ship " of the gentry of the Protestant Ascendency with a vengeance ! 
 
 In his boyhood, O'Connell sometimes took a part in private theat- 
 ricals. His memory was so good that he once got sixty lines by heart 
 
x~ 
 
 34 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 in an hour, and that without the slightest trouble. All amateurs, how- 
 ever, are not, like O'Connell, blessed with excellent memories. Some 
 persons, indeed, are awfully stupid about getting a part off by heart. 
 Sometimes the stupidity is very droll. When our hero, in his young 
 days, along with some companions, got up a private play in Tralee, his 
 friend, Ralph Hickson, was to take a part. All he had to say was, 
 " Put the horses to the coach ;" and yet he contrived to make a stu- 
 pendous blunder in trying to repeat on the stage even that little sen- 
 tence of six short words. 
 
 "How could he manage to blunder that?" a friend asked O'Connell. 
 
 "Why, he said 'Put the horses into the coach!' " 
 
 O'Connell was carefully instructed in religious matters in his youth. 
 Doubtless his parish priest, Father 0' Grady, was an excellent and con- 
 scientious pastor, zealous like most of the Catholic priests in Ireland 
 during the rage of penal persecution. 1 have already given some anec- 
 dotes illustrative of the whimsical humor of this spiritual guide of 
 O'Connell's early years. He seems to have been a primitive, merry- 
 souled, kind-hearted old man, characterized by a sort of quaint and 
 guileless simplicity altogether pleasant to meet with. While there can be 
 no doubt that he and others took great pains to rear O'Connell in the strict- 
 est religious principles, so that in every period of his after-life "the Lib- 
 erator's" devotion to and reverence for the faith of his fathers remained 
 earnest and unalterable, there is yet no just foundation for the statements 
 of those who have asserted that he was originally intended for the priest- 
 hood. In a letter addressed to the editor of The Dublin Evening Post, 
 1 tearing date the 17th of July, 1828, O'Connell endeavors to correct this 
 and another misstatement: "It is right to be accurate even in trifles." 
 Then, referring to a paragraph which had appeared in the papers, his 
 letter says : " It contained two mistakes. It asserted that I w-as born 
 in 1774; and, secondly, that I was intended for the Church. I was not 
 intended for the Church. JS T o man respects, loves or submits to the 
 Church with more alacrity than I; but 1 was not intended for the 
 priesthood. It is not usual with the Catholic gentry in Ireland to de- 
 termine the religious destiny of their children ; and being an eldest son, 
 born to an independence, the story of my having been intended for the 
 Church is a pure fabrication. I was not born in the year 1774. Be it 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 85 
 
 known to all whom it may concern that I was born on the 6th of Au- 
 gust, 1775 — the very year in which the stupid obstinacy of British 
 oppression forced the reluctant people of America to seek for security in 
 arms, and to commence that bloody struggle for national independence 
 which has been in its results beneficial to England, whilst it has shed 
 glory and conferred liberty pure and sublime on America." 
 
 O'Connell used to tell a good story of two Protestant gentlemen who 
 were visitors on one occasion at Darrynane Abbey, the seat of his uncle 
 Maurice. Our hero himself was stopping there at the time. " On Sun- 
 day," says O'Connell, "as there was no Protestant place of worship 
 near, they were reduced to the alternative of going to mass or doing 
 without public worship. They chose to go to mass, and on entering the 
 chapel they fastidiously kept clear of the holy water which the clerk was 
 sprinkling copiously on all sides. The clerk observed this, and feeling 
 his own dignity and that of the holy water compromised by their Prot- 
 estant squeamishness, he quietly watched them after service, and plant- 
 ing himself behind the sanctuary door, through which they had to pass, 
 1m3 suddenly slashed the entire contents of his full-charged brush into 
 their faces. I thought I should have been choked with laughing. You 
 can't conceive anything more ludicrous than the discomfited look the 
 fellows had." O'Connell's fancy was so tickled with the recollection of 
 this grotesque incident that, when telling it, he couldn't refrain from 
 chuckling heartily for some minutes. 
 
 He used to tell a singular anecdote of his uncle, old Maurice, alias 
 "Hunting-cap." "Old Mr. Connell of Darrynane pitched upon an oak 
 tree to make his own coffin, and mentioned his purpose to a carpenter. 
 In the evening the butler entered, after dinner, to say that the carpen- 
 ter wanted to speak with him. ' For what ?' asked my uncle. ' To talk 
 about your honor's coffin,' said the carpenter, putting his head inside 
 the door over the butler's shoulder. I wanted to get the fellow out, but 
 my uncle said, ' Oh, let him in by all means. Well, friend, what do 
 you want to say to me about my coffin ?' ' Only, sir, that I'll saw up 
 the oak tree your honor was speaking of into seven-foot plank.' 'That 
 would be wasteful,' answered my uncle ; ' I never was more than six feet 
 and an inch in my vamps the best day I ever saw.' ' But your honor 
 will stretch after death,' said the carpenter. 'Not eleven inches, I am 
 
sure, you blockhead ; but I'll stretch, no doubt, perhaps a couple of inches 
 or so ; well, make my coffin six feet six, and I'll warrant that will give 
 me room enough.' " 
 
 "We may feel satisfied that the old ruins to be found in so many parts 
 of romantic Kerry, with the hoary traditions and legends hanging and 
 clinging like the ivy around them, deeply impressed the mind of O'Con- 
 nell in his youth, and bound his heart by the strong chain of association 
 more and more firmly every day to the love of his birthplace and his 
 entire fatherland. Doubtless, ere he reached manhood, he had often vis- 
 ited Killarney and all the other enchanting spots that make the south- 
 west of Ireland a sort of fairy region. On the occasion of such visits he 
 would see Muckross Abbey, still beautiful and impressive even in decay ; 
 the crumbling walls of Ross Castle and other time-haunted ruins, not less 
 venerable or suggestive of the past and its vanished forms of life ; he 
 would hear recited the innumerable local legends of The O'Donohoe ; alike 
 the ruins and the tales of other days would take hold of his imagination 
 and become mysteriously intertwined with all his feelings. The subtle 
 influences of old legendary stories, whether of love or terror, are wellnigji 
 inexplicable. O'Connell used occasionally to refer in after life to the 
 particulars connected with local antiquities and traditions which he had 
 gleaned and treasured up in the days of his youth. On one occasion, 
 having asked a clergyman if he had seen the old church of Kilkee, near 
 Greena, on the road from Killarney, he told the following traditional 
 anecdote of an act of sacrilege committed by one of the fierce and haughty 
 chiefs of Desmond. Doubtless he had often thrilled at the recital of this 
 and similar wild deeds in his boyhood. Speaking of the old church, he 
 said, " It was unroofed and desecrated over three centuries ago ; the 
 Macarthy Mhor of the day was in the habit of attending mass there, 
 and ordered the officiating priest to delay the celebration of mass every 
 Sunday until he should arrive. The priest complied for some Sundays, 
 but one day the chief was so late that the priest, in order no longer to 
 detain the congregation, commenced divine service ; he had not proceeded 
 far v. hen Macarthy Mhor entered the church, and being enraged at the 
 presumption of the priest in neglecting to wait for him, rushed to the 
 altar, and felled the priest to the floor. The bishop could not bear that 
 the scene of such a crime should continue the centre of parochial devo- 
 

THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 87 
 
 tion, and accordingly lie got the chinch unroofed and another one built 
 in a different part of the parish." 
 
 It appears that a great many Protestants of Killarncy used to get 
 named in this old ruined church of Kilkce. As, in case of their not get- 
 ting a license, it was necessary for them to be married in a parish church, 
 many couples modestly preferred the seclusion of the ivy-festooned walls 
 of mouldering Kilkec, where they would be safe from all prying intrusion 
 during the matrimonial ceremony, to the staring and curious crowds sure 
 to gather around all wedding-parties in the church of Killarney. 
 
 He spoke thus on another occasion of certain old burial-grounds 
 between Cahirciveen and Darrymore: "I never can pass the old 
 burial-grounds of Kilpeacon and Killogroin, among the hills, without 
 thinking how strange it is that they should be totally deserted by the 
 present generation ; nobody ever is buried in either of them now, and 
 they have been disused so long ago that not even a tradition exists 
 among the peasantry of the time when, or the cause wherefore, inter- 
 ments were discontinued in them." 
 
 On one of the old castles of his native county he made these reflec- 
 tions : "What an undigested mass of buildings arc the relics of the earl 
 of Desmond's court at Castle Island ! and how much the difference 
 between our habits and those of our forefathers is marked by the archi- 
 tecture of their dwellings and of ours ! The old castles, or rather the old 
 towers, of Ireland were manifestly constructed for inhabitants who only 
 stayed within when the severity of the weather would not allow them to 
 go oat; there seems to have been little or no provision in the greater 
 number of them for internal comfort ; and what a state of social inse- 
 curity they indicate! Small loopholes for defence, low, small entrance- 
 doors for the same purpose — evidently it was a more important object to 
 keep out the enemy than to ventilate the house." The earls of Desmond 
 here referred to were the Norman Fitzgeralds, not the chiefs of the 
 Macarthy clan, who had been 2Jrinccs of Desmond in the old Celtic times. 
 
 As we have just had occasion to refer to an incident in the life of a 
 Macarthy Mhor, as related by O'Connell, I cannot refrain from here 
 giving an amusing anecdote of his about a lady of the Macarthy family, 
 though I must own it is in no way whatever connected with the subject 
 :>f the present chapter — O'Connell's childhood. 
 
,98 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 Speaking of sumo imposing cavalcade that had attended him in one 
 of his many political progresses, he remarked: "Those things are all 
 comparative; when a lady of the Macarthy family was sitting in her 
 hotel at Paris, working embroidery, she heard shouts of triumph in the 
 street for Louis XIV.'s grand entry after his successes in Flanders; but 
 she stirred not from her task. 
 
 " 'What!' said her companion, 'will you not come to the window to 
 look at the king's triumphant entry?' 
 
 "' No,' replied the lady; 'I have seen Macarthy Mhor's triumphant 
 entry into Blarney, and what can Paris furnish equal to that?' " 
 
 It was probably in this early period of his life that O'Connell acquired 
 his excessive fondness for the old Latin hymns of the Catholic Church; 
 in after days the great Agitator used frequently to begin repeating some 
 of them when travelling; his favorite appeared to be — 
 
 " Laiula Sion salvatoreni, 
 Lauda Duceiu et Pastorem ;" 
 
 also the grand hymn beginning with the words — 
 
 "Stabat Mater Dolorosa, 
 •Tuxta crueera lachrymosa 
 
 Duin pendebat filius." 
 
 During these early years of O'Connell's life the events of the Amer- 
 ican war followed each other in rapid succession. In 1776, the year 
 after O'Connell's birth, the Congress of the revolted colonies issued their 
 ever-memorable Declaration of Independence; in the same year, Washing- 
 ton, who, immediately after Bunker's Hill, had been appointed commander- 
 in-chief, captured or destroyed at Trenton, on the Delaware, a large body 
 of the Hanoverian auxiliaries in the British pay. In 1777 the surrender 
 of General Burgoync's army took place, which was a desperate if not 
 ruinous blow to England's prestige in America; still, the war continued 
 with varying fortune for some years longer. The credit of the thirteen 
 republics was at times sunk to the very lowest ebb; their papnr-money 
 depreciated till it was of hardly any value ; their soldiery were often 
 without shoes, without clothes, food or regular pay — discouraged, more- 
 over, by frequeut defeats. The integrity, patriotism and constancy of 
 Washington, together with his rare power of influencing the minds of the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. &\) 
 
 troops under his command, barely saved the army from complete disso- 
 lution and the fortunes of the young commonwealths from total ruin. 
 At last, however, brighter hopes dawned on the Continentals, and inspired 
 them to carry on their struggle for national existence with fresh-strung 
 energy. The French monarchy recognized the independence of the new- 
 born republics, and on the 6th of February, 1778, a treaty of alliance 
 was signed at Paris, by which France bound herself to aid America in 
 her struggle for independence ; almost immediately after a French fleet 
 under Count d'Estaing appeared off' the American shores to co-operate 
 with the patriot forces. More than three years later, on the 19th of Oc- 
 tober, 1781, the army of Lord Cornwallis was forced to capitulate, at 
 Yorktown, to the combined French and American forces under Count 
 Rochambeau and General Washington. After this momentous event the 
 war was virtually at an end; preliminary articles of peace between 
 Great Britain and the United States were signed at Paris on the 30th of 
 November, 1782; a cessation of hostilities was proclaimed throughout 
 the American colonies on the U)th of April, 1783; and finally, a defini- 
 tive treaty of peace was signed at Paris on the 3d of September, 1783. 
 In a word, the pride of England was humbled in the dust, and a giant 
 young republic, or rather confederation of republics, started into inde- 
 pendent existence full armed. 
 
 The temporary prostration of British power was as usual a Godsend 
 to Ireland. During these early years of O'Connell's life public changes of 
 vast importance took place in Ireland. The revolution of 1782, which 
 for a time made Ireland, formally and technically at least, an independent 
 nation, was carried by the mere terror with which the guns and bayo- 
 nets of more than 70,000 Irish volunteers inspired England in her crest- 
 fallen and exhausted state at the close of this American Revolution. 
 
 Within the period extending from the year of our hero's birth to the 
 close of the session of the Irish Parliament in 1782, certain relaxations 
 of the penal code took place. As these events influenced to a great extent 
 the subsequent destiny of Ireland, and as their bearing upon O'Connell's 
 career in after-life was also very great, it will be proper for me to give a 
 short outline of them in the next chapter.* 
 
 * The bonks to which I am chiefly indebted for the materials of the above chapter are O'.Ncill 
 Diumt'i " Personal Recollections" and Fagaa's " Life of O'Counell." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Brief sketch of the Irish volunteer movement and the revolution of 1782— This 
 Reform Convention— Flood and Grattan — Further relaxations of the penal laks 
 — Reflections on England's concessions in 1782 — O'Conneli.'s opinion of Grattan — 
 His opinion on the question of "simple repeal." 
 
 f/JFp^ROM an earlv period after the English invasion, parliaments 
 
 Vv \m£^\ i . . " ° 
 
 f»alR3ai existed in Ireland. For centuries, however, tliev were confined 
 
 «(g^%2 to the small territory called the Pale. The ancient race, con- 
 fZffj) temptuously styled by the Norman and Saxon colony "the 
 V mere Irish," were excluded from all participation in the delibera- 
 tions of those assemblies. To them, so far from being any source of 
 benefit, they were an unmixed evil, for they gave their oppressors the 
 means of legalizing outrage and wrong. The laws were of the most 
 exclusive kind. The native Irish were not regarded as having any 
 claim to those privileges which were admitted to belong of right to the 
 meanest of the British settlers and descendants of settlers in ihe Pale. 
 On certain occasions — in fact, when some of the Irish, wearied with the 
 social confusion around them, had even asked for such an extension of 
 English laws and usages as they fancied would give them security 
 against rapacity and injustice — their petitions were repelled contempt- 
 uously. When, at a later period, the whole of Ireland was made into 
 shire-ground, so that representatives attended Parliament from every 
 part of the island, and when, theoretically at least, the old race were 
 regarded as entitled to the same privileges with the rest of the king's 
 subjects, still religious enactments of a penal kind, generally speaking, 
 amounted to a virtual exclusion of the vast majority of the native Irish 
 from all participation in the principal rights conferred by the constitu- 
 tion.- The Parliament, in short, still remained the mere Parliament of 
 the colony, instead of becoming the Parliament of the Irish people. 
 
 Early in the parliamentary history of Ireland we find England claim- 
 ing a certain control over Irish legislation. In the reign of Henry VII.. 
 during the administration of Sir Edward Poynings, acts were passed -- 
 
 SO 
 
 — .;■ -,""j!ir-. 
 
commonly known as Poynings's laws — providing, first, that all laws en- 
 acted by the Parliament (if England which related to the welfare of 
 England should have validity and be acted upon in Ireland ; and. second, 
 that no hill should be enacted, or even brought forward, in the Parlia- 
 ment of Ireland which had not beforehand received the sanction of the 
 king and council in England ; nor was it even to be lawful, for the future, 
 to call any Parliament in Ireland at all until the chief governors and coun- 
 cil had certified to the king, under the great seal, " the causes and consid- 
 erations," in short the laws intended to be brought forward, so that the 
 same might have the approval of the king and his council. More than 
 two centuries later, in the reign of George I., an act was passed in the 
 London Parliament declaring that the king, with the advice of the Lords 
 and Commons of England, "hath had of right, and ought to have, full 
 power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and 
 validity to bind the people and the kingdom of Ireland. 
 
 "And be it further enacted and declared by the authority aforesaid, 
 that the House of Lords of Ireland have not. nor of right ought to have, 
 any jurisdiction to judge, affirm or reverse any judgment, sentence or 
 decree given or made in any court within the same kingdom ; and that 
 all proceedings before the said House of Lords upon any such judg- 
 ment, sentence or decree, are, and are hereby declared to be, utterly null 
 and void to all intents and purposes whatever." 
 
 This declaratory act was the last act of the kind passed by the Eng- 
 lish Parliament. The Protestant colony in Ireland, though compelled to 
 submit for a time, before many years began to show a spirit of resist- 
 ance to this usurpation on the part of England. Even so early as the 
 year 1G98, Mr. William Molyneux, one of the members of Parliament 
 for the University of Dublin, had published a work entitled " The Case 
 of Ireland being bound by Acts of Parliament in England, Stated," in 
 which he distinctly asserts the independent power of the Parliament of 
 Ireland as the legislature of a sovereign state. This denial of the right 
 of supremacy asserted and exercised by the English Parliament, at the 
 period of its publication, aroused a great feeling of indignation in Eng- 
 land. A committee of the English Parliament was appointed to exam- 
 ine the treatise, and on the report of that committee, it was unanimously 
 resolved "That the said book was of dangerous consequence to the Crown 
 
and to the people of England, 7 ' etc. The English House of Commons 
 also in an address to the king rebuked the Irish House for pretending U) 
 re-enact and alter an act made in England, and promised His Majesty 
 their co-operation in maintaining the dependence and subordination of 
 Ireland to the imperial crown of England, and besought him to dis- 
 courage all things tending to impair that dependence. 
 
 The spirit of Molyneux's book lived and influenced the men who 
 came after him. The next remarkable man who protested against the 
 English influence in Ireland was Dean Swift. His first pamphlet on 
 Irish affairs was published in 1720, the year after the passing of the 
 declaratory act of George I. It was "A Proposal for the Use of Irish 
 Manufacture." No man did more to create an Irish feeling among the 
 Protestants of Ireland than the celebrated dean in the series of pamph- 
 lets, replete with wit, ironical humor, scathing satire, argument — in 
 short, the most varied literary ability — with which for years he assailed 
 the abuses of English rule. The author of the " Drapier's Letters"—- 
 (hose letters in which he develops his real sentiments on the absolute 
 right of the Irish nation to govern itself independently of the English 
 Parliament — became, and continued to the day of his death, the most 
 popular man in Ireland. Strange to say, he was even popular with the 
 Catholic body, for whom, if he did not exactly show disdain, he at least 
 manifested no sympathy. They forgot or forgave this, however, on ac- 
 count of his vigorous assertion of the independence of their country. 
 They felt intuitively that if their country were once independent their 
 state of bondage would soon come to an end. 
 
 Towards the middle of the eighteenth century another assevior of the 
 rights of Ireland (meaning the rights of the Protestant colony) against 
 the usurpations of England arose; this was Dr. Charles Lucas, a man 
 immeasurably inferior, indeed, in abilities to the illustrious dean of St. 
 Patrick's, but still possessing a respectable intellect and great honesty, 
 courage and energy ; unfortunately, he, too, was without sympathy lor 
 the downtrodden majority of his countrymen; he was even absolutely 
 intolerant in his demeanor towards the Catholics. In spite of this, how- 
 ever, he did good service to the cause of Ireland; lie was a strenuous 
 assertor of the sovereign right of the Irish Parliament. For his princi- 
 pies he was persecuted by the English government, and the venal and 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL G'COXXELL. 
 
 servile Irish Commons, not yet ripe for the doctrines or language of 
 liberty, lent themselves to their country's enemies, and became the 
 instruments of the patriot's persecution; after forcing him to liy from 
 Ireland, they voted him to be an enemy of his country. The famous Dr. 
 Johnson honored him thus : " The Irish ministers drove him from his 
 native country by a proclamation in which they charged him with crimes 
 which they never intended to be called to the proof, and oppressed him 
 by methods equally irresistible by guilt and innocence. Let the man, 
 thus driven into exile for having been the friend of his country, be 
 received in every other place as a confessor of liberty, and let the tools 
 of power be taught in time that they may rob, but cannot impoverish." 
 The original steps which led to the Octennial Bill, passed in 17(J< Q — a bill 
 which in its turn gradually led to Ireland's short-lived independence — 
 were due, in the opinion of the celebrated Lord Charlemont, to the influ- 
 ence of Lucas. In the words of another. " He raised his voice when all 
 around was desolation and silence ; he began with a corporation and 
 he ended with a kingdom." 
 
 From the years 1761 to 1770 the famous Henry Flood, one of Ire- 
 land's greatest orators, struggled hard to create an Irish national party. 
 Lucas had sprung from the ranks of the people; Flood was an aristocrat. 
 He succeeded in rousing to life and action a strong opposition party against 
 those tools of British power miscalled the Irish government ; he intended 
 this national opposition to be a permanent depository of fixed public 
 principles, which " should not fluctuate with the intrigues of the court 
 nor with capricious fashions among the people." This period I have 
 specified was probably the noblest period of Flood's life ; before this the 
 opposition to England had only been desultory — henceforward it was 
 steady and progressive. After 1770 Flood's career was for a time any- 
 thing but glorious; he accepted office, and consequently his opposition 
 to government was silenced. The most patriotic Irish writers, however — 
 John Mitchel, for example — are inclined to acquit him of the charge of 
 being influenced by corrupt motives. The time was unfavorable for 
 aggressive action; perhaps by taking office for awhile he could best serve 
 his country. In the days of '82 we again find him in the patriot ranks. 
 Much of his conduct during the exciting scenes of that glorious time 
 deserves the highest praise, but much, too, is at least questionable ; and 
 
1)1 THE LIFE OF DAXTEL 0T0XXEEL. 
 
 certainly his narrowness, not to say downright intolerance, with regard 
 to the claims of the Catholic portion of his countrymen, as it helped to 
 prevent all chance of establishing his country's newly-won independence 
 on the broad basis of the iiniccrsal Irish nation, so it deserves the 
 severest condemnation. 
 
 Yet, with all these drawbacks, Flood must ever be esteemed one pi" 
 our greatest patriots. 
 
 But " the noblest Roman of them all," the grandest of Irish patriots, 
 was the illustrious Henry Grattan. No doubt the labors of the great 
 men who preceded him, of Flood especially, had swept aside many obsta- 
 cles that might have stood in the way of his and Ireland's triumphant 
 march to freedom; but making due allowance for the brave efforts of his 
 predecessors, he stands forth the foremost Irishman of his age, if not of 
 every age. He was refined, enlightened, generous, disinterested, ideal, 
 chivalrous, even daring to rashness; but the gift in which ho excelled 
 almost every man that ever lived was his bold, iicry, impassioned, sug- 
 gestive, rhythmical, imaginative, picturesque, entirely original and thor- 
 oughly Irish eloquence; he was the first great orator whose "thoughts 
 that breathe and words that burn" were really "racy of the Irish soil." 
 He came, at once the deliverer of his country and the type and truest 
 exponent of her genius. Was it any marvel that this man, whose broad 
 and sympathetic genius embraced within its advocacy the wrongs and 
 rights of his Catholic countrymen, should soar far aloft above the great 
 and brilliant Irishmen who in that day of our evanescent splendor sur- 
 rounded him? Was it any wonder that he was the magician who first 
 succeeded in evoking the soul of Ireland from her long slumber? or that 
 Henry Grattan was then, as he is now, acknowledged to be the true 
 guiding spirit and hero of the Irish revolution of 1782? 
 
 At the close of the American war the might of England for a time 
 seemed paralyzed. She was unable to supply Ireland with troops to 
 defend her shores. The Irish resolved to trust for security in their own 
 right arms.* Up sprang as if by magic the host of Irish Volunteers. 
 Catholics at first were only admitted to their ranks by connivance. 
 
 * Even in 1775 the Irish Commons hail sufficient spirit anil patriotism to re^.'Jw, by a vote of 
 106 against 68, to allow 4000 Hessian soldiers to be introduced into the garrisons of Ireland. 
 This, in fact, was the first patriotic step towards the revolution of 1782. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXFLL. 
 
 Subsequently, as liberal feelings expanded and true patriotism began to 
 wax stronger, no obstacles were thrown in the way of their enrollment. 
 The ranks of the patriot army swelled till it became more than 7o,( I 
 strong. The English, and the English government and their corrupt 
 minions in Ireland, looked on in abject and helpless dismay. The ''pow- 
 ers that be" were even obliged to have recourse to hypocrisy (an easy 
 task with English rulers), and fawn on and compliment the patriot 
 army. They saw T that all Ireland willed to be free ; that the Catholics, 
 though deprived of all share in the government of their country, still 
 longed for its independence ; and that the Protestants were begin- 
 ning to see that, however they might be tyrants over the oppressed 
 Catholics, they were not permitted to be the masters of Ireland, but 
 merely a degraded garrison holding their own country for the benefit of 
 England. 
 
 "Your ancestors," says the brilliant and eloquent Curran in one of 
 his speeches in the Irish Parliament, " thought themselves the oppress- 
 ors of their fellow-subjects, but they were only their jailers; and the 
 justice of Providence would have been frustrated if their own slavery 
 had not been the punishment of their vice and of their folly." 
 
 It was in 1778 that the Volunteer movement began. Early in 1780 
 free trade was wrung from the English government and legislature. 
 Lord North was once more compelled to yield to a people against his 
 will. Free trade, in the sense of the men of '82, simply meant the 
 freedom of Irish trade from all control on the part of England. In the 
 course of this struggle for free trade no orator distinguished himself 
 more on the patriot side than the celebrated Hussey Burgh. On the 
 29th of November, 1779, he said: "The usurped authority of a foreign 
 Parliament has kept up the most wicked laws that a jealous, monopo- 
 lizing, ungrateful spirit could devise to restrain the bounty of Provi- 
 dence, and enslave a nation whose inhabitants are recorded to be a 
 brave, loyal and generous people ; by the English code of laws, to answer 
 the most sordid views, they have been treated with a savage cruelty. 
 The words penalty, punishment and Ireland are synonymous. They are 
 marked in blood on the margin of their statutes; and, though time may 
 have softened tlie calamities of the nation, the baneful and destructive in- 
 fluences of those laws have borne her down to a state of Egyptian bond- 
 
 7 
 
9P> THE FIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELE. 
 
 age. The English have sown their laws like serpents' teeth, and they 
 have sprung up in armed men." 
 
 On the 19th of April, 1780, Grattan moved his famous declaration 
 of right. The scenes in Dublin on that day were magnificent. The 
 streets around the Senate-House were thronged with the disciplined 
 ranks of the Volunteers in varied uniforms — orange, scarlet and green — 
 with different facings. The dark mass of eager civilians contrasted with 
 the brilliant patriot soldiery. Gorgeous banners, with watchwords and 
 devices significant of freedom worked in gold or silver on their folds of 
 blue or green or white, floated proudly overhead. But inside the House 
 of Commons the scene was perhaps more interesting and impressive, and 
 not less brilliant, for in richest attire the loveliest ladies of the land sat 
 there to reward the patriot orators with their brightest smiles. The 
 ablest men of Ireland were present, too — some in the uniforms of Volun- 
 teer officers. But above and beyond all, the immortal Grattan stood 
 there to plead Ireland's cause against England with tongue of fire. 
 
 "Sir," he began, "I have entreated an attendance on this day that 
 you might in the most public manner deny the claim of the British Par- 
 liament to make law for Ireland, and with one voice lift up your hands 
 against it. . . . England now smarts under the lesson of the American 
 
 o o • — ... 
 
 war; the doctrine of Imperial legislation she feels to be pernicious, 
 . . . Her enemies are a host, pouring upon her from all quarters of 
 the earth ; her armies are dispersed ; the sea is not hers ; she has no 
 minister, no ally, no admiral, none in whom she long confides, and no 
 general whom she has not disgraced. The balance of her fate is in the 
 hands of Ireland. . . . Besides, there does of late a certain damp and 
 spurious snpineness overcast her arms and counsels, miraculous as that 
 vigor which has lately inspirited yours, for with you everything is the 
 reverse. Never was there a Parliament in Ireland so possessed of the 
 confidence of the people. You are the greatest political assembly now 
 sitting in the world : you are at the head of an immense army. Nor do 
 .we only possess an unconquerable force, but a certain unquenchable pub- 
 lic fire, which has touched all ranks of men like a visitation. . . . Let cor- 
 ruption tremble; let the enemy, foreign or domestic, tremble; but let the 
 friends of liberty rejoice at these means of safety and this hour of 
 redemption. Yes, there does exist an enlightened sense of right, a 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. <J7 
 
 young appetite for freedom, a solid strength and a rapid tire, which not 
 uulv put a declaration of right within your power, but put it out of your 
 power to decline one. Eighteen counties are at your bar. They stand 
 there with the compact of Henry, with the charter of John, and with ali 
 the passions of the people. 'Our lives are at your service, but our lib- 
 erties — we received them from God; we Mill not resign them to man.' 
 . . . You have done too much not to do more ; you have gone too far 
 not to go on; you have brought yourselves into that situation in which 
 you must silently abdicate the rights of your country or publicly restore 
 them. . . . Sir, we may hope to dazzle with illumination, and we may 
 sicken with addresses, but the public imagination will never rest, nor 
 will her heart be well at ease — never! So long as the Parliament of 
 England exercises or claims a legislation over this country, so long as 
 this shall be the case, that very free trade, otherwise a perpetual attach- 
 ment, will be the cause of new discontent; it will create a pride to feel 
 the indignity of bondage ; it will furnish a strength to bite your chain, 
 and the liberty withheld will poison the good communicated. 
 
 " The British minister mistakes the Irish character: had he intended 
 to make Ireland a slave, he should have kept her a beggar. There is no 
 middle policy ; win her heart by the restoration of her right, or cut off 
 the nation's right hand ; greatly emancipate or fundamentally destroy. 
 We may talk plausibly to England, but so long as she exercises a power 
 to bind this country, so long are the nations in a state of war. The 
 claims of the one go against the liberty of the other, and the sentiments 
 of the latter go to oppose those claims to the last drop of her blood." 
 
 After arguing the cause of Ireland at length and with great power, the 
 orator concludes his wondrous speech with this magnificent peroration : 
 " Do not suffer the arrogance of England to imagine a surviving hope in 
 the fears of Ireland ; do not send the people to their own resolves for 
 liberty, passing by the tribunals of justice and the high court of Parlia- 
 ment; neither imagine that by any formation of apology you can pal- 
 liate such a commission to your hearts, still less to your children, who 
 will sting you with their curses in your grave for having interposed be- 
 tween them and their Maker, robbing them of an immense occasion, and 
 losing an opportunity which you did not create and can never restore. 
 
 " Hereafter, when these things shall be history, your age of thraldom 
 
98 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 and poverty, your sudden resurrection, commercial redress and miracu- 
 lous armament, shall the historian stop at liberty, and observe that 
 here the principal men among us fell into mimic trances of gratitude — 
 they were awed by a weak ministry and bribed by an empty treasury ; 
 and when liberty was within their grasp, and the temple opened her 
 folding-doors, and the arms of the people clanged, and the zeal of the 
 nation urged and encouraged them on, that they fell down and were pros- 
 tituted at the threshold ? 
 
 " I might, as a constituent, come to your bar and demand my liberty. 
 I do call upon you, by the laws of the land and their violation, by the 
 instruction of eighteen counties, by the arms, inspiration and providence 
 of the present moment, tell us the rule by which we shall go — assea t 
 the law of Ireland — declare the liberty of the land. 
 
 " I will not be answered by a public lie in the shape of an amend- 
 ment, neither, speaking for the subject's freedom, am I to hear of faction. 
 I wish for nothing but to breathe in this our island, in common with my 
 fellow-subjects, the air of liberty; I have no ambition, unless it be the 
 ambition to break your chain and contemplate your glory. I never will 
 be satisfied so long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the 
 British chain clanking to his rags; he may be naked, he shall not be in 
 iron ; and I do see the time is at hand, the spirit is gone forth, the decla- 
 ration is planted, and though great men should apostatize, yet the cause 
 will live ; and though the public speaker should die, yet the immortal 
 tire shall outlast the organ which conveyed it, and the breath of liberty, 
 like the word of the holy man, will not die with the prophet, but survive 
 him. 
 
 " I shall move you ' That the king's most excellent Majesty and the 
 Lords and Commons of Ireland are the only power competent to make 
 laws to bind Ireland.' " 
 
 Although the Declaration of Eight was not on this occasion pressed 
 to a division, yet virtually its object was achieved. The eloquence of 
 G rattan fired the Volunteers and people with redoubled enthusiasm in 
 the cause of Irish independence; and even the government and their 
 creatures were forced to admit that the newly-born national spirit of Ire- 
 land was both strong and deeply rooted. The day after the debate the 
 vicerov, Lord Buckinghamshire, wrote a letter to Lord Hillsborough in 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. \)\) 
 
 which the following words occur: " It is with the utmost concern I must 
 acquaint your lordship that, although so many gentlemen expressed their 
 concern that the subject had been introduced, the sense of the House 
 against the obligation of any statutes of the Parliament of Great Britain 
 within this kingdom is represented to me to have been almost unanimous.'' 
 The English were at last beginning to fear lest the Irish should follow' 
 the example of the American colonists and seek separation ; they knew 
 that in the course of the war considerable sympathy had grown up 
 between Ireland and America, The first general Congress of the colonies 
 had even directed one of their addresses from Philadelphia, in the year 
 1774, to the " People of Ireland : We are desirous of the good opinion of 
 the virtuous and humane; we are peculiarly desirous of furnishing you 
 with the true state of our motives and objects, the better to enable you 
 to judge of our conduct with accuracy and determine the merits of the 
 controversy with impartiality and precision. Your Parliament had 
 done us no wrong; you had ever been friendly to the rights of mankind, 
 and we acknowledge with pleasure and gratitude that your nation has 
 produced patriots who have nobly distinguished themselves in the cause 
 of humanity and America." All this alarmed the English interest the 
 more when the volunteers and the people began to show such a deter- 
 mined spirit of patriotism in 1780. Indeed, long before this "the Cas- 
 tle " had been rendered uneasy, if not terrified, by the menacing demeanor 
 and hints of the volunteers: So early as the 4th of November, 1779, 
 the anniversary of the birth of William III., the volunteers had assem- 
 bled round his statue in College Green. The City of Dublin Volunteer 
 Artillery, commanded by the well-known James Napper Tandy, had 
 labels with the inscription "Free Trade or Speedy Revolution " hung 
 round the necks of their cannon. The duke of Leinster was there in 
 command of the volunteers of Dublin and its neighborhood. Other polit- 
 ical inscriptions decorated the sides of the pedestal, on which stood the 
 statue of the so-called "Deliverer." On one side of the pillar was in- 
 scribed "Relief to Ireland;" on another, " A Short Money-bill, a Free 
 
 Trade, or else ;" on a third, "The Volunteers — quinquaginta millia 
 
 functi, parati pro patria mori" ("fifty thousand united, prepared to die 
 for country ") ; and in front of the statue were two cannons, each having 
 this inscription : " Free Trade, or This." The people, excited to the high- 
 
100 THE LIFF. OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 est pitch of enthusiasm, surrounded the volunteers, and the roar of their 
 acclamations rivalled the thunder of the artillery. 
 
 In the middle of the year 1780 the hitherto independent troops and 
 companies of the Irish Volunteers were linked together in a closer organ- 
 ization than mere sympathy and a common object could give them. 
 They became a consolidated army with unity of command. James Caul- 
 field, earl of Charlemont, an amiable, cultured and patriotic, but at the 
 same time rather vacillating, nobleman, was appointed commander-in- 
 chief of all the patriot forces. It was unfortunate that this excellent 
 and honorable gentleman entertained narrow prejudices towards his 
 Catholic countrymen. However, for the present, all went well ; the earl 
 was not merely a dignified chief, but even a very active military organ- 
 izer. He held some imposing provincial reviews, and his arrival at Bel- 
 fast on the 11th of July to review the Ulster regiments, with Grattan 
 and Sir Annesley Stewart as his aids, was announced by a salute of 
 seven guns from the artillery, which Avas replied to by the ships in the 
 harbor. A splendid review followed. 
 
 It was on the memorable 15th of February, 1782, that the Dungannon 
 Convention took place. The church was thronged "to the door" with 
 the armed delegates of the patriot army, two hundred in number. The 
 scene was morally sublime. Never did men feel their responsibilities 
 more, or better fulfil their duties, than these soldier-delegates. The chair 
 was taken by Colonel Irwin, a man of high rank, brave and resolute, 
 but also cautious. Resolutions of the most determined and spirited 
 nature were passed ; of these I give the following : 
 
 " Whereas, it has been asserted that volunteers, as such, cannot with 
 propriety debate or publish their opinions on political subjects or on the 
 conduct of Parliament or political men; 
 
 "Resolved (unanimously), That a citizen by learning the use of arms 
 does not abandon any of his civil rights. 
 
 "Resolved (unanimously), That a claim of anybody of men, other than 
 the king, Lords and Commons of Ireland, to make laws to bind this king- 
 dom is unconstitutional, illegal and a grievance. 
 
 "Resolved (with one dissenting voice only), That the powers exercised 
 by the privy councils of both kingdoms, under or under color or pretence 
 of the law of Poynings, are unconstitutional, and a grievance. 
 
THE LIFE OF DAUIEL O'COXNELL. 101 
 
 "Resolved (unanimously), That the ports of this country are by right 
 open to all foreign countries not at war with the king, and that any bur- 
 den thereupon or obstruction thereto, save only by the Parliament of 
 Ireland, is unconstitutional, illegal and a grievance. 
 
 "Resolved (with one dissenting voice only), That a mutiny bill not 
 limited in point of duration from session to session is unconstitutional 
 and a grievance. 
 
 "Resolved (unanimously), That the independence of judges is equally 
 essential to the impartial administration of justice in Ireland as in Eng- 
 land, and that the refusal or delay of this right to Ireland makes a dis- 
 tinction where there should be no distinction, may excite jealousy where 
 perfect union should prevail, and is in itself unconstitutional and a 
 grievance. 
 
 "Resolved (with eleven dissenting voices only), That it is our decided 
 and unalterable determination to seek a redress of these grievances, and 
 we pledge ourselves to each other and to our country, as freeholders, fel- 
 low-citizens and men of honor, that we will, at every ensuing election, 
 support those only who have supported and will support us therein, and 
 that we will use all constitutional means to make such our pursuit of 
 redress speedy and effectual. 
 
 . . . "Resolved (with two dissenting voices to this and the following 
 resolution), That we hold the right of private judgment in matters of 
 religion to be equally sacred in others as ourselves. 
 
 "Resolved, therefore, That as men and as Irishmen, as Christians 
 and as Protestants, we rejoice in the relaxation of the penal laws against 
 our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, and that we conceive the measure 
 to be fraught with the happiest consequences to the union and prosperity 
 of the inhabitants of Ireland." 
 
 Such were the principal resolutions of the Dungannon Convention. 
 There were others which I do not deem it necessary to give in a mere 
 sketch of the events of '82. Indeed, most of the others either had 
 reference to some judicious arrangement for administering the affairs of 
 the volunteers till the next general meeting, or were mere formal votes 
 of thanks. There was one other somewhat important resolution, how- 
 ever, in which the members of the Convention unanimously pledged 
 themselves not to consume any wines of Portugal, and to prevent tho 
 
102 THE LIKE OK DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 use of said wines, "save and except the wines at present in this king- 
 dom, until such time as our exports shall be received in the kingdom of 
 Portugal as the manufactures of part of the British empire." 
 
 The Convention terminated by the adoption of an address to the 
 Patriot minorities in the Lords and Commons, concise and nervous to a 
 degree seldom found in documents of a similar class : 
 
 " My Lords and Gentlemen : We thank } r ou for your noble and spirited, 
 though hitherto ineffectual, efforts in defence of the great constitutional 
 and commercial rights of your country. Go on ! The almost unanimous 
 voice of the people is with you, and in a free country the voice of the 
 people must prevail. We know our duty to our sovereign, and are loyal. 
 We know our duty to ourselves, and are resolved to be free. We seek 
 for our rights, and no more than our rights; and in so just a pursuit we 
 should doubt the being of a Providence if we doubted of success. 
 
 " Signed by order, William Irvine, Chairman.'''' 
 
 Universal Ireland endorsed the resolutions of the Dungannon Con- 
 vention. The four provinces were unanimous. The various races com- 
 posing the Irish nation were unanimous. The various religious sects 
 were unanimous. I may here observe that it will be seen from the pro- 
 ceedings of all concerned that the movement of '82 was national rather 
 than democratic or social. 
 
 But the crisis was now approaching fast. Lord North and his cab- 
 inet most deservedly fell from power soon after the Dungannon Conven- 
 tion. After some delay all sections of the Whigs were united. The 
 marquis of Eockingham became prime minister; Lord Shelbourne and 
 the celebrated Charles James Fox were the new secretaries of state ; the 
 illustrious Irishman, Edmund Burke, was made paymaster of the forces ; 
 and the duke of Portland was appointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland, with 
 Colonel Fitzpatrick, a scion of a noble Irish house, as chief secretary. 
 
 And now it became the great effort of the crafty though not ungen- 
 erous English secretary, Fox, to gain time, to try and cajole the Irish 
 Patriot leaders to relax their efforts. Grattan was breaking down in 
 health after the incessant exertions of three years. If Fox could gain 
 over Charlemont and some of the others to agree to delay, he might find 
 some opportunity of baffling and finally defeating the great hopes of Ire- 
 land. He writes a honeyed, flattering letter of graceful compliments to 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 103 
 
 "his old and esteemed friend. Lord Charlemont." The earl and others 
 are seduced by Fox's graceful blandishments, but Grattan was not to be 
 deluded from his onward course by Belial himself. On his sick bed his 
 glowing spirit still kept him firm of purpose. Vehemently he cries to 
 Charlemont, " Xo time ! No time !" Charlemont is tired once more with 
 patriotic ardor. At the dictation of Grattan he writes to the English 
 minister "that they (the Irish leaders) could not delay; that they wore 
 pledged to the people; that they could not postpone the question, for 
 that it was public property.' 1 '' Edmund Burke some time before had said, 
 " Will nobody stop that madman, Grattan ?" But, in truth, on this occa- 
 sion Henry Grattan was "the saviour of his country." 
 
 The English ministry at last yielded with a sufficiently good grace. 
 The declaratory act of George I. was repealed. In Ireland, on the 
 16th of April, 1782 — the most glorious day in Ireland's history — 
 Grattan, in spite of sickness and suffering, was at his post to the sur- 
 prise of everyone. There and then, emaciated and careworn as his slen- 
 der frame appeared, his noble spirit shone brighter than ever. An Eng- 
 lish critic says that his speech on this great day was distinguished "for 
 its tire, sublimity and immense reach of thought." Charlemont used 
 often to say, "If ever spirit could be said to act independent of body, it 
 was on that occasion." All were electrified and lost in admiration 
 Grattan stated Ireland's grounds of complaint — the declaratory statute 
 of George I., the perpetual mutiny bill, and the unconstitutional powers 
 of the Privy Council. Thus his "resistless eloquence" began: 
 
 " I am now to address a free people. Ages have passed away, and t his 
 is the first moment in which you could be distinguished by that appellation. 
 
 " I have spoken on the subject of your liberty so often that I have 
 nothing to add, and have only to admire by what Heaven-directed steps 
 you have proceeded until the whole faculty of the nation is braced up to 
 the act of her own deliverance. 
 
 " I found Ireland on her knees; I watched over her with a pate nal 
 solicitude; I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and trom 
 arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift ! spirit of Molyneux ! your genius has 
 prevailed ! Ireland is now a nation ! In that new character I hail her, 
 and bowing to her august presence, I say, Esto perpetual 
 
 •- She is no longer a wretched colony, returning thanks to her gov 
 
ernor for bis rapine and to her king for his oppression. Nor is she now 
 a squabbling, fretful sectary, perplexing her little wits and firing her 
 furious statutes with bigotry, sophistry, disabilities and death, to trans- 
 mit to posterity insignificance and war. 
 
 "Look to the rest of Europe, and contemplate yourself, and be satis- 
 fied. Holland lives on the memory of past achievements ; Sweden has 
 lost liberty ; England has sullied her great name by an attempt to 
 enslave her colonies." The whole speech was worthy of the orator. 
 Shortly after, £100,000 were voted by Parliament to Grattan. He 
 accepted only £50,000. 
 
 I said that Fox yielded with a reasonably good grace. He would 
 rather see Ireland wholly separated from the crown of England than 
 kept in subjection by force. " Unwilling subjects," said he, " are 
 little better than enemies." Ireland triumphed completely at that 
 time. While the declaratory act of the 6th of George I. was repealed in 
 the English House, Poynings's laws were swept away in the Irish. The 
 lost appellate jurisdiction was restored to the Irish House of Lords. 
 The perpetual mutiny bill was repealed. Later, when Flood questioned 
 the sufficiency of " simple repeal" to secure the independence of the 
 Irish Parliament, an express "renunciatory act" Avas passed by the 
 English legislature. The Irish people also got a "habeas corpus act" 
 similar to that possessed by the English. In short, Ireland was now 
 beyond all dispute, technically at least, an independent nation. She 
 had no longer to submit to the humiliation of sending over the heads 
 of all her "bills" to England before passing them. Her prosperity 
 grew apace during the years of her independent existence, in spite of 
 the corrupt and defective constitution of her Parliament. The Bank of 
 Ireland and other banks were established, manufactures increased, com- 
 merce flourished. In short, Ireland in eighteen years attained a state 
 of well-being hardly paralleled " in the annals of any other nation in so 
 short a period." If, indeed, she had then thoroughly reformed her House 
 of Commons, sweeping away those rotten boroughs that returned such a 
 large proportion of her representatives, making the legislature necessa- 
 rily corrupt, and if she had also put an end to all the disabilities affect- 
 ing the Catholic body, thereby basing the constitution on the might and 
 affection of the entire nation, the English could never have destroyed 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. l()o 
 
 (lie independence of the Irish legislature by the accursed "Act of 
 Union." But it was not to be. The corrupt legislators, though capa- 
 ble of being aroused for a moment, so to speak, to a generous exalt- 
 ation of public virtue by the commanding spell of Grattan's genius, 
 soon relapsed into their old diseased and debased habits of sordid self- 
 seeking. Their ephemeral patriotism having once vanished, they stood 
 by the old rotten electoral system, and would no more reform the House 
 of Commons than reform themselves. And it was vain for the Catholics 
 to expect aught but refusal to their prayers for any really generous or 
 comprehensive measure of justice from a representative body so consti- 
 tuted and so lost to public spirit. The unfortunate quarrel between 
 Flood and Grattan. that, having its primary source in their difference of 
 opinion on the question of "simple repeal," on a subsequent occasion 
 broke out in the most virulent and unseemly exhibition of personal ani- 
 mosity and the fiercest invectives against each other — this unlucky 
 quarrel of the two greatest men of Ireland destroyed the last and onh 
 chance of securing parliamentary reform in those days, and as a conse- 
 quence put an end to any immediate hopes of Catholic emancipation. 
 The enemies of Ireland were quickly able once more to rally their broken 
 strength and resources, and soon the legislative independence of Ireland 
 was doomed. Things had come to such a pass that the union was only 
 a question of time. 
 
 When, on the 10th of November, 1783, the reform convention of one 
 hundred and sixty delegates of the volunteers of Ireland, met at the 
 Royal Exchange, Dublin, amid the acclamations and sanguine expectancy 
 of the people, all would have ended well if Grattan and Flood had worked 
 together; but Grattan stood aloof. Then Flood and Charlemont were 
 intolerant; they wished to give the monopoly of constitutional rights to 
 the half million of Protestants in Ireland, who were still to hold in sub- 
 jection the two millions of Catholics — or, in other words, the old Irish 
 race. Such an idea of Irish nationality wanted the germs of success. 
 The government were able to resist this convention successfully ; they 
 even ventured at last to speak slightingly, or even with downright censure, 
 of the volunteers ; still, when Yelverton, the attorney-general, denounced 
 the idea of their dictating the adoption of their reform bill to the Par- 
 liament, Flood defended them with vigorous eloquence. 
 
" I have not introduced the volunteers, but if they are aspersed 1 
 will defend their character against all the world. By whom were the 
 commerce and the constitution of this country recovered ? By the vol- 
 unteers. 
 
 "Why did not the right honorable gentleman make a declaration 
 against them when they lined our streets — when Parliament passed 
 through the ranks of those virtuous armed men to demand the rights of 
 an insulted nation ? Are they different men at this day, or is the right 
 honorable gentleman different? He was then one of their body — he is 
 now their accuser! He who saw the streets lined — who rejoiced — who 
 partook in their glory, is noiv their accuser ! Are they less wise, less 
 brave, less ardent in their country's cause, or has their admirable con- 
 duct made him their enemy? May they not say, We have not changed, 
 but xjou have changed? The right honorable gentleman cannot bear to 
 hear of the volunteers, but I will ask him, and I will have a starling 
 taught to hollo ix ins ears, Who gave you free trade? Who got yon 
 the free constitution? Who made you a nalwnf The volunteers! 
 
 "If they were the men you now describe them, why did you accept 
 of their service, why did you not then accuse them ? If they were so 
 dangerous, why did you pass through their ranks, with your Speaker at 
 your head, to demand a constitution? Why did you not then fear the ills 
 you now apprehend ?" 
 
 But, in spite of this bold and energetic defence of the volunteers, 
 Flood's reform bill was thrown out; rather, he was refused leave to bring 
 it in. Grattan, indeed, supported the motion, but apparently in a 
 half-hearted manner, alike unworthy of his manly truth and lofty genius. 
 "And yet," as Mr. Mitchel justly observes, "reform was the only secu- 
 rity for his own work; it would have rendered the constitution immortal, 
 and erected an enduring memorial of his glory." After the defeat of 
 Flood's motion, Yelverton thought lit to move, "That it has now become 
 indispensably necessary to declare that the House will maintain its just 
 rights and privileges against all encroachments whatsoever." This was a 
 challenge to the convention and the volunteers. Did they meet it boldly ? 
 
 They did not! In this brief sketch it is unnecessary to describe, in 
 detail, the collapse of the convention, and, I may add, of the voluntct r 
 movement itself. Intrigues of false or faint-hearted delegates began tc 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 107 
 
 undermine the stability of the convention ; cowardly counsels prevailed. 
 Grattan, if not their opponent (lie had voted in favor of the resolution to 
 support Parliament), was, at all events, not acting with thein. Lord 
 Charlemont was vacillating, timid, narrow and intolerant of Catholics; 
 above all, he feared measures having a tendency to democratic revolu- 
 tions. Flood probably saw the game was lost. Be that as it may, Char- 
 lemont was, after a few more feeble meetings of the convention, suffered 
 to repair one morning, at an earlier hour than usual, to the Rotunda and 
 declare the convention dissolved. " From this time," says Dr. Madden, 
 " the power of the volunteers was broken." Indignation, doubt, sus- 
 picion and alarm were now everywhere in their ranks. But it is un- 
 necessary to follow the steps of their subsequent melancholy decline ; 
 suffice it to say, they dragged out a feeble, lingering existence for a few- 
 years longer; quite insignificant as they dwindled away gradually — no 
 longer objects of terror to the weakest. For a while the strange earl- 
 bishop of Deny, to whom I made allusion in a former chapter, became 
 the idol of the more fiery spirits ; volunteers used to escort him in his 
 progresses, but his guidance or leadership proved of no avail to restore 
 their drooping vigor. On one occasion he finely said, " Tyranny is not 
 government, and allegiance is due only to protection." At last a day 
 comes — and that not a very remote one from the palmy days of their 
 great success — when this once-powerful host of freedom is heard of no 
 more among the things that exist. Some of the bravest spirits began to 
 dream of more perilous roads to freedom. It is melancholy to be obliged 
 to admit here that our two greatest men of that age, while they deserve, 
 and will enjoy immortal glory for the share they each had in securing 
 what of success and honor Ireland derived from the movement of '82. 
 are both, at the same time, more or less to blame both for the shortcom- 
 ings of that most promising revolution and for the final discomfiture and 
 dissolution of the gallant and faithful and patriotic army of the Irish 
 Volunteers. 
 
 While the Irish revolutionists of '82 in general, and the Parliament 
 they appealed to, wanted the breadth of mind and boldness of view to 
 carry through that great and just measure, Catholic emancipation, in its 
 totality, I should be unjust to the Irish legislatures of the end of the last 
 century if I forgot to give them credit for the few slight relaxations of 
 
108 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CGNNELL. 
 
 the penal laws which they passed in those years, and which, however 
 they might come short of the claims of justice and true wisdom, were 
 nevertheless by no means unwelcome to the Catholics. 
 
 In 1778, on the 25th of May — eleven days after a general assent had 
 been given in the English House of Commons to Sir George SavihVs 
 motion in favor of the Catholics of England — Mr. Gardiner moved, in the 
 Irish House, that leave be given to bring in heads of a bill for the relief 
 of the Catholics of Ireland ; the motion was carried. However, the bill 
 did not finally become law without encountering considerable opposition. 
 The bill was a paltry measure, and in all probability would never have 
 been assented 'to by the Crown were it not that France had recently 
 recognized America as an independent state. On taking the oath of 
 allegiance, Catholics were allowed to obtain or assign a lease for 999 
 years; popish priests, Jesuits and schoolmasters were publicly tolerated ; 
 children conforming to the Established religion could no longer claim, bv 
 law, right of succession or maintenance to the prejudice of parental 
 right. 
 
 The Catholics were not bribed away from the cause of their country 
 by these paltry, peddling, pitiful measures of relief; all through the vol- 
 unteer movement they Avere true to Ireland. Many of them, in spite 
 of penal laws, were thoughtful and highly-educated men. These felt 
 thoroughly that if Ireland should become really independent, it would 
 be impossible for the Irish legislature to deny them complete emancipa- 
 tion for any long period; like Grattan, they saw that if Ireland should 
 still try " to stand upon her smaller end/' she would not long be able to 
 stand against her old enemy and oppressor. The Catholics of Limerick, 
 denied the use of arms, subscribed eight hundred pounds to the treasury 
 of the volunteers. How unfortunate it was, at this crisis, that so many 
 of the bigoted or insolent Cromwellian and Williamite squires and their 
 narrow-minded, deluded followers still imagined that they could hold the 
 Catholics in a degraded condition of subserviency, and at the same time 
 keep Ireland independent of England ! 
 
 Towards the end of 1781, Mr. Luke Gardiner (afterwards Lord Mount- 
 joy) made another attempt to procure some installment of justice to the 
 Catholics. This gentleman had lived a good deal on the continent of 
 Europe; when he contrasted his own country with foreign lands, la; con- 
 
TII£ LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 109 
 
 fessed, with shame, that she was the most intolerant country, Protestant 
 or Catholic, in the world. When Mr. Gardiner introduced the subject of 
 further relief to the Catholics to the House in December, 1781, Grattan 
 at once gave a generous support in advance to some large measure which 
 should include Catholics and dissenters ; he said that " it should be the 
 business of Parliament to unite every denomination of Irishmen in 
 brotherly affection and regard to the constitution." This novel language, 
 the like of which probably had not been heard in an Irish legislature 
 since the fall of Limerick, startled the Cromwellians and other bigots of the 
 Ascendency. Sir Richard Johnson nervously protested " that he would 
 oppose any bill by which papists were permitted to bear arms." In this 
 debate Grattan uttered the following wise and weighty remarks : " It had 
 been well observed by a gentleman of first-rate understanding (a member 
 of the British Parliament) that Ireland could never prosper till its inhab- 
 itants were a people, and, though the assertion might seem strange, that 
 three millions of inhabitants in that island should not be called a people, 
 yet the truth was so, and so would continue till the wisdom of Parliament 
 should unite them by all the bonds of social affection. Then, and not till 
 then, the country might hope to prosper." Meanwhile, Gardiner's bill 
 was postponed from week to week, and was still pending when the Dun- 
 gannon Convention took place. 
 
 But on the loth of February, 1782, Mr. Gardiner formally introduced 
 this Catholic relief bill into the House of Commons. Of course the en- 
 venomed Fitzgibbon, afterwards earl of Clare and betrayer of his coun- 
 try's independence, did his best to defeat it. Finally, indeed, when lie 
 saw it was likely to pass, he made a merit of supporting it. Of course 
 Grattan was one of its most eager champions. It proposed to give Cath- 
 olics — first, the enjoyment of property; second, the free exercise of their 
 religion ; third, the rights of education ; fourth, of marriage ; and fifth, 
 of carrying arms. Flood, while he supported the bill, tried to draw a 
 distinction between the rights of property and the rights of power. He 
 seemed to object that if the bill passed there would be no restraint on 
 Catholics. Gardiner replied, "But was it not a restraint upon a man 
 that he could hold no trust nor office in the state ? That he could not be 
 a member of Parliament, a justice, or a grand-juror? That he could not 
 serve in the army of his country, have a place in the revenue, be an ad- 
 
.110 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 vocate or attorney, or even become a freeman of the smallest corpora- 
 tion ? If gentlemen labored under these incapacities themselves, would 
 the)' think them no restraint?" Some members were enlightened 
 enough to declare themselves in favor of wiping away the entire penal 
 code at once, and maintained that such an act of justice to the Catholic 
 body would be a benefit to the whole nation. Such were Sir Lucius 
 O'Brien, Mr. Forbes, Hussey Burgh, Yelverton, Mr. Dillon, Captain Hall 
 and Mr. Mossom. Fitzgibbon, Mason, Bushe and others resisted the 
 clause which permitted Catholics to go abroad for education. Grattan 
 fought for the whole bill. "When this country," said he, "had resolved 
 no longer to crouch beneath the burden of oppression that England had 
 laid upon her, when she armed in defence of her rights, and a high- 
 spirited people demanded a free trade, did the Roman Catholics desert 
 their fellow-countrymen? No, they were found among the foremost. 
 When it was afterwards thought necessary to assert a free constitution 
 the Roman Catholics displayed their public virtue. They did not en- 
 deavor to take advantage of your situation, they did not endeavor to 
 make terms for themselves, but they entered frankly and heartily into 
 the cause of the country, judging by their own virtue that they might 
 depend upon your generosity for their reward. . . . The question is now, 
 whether we shall grant Roman Catholics a power of enjoying estates, 
 or whether we shall be a Protestant settlement or an Irish nation ? 
 Whether we shall throw open the gates of the temple of liberty to all 
 our countrymen, or whether we shall confine them in bondage by penal 
 laws? So long as the penal code remains we never can be a great 
 nation. The penal code is the shell in which the Protestant power has 
 been hatched, and now it is become a bird, it must burst the shell 
 asunder or perish in it. ... I give my consent to it (the clause 
 under debate) because I would not keep two millions of my fellow-sub- 
 jects in a state of slavery, and because, as the mover of the declaration 
 of rights, I should be ashamed of giving freedom to but six hundred 
 thousand of my countrymen when I could extend it to two millions 
 more." This was Mr. Grattan's first enunciation of the grand and true 
 idea of a broad and comprehensive Irish nationality. 
 
 Mr. Gardiner's relief measures were contained in three separate bills. 
 Ir. order not to startle the Protestant Ascendency too much, they were 
 
^ 
 
 -■ A\ ■ ... 
 
THE LTFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. J 11 
 
 very moderate. The first gave Catholics the power of taking and hold- 
 ing, just like Protestants, any lands and hereditaments except advow- 
 .-.i his, manors and boroughs returning members to Parliament. It removed 
 various penalties from such of the registered clergy as had taken the 
 oath. In order to prevent the succession of other regular clergy from 
 abroad, its operation was confined to the regular clergy then within the 
 kingdom. Any Catholic clergyman officiating in a church or chapel 
 with a steeple or bell forfeited the benefit of the act. Finally, it re- 
 pealed several of the most obnoxious parts of the statutes of Anne and 
 George I. and George IT. 
 
 The second bill was " An act to allow persons professing the popish 
 religion to teach schools, and for regulating the education of papists," etc. 
 It repealed portions of the acts of William III. and Anne inflicting on 
 any Catholic teaching school or privately instructing youth the same 
 pains, penalties and forfeitures that any popish regular clergyman was 
 liable to — viz., transportation, and, in case of return, death. Those, 
 however, who should not have taken the oath of allegiance, who should 
 presume to receive a Protestant pupil, or who should become ushers or 
 assistants under Protestant schoolmasters, were excepted from its ben- 
 efits. This act also enabled Catholics, except ecclesiastics, to be guard- 
 ians to their own or any other popish child. These two bills passed, and 
 received the royal assent. 
 
 The third bill was thrown out by a majority of eight. It had been 
 designed to enable Protestants to intermarry with Catholics. 
 
 r il:c illustrious Edmund Burke, in a letter to a noble lord, thus ex- 
 presses his large-souled scorn of the smallness of these pitiful install- 
 ments of justice to the much-injured, much-enduring Catholic body: 
 "To look at the bill in the abstract, it is neither more nor less than a 
 renewed act of universal, unmitigated, indispensable, exceptionless dis- 
 qualification. One would imagine that a bill inflicting such a multitude 
 of incapacities had followed on the heels of a conquest made by a very 
 fierce enemy under the impression of recent animosity and resentment. 
 No man on reading that bill could imagine that he was reading an act 
 of amnesty and indulgence. This I say on memory. It recites the 
 oath, and that Catholics ought to be considered as good and loyal sub- 
 jects to His Majesty, his crown and government. Then follows a uni- 
 
112 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 versa! exclusion of those good and loyal subjects from every — even the 
 lowest — office of trust and profit, or from any vote at an election ; from 
 any privilege in a town corporate ; from being even a freeman in such, 
 corporations; from serving on grand-juries; from a vote at a vestry; 
 from having a gun in his house ; from being a barrister, attorney, soli- 
 citor, or etc., etc., etc. 
 
 " This has surely more the air of a table of proscriptions than an act 
 of grace. What must we suppose the laws concerning those good sub- 
 jects to have been of which this is a relaxation ? When a very great 
 portion of the labor of individuals goes to the state, and is by the state 
 again refunded to individuals through the medium of offices, and in this 
 circuitous progress from the public to the private fund indemnities the 
 families from whom it is taken, an equitable balance between the gov- 
 ernment and the subject is established. But if a great body of the peo- 
 ple who contribute to this state lottery are excluded from all the prizes, 
 the stopping the circulation with regard to them must be a most cruel 
 hardship, amounting in effect to being double and treble taxed, and will 
 be felt as such to the very quick by all the families, high and low, of 
 those hundreds of thousands who are denied their chance in the returned 
 fruits of their own industry. This is the thing meant by those who look 
 on the public revenue only as a spoil, and will naturally wish to have as 
 few as possible concerned in the division of the booty. If a state should 
 be so unhappy as to think it cannot subsist without such a barbarous 
 proscription, the persons so proscribed ought to be indemnified by the 
 remission of a large part of their taxes, by an immunity from the offices 
 of public burden, and by an exemption from being pressed into any mil- 
 itary or naval service. Why are Catholics excluded from the law ? Do 
 not they expend money in their suits? Why may not they indemnify 
 themselves by profiting in the persons of some for the losses incurred by 
 others ? Why may they not have persons of confidence whom they may, 
 if they please, employ in the agency of their affairs? The exclusion 
 from the law, from grand-juries, from sheriffships, under-sheriffships, as 
 well as freedom in any corporation, may subject them to dreadful hard- 
 ships, as it may exclude them wholly from all that is beneficial and ex- 
 pose them to all that is mischievous in a trial by jury." 
 
 Such was the very small length to which the toleration and liberality 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 113 
 
 of that age was prepared to go. The Burkes and Grattans and Hussey 
 Burghs were the exceptions to the rule. It was reserved for glorious and 
 sympathetic France, a few years later, to give the grand example (if 
 absolute equality in the eye of the law to people professing all forms of 
 religious worship. 
 
 This narrowness of even the patriot party on questions of religious 
 liberty was illustrated in a stronger and more fatal manner by the con- 
 duct of the Dublin Convention in 1788. If the members of that body 
 really meant to reform the Parliament and to secure and consolidate the 
 recently-gained independence of their country, they should, above all 
 things, have made it one of their main objects to struggle for the emanci- 
 pation of the Catholics, so that the interests and feelings and sympathies 
 of the entire nation might be enlisted on the side of Irish independence 
 against all possible intrigues and attempts to bring about a legislative 
 union with Great Britain ; but they showed worse than coldness to the 
 Catholic cause. The very resolution by which they reaffirmed the funda- 
 mental principle of the Dungaiinon Convention, that the right of free 
 discussion on political matters was not forfeited by citizens because they 
 assumed arms and entered military organizations, was worded in a nar- 
 row, exclusive spirit, certain to prove equally pernicious to themselves 
 and to the best interests of their country : "Resolved, That the Protestant 
 inhabitants of this country are required by the statute law to carry arms 
 and lo learn the use of them," etc. Even Flood's plan of reform provided 
 nothing in the shape of a boon for the Catholics. This miserable intolerance 
 on the part of so large a proportion of the Protestant patriots of the time 
 very naturally had the fatal effect of causing many of the Catholic body, 
 thus insulted and rudely repelled by their dominant countrymen, to 
 become gradually reconciled with the ruinous notion of union with Eng- 
 land. They were led to imagine that emancipation would be more easily 
 conceded to them by the English legislature than by their own. A fool- 
 ish and fatal idea ! for, in spite of all its bigotry, the Irish Parliament was 
 slowly but surely knocking off link after link of their fetters, and would 
 assuredly, had it remained in existence, have been obliged to emancipate 
 them completely long before 1829. 
 
 Unluckily, the folly and meanness of some of the Catholic body played 
 into the hands of the bigots of the convention.' The friends of the Cath* 
 
114 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 olics in the convention must, indeed, have felt embarrassed, if not dis- 
 comfited, when, a few days after the assembly of that body, Sir Boyle 
 Roche, renowned for his amazing Irish bulls, a few specimens of which 
 make some of the pages of Barrington's personal sketches so amusing. 
 appeared on the floor, and got leave, though not a member of the con- 
 vention, to make a statement on the part of the earl of Kenmare, a Cath- 
 olic nobleman: "That noble lord," said Sir Boyle, "and others of his 
 creed, disavowed any wish of being concerned in the business of elections, 
 and, fully sensible of the favors already bestowed upon them by Parlia- 
 ment, felt but one desire, to enjoy them in peace, without seeking in the 
 present distracted state of affairs to raise jealousies and further embar- 
 rass the nation by asking for more." 
 
 Fortunately for the Catholics and the honor of human nature, other 
 members of the persecuted body were very different in temper and cast 
 of mind from the coroneted slave of Kenmare. His abject declaration 
 (which, in justice, I should observe is called by the historian Plowdeii 
 "a pretended letter of Lord Kenmare") excited intense disgust and 
 indignation amongst the Catholics of Dublin. Later, on the very day of 
 Sir Boyle's strange announcement of Kenmare's lack of all manhood, 
 that lordly demagogue or popular leader, the earl of Bristol and bishop 
 of Deny, who seems to have always been a really sincere and resolute 
 friend to the oppressed Catholics of Ireland, rose in his place to submit 
 to the convention "a paper of consequence, which referred to a class of 
 men who were deserving of every privilege in common with their country- 
 men." The paper, on the earl-bishop's motion, was read ; it was to this 
 effect: " Nov. 11th, 1783. At a meeting of the General Committee of the 
 Roman Catholics of Ireland, Sir Patrick Bellew, Bart., in the chair, it 
 was unanimously Resolved, That the message relating to us, delivered 
 this morning to the National Convention, was totally unknown to and 
 unauthorized by us. That we do not so widely differ from the rest 
 of mankind as by our own act to prevent the removal of our shackles. 
 That we shall receive with gratitude every indulgence that may be 
 extended to us by the legislature, and are thankful to our benevolent 
 countrymen for their generous efforts on our behalf. Resolve;}, That 
 Sir P. Bellew be requested to present the foregoing resolutions to the 
 earl of Bristol as the act of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and entreat 
 
THE LIFE OK DANIEL OCONXELl,. 115 
 
 that his lordship will be pleased to communicate them to the National 
 
 Convention." 
 
 Next rear, 1784, a more liberal spirit was manifested by some of the 
 Protestant patriots. Many of these were so disgusted at the continual 
 rejection on the part of the legislature of all projects of reform that they 
 began to dream of revolutionary plans. A national congress was pro- 
 posed. The sheriffs of Dublin called a preparatory meeting, which" took 
 place on the 7th of July. At this meeting parliamentary corruption was 
 denounced and strong desires for the emancipation of the Catholics were 
 expressed. The following passages are from the resolutions: " We call 
 upon you, therefore, and thus conjure you, that in this important work 
 you join with us as fellow-subjects, countrymen and friends, as men em- 
 barked in the general cause to remove a general calamity; and for this 
 we propose that live persons be elected from each county, city and great 
 town in tins kingdom to meet in national congress at some convenient 
 plaee in this city on Monday, the 25th day of October next, there to 
 deliberate, digest and determine on such measures as may seem to them 
 most conducive to re-establish the constitution on a pure and permanent 
 basis, and secure to the inhabitants of this kingdom peace, liberty and 
 safety. 
 
 " And while we thus contend, as far as in us lies, for our constitu- 
 tional rights and privileges, we recommend to your consideration the 
 state of our suffering fellow-subjects, the Roman Catholics of this king- 
 dom, whose emancipation from the restraints under which they still labor 
 we consider not only as equitable, but essentially conducive to the gen- 
 eral union and prosperity of the kingdom." 
 
 Similar sentiments are expressed in their address to the king: "We 
 farther entreat Your Majesty's permission to condemn that remnant of 
 the penal code of laws which still oppresses our Roman Catholic fellow- 
 subjects — laws which tend to prohibit education and liberality, restrain 
 certain privileges and proscribe industry, love of liberty and patriotism." 
 
 This liberality, melancholy to relate, shocked and frightened away 
 the leaders of the old volunteers. The narrow-souled Charlemont, in 
 reply to an address of the Ulster Volunteers somewhat similar in lib- 
 erality of sentiment with respect to the Catholics, and also strongly 
 expressive of abhorrence of aristocratic tyranny, lamented that he found 
 
J 16 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O' COS K ELL. 
 
 himself differing from them in opinion for the first time. He had no 
 illiberal prejudice against the Catholics — not he. Oh no! He had all 
 sorls of good-will to such respectable folks; but still he entreated the 
 Protestants not to clog their efforts for securing Ireland's independence 
 and prosperity by any efforts for Catholic emancipation. This is the 
 meaning of what lie said in somewhat different and balmier phraseology. 
 
 Tliis was a severe blow both to the Catholic cause and that of reform. 
 Charlemont was an object of veneration. Those who resembled himself 
 —viz., the timid and vacillating — were swayed by his opinion. The 
 bigots, too, hailed it with joy. In the month of October the bigoted 
 corporation of Dublin voted him their thanks for his illiberal and nar- 
 row-minded conduct. 
 
 The attorney-general proceeded, by attachment from the court of 
 King's Bench, against Mr. Riley, the high-sheriff of Dublin county, for 
 presiding over an assemblv of freeholders who met on the 19th of An- 
 gust, 1781, to choose and instruct delegates for the congress. The 
 assembly and their resolutions, signed by Mr. Riley, were declared illegal. 
 Mr. Riley was sentenced to a week's imprisonment and a fine of five merks 
 — £3 6s. 8d. Attachments were granted against magistrates who called 
 meetings and signed resolutions of freeholders in Leitrim and Roscom- 
 mon. The sheriffs of the city of Dublin were intimidated. Printers 
 and publishers of newspapers suffered too. Nevertheless, the National 
 Congress met on the 25th of October ; but it was badly attended, and 
 finally nothing came of it. The tyrannical action of the government 
 caused some clamor, but there arose no opposition to it worth speaking 
 of. The government profited by the divisions that sprang up in the 
 ranks of the reformers on the question of admitting Catholics to exer- 
 cise the right of the franchise. In the year before (1783), in the short 
 viceroyalty of Lord Temple, other tactics had been employed against 
 reform. "To draw away the public mind from speculative questions," 
 to borrow the words of Mr. Plowden, letters-patent were issued creating 
 the order of "The Knights of St. Patrick." The Knights were installed 
 with solemn pomp on St. Patrick's clay that year. Probably the gor- 
 geous tom-foolerv had little effect on the minds of the people beyond 
 affording them a passing amusement somewhat livelier and more novel 
 than that of a lord-mayor's show ! 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONKELL. 117 
 
 I have now given all the relaxations of the penal laws that tools 
 place during O'Connell's childhood. Only one more important relaxation 
 took placs betwesn Gardiner's bill and the act of '29. It was necessary 
 to dwell a little on these earlier concessions, that we may the better esti- 
 mate the extent of the Catholic grievances that remained unredressed till 
 '29, and the consequent value of the great measure wrung from England 
 in that year, chiefly by the abilities and energy of O'Connell. 
 
 I may as well append to the sketch of the Irish "revolution of '82," 
 as Edmund Burke called it, contained in this chapter, the first half of 
 the first article I wrote for " The Irish People." It contains some reflec- 
 tions on the consequences of the manner in which this revolution was 
 achieved, which, as I think them just, I wish to place before the reader. 
 It may be as well to present them now in the same form in which I gave 
 them in November, '63, as to endeavor to rearrange or rewrite them. I 
 am pleased, though not greatly surprised, to find that Mr. Mitchcl, in 
 treating more recently of the same events, has taken views of them on 
 the whole similar to mine. It may not be impertinent in me also to 
 notice the fact that this article, and, if I remember rightly, this very 
 portion of it, was, along with other writings, used against me in the in- 
 dictment for "treason-felony" which, after five days' trial, consigned me 
 to penal servitude on the 1st of December, I860. The article is headed 
 " '82 and '29," and begins thus : 
 
 "Since the twelfth century England has been the unsleeping enemy 
 of Ireland. 
 
 "Generally her tyranny has shown itself in the form of undisguised 
 oppression. 
 
 "Sometimes, however, she has affected to conciliate and make great 
 concessions to Ireland. 
 
 "Whenever this has been the case the apparent concession has 
 invariably had the effect of extending her unjust authority. England's 
 open and avowed hostility has never proved so effectual a method of 
 rivetting on Ireland the fetters of alien rule as her occasional insidious 
 adoption of the fatal seeming of friendship. 
 
 " There have been two very remarkable illustrations of this within 
 the last hundred years. The first was the acknowledgment of the hide- 
 
IIS THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 pendence of the Irish Parliament in 1782; the second was the conces- 
 sion of Catholic emancipation in 1829. 
 
 ."These concessions have generally been looked upon as unalloyed 
 benefits. Yet we assert that, owing to the manner in which they were 
 gained, they have really proved curses rather than blessings to our 
 country. 
 
 " In '82 Ireland was on the point of achieving a glorious revolution. 
 Had England not conceded at once, an appeal to arms would have been 
 made by the Irish people, whose military might and enthusiasm at that 
 moment were well-nigh irresistible ; while, on the other hand, the martial 
 ardor and available resources of England had sunk to a low ebb. That, 
 iu the event of a war-struggle, Ireland would have triumphed no one can 
 reasonably doubt. But victory in the held would have made her achieve- 
 ment of independence real and complete, not an abortive sham. It 
 would have precipitated separation. It would have glorified the Irish 
 people. And, doing so, it would have enabled the Catholics, with arms 
 in their hands, to assert their right to religious liberty, and the whole 
 democracy to demand and to win that preponderance of political ptwer 
 to which they were entitled. Finally, it would have given Ireland an 
 army and a navy — in a word, all the appliances and securities of real 
 independence. 
 
 " But no war-struggle took place. England struck at once and con- 
 ceded. Thus the parliamentary independence of '82 was won, if not 
 altogether ingloriously, at least peacefully; and the consequence was, it 
 turned out, not independence, but a mockery and phantom. True national 
 independence never Avas and never will be anywhere achieved save by 
 the sword. The revolution of '82 was, after all, a plausible, solemn, 
 deluding humbug — a clever manoeuvre of the English government to 
 transform a national movement of glorious promise into a mere imposing- 
 piece of pageantry. Accordingly, while a few orators distinguished them- 
 selves, the people at large were not ennobled by sacrifices and heroic 
 deaths. No permanent and potent military and naval organization, trained 
 and tested by actual service, or really adequate to the task of guarding 
 Ireland's independence, arose. The volunteer organization, as might be 
 expected, dwindled and finally fell to pieces. Grattan, charmed with 
 English concession, canted about loyalty and resisted Flood's more 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 119 
 
 daring tendencies towards separation. The people haying done noth- 
 ing so grand as to make their claims irresistible, Grattan could dare 
 despise democracy and the Reform Convention; and Flood, though 
 championing popular reform, leaning even towards separation, could in- 
 consistently spurn at the idea of allowing the Catholics to be anything 
 save hewers of wood and drawers of water. Had the people been 
 ennobled by a war of independence, these things could not have been so. 
 
 " England's concession, then, was a master-stroke of policy. The 
 whole system that resulted from the arrangement of '82 was anomalous 
 and absurd, and could by no possibility endure. According to the the- 
 ory of '82, here were two countries with perfectly independent legisla- 
 tures, yet united by that absurdity, 'the golden link of the crown;' 
 both legislatures, mark, having the power to impeach the king's min- 
 isters. Thus, the king's Irish ministers might, in obedience to the pres- 
 sure of the Irish legislature, have felt it necessary to advise him to declare 
 war, as king of Ireland, against any given country, while at the same 
 time his English ministers might have advised him, as king of England, 
 t'» remain at peace, the interests of England, in the supposed case, re- 
 quiring and the feelings of the English legislature being in favor of 
 peace. What charming ' confusion worse confounded ' should in such 
 an event have arisen ! In fact, considering the principle of ministerial 
 responsibility, under the '82 regime circumstances might have arisen in 
 which George III., as king of Ireland, would have been called on to de- 
 clare war on himself as king of England. Such a system could not last. 
 The absurdity of ' the golden link ' theory was in effect tested three 
 times between '82 and 1800. The act of union was the natural result 
 of '82. Ireland lost her golden opportunity the day on which English 
 concession prevented her achievement of real independence by war." 
 
 The second half of this article gives a second instance illustrative 
 of the insidious nature of England's concessions to Ireland fully as 
 striking as that of '82. At a later stage of this biography I shall have 
 occasion to quote it. 
 
 It may be interesting now to hear O'Connell's opinion of his illus- 
 trious predecessor, Henry Grattan, the hero of the revolution of '82. 
 Mr. Daunt, on one occasion, asked him who was our greatest Irishman. 
 O'Ccnnell at once replied, "JYcxt to myself, I think old Harry Grattan 
 
120 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 was. But lie was decidedly wrong in his controversy with Flood about 
 the simple repeal." 
 
 On another occasion he said, "If Flood had succeeded, it is my firm 
 conviction that the union could never have been passed. If the Irish 
 popular party in 1800 had possessed the strong grounds of an express 
 renunciation by the British legislature of all right to legislate for Ire- 
 land, they would have been able to make a triumphant stand against ail 
 the arts of corruption and all the sanguinary tyranny of the union gov- 
 ernment." 
 
 When Mr. O'Connell spoke thus he forgot for a moment that the 
 very renunciatory act for which Flood contended so strenuously Avas in 
 point of fact passed by the Parliament of Great Britain in the year 
 1783. 
 
 I am inclined to agree, in the main, with the opinions expressed by 
 the late Daniel Owen Madden, in his short but clever life of Henry 
 G-rattan, as to the merits of this celebrated and unfortunate controversy 
 between Flood and Grattan on the subject of "Simple Eepeal." He 
 says : " It is an easy thing now to dispose of the idle question of Simple 
 Repeal. In truth, there was nothing whatever deserving of attention in 
 the point raised by Mr. Flood. The security for the continuance of Irish 
 freedom did not depend upon an English act of Parliament. It was by 
 Irish will, and not at English pleasure, that the new constitution was 
 to be supported. The transaction between the countries was of a high 
 political nature, and it was to be judged by political reason ard by 
 statesmanlike computation, and not by the petty technicalities, of the 
 courts of law. The revolution of 1782, as carried by Ireland and 
 assented to by England (in repealing the 6th George I.), was a political 
 compact — proposed by one country and acknoAvledged by the other in 
 the face of Europe ; it was not (as Mr. Flood and his partisans construed 
 the transaction) of the nature of municipal right, to be enforced or 
 annulled by mere judicial exposition. 
 
 " The question of Simple Repeal was twofold in its nature — legal and 
 political. Mr. Flood contended, in his own words, ' that the simple repeal 
 df a declaratory law (unless it contains a renunciation of the principle) 
 is only a repeal of the declaration, and not of the legal principle ' (June 
 11, 1782). No such position as Mr. Flood here asserted could be 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 12] 
 
 maintained by sane lawyers unless (as was the case in 1782) several of 
 them had their minds inflamed by spleen or excited by fanaticism. If a 
 legal principle survives the repeal of a declaratory law, where does it 
 exist ? How is it operative ? In what case can it be applied ? It may 
 have a metaphysical existence in the head of an abstract speculator or 
 a fanciful politician, but where does it exist in tangible shape? A legal 
 principle is cognizable, but when the law containing a principle is erased 
 from the statute-book, where is the principle to be sought for? In truth, 
 if Mr. Flood's mode of construing the effects of a repeal of a statute were 
 correct, a most fatal analogy would be established for those high-prerog- 
 ative lawyers who favor constructive doctrines of all crown law. Several 
 of the worst laws of the Stuart times were annulled by simple repeal ; 
 if the views put forward by Flood were right, these principles still sur- 
 vive. Innumerable laws were swept from the statute-book by Eomilly 
 and Mackintosh, but do the principles of those enactments remain ? 
 
 "Again, treating Mr. Flood's question according to the principles of 
 [risk constitutional law (as it existed in June, 1782), his views were 
 ridiculous and inconsistent. What was the principle of the revolution 
 of 1782 other than that Ireland was a distinct kingdom from England 
 with an imperial crown, but a Parliament of its own, the sole legislature 
 thereof? These are the words of the Declaration of Rights unanimously 
 assented to in the Irish House of Commons. The revolution asserted the 
 supremacy of the Irish Parliament in Ireland — ' the King, Lords and 
 Commons of Ireland should alone make laws for Ireland.' How truly 
 absurd, then, to have sought Irish liberty by a renunciatory act of the 
 English Parliament ! Seeking for an English law on such a subject was 
 calling in question the right and power of Ireland to legislate for herself 
 As Mr. Grattan aptly said, 'We went to the sovereign with and not for a 
 charter.' 
 
 "As a question of legal security and British constitutional law, the 
 absurdity of Mr. Flood's views were admirably exposed by Grattan : 
 ' What is the authority of the Parliament of England ? Omnipotence 
 within the realm of England. It makes law — it unmakes law — it de- 
 clares law ; and whatever it enacts the king must execute, the judges 
 declare, and the subjects obey. Against whom have you sought secu- 
 rity? Against the Parliament of England. What security does the 
 
122 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 member propose ? The statute law of England, which does not bind the 
 Parliament of England ; the law against the lawmaker ; a security which 
 ends where your danger begins ; which is essentially defective in the 
 very point where you want to be secured ; which is the very reverse of a 
 specific for your disorder. With peculiar sagacity he rejects the faith of 
 nations, which alone can bind the power of Parliament, and he calls for 
 a law which is the creature of Parliament to restrain it, he calls for 
 English statutes, which secure you, I allow, against the individual, 
 the corporation and the king, and everything except the British Par- 
 liament.' " 
 
 In truth, all the renunciatory acts in the world could not have availed 
 to save Ireland from the union in 1800. Corruption and violence would 
 have laughed at and trampled on any protection, which any amount of 
 English parliamentary guarantees could at that time pretend to lend the 
 cause of Irish legislative independence. 
 
 Whatever different opinions may be formed concerning the merits of 
 this controversy between Grattan and Flood, all must agree that the 
 quarrel between those two great Irishmen was not merely most disas- 
 trous to the national welfare, but even disgraceful to themselves. The 
 famous General Burgoyne thus describes the scene on the memorable 
 night when they assailed each other in the House of Commons with the 
 iiercest invectives, replete, indeed, with the highest proofs of talent, but 
 disfigured with unscrupulous and shameful personalities : " Can you be- 
 lieve" (he is writing to Charles James Fox) "that the House heard this 
 discussion for two hours without interfering? On the contrary, every 
 one seemed to rejoice as his favorite gladiator gave or parried a stroke, 
 and when the Chair at last interfered they were suffered by an inatten- 
 tion, which seemed on purpose, to withdraw themselves." The arrest 
 of Flood prevented a duel. While the " affair of honor" seemed likely 
 to occur, Grattan made a will bequeathing his grant of £50,000 to the 
 people of Ireland, charging it, however, with a life-annuity to his recent- 
 ly-wedded wife, Henrietta Fitzgerald, a beautiful lady, alike worthy of 
 her noble husband and of the illustrious Geraldine stock from which she 
 sprang. 
 
 Young as O'Connell was when the revolution of '82 occurred, he 
 must have watched the incidents of that year and the years inimedi- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 123 
 
 ately succeeding with the liveliest interest. His young ears must have 
 drunk in with avidity the eager conversation of his elders on the 
 momentous events and questions of those stirring times. It is not easy 
 now to calculate to what extent the development of his mind was influ- 
 enced and his future career decided by the men and deeds of '82. I 
 have been led to dwell on the occurrences of this revolution at consider- 
 ably greater length than I originally intended, chiefly owing to two con- 
 siderations — first, in the closing and perhaps the most remarkable and 
 even glorious portion of O'Connell's career all his energies were directed 
 to achieving for his country the restoration of this very constitution of '82. 
 One of the steps he took in that direction Avas the formation of an '82 
 club, the members of which were attired in a showy and semi-military 
 green uniform. Second, the events of '82 ought to be peculiarly inte- 
 resting to Irishmen at the present hour, when the " home-rule " move- 
 ment necessarily opens up all the questions of international arrangement 
 between Great Britain and Ireland that were vexed in the days of our 
 grandfathers and our great-grandfathers. 
 
 I shall end this chapter with a conversation of O'Connell's about 
 Henry Grattan. Speaking to Mr. Daunt, he contrasted his style of ora- 
 tory with that of the younger William Pitt. He described Pitt as hav- 
 ing a grand majestic march of language and a full, melodious voice. He 
 said that Grattan's eloquence was full of tire, wanting, however, the 
 melody and dignity of Pitt's. Still, nobody quoted the sayings of Pitt, 
 while Grattan was always uttering sentences that everybody quoted and 
 held in memory. "I did not," said O'Connell, "hear Grattan make any 
 of his famous speeches, but I have heard him in public. He had great 
 power and great oddity — he almost swept the ground with his odd 
 action." 
 
 Mr. Daunt inquired, "Was he in private society an entertaining 
 man?" 
 
 "Very much so. His conversation contained much humor of a dry, 
 antithetical kind, and he never relaxed a muscle whilst his hearers were 
 convulsed with laughter. He abounded with anecdotes of the men with 
 whom he politically acted, and told them very well. I met him at din- 
 ner at the house of an uncle of O'Connor Don, and the conversation 
 turned on Lord Kingsborough, grandfather to the present earl of Kings- 
 
124 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 ton, a very strange being, who married at sixteen a cousin of his own 
 aged fifteen — used to dress like a Roundhead of Cromwell's time, kept 
 his hair close shorn, and wore a plain coat without a collar. Grattan 
 said of this oddity, ' He was the strangest compound of incongruities I 
 ever knew ; he combined the greatest personal independence with the 
 most crouching political servility to ministers ; he was the most religious 
 man and the most profligate ; he systematically read every day a portion 
 of the Bible, and marked his place in the sacred volume with an obscene 
 ballad.' 
 
 " I dare say," continued O'Connell, " that Grattan told O'Connor to 
 ask me to dinner. I was then beginning to be talked of, and people 
 like to see a young person who acquires notoriety." * 
 
 * I am indebted for the materials of the above chapter chiefly to Mitchel's "Continuation of 
 McGeoghegan ;" Plowden's "History of Ireland;" "Works of Edmund Burke;" " Grattan's 
 Speeches;" Daniel Owen Madden's " Life of Grattan;" "Grattan's Life," by his son; Warden Flood's 
 "Life of Flood;" Hardy's "Life of Charlemont;" McNevin's "History of the Volunteers;" " Tito 
 Irish People;" O'Neill Daunt's "Personal Recollections of O'Connell," etc. 
 
 "Tr-"-.- -■• : .' : • : ' — *- ■ i-i r •-- ■ "■ — ■■'- -~ 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Youth and early manhood of O'Connell — O'Connell at Louvain, St. Omer's and Dor ay 
 — In danger during the French Revolution — Anecdote of John and Henry Sheared 
 and the execution of Louis XVI. — O'Connell and the crowns of France and Bel- 
 gium — Dan and the banker — Jeffreys of Blarney Castle — Further relaxations 
 of the penal laws — Catholics admitted to the bar — O'Connell a law-student in 
 London — Anecdotes of George IV., Mrs. Fitzherbert and Charles James Fox — 
 O'Connell sees George III. in danger — Slow travelling of the last century — Pitt 
 and Fox as orators — Drinking habits of the last century resisted by O'Connell 
 — Cousin Kane, an odd character — O'Connell in the yeomanry — He attends a 
 political meeting in '97— Sees Lord Edward Fitzgerald — O'Connell gets a fever 
 from sleeping in wet clothes, and is near dying — Sallies forth on his first cir- 
 cuit — O'Connell, Harry Deane Grady and the soldiers — Robbers — Anecdote cf 
 Grady — Journey with II. D. Grady — Passing the Kilwortii Mountains — Sudden- 
 death of a cousin of O'Connell's — Inns when O'Connell was a young man — He 
 travels with John Philpot Curran — Arthur O'Connor — Humorous bar anecdotes 
 — Robber incident — Death of Brennan the robber — O'Connell thinks of writ- 
 ing a novel — O'Connell's courtship and marriage — Anecdote of Collins — Auto- 
 biographical anecdote — O'Connell a zealous advocate of Mary queen of Scots — 
 Lalor of Killarney and the farm of Lisnababie — Old roads — Inn at Milstref/i 
 — A cow of feeling — "Dark oblivion of a brow" — Corrupt judges. 
 
 U% 'CORNELL spent about a year at the school of Father Harring- 
 (r^-'W * on " ^ ne re P u tation for ability and application which In. 
 t 4t^IS| acquired there reached the ears of his uncle, General Count 
 ; •-;*?-'' O'Connell, who began to feel a considerable interest in the boy. 
 f'i At the solicitation of the count, Uncle Maurice, alias " Hunting-cap," 
 decided on going to the expense of giving their nephew a continental edu- 
 cation. Accordingly, Dan was sent first to Louvain, and next to St. Omer's. 
 This arrangement seems to have been quite agreeable to the lad, who at 
 this period burned to make his name as distinguished as that of the general 
 his uncle. O'Connell showed at St. Omer's the same cleverness he bad 
 already displayed at Father Harrington's ; he was always the foremost boy 
 in his class. Another Minister boy, a cousin of his own, who subse- 
 quently attained high position, was a formidable school- rival of his ; this 
 was Christopher Fagan. The president of the college in Connell's time 
 was the Reverend Dr. Stapylton. At this period (1791) the career of the 
 
 125 
 
120 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 great Revolution in France was advancing with daily-increasing terror 
 and velocity. The outrages done to religion, the cruelties perpetrated 
 against the members of the French aristocracy and the royal family in 
 the course of this tremendous revolution naturally revolted O'Connell, 
 whose instincts and training alike tended to make him in sentiment 
 both an aristocrat and a Catholic. From this period may be dated his 
 decided love of monarchic institutions, and his still more decided re- 
 pugnance to all measures of a thoroughly revolutionary tendency. He 
 afterwards, indeed, became a democratic leader and more or less dem- 
 ocratic in principle, but his notions of democracy had little or nothing 
 in common with those of the chief representatives of the European 
 continental democracy. 
 
 On one occasion, travelling in France at this period, he met in a dil- 
 igence a very loquacious Gaul, who poured forth endless torrents of in- 
 vective against England. O'Connell preserved an unbroken silence. At 
 last, the Frenchman, surprised at his apparent callousness, exclaimed, 
 
 "Do you hear? do you understand what I am saying, sir 9 " 
 
 "Yes, I hear you; I comprehend you perfectly." 
 
 "Yet you do not seem angry." 
 
 " Not in the least." 
 
 " How can you so tamely bear the censures I pronounce against your 
 country?" 
 
 " Sir, England is not my country. Censure her as much as you 
 please, you cannot offend me. I am an Irishman, and my countrymen 
 have as little reason to love England as yours have — perhaps less." 
 
 When O'Connell went to St, Omer's he was accompanied by his 
 younger brother, Maurice. They remained at that seminary for about 
 a year. Their uncle begged the president, Dr. Stapylton, to give a can- 
 did opinion of the merits and demerits of each of the lads. The presi- 
 dent's answer proves that, in one instance at least, he was a man of pro- 
 found penetration and remarkable foresight. " You desire," writes the 
 reverend doctor, "to have my candid opinion respecting your nephews; 
 and you very properly remark that no habit can be worse than that of 
 the instructors of youth who seek to gratify the parents of those under 
 their care by ascribing to them talents and qualities which they do not 
 really possess. You add that, being only the uncle of these young men, 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 125 
 
 you can afford to hear the real truth respecting their abilities and de- 
 ficiencies. It is not my Habit to disguise the precise truth in reply to 
 such inquiries as yours ; you shall therefore have my opinion with per- 
 fect candor. 
 
 " I begin with the younger, Maurice. His manner and demeanor are 
 tpiite satisfactory. He is gentlemanly in his conduct and much loved 
 by his fellow-students. He is not deficient in abilities, but he is idle 
 and fond of amusement. I do not think he will answer for any labor- 
 ious profession, but I will answer for it he will never be guilty of any- 
 thing discreditable— at least, such is my firm belief. 
 
 "With respect to the elder, Daniel, I have but one sentence to write 
 about Mm, and that is, that I never was so much mistaken in my life as 
 I shall be unless he be destined to make a remarkable figure in society.'* 
 
 The two O'Connelis seem to have spent about a year at St. Omer's. 
 Daniel distinguished himself greatly there. We next find him spend- 
 ing some months in Douay College in the year 1792. 
 
 O'Connell does not appear to have incurred any personal danger in 
 th jse terrible days of revolutionary bloodshed, save on one occasion. He 
 frankly admits, however, that he was always in terror lest " the scoun- 
 drels," as he calls the French " sans-culottes" "should cut our throats." 
 The occasion of his being in personal danger was this: A wagoner 
 of Dumouriez's army scared him and a set of his fellow-collegians who 
 had walked out from Douay, crying, " Voila Us jeunes jcsitites I les cap- 
 ucins! Us recottets" ("Behold the young Jesuits! the Capuchins! the 
 Franciscan friars!") Panic-stricken, O'Connell and his companions 
 ran back to their college. Luckily, they were not pursued. Our hero 
 used long after this to repeat occasionally the verses composed at the 
 time of the sanguinary Marat's death : 
 
 " Marat est .mort ! 
 Marat est rnort! 
 La FraDce encore respire; 
 Satan ! Prends garde de toi, 
 Car anjourd'hui s'il entre votre empire, 
 Demain tu ne seras plus roi !" 
 
 ("Marat is dead! Marat is dead! France once more breathes freely. 
 Satan! take care of yourself, for if to-day he enters your empire 
 to-morrow you shall be king no more.") 
 
 9 
 
128 THE LIFE 0E DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 O'Connell, in the decline of his life, told the following anecdote of 
 those two unfortunate "United Irishmen," Henry and John Sbeares, to 
 Dr. E. R. Madden, the author of "The Lives of the United Irishmen." 
 One day the doctor called upon him. " Oh, Madden !" cried " the Liber- 
 ator " as he entered, " I was thinking, as I read your book, how glad you 
 would have been to learn a trifling incident I could have told you about 
 the Sheareses. I travelled with them in the Calais packet to England in 
 1793. I left Douay on the 21st of January in that year, and arrived in 
 Calais the very day the news arrived that the king and queen (?) had 
 been guillotined. The packet had several English on board, who all, 
 like myself, seemed to have been made confirmed aristocrats by the 
 sanguinary horrors of the Revolution. They were talking of the execu- 
 tion of the king and queen (?), and execrating the barbarity of their mur- 
 derers, when two gentlemen entered the cabin — a tall man and a low one. 
 These were the two Sheareses. Hearing the horrible doings at Paris 
 spoken of, John Sheares said, 'We were at the execution.' 'Good 
 Heaven !' exclaimed one of the Englishmen ; ' how could you have got 
 there ?' ' By bribing two of the National Guard to lend us their uni- 
 forms,' answered Sheares. 'We obtained a most excellent view of the 
 entire scene.' 'But, in God's name, how could you endure to witness 
 such a hideous spectacle?' resumed the Englishman. John Sheares 
 answered energetically — I never can forget his manner of pronouncing 
 the words — 'From love of the cause!' " 
 
 In telling this anecdote O'Conneirs memory seems for the moment 
 to play him false. He forgets that Lhe king and queen of France were 
 not either tried or executed together. Louis was executed on the 23d 
 of January, 1793, and Marie Antoinette in the October of the same year. 
 Perhaps, however, a false rumor had got aboard the vessel. The Shearscs 
 would necessarily be in a position to correct it. 
 
 O'Connell added a slight particular about Henry Sheares, the elder 
 brother. Henry remarked that it was the only time he had ever been 
 at sea without danger of shipwreck. " I think, Madden," said Dan, in 
 conclusion, " the whole story would have derived some zest from my being 
 mixed up in it." What a singular contrast there was between the sub- 
 sequent fate of O'Connell and that of those two hapless brothers, who 
 
were tried and executed together for their devotion to Ireland ill the 
 fatal and blood-stained year of '98! 
 
 The bishop of Ardagh, probably Dr. O'Higgins, told O'Neill Daunt a 
 whimsical circumstance — that a French captain of artillery said to him 
 shortly after "the three glorious days of July" in 1830, "Some of us 
 imagined that your O'Connell was born at St. Omer. Ah ! if he had 
 been a native of our country, we should have made him king of the 
 French." We have his own authority for the fact that at the election 
 at which Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was chosen king of the Bel- 
 gians, shortly after the revolt of the citizens of Brussels in 1830 against 
 their Dutch masters, three votes were given to place O'Connell on the 
 throne of the newdy-created kingdom. 
 
 The following is another of O'Connell's reminiscences. It occurred 
 to his mind when he was speaking one day of the temptations to an 
 improper acquisition of money that arise from opportunity and security 
 from being detected. "I knew," said he, "a person named Barnewall, 
 who while staying in Dublin was commissioned by a friend in the coun- 
 try to purchase a lottery-ticket. The choice of the number was left to 
 Barnewall, who accordingly selected and paid for a ticket. It turned up 
 a prize of £10,000. He had the most thorough facility for retaining the 
 amount. All he needed to do was to buy his friend some other ticket. 
 No one could say that he had not duly executed his commission. But 
 Barnewall reasoned thus with himself: 'If,' said he, 'my friend had not 
 commissioned me to buy the ticket for him, I never would have bought 
 it for myself. It therefore is rightfully his, and to put myself beyond 
 the vyach of casuistry I'll lodge the amount to his credit immediately, 
 and apprise him that I have done so by this day's post;' which honest 
 Barnewall accordingly did. I recollect," continued "the Liberator." 
 " when I was a younker, my uncle gave me £300 in gold to get changed 
 into notes at Cotter and Kellet's bank. The clerk through stupidity 
 gave me £100, of which £300 were in small notes and the rest in a 
 £100 note. I pointed out his blunder, and he in a very surly manner, 
 and without looking at the heap of notes, insisted that I must be 
 wrong, for that he never mistook. I persisted ; he was sulky and obsti- 
 nate. At last our altercation attracted the notice of Cotter, who came 
 ovex <md asked what was the matter. I told him I had got £100 too 
 
 & 
 
130 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 much. He reckoned the money, and then took off the £100 note, say- 
 ing, 'Now it is all right.' I begged he would let me retain that note, as 
 my uncle was desirous to get the largest notes he could ; and I assure 
 you it was with no trifling difficulty I could prevail on the old gentle- 
 man to take his hundred pounds in small notes." 
 
 England joined the alliance against revolutionary France shortly after 
 the execution of the king. Probably it was the certainty of a rupture 
 between the two powers that caused O'Conncll to leave Douay in order 
 to return to Ireland on the 21st of January, 1793. It has been stated 
 that O'Connell, on getting aboard the vessel in which he encountered the 
 Sheareses, plucked the French republican tri-color from his hat, and either 
 trampled it under foot or flung it into the water. 
 
 In his early youth O'Connell won the friendship of Mr. Charles Jef- 
 freys of Blarney Castle, county Cork. One night they met at the Cork 
 theatre, where Mr. Jeffreys somehow or other got into a row. He would 
 have been overmatched but for the timely assistance of O'Connell. From 
 this night forward Mr. Jeffreys was always polite and attentive to our 
 hero. Though a nephew of that infamous destroyer of his country's 
 independence, the earl of Clare, Mr. Jeffreys through all his life remained 
 an enemy of the act of union. He had been one of the members of an 
 Irish deputation appointed to lay an anti-union petition at the feet of 
 George III. in 1799, and in his old age, in 1840, we find him at a Repeal 
 meeting at Cork beside his old friend, O'Connell, moving one of the 
 anti-union resolutions. After his speech on this occasion, feeling op- 
 pressed by the heat and the crowd, the old man was forced to retire for 
 a few moments from the building — Battv's circus — in which the meeting 
 was held. On his return a gentleman remarked to him that it was a 
 dangerous experiment to expose himself again to the heat and the 
 throng of the vast assembly. "I could not help it," said the fine old 
 gentleman, enthusiastically ; " my heart is with you all." 
 
 In the years. 1792 and 1793 concessions were made to the Catholics, 
 one of which, at least, had the most important influence on the destiny 
 and renown of Daniel O'Connell. Admission to the Bar was at last con- 
 ceded to the Catholics. But for this O'Connell could never have stepped 
 into that forensic arena in which some of his most glorious laurels were 
 won. Though divisions, principally arising from the timidity and jeal- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 131 
 
 ousies of the more aristocratic Catholics, had for a considerable time 
 weakened the efforts of the Catholic committee, vet now, inspired by 1 
 the energy of John Keogh, O'Connell's predecessor in the leadership of 
 the Catholic body, and helped on by the noble zeal and enthusiasm and 
 the sound practical work of the gallant Theobald Wolfe Tone, the founder 
 of "the United Irishmen," who, though a Protestant, was. on the recom- 
 mendation of Keogh, appointed their secretary in 1702, the Catholic 
 committee was beginning to put forth more energy. But what chiefly 
 moved the government to make these tardy concessions was the territic 
 progress of the French Revolution. They began to dread lest the Irish 
 should some day fraternize with their republican kinsmen of France. 
 Already Tone had founded the society of "United Irishmen" that after- 
 wards became so famous. Here was something, indeed, menacing to 
 British dominion in Ireland. The Irish Catholics and the Irish dis- 
 senters becoming sworn brothers ! Doubtless, as yet, the constitution 
 of the new brotherhood was quite "legal and constitutional," but might 
 it not sooner or later become treasonable, as in point of fact it did, in 
 1705, when it adopted a completely new organization? Manifestly, the 
 time had arrived when it was necessary for England to make a stren- 
 uous effort to conciliate the Catholics of Ireland, and draw them away 
 from the influence of those who might lead them into the road to com- 
 plete separation from England. Accordingly, in 1792, a relief bill of a 
 trifling nature was introduced by Sir Hercules Langrishe and supported 
 by the government, The objects of this bill were fourfold : First, it gave 
 them the practice and profession of the law. Second, it proposed to 
 restore the Catholics the right of education, entire and unrestrained. 
 The necessity for a license, as enjoined by the act of 1782, was taken 
 off. Third, intermarriage between Protestants and Catholics was to be 
 permitted. Fourth, Sir Hercules would remove those obstructions to 
 arts and manufactures that limited the number of apprentices. This 
 bill, which was prepared in concert with Edmund Burke, passed. Sir 
 Hercules congratulated the House on the growth of the spirit of liber- 
 ality manifested by the passing of this paltry act. This Sir Hercules 
 Langrishe is celebrated for two very amusing bon-mots, which John 
 Mitchel describes "as being, in fact, short essays on the politics of Ire- 
 land." He was riding in the Park one day with Lord Townshend when 
 
132 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 that convivial and humorous but lax-principled nobleman was viceroy. 
 His Excellency complained that his predecessors had left it very damp 
 and marshy. Sir Hercules at once observed " that they were too much 
 engaged in draining the rest of the kingdom." Being asked on another 
 occasion where was the best and truest history of Ireland to be found, 
 he answered, " in the continuation of Rapin" 
 
 At the same time that this bill passed a very humble petition of the 
 Catholics, in which they asked for admission to the profession and prac- 
 tice of the law ; capacity to serve in county magistracies ; a right to be 
 summoned and to serve on grand and petty juries ; and a share in the 
 right of suffrage much more restricted than that enjoyed by Protestants; 
 while at the same time they meekly disavowed the imputation of making 
 any application for "unlimited and total emancipation," or of preferring 
 their applications "in a tone of menace," — this very humble petition, I 
 say, was presented to the House of Commons, and somewhat contume- 
 liously rejected on the motion of Mr. David la Touche, seconded by Mr. 
 Ogle Both the presentation of such a petition and its rejection are 
 proofs of the depressed condition in which the Catholics still were. 
 
 Yet the Catholics were beginning to make their voices heard. If the 
 bigotry of the Ascendency faction was rampant in its opposition to en- 
 lightened measures, the liberal Protestants were becoming more liberal 
 every day, and the necessities of the British empire pointed to addi- 
 tional concessions. Mr. Simon Butler, chairman of the Dublin society 
 of "United Irishmen." published by order of that body a "Digest of the 
 Popery Laws," putting into the strongest light the still-existing disabil- 
 ities and exclusions from all offices of trust, power and emolument, civil 
 and military, of the Catholics. They were "excluded from all corporate 
 rights and immunities; expelled from grand juries and restrained in 
 petit juries ; excluded from every trust; from every incorporated society; 
 from every establishment, occasional or fixed, instituted for public de- 
 fence, public police, public morals or public convenience; from the 
 bench ; from the bank ; from the exchange ; from the university ; from 
 the college of physicians; — from what are they not excluded?" The 
 general committee also prepared a "declaration" of Catholic tenets on 
 points respecting which Catholics had been systematically slandered, 
 such as the keeping of faith with heretics; the alleged power of the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL OTONNELL. 133 
 
 pope to absolve subjects from their allegiance; the power of clergy- 
 men to free persons from the obligation of their oaths. The declaration 
 denied contemptuously the existence of any such Catholic tenets. " The 
 answers of six Catholic universities on the Continent to the queries which 
 had been propounded to them at the request of Mr. Pitt, three years 
 before, on behalf of the English Catholics, were republished." These three 
 questions referred to the two first of the alleged tenets I have just men- 
 tioned. The universities — those of Paris, Louvain, Alcala, Douay, Sala- 
 manca and Valladolid — while they unanimously denied with great dis- 
 tinctness the existence of the alleged tenets, in some instances rebuked 
 the childishness of the questions. Here are the expressions of the fac- 
 ulty of divinity at Louvain: "Having been requested to give an opinion 
 upon the questions above stated, (the faculty) does it with readiness, but 
 is struck with astonishment that such questions should, at the end of 
 this eighteenth century, be proposed to any learned body by inhabitants 
 of a kingdom (England) that glories in the talents and discernment of 
 its natives." 
 
 The bigots all over Ireland set up a howling-chorus at these demon- 
 strations in favor of the Catholics. Most of the grand juries passed reso- 
 lutions of the narrowest and most intolerant kind ; but the bigotry was 
 all in vain. The Catholics were becoming stronger every day. During 
 the few years of partial relaxation they had begun to accumulate wealth ; 
 like the Jews, shut out from the honorable pursuits of life, they concen- 
 trated their faculties on the acquisition of money. The Catholic commit- 
 tee was now beginning to draw closer to the United Irish Society. The 
 English government was uneasy. The terrible French Revolution was still 
 menacing all existing institutions. The Irish Catholics held a conven- 
 tion of two hundred delegates in Dublin in December, 1792. Worse still, 
 a new and highly-popular military body, called the National Guard, 
 wearing green uniforms, with buttons engraved with a harp under a cap 
 of liberty instead of a crown, and commanded by those seditious Protest- 
 ants, Archibald Hamilton Rowan and James Napper Tandy, was arrayed 
 and disciplined in Dublin. All sorts of alarms prevailed. Bodies of 
 horse, by order of government, patrolled the streets at night. Rumors 
 of conspiracies and assassinations were afloat. The " citizen soldiers," 
 as they called themselves, were prevented from meeting on the 9th of 
 
134 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 December to celebrate the triumph of French liberty. On the other hand, 
 in January, '93, the king graciously received the petition of the conven- 
 tion, setting forth the grievances of the Catholic body, from the deputa- 
 tion of Catholic gentlemen appointed to present it. In fact, England 
 was in difficulty, and "England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity." 
 The French under Dumouriez had driven back the intended allies of 
 England. The cannonade of Valmy had checked the Prussian invaders 
 of France. Later still, the Austrians were routed at Jemappes, and Bel- 
 gium was overrun by the republican army. Sympathy with France was 
 manifested in many parts of Ulster. Military organizations of revo- 
 lutionary type were springing up in Dublin and parts of the North. 
 The Catholics were united ; moreover, signs of union between the Cath- 
 olics and the dissenters were visible. The populace of Belfast had 
 lately drawn the carriages of the Catholic deputation to the king through 
 their streets. In short, the government deemed it high time to try and 
 conciliate the Catholics by a larger measure of relief than any conceded 
 to them as yet. 
 
 On the 1st of February, 1703, the French republic declared war 
 against England ; and in the same month Mr. Secretary Hobart brought 
 in his " Relief Bill." In spite of the opposition of the Ascendency fac- 
 tion, it passed, and received the royal assent on the 9th of April ; and 
 this was the last measure of "relief" to the Catholics that passed till 
 O'Connell's great triumph of 1829. 
 
 This bill enabled Catholics to vote for Protestant members of Parlia- 
 ment, admitted Catholics to the outer bar; they could not be king's coun- 
 sel, or enjoy any of the high dignities or honors of the profession. It 
 enabled them to vote for Protestant municipal officers; permitted them 
 to have arms, provided they possessed a certain freehold and personal 
 estate and took certain oaths — conditions not imposed on Protestants. 
 Further, it allowed them to serve on juries, but not to sit on parish ves- 
 tries. It also admitted them, under certain restrictions, to hold commis- 
 sions in the army and navy, certain of the higher grades being excepted. 
 It opened the way to their taking degrees in Trinity College, Dublin, 
 but a Catholic could not become either provost, fellow, or even a scholar. 
 Finally, in order to obtain the benefit of most of the privileges conferred 
 by this act, it was necessary to take an insulting and humiliating oath. 
 
CAHOLAN 
 
 f/virsYr/ffr < //'/<>// ' JjrrYfi 
 
: 
 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 135 
 
 Nevertheless, the Catholics received it with exceeding gratitude, and the 
 Protestant Ascendency felt humbled. Henceforth the leading Catholics, 
 bribed by England's concession, showed themselves less disposed to 
 countenance the ultra-liberal and national views of "the United Irish- 
 men." And yet the Catholics were still subjected to the grossest insults 
 and to exclusion from positions, to which they were now legally eligible, 
 by the malignant faction of the Ascendency. 
 
 At this time, too, Fitzgibbon, Lord Clare, that inveterate enemy of 
 his country, struck a deadly blow at Irish liberty. He succeeded in 
 getting his favorite measure, the Convention Act, made law. After 
 this no assembly of popular delegates could meet in Ireland to deliberate 
 in a solemn authoritative fashion on the Catholic or any other polit- 
 ical question. No such law exists in England. To this day it embar- 
 rasses the efforts of Irish patriots. As Mr. Mitchel says justly, "It was 
 afterwards the rock ahead which confronted O'Connell in all his agita- 
 tion. This law it was which prevented his calling together the promised 
 'Council of Three Hundred,' and left him only the alternative of inor- 
 ganic ' monster meetings ' — which latter, indeed, were also made criminal 
 by a prudent interpretation of law." 
 
 Wolfe Tone blames the sub-committee who, during the progress of 
 the " Relief Bill," managed the affairs of the Catholics, for the narrowness 
 of that measure. In their negotiations with the government they weakly 
 let it be seen that, while they demanded general relief, including admis- 
 sion to both Houses of Parliament, they would be content to take much 
 less. After this, the question with the government became, not how 
 much was to be yielded, but how much could safely be withheld. 
 
 O'Connell, speaking of John Keogh and these events of 1793, says: 
 "He (Keogh) and his coadjutors made a mistake in 1793. He was a 
 member of a deputation, consisting altogether of five persons, who had an 
 interview with Pitt and Dundas on the subject of the Catholic claims. 
 Pitt asked, ' What would satisfy the Catholics ?' Keogh replied, ' Equal- 
 ity.' Pitt seemed inclined to comply with the wishes of the deputation, 
 but Dundas started several objections. Pitt then said, 'Would you be 
 satisfied with the bar, the elective franchise and eligibility to the munici- 
 palities ?' Keogh replied, ' They would be great boons.' Pitt immediately 
 pinned him to that, and would concede no more. Now, had a lawyer 
 
136 THE LIFE OF DANiEL O'CONNELL 
 
 been present, he would have known that eligibility to the municipalities 
 was really worth nothing. They thought it was a great approach to 
 equality. 
 
 After this "relief measure" of '93, which admitted Catholics to the 
 bar, O'Connell determined on adopting the profession of the law. We 
 find him in London in 1791, keeping his terms as a law-student. He 
 sometimes saw, during his residence there, the prince of "Wales, after- 
 wards George IV. His opinion of that worthless scion of royalty seems 
 to have been low and consequently just. Mr. Daunt asked O'Connell, 
 years after, Was the prince, in his opinion, "a handsome, princely - 
 looking fellow " ? 
 
 "When I saw him in 1794," replied O'Connell, "he was a remark- 
 ably handsome-faced man ; his figure was faulty, narrow shoulders and 
 enormous hips, yet altogether he was certainly a very line-looking fellow. 
 But when I saw him in Dublin in 1821, age and the results of dissipation 
 had made him a most hideous object; he had a flabby, tallow-colored 
 face and his frame was quite debilitated. He came to Ireland to hum- 
 bug the Catholics, who, he thought, would take sweet words instead of 
 useful deeds. Ah ! Ave were not to be humbugged. 
 
 " I believe," he added, " that there never was a greater scoundrel 
 than George IV. To his other evil qualities he added a perfect disregard 
 of truth. During his connection with Mrs. Fitzherbert, Charles James 
 Fox dined with him one day in that lady's company. After dinner, Mrs. 
 Fitzherbert' said, 'By the by, Mr. Fox, I had almost forgotten to ask 
 you what you did say about me in the House of Commons the other 
 night. The newspapers misrepresent so very strangely that one cannot 
 depend on them. You were made to say that the prince authorized you 
 to deny his marriage with me.' The prince made monitory grimaces at 
 Fox, and immediately said, ' Upon my honor, my dear, I never author- 
 ized him to deny it.' ' Upon my honor, sir, you did,' said Fox, rising 
 from the table ; ' I had always thought your father the greatest liar in 
 England, but now I see that you are.' Fox would not associate with the 
 prince for some years until one day that he walked in, unannounced, and 
 found Fox at dinner. Fox rose as the prince entered, and said that he 
 liad but one course consistent with his hospitable duty as an English 
 gentleman, and that was to admit him." 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 137 
 
 Referring to the praise which some writers had given George IV. for 
 conversational talent, O'Connell made the following very jnst observa- 
 tion : " Why. from his rank he of course found ready listeners, and he 
 could talk familiarly of royal personages, concerning whom there is usu- 
 ally some curiosity felt. That kind of talk might have passed for agree- 
 able, but his favorite conversation was like that of a profligate, half- 
 drunken trooper." 
 
 In 1795, while O'Connell was over in London, he witnessed one day 
 a very singular tumult in the streets of that Babylonish metropolis, in 
 the course of which King George III. had a narrow escape from the fury 
 of a mob, and O'Connell himself an equally narrow one from the sabre 
 of a trooper. On one occasion O'Connell was led to relate all the par- 
 ticulars of the occurrence in this manner: He was in the company of 
 some friends, when the conversation turned on the odd knack some sov- 
 ereigns had of rewarding their foes and neglecting to do anything for 
 th?ir friends. To illustrate the truth of this, one of the party told a 
 somewhat humorous story of an Irish colonel who, though he had fought 
 for the Stuarts, was completely neglected by the Second Charles on his 
 restoration to his ancestral throne. What chagrined the worthy colonel 
 more was to see His Majesty heaping favors on numbers who had been 
 downright opponents of that restoration. He couldn't help saying to 
 the king one day, "Please, Your Majesty, I have fought in your service 
 and got nothing. An't please you, I can perhaps plead a merit that will 
 find more favor in your royal eyes." " I pray } T ou, friend, what is that?" 
 demanded the king. "Why, that I fought against your sacred Majesty 
 for two years in the service of Cromwell." replied this strange courtier. 
 "Oddsfish, man! we'll look to it," replied Charles, in high glee at the 
 Irishman's whimsical way of recommending himself to royal favor, and, 
 in short, before long the lucky colonel was provided for by "the merry 
 monarch." The teller of this story added that more recently one who 
 had assailed George III., and forced himself into his carriage, got a snug 
 appointment in Somerset House some short time after the outrage. 
 
 "Forced into his carriage!" cried O'Connell. " Et voila jvstemenl 
 comme on e'erit Vhistoire! (And behold how justly they write history!) I 
 was witness to the whole transaction, and I can state that nobody forced 
 into his carriage, although his life was certainly in imminent danger. 
 
138 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 It was in 1795 ; I was over here in London. Richard Newton Bennett and 
 I went down through St. James's Park to see the king returning from the 
 House of Lords. On passing through Whitehall there was a tumult- 
 uous crowd, and some person flung a penny at the king's carriage and 
 broke the glass. The dragoons immediately began to clear their way 
 with drawn sabres through the crowd, advancing with great speed along 
 the park in front of the king's carriage. As the procession approached 
 the place where I stood, I pressed forward to get a sight of the king, and 
 one of the dragoons made a furious cut at me with his sabre, which 
 deeply notched the tree about an inch or two over my head. The mob 
 were all this while groaning and hooting His Majesty ; however, he got 
 clear of them and entered St. James's Palace, where he took off his 
 robes in a wonderfully short time. He then came out at the opposite 
 side of the palace, next Cleveland Row, and got into a coach drawn by 
 two large black Hanoverian horses. He was then driven off towards 
 Buckingham House, and just as he was passing the bottom of the Green 
 Park the mob tumultuously rushed about his carriage, and seizing the 
 wheels retarded it in spite of the postilion, who kept flogging the horses 
 to no purpose. Whilst His Majesty was thus detained two fellows 
 approached the door of the carriage; the hand of one was on the door- 
 handle in the act of opening it ; had they dragged the king out, he would 
 doubtless have been murdered. But the king had a friend in the crowd. 
 At this critical juncture a tall, determined-looking man presented a pis- 
 tol through the opposite window at the fellows who were going to open 
 the door. They shrank back, the mob relaxed their grasp on the wheels 
 for one moment, the postilion flogged away and the carriage went off 
 at a gallop to Buckingham House. Never had a king a more narrow 
 escape. The French revolutionary mania had tainted all minds, and 
 men were full of Jacobinism. Richardson was, I think, the name of 
 one of the men who tried to open the coach door. He was speedily 
 afterwards given a good clerkship in the naval department of Somerset 
 House. One of the rioters who was tried lor high treason was indicted, 
 among other counts, for grinning at the king ; whereupon he got several 
 friends to prove that he was always grinning." How different in many 
 respects might have been the subsequent course of human affairs and 
 history if either the obstinate old king or the big-brained young Irish 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 139 
 
 law-student had perished on that day — the one meeting death at the 
 hands of the infuriated Cockneys, the other cloven down by the fierce 
 sweep of the English horseman's sabre ! 
 
 It is wonderful to contrast the slow travelling of those days with the 
 manner in which railway-trains annihilate space in our own times. 
 Even the mail and day coaches, immediately prior to the introduction 
 of railway travelling, traversed the length and breadth of Great Britain 
 and Ireland at a rate of speed that might be called marvellous when 
 compared with the slow locomotion of travellers in the day of O'Connell's 
 early manhood. He gives us some curious details respecting the number 
 of days it took him to travel from Darrynane to London in the year 179o, 
 and the distances traversed each day. " I remember," he says, "when I 
 left Darrynane for London in 1795, 1113^ first day's journey was to Carhen, 
 my second to Killorglin, my third to Tralee, my fourth to Limerick, two 
 days thence to Dublin. I sailed from Dublin in the evening ; my pas- 
 sage to Holyhead was performed in twenty-four hours ; from Holyhead to 
 Chester took six-and-thirty hours, from Chester to London three days. 
 My uncle kept a diary of a tour he made in England between the years 
 '70 and '80, and one of his memorabilia was, ' This day we have travelled 
 thirty-six miles, and passed through parts of five counties.' In 1780 the 
 two members for the county of Kerry sent to Dublin for a noddy, and 
 travelled together in it from Kerry to Dublin. The journey occupied 
 seventeen days, and each night the two members quartered themselves 
 at the house of some friend ; and on the seventeenth day they reached 
 Dublin just in time for the commencement of the session. The steam 
 navigation is of infinite utility in abridging the sufferings of sea-sickness. 
 In a sailing-vessel you often got almost to land, and yet were tantalized 
 by chopping winds or tides which prevented your landing. I remember 
 in 1817" (O'Connett is speaking of these reminiscences of his early clays late 
 in life) " dodging for eight hours about Caernarvon harbor before we could 
 land. When on shore I proceeded to Capelcarrig, w r here I was taken 
 very ill, and I was not consoled by reflecting that should my illness 
 threaten life there was no Catholic priest within forty miles of me." 
 These long journeys are suggestive of any amount of incidents and ad- 
 ventures on the way. They call to mind at once the strange wanderings 
 in " Don Quixote " and " Gil Bias," so replete with variety and whimsical 
 
140 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 adventure; or perhaps still more so the odd journeys to London and 
 elsewhere, lasting for so many days and so full of humorous and gro- 
 tesque incidents, in Fielding's "Tom Jones" and " Joseph Andrews " and 
 Smollett's "Roderick Random," "Peregrine Pickle" and other novels. 
 
 O'Connell's principal amusement, while keeping his law-terms in 
 London, was boating on the Thames. Indeed, so fond was he of this 
 recreation that the watermen's fares taxed his financial resources so 
 heavily as occasionally to put him to some inconvenience. In 1704 he 
 lodged in a court on the north side of Coventry street. He described the 
 accommodation he had in this cul-de-sac, as he styled it, as excellent. 
 Long after, when walking through Coventry street, he would stop oppo- 
 site a fishmonger's shop and say, " That shop is in precisely the same 
 state in which I remember it when I was at Gray's Inn, nearly fifty 
 years ago — the same sized window, the same frontage ; I believe the 
 same fish." 
 
 Irish law-students have to keep half their law-terms in London. If 
 ever there could have been any sound reason for this regulation, none 
 exists to-day. The only apparent reason for preserving the custom now 
 is, that it affords the English inns of court an easy means of robbing the 
 Irish of a little money, and probably this passes for a sound reason on 
 the English side of the Channel. In O'Connell's time, and indeed until 
 within the last few years, law-students were under no obligation to 
 attend lectures or pass any examination in law before they could be 
 called to the bar. In fact, a man might become a barrister without 
 having ever opened a law-book. Of course, if he did not study he could 
 not expect to obtain practice. But he might act, in that respect, as he 
 pleased. All he had to do at the inns of court was to pay certain fees 
 and to eat a certain number of dinners each term for three years if he 
 were a graduate of a university, for four years and a half if he had no 
 degree. This was called eating one's way to the bar. I find some dif- 
 ficulty in determining to which of the London inns of court O'Connell 
 belonged. Mr. O'Neill Daunt, who ought to be accurately informed on 
 this point, talks in vol. i., page 277, of his " Personal Recollections of 
 O'Connell," of our hero's "attending his terms at Gray's Inn." But in 
 another part of the same work (vol. L, page 155) O'Connell himself is 
 made to say, in relating some particulars to which I shall have occasion 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 141 
 
 to advert presently : " After I returned from the Temple," etc. Per- 
 haps, however, this may refer to "the King's Inn" in Dublin, which I 
 think I have occasionally heard persons style " the Temple." Still, even 
 if this were so, the difficulty would remain ; for, in the work of another 
 well-informed biographical writer, I find it stated that in 1794 he 
 became a law-student in Lincoln's Inn. As O'Connell's family was 
 ancient and comparatively wealthy, he might prefer Lincoln's Inn as 
 being the most aristocratic of the inns. Gray's Inn is not considered so 
 respectable as it or the Temple ; but, on the other hand, Gray's Inn is 
 greatly frequented by the Irish students on account of certain advan- 
 tages it offers them. It is, if I remember rightly, cheaper than the 
 other inns, and to keep each term a student there is required to dine a 
 less number of days. " Besides, as Irish students belong also to the inns 
 in Dublin and are finally called to the bar in that city, it is of less con- 
 sequence which of the London inns they belong to. I have no means, 
 then, of determining whether O'Connell belonged to Lincoln's Inn, one 
 of the Temples, or Gray's Inn. 
 
 At this period, as might be expected, O'Connell used sometimes to 
 be found in the visitors' gallery of the House of Commons. He greatly 
 admired the younger William Pitt as a speaker. He once heard him in 
 a debate "on the state of the nation." O'Connell tells us that Pitt 
 struck him " as having the most majestic flow of language and the finest 
 voice imaginable. He managed his voice admirably. It was from him 
 I learned to throw out the lower tones at the close of my sentences. 
 Most men either let their voice fall at the end of their sentences, or else 
 force it into a shout or screech. This is because they end with the upper 
 instead of the lower notes. Pitt knew better. He threw his voice so 
 completely round the House that every syllable he uttered was distinctly 
 heard by every man in the House." 
 
 Mr. Daunt asked O'Connell, Did he hear Fox in the debate to which 
 he was referring ? 
 
 "Yes," replied O'Connell, "and he spoke delightfully; his speech 
 was better than Pitt's. The forte of Pitt as an orator was majestic dec- 
 lamation and an inimitable felicity of phrase. The word he used was 
 always the very best word that could be got to express his idea. Tho 
 only man I ever kriew who approached Piu in this particular excel- 
 
142 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 lence was Charles Kendal Bushe, whose phrases were always admirably 
 happy." 
 
 "We have seen that the atrocities that stained the French Revolution 
 had somewhat prejudiced the mind of O'Connell against revolutionary 
 movements. At the period we are now speaking of a sort of reaction in 
 favor of popular ideas took place in his mind. During his residence in 
 or near London he witnessed the state-trials of Home Tookc, Thelwall 
 and Hardy. The unscrupulous manner in which Pitt and the Tory party 
 abused power to persecute these English sympathizers with revolutionary 
 or democratic ideas disgusted O'Connell. The indignation he felt lessened 
 daily his conservative leanings, and gradually gave his mind even a tend- 
 ency towards radicalism. In the words of his son John, "Each suc- 
 cessive day revealing more and more the iniquitous nature of the 
 prosecution, the process of change in Mr. O'Connell's mind ended by 
 converting him to popular opinions, and confirming his natural detesta- 
 tion of tyranny." 
 
 O'Connell, during this period of student-life in England, sometimes 
 left his lodgings in London and sought purer air and retirement in some 
 of the places in the vicinity of the great metropolis. Thus we find him 
 dwelling in Chiswick in the year 1795. From that place, in that year, 
 he writes the following letter to his uncle Maurice O'Connell of Darry- 
 nane: " I pay the same price for board and lodging as I should ii. Lon- 
 don, but I enjoy many advantages here besides air and retirement. The 
 society in the house is mixed — I mean composed of men and women, all 
 of whom are people of rank and knowledge of the world ; so their con- 
 versation and manners are perfectly well adapted to rub off the rust of 
 scholastic education, nor is there any danger of riot or dissipation, as 
 they are all advanced in life, another student of law and I being the 
 only young persons in the house. This young man is my most intimate 
 acquaintance, and the only friend I have found among my acquaintance. 
 His name is Bennett; he is an Irishman of good family connections 
 and fortune ; he is prudent and strictly economical ; he has good sense, 
 ability and application. I knew him before my journey to Ireland ; it 
 was before that period our friendship commenced ; so that, on the whole, 
 I spend my time here not only pleasantly, but I hope very usefully. 
 
 " The only law-books I have bought as yet are the works of Espinasse 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 143 
 
 on the trials of nisi prius. They cost me £1 10s., and contain more 
 information on the practical part of the law than any other books I 
 have ever met. When in Dublin, I reflected that carrying any more 
 books than were absolutely necessary would be inclining expense, so I 
 deferred buying a complete set of reports until my return thither. 
 
 " I have now two objects to pursue — the one, the attainment of know- 
 ledge ; the other, the acquisition of those qualities which constitute the 
 polite gentleman. I am convinced that the former, besides the imme- 
 diate pleasure that it yields, is calculated to raise me to honors, rank 
 and fortune ; and I know that the latter serves as a general passport ; 
 and as for the motives of ambition which you suggest, I assure you that 
 no man can possess more of it than I do. I have indeed a glowing and 
 — if I may use the expression — an enthusiastic ambition, which converts 
 every toil into a pleasure and every study into an amusement. 
 
 " Though nature may have given me subordinate talents, I never will 
 be satisfied with a subordinate situation in my profession. No man is 
 able, I am aware, to supply the total deficiency of ability, but everybody 
 is capable of improving and enlarging a stock however small and in its 
 beginning contemptible. It is this reflection that affords me consola- 
 tion. If I do not rise at the bar, I will not have to meet the reproaches 
 of my own conscience. It is not because I assert these things now that 
 I should conceive myself entitled to call on you to believe them. I refer 
 that conviction which I wish to inspire to your experience. I hope- 
 nay, I flatter myself — that when Ave meet again the success of my efforts 
 to correct those bad habits which you pointed out to me will be appa- 
 rent. Indeed, as for my knowledge in the professional line, that cannot 
 be discovered for some years to come ; but I have time in the interim to 
 prepare myself to appear with great eclat on the grand theatre of the 
 world." 
 
 The above letter is pregnant with many indications of character. It 
 speaks for itself, however, with sufficient clearness, so that I shall leave 
 it to my readers to make their own comments upon it. 
 
 In O'Connell's young days guests in Ireland were forced by their 
 hosts to drink, whether they liked to do so or not. In fact, they were 
 sometimes made to drink till they were deadly sick. This was esteemed 
 an essential feature of true old-fashioned hospitality. O'Connell tells us 
 
 10 
 
 J J 
 
144 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXN'ELL. 
 
 he was the first person in Iveragh to rebel against this custom of the 
 fine old Irish gentlemen "all of the olden time." "After I returned 
 from the Temple" (?), says he, "I introduced the fashion of resistance, 
 and I soon had abettors enough. It was fortunate for me that I never 
 while a youth could drink more than three glasses of wine without being 
 sick, so that I had my personal convenience to consult in aid of tempe- 
 rance. To be sure, I have seen some rare drinking-bouts ! In 1785, 
 when less than ten years old, I was at the house of a friend near the 
 seaside, and a sloop came in, of which the whole crew got drunk every 
 night — Monday night on wine, Tuesday night on punch, Wednesday 
 night on wine, Thursday night on punch, and so on, the only variety 
 consisting; in the alternation. What a change in our social habits since 
 those days ! — a most happy change in this respect ! I believe there is 
 no nation under heaven save our own in which the apostle of a great 
 moral movement could meet the success that has attended Father 
 Mathew." It is hardly necessary to say that O'Connell agreed with 
 those who not merely thought Father Mathew' s success " highly honor- 
 able to the Catholics," but "probably destined to be one of the means 
 of extending the Catholic religion." 
 
 Some anecdotes which he used to tell of a whimsical character, called 
 "Cousin Kane," who flourished in Kerry in the days of his youth, are 
 curiously illustrative of the jovial habits and of certain other singular 
 features in the manners then prevalent in Irish society. 
 
 "On occasion of festivity," says O'Connell, "I loved to preside at a 
 side-table at Darrynane. I remember a jolly fellow of the name of Kane 
 — everybody called him ' Cousin Kane.' He always lived from house to 
 house, and kept two horses and twelve couple of dogs at other people's 
 expense. One day there was a large dinner at Darrynane, and Kane 
 was one of the guests at my side-table. A decanter of whisky stood 
 before me, and I, thinking it was sherry — which it exactly resembled in 
 color — rilled ' Cousin Kane's ' glass. He drank it off, but immediately got 
 into a rage with me for giving him whisky instead of wine. He gave 
 me a desperate scolding, which he ended by holding out his glass and 
 saying, ferociously, ' Fill it again, sir!' 
 
 " Cousin Kane's figure was in the last degree ungainly. He was a 
 tall, thin, wiry, raw-boned man, with splay feet and one shoulder higher 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. 145 
 
 than the other. He lived upon all who would let him in, and being a 
 younger brother of good family, he had admission everywhere. When 
 he was with us at Carhen, he got up at two o'clock in the morning and 
 wakened me with the noise he made. I asked him what he was about, 
 and told him the clock had only struck two. ' And am I to be bound 
 by a blackguard clock, you blockhead ?' retorted Cousin Kane. ' If it 
 struck twenty-two, is that any reason I should stay one moment in bed 
 after I can't sleep?' He used to mingle prayers and curses in the most 
 outlandish wa} r — would begin with a pious ejaculation and end with a 
 tremendous oath. On the whole, he was a noble brute, fearless, faithful 
 and sincere, but brutally uncouth and choleric to the last degree. He 
 had seventy-six actions for assault and battery against him, yet he 
 would venture to go to Tralee in assizes time. He had kicked up a row 
 in court, and Judge Kelly reproved him in as gentle language as the 
 case permitted. He cursed and swore at the judge for presuming to 
 lecture a gentleman. Kelly pretended to think he was mad, and said 
 'Has this unhappy man any friends in court?' 'Yes,' burst from fifty 
 voices. 'Then take him out and put him up in safety,' said the judge 
 He was immediately hustled out. Some time after he was riding slowly 
 up a hill, and was overtaken by a gentleman and his servant on horse- 
 back. They dismounted and led their horses up the acclivity. The 
 gentleman got on much faster than his servant, who lagged behind near 
 Cousin Kane. At a point where their roads parted, 'Who's your master, 
 friend ?' asked Kane. ' Judge Kelly, sir.' ' Bad luck to me,' cried Kane, 
 'that didn't know him without his Avig! A'n't I the unluckiest devil 
 that ever was born that I didn't thrash him ? Give my best respects 
 to your master, friend, and tell him that if I had known who he was I'd 
 have licked and leathered him as long as I could stand over him.' ' 
 
 In later life, as O'Connell was one day passing the corner of Grafton 
 street, a child stopped to stare at him. He immediately said to the 
 friend accompanying him, "That's just the spot where I stopped to 
 stare at Lord Edward Fitzgerald. I ran on before him, and turned 
 about to enjoy a good stare at him. He was a nice, dapper-looking fellow 
 with keen dark eyes." The time of this vision of the gallant and ill- 
 fated rebel Geraldine was in all probability in '97 qr early in '98 ; at all 
 events, not very long before the fierce death-grapple of the noble patriot. 
 
146 THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 In '97 the reformers of the period in Dublin used to hold many of 
 their meetings in Eustace street, in a tavern then celebrated. O'Con- 
 nell attended one of those meetings — a meeting of the lawyers. As he 
 had not yet been called to the bar, he only went as a spectator. Among 
 those taking a part in the proceedings were John Sheares, who has turned 
 up in this chapter already, and who in '98 sealed his fidelity to the cause 
 of Irish freedom on the scaffold, and Mr. — afterwards Judge — Burton, 
 who lived to figure in the state trials of January, 1844, and to pass sen- 
 tence on Daniel O'Connell and his fellow-traversers when convicted by a 
 packed jury on a charge of seditious conspiracy. Referring in his old 
 days to this meeting in Eustace street, O'Connell said, "It was fortunate 
 for me that I could not then participate in the proceedings. I felt 
 warmly, and a young Catholic student stepping prominently forth in 
 opposition to the government would have been in all probability hanged. 
 I learned much by being a looker-on about that time. I had many good 
 opportunities of acquiring valuable information, upon which 1 very soon 
 formed my own judgment, It was a terrible time. The political lead- 
 ers of the period could not conceive such a thing as a perfectly open and 
 above-board political machinery. My friend, Richard JNewton Bennett, 
 was an adjunct to the directory of United Irishmen. I was myself a 
 United Irishman. As I saw how matters worked, I soon learned the 
 lesson to have no secrets in politics. Other leaders made their tvorkings 
 secret, and only intended to bring out the results. They were, therefore, 
 perpetually in peril of treachery. You saw men on whose fidelity you 
 would have staked your existence playing false when tempted by the 
 magnitude of the bribe on the one side and terrified on the other by the 
 danger of hanging." 
 
 The above plausible remarks are of importance. They show how 
 early the germs of that peculiar policy and plan of action which charac- 
 terized his long career as an agitator were planted in his mind. They 
 show, too, that constant tendency to take an exaggerated view of the 
 practical value of his favorite political theory and its applicability to the 
 actual circumstances of Irish national affairs, which finally produced 
 such disastrous consequences both to his great repeal movement and 
 to himself. 
 
 It was in the spring of 1798, on the eve of some of Ireland's darkest 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 147 
 
 days of agony, that Daniel O'Connell was called to the bar. After such 
 a long and iniquitous exclusion of the Catholic body from the field of 
 legal distinction, the time had at length arrived when a young Catholic 
 Irishman of the highest forensic genius was to commence his career as 
 a barrister, destined to win such triumphs in his profession as would 
 necessarily cast the lustre of renown over himself, his despised co-re- 
 ligionists, and even the whole Irish race. 
 
 In this year of '98, so full of melancholy recollections for Ireland, we 
 find O'Connell joining one of the yeomanry corps embodied to defend Dub- 
 lin against the rebels. Of the members of O'Connell's corps — the " Law- 
 yers' Yeomanry Corps " — many were discovered to be members of the 
 great secret organization of " United Irishmen." This discovery alarmed 
 O'Connell, who was naturally under an apprehension lest, in some man- 
 ner, he might be involved in a charge of disaffection to "the powers that 
 be." I have just given his own admission that he was himself a United 
 Irishman. Accordingly — manifesting some of the safe worldly prudence 
 I have pointed out as characteristic of the O'Connell race — he determined 
 to withdraw from the danger. In June, 1798, he left Dublin. As com- 
 munication by land with the interior of the island was then cut off, he 
 sailed with eighteen others for Cork in a potato-boat, bound for Court- 
 masherry. They each gave the pilot half a guinea to put them ashore 
 at the Cove of Cork. There they landed after a capital passage of six- 
 and-thirty hours. We may rest assured that the discomforts of this odd 
 voyage in the potato-boat were more than counterbalanced by the fun 
 and frolic of the passengers. Doubtless, O'Connell himself, with his vein 
 of genial, exuberant humor, was the veiy soul of the mirth on board. 
 Even of the demon of sea-sickness the merry voyagers were sure to make 
 a laughing-stock. 
 
 Having landed safely, O'Connell travelled to his native Iveragh, and 
 remained for some months at Carhen. Here the career of the future 
 "liberator" was within a little of being prematurely cut short by an 
 enemy fully as insidious and fatal as the Saxon government. In plain 
 words, he was assailed by a severe fit of typhus fever in the August of 
 '98. It was caused by his sleeping in wet clothes. He had dried them 
 on him at the fire in a peasant's cabin. At the same time he had tossed 
 off three glasses of whisky, after which he fell asleep. The following 
 
148 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 day he goes forth to the chase, but his hunting-exercise soon fatigues 
 him, and he falls asleep in a ditch beneath the rays of the sun. He gets 
 worse and worse every day. He spends a fortnight in a miserable state 
 of discomfort, wandering about and unable to eat anything. At last, 
 feeling that he can battle against the disease no longer, he gives in and 
 takes to bed. Now old Dr. Moriarty is sent for in hot haste. He at 
 once pronounces our hero to be in a state of high fever. " I was in such 
 pain," says O'Connell, "that I wished to die. In my ravings I fancied 
 that I was in the middle of a wood, and that the branches were on tire 
 around me. I felt my backbone stiffening for death, and I positively 
 declare that I think what saved me was the effort I made to rise up and 
 show my father, who was at my bedside, that I knew him. I verily 
 believe that effort of nature averted death. During my illness I used to 
 quote from the tragedy of ' Douglas ' these lines : 
 
 'Unknown I die, no tongue shall speak of me; 
 Some noble spirits, judging by themselves, 
 May yet conjecture what I might have proved, 
 And think life only wanting to my fame.' 
 
 " I used to quote these lines under the full belief that my illness 
 would end fatally. Indeed, long before that period — when I was seven 
 years old — } r es, indeed, as long as I can recollect, I always felt a pre- 
 sentiment that I should write my name on the page of history. I hated 
 Saxon domination. I detested the tyrants of Ireland. During the latter 
 part of my illness, Dr. Moriarty told me that Bonaparte had got his 
 whole army to Alexandria across the desert. 
 
 " 'That is impossible,' said I; 'he cannot have done so; they would 
 have starved.' 
 
 " ' Oh no,' replied the doctor; 'they had a quantity of portable soup 
 with them, sufficient to feed the whole army for four days.' 
 
 "'Ay,' rejoined I; 'but had they portable water? For their port- 
 able soup would have been but of little use if they had not water to dis- 
 solve it in.' 
 
 " My father looked at the attendants with an air of hope. Dr. Mori- 
 arty said to my mother, 'His intellect, at any rate, is untouched.' I 
 remember the doctor's mentioning the rumor of an engagement between 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 149 
 
 the insurgents and the royalists at Ballinamuck, but the result had not 
 then transpired." 
 
 After this severe wrestling-match with "that most excellent fellow 
 Death," as Lucian humorously styles the terrible and all-destroying 
 " goblin " king, O'Connell rapidly recovered. And now, behold ! early 
 one sunny morn in 1799, like the adventurers of old, he sallies forth on 
 horseback from his father's house at Carhen — the abode where he first 
 saw the blessed light of heaven — to go on his first circuit. Our cavalier, 
 however, is not armed with lance and shield or clad in complete steel, 
 nor does he, like the antique knights-errant, expect to redress the wrongs 
 of injured damozels by the wayside. Yet is our adventurer strongly 
 armed, too, with a powerful frame and constitution, a stout, hope- 
 ful heart, and, above all, a vigorous, domineering brain, full of all the 
 subtleties and resources of an acute lawyer, and all the commanding 
 energy of a consummate popular leader. And ere he dies he, too, may 
 right, in modern forensic way, the wrongs of widow and orphan, and 
 in another way, more or less his own, may go far to redress the wrongs 
 of an entire nation. He. too, may meet and vanquish in desperate 
 encounter many an ogre of misrule and wrong. Wicked barons and 
 rack-renting landocrats were grinding down Irish peasants in his clays 
 as fiercely and pitilessly as their forefathers or prototypes trampled 
 under iron heel the mediaeval serfs. 
 
 His own account of this his first sally (properly so called) from his 
 paternal home to fight the battle of life is intensely interesting. It would 
 be a pity not to give it in his own words. After mentioning that on his 
 recovery "he prepared to go off circuiteering," he thus proceeds: "It 
 was at four o'clock on a fine sunny morning that I left Carhen on horse- 
 back. My brother John came part of the way with me. and oh how I 
 did envy him when he turned off the road to hunt among the mountains, 
 whilst I had to enter on the drudgery of my profession ! But we parted. 
 I looked after him from time to time until he was out of sight, and then 
 I cheered up my spirits as well as I could. I had left home at such an 
 early hour that I was in Tralee at half-past twelve. I got my horse fed, 
 and thinking it was as well to push on, I remounted him and took the 
 road to Tarbert by Listowell. A few miles farther on a shower of rain 
 drove me under a bridge for shelter. "While I stayed there the rain sent 
 
150 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Robert Hickson also under the bridge. He saluted me, and asked me 
 where I was going. I answered, ' To Tarbert.' 
 
 " ' Why so late ?' said Hickson. 
 
 " 'I am not late,' said I. 'I have been up since four o'clock this 
 morning.' 
 
 " ' Why, where do you come from ?' 
 
 " ' From Carhen.' Hickson looked astonished, for the distance was 
 near fifty Irish miles ; but he expressed his warm approval of my 
 activity. 
 
 " ' Yoxill do, young gentleman,' said he ; 'I see you 1 11 do.' 
 
 " I then rode on, and got to Tarbert about five in the afternoon — full 
 sixty miles, Irish, from Carhen. There wasn't one book to be had at the 
 inn. I had no acquaintance in the town, and I felt my spirits low 
 enough at the prospect of a long, stupid evening. But I was relieved 
 by the sudden appearance of Ralph Marshall, an old friend of mine, who 
 came to the inn to dress for a ball that took place in Tarbert that night. 
 He asked me to accompany him to the ball. 
 
 " 'Why,' said I, ' I have ridden sixty miles.' 
 
 " ' Oh, you don't seem in the least tired,' said he ; ' so come along.' 
 
 " Accordingly, I went and sat up until two o'clock in the morning, 
 dancing." (Here either Dan or Mr. Daunt, who is the reporter of his 
 words, seems to be guilty of something like "an Irish bull.") "I arose 
 next day at half-past eight, and rode to the Limerick assizes. At the 
 Tralee assizes of the same circuit James Connor gave me a brief. There 
 was one of the witnesses of the other party whose cross-examination 
 was thrown upon me by the opposite counsel. I did not do as I have 
 seen fifty young counsel do — namely, hand the cross-examination over to 
 my senior. I thought it due to myself to attempt it, hit or miss, and I 
 cross-examined him right well. I remember he stated that he had his 
 share of a pint of whisky, whereupon I asked him whether his share was 
 not all except the pewter. He confessed that it was ; and the oddity of 
 my mode of putting the question was very successful and created a gen- 
 eral and hearty laugh. Jerry Keller repeated the encouragement Robert 
 Hickson had already bestowed upon my activity in the very same words : 
 'You'll do, young gentleman — you'll do.' " 
 
 It may be remarked here, for the edification of American readers of 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 151 
 
 the above anecdotes, that Irish miles are much longer than English miles. 
 Distances in Ireland are now, however, more generally measured by Eng- 
 lish miles than they were in O'Connell's early days. The Jerry Keller 
 just mentioned was an Irish barrister of great abilities and greater 
 eccentricity, of whom we shall hear again in the course of this biog- 
 raphy, llobert Hickson had originally been a Eoman Catholic. He 
 thought proper, however, to turn Protestant, and was twice made high- 
 sheriff of the county Kerry. In 1799 he took it into his head to turn 
 Catholic again, and, before doing so, consulted Plunkett, Saurin and 
 young O'Connell to learn whether, by taking such a step, he would in- 
 cur the penalties against "relapsed papists." His legal advisers freed 
 his mind from all apprehension on this score, and he accordingly went 
 back to his original Church, nor did he ever stray from its fold again. 
 
 But the adventures of this circuit, in the course of which our hero 
 attended the assizes of Limerick, Tralee and Cork, are not yet finished. 
 After the Cork assizes, O'Connell and another barrister named Harry 
 Deane Grady agreed to travel post to Dublin together. When, on a very 
 wet evening, the two travellers reached Fermoy, they found the inns com- 
 pletely crowded with the judges, their suite and their yeomanry escort, 
 so that they were compelled to dine in a corner of the tap-room. Whilst 
 the two young lawyers were there, a corporal of dragoons and three pri- 
 vates entered and sat down to drink. O'Connell and Grady were very 
 anxious to provide themselves with powder and ball for their pistols, as 
 they had to pass that evening by a dangerous route through the Kil- 
 worth Mountains, which then bore an evil name from the fact of their 
 defiles being infested with gangs of robbers. There was one part of the 
 old road peculiarly dangerous in more ways than one. It was a narrow 
 causeway thrown across a glen : it was unprotected by guard-walls and 
 too narrow for two vehicles to pass abreast. The postboys were wont to 
 style it " the delicate bit." "And," to use the words of O'Connell, " a tick- 
 lish spot it surely was on a dark night, approached at one end from a 
 steep declivity." It was no wonder, then, that our forensic travellers 
 were anxious before passing the Kil worth defiles, especially "the deli- 
 cate bit," to procure a fresh supply of munitions of war, so as to be able 
 to defy the robbers at all events. Having this object in view, Grady 
 turned to the corporal, and said, abruptly, 
 
152 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 11 Soldier, will you sell me some powder and ball?" 
 
 " Sir, I don't sell powder," replied the corporal, snappishly. 
 
 "Will you, then, have the goodness to buy me some?" said Grady. 
 " I believe the fellows that are licensed to sell it here are very chary 
 of it." 
 
 Remember, this was the year after the sanguinary rebellion of '98. 
 A general feeling of uneasiness, distrust, even terror, still pervaded the 
 island. 
 
 "Sir," replied the corporal, still more tartly than before, "you may 
 go yourself; I am no man's messenger but the king's." 
 
 O'Connell seized the first opportunity of whispering to Grady, " I 
 wonder. Grady, that you, who have so much mother-wit, should have 
 been guilty of the blunder of calling the corporal ' Soldier.' Did you not 
 see the mark of his rank upon his sleeve ? You have grievously wounded 
 his pride and turned him against us by thus undervaluing him in the 
 eyes of his own soldiers, whom doubtless he keeps at a distance, and 
 amongst whom he plays the officer." 
 
 Grady kept silent, and in a minute our insinuating hero accosted the 
 offended son of Mars. 
 
 " Sergeant," said the wily advocate, " I am very glad that you and 
 your brave fellows here had not the trouble of escorting the judges this 
 wet day. It was excellent business for those yeomanry chaps." 
 
 " Ay, indeed, sir," said the corporal, this time speaking quite civilly, 
 and manifestly highly nattered at having been styled " Sergeant " by our 
 hero ; " it was well for those that were not under these torrents of rain." 
 
 " Perhaps, sergeant," resumes the bland and insinuating diplomatist, 
 " you would have the kindness to procure me some powder and ball in 
 town ; we are to pass the Kilworth Mountains, and shall want ammu- 
 nition. You can of course have no difficulty in purchasing, but it is 
 not to every one they'll sell these matters." 
 
 This clever proceeding by method of sap and mine on the part of the 
 oily young barrister was simply irresistible. The corporal in a moment 
 forgot all about his offended dignity; Dan's blarney went down like new 
 milk mixed with drops of Lethe's water. 
 
 " Sir," said the corporal with the utmost bonhommie, and even effu- 
 sion, " I shall have very great pleasure in requesting your acceptance of 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 153 
 
 a small supply of powder and ball. My balls will, I think, just fit your 
 pistol. You'll stand in need of ammunition, for there are some of those 
 outlying rebelly rascals on the mountains." 
 
 Harry Grady was immensely amused at Dan's brilliant success in 
 smoothing the ruffled feelings of the warrior. "Ah, Dan," said he, 
 smiling at his balmy-tongued fellow-traveller, "you'll go through the 
 world fair and easy, I foresee." 
 
 Indeed, everybody who came across Dan in those days, or even ear- 
 lier, seemed to anticipate his future success in life. We have seen a 
 remarkable instance of this in Dr. Stapylton's letter to his uncle from 
 St. Omer's. In the same manner his instructors at Douay had already 
 prophesied his future renown from the uncommon talent he manifested 
 while in that seminary. 
 
 But, to return to our two travellers. Their warlike preparations, after 
 all, were not called into requisition. The expected attack by the band 
 of robbers did not come off; though, on the principles of that admirable 
 authority in predatory matters, the worthy Captain Gibbet, in Farquhar's 
 comedy of "The Beaux' Stratagem," the night was a beautiful one for 
 such an enterprise, for it was fearfully wet as O'Connell and Grady 
 crossed the Kilworth Mountains, and it may be presumed pretty safely 
 it was also, to use the words of Gibbet's excellent colleague in roguery, 
 Hounslow, "dark as hell;" and possibly, if their comrade Bagshot, the 
 third member of this respectable triumvirate, so admirably typical of a 
 certain class of " British Worthies," had been there, he would have added 
 of the night, "And blows like the devil." 
 
 " It is an ill wind that blows nobody good;" so the old saying runs, 
 and it may be very true for all I know to the contrary. But it is also 
 true that there is no ill wind or weather but does somebody some harm, 
 be it more or less. If O'Connell and his friend Grady escaped scot-free 
 this night from all ill consequences of foul weather or mishaps from 
 fouler deeds of robbers, or other mischances of the road, the day and the 
 weather were fatal to a cousin of Dan's. Captain Henessey, his cousin, 
 commanded the company that escorted the judges from the city of Cork 
 to Fermoy on that day. By the time he arrived at Fermoy he was wet 
 to the skin. When he got into the inn he pulled out the breast of his 
 shirt and wrung about a pint of water from it on the floor. O'Connell 
 
154 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 implored him to change his clothes. " Oh no," he said, carelessly, " I 
 sha'n't mind it;" and in that state he sat down to dinner. The result 
 of this act of imprudence was a fever, and in three or four days Captain 
 Henessey was a corpse. Referring afterwards to this melancholy occur- 
 rence, O'Connell makes the following reflections : " How people will fling 
 their lives away ! I once myself nearly fell a victim to sitting in wet 
 clothes." (No doubt O'Connell here refers to the severe attack of fever 
 already described in this chapter.) "No one should remain an instant in 
 them after ceasing to be in motion. As long as you are riding or walk- 
 ing the exercise preserves you. On reaching your house throw off your 
 wet clothes and get between blankets at once. Thus you become warm 
 all over in an instant. To rinse the mouth once or twice with spirits 
 and water is useful." 
 
 This Harry Deane Grady, O'Connell' s fellow-traveller on this occa- 
 sion, was, in O'Connell's opinion, " a very dexterous cross-examiner." 
 He once showed his skill in this respect very conspicuously at an assizes 
 at Tralee, where he was retained to defend some still-owners who had 
 been recently engaged in a scuffle with live soldiers. The soldiers were 
 witnesses against the still-owners. Harry Grady cross-examined in the 
 following style each soldier, out of ear-shot of his comrades, who were all 
 kept out of court : 
 
 " Well, soldier, it was a murderous scuffle, wasn't it ?" " Yes." "But 
 you weren't afraid?" "No." 
 
 " Of course you weren't. It is part of your sworn duty to die in the 
 king's service if needs must. But if you were not afraid, maybe others 
 were not quite so brave. Were any of your comrades frightened ? Tell 
 the truth now." 
 
 "Why, indeed, sir, I can't say but they were." 
 
 "Ah, I thought so. Come, now, name the men who were fright- 
 ened. On your oath, now." 
 
 The soldier then mentioned every "man Jack" of his four comrades. 
 Grady then told him "he might go down," after which he called up on 
 the table soldier number two, to whom he addressed precisely the same 
 set of questions, receiving just the same answers. The third, fourth 
 and fifth soldiers were called up in turn, and Grady adopted in every 
 case the same line of cross-examination with the same identical result 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 155 
 
 In short, ho induced each of the five soldiers to swear that he alone had 
 fought the still-owners courageously, and that every one of his four com- 
 rades was an arrant coward. By this ingenious method Harry contrived 
 to throw complete discredit on the soldiers' evidence against his clients. 
 
 Having passed the defiles of the Kilworth Mountains without any 
 collision with the highwaymen, the two young lawyers reached Dublin 
 in safety on the third day ; and so ended auspiciously Daniel O'ConnelFs 
 first circuit. 
 
 It may not be out of place to mention here that during his first year 
 at the legal profession O'Connell's fees amounted to fifty-eight pounds 
 sterling; during the second year he received one hundred and fifty; 
 during the third, two hundred ; and during the fourth he received 
 about three hundred guineas. But during the last year of his practice 
 he got no less a sum than nine thousand pounds, though he lost one term. 
 
 The freebooters continued to levy contributions in the perilous passes 
 of the Kilworth Mountains for a long time after the adventures I have 
 just related. The last remaining robber, Mr. O'Neill Daunt tells us, 
 was shot about the year 1810 by the postmaster of Fermoy. Several 
 individuals had been forced to pay tribute to this unlicensed surveyor of 
 the king's highway a short time previously, upon which the postmaster 
 and another townsman of Fermoy hired a post-chaise and drove to the 
 Kilworth Mountains. The robber, spying the chaise as it drew near, 
 darted on his imagined prey and gave the customary order to " stand 
 and deliver." The response of the postmaster took him rather by sur- 
 prise, for that combative official shot him dead incontinently ; and thus 
 perished the last freebooter of the Kilworth range. 
 
 O'Connell himself once mistook a possibly quite inoffensive man for 
 a robber, and was within an ace of shooting him. This occurred about 
 five or six miles on the Dublin side of Nenagh. Travelling over the 
 same ground years after with Mr. Daunt, he related to that gentleman 
 the circumstances of the adventure. " I was very near being a very 
 guilty wretch there," said the Liberator. "Some years ago, when this 
 neighborhood was much infested with robbers, I was travelling on cir- 
 cuit. My horses were not very good, and just at this spot I saw a man 
 whose movements excited my suspicions. He slowly crossed the road 
 about twenty yards in advance of my carriage, and awaited my approach 
 
156 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 with his back against the wall and his hand in the breast of his coat, as 
 if ready to draw a pistol. I felt certain I should be attacked, so I held 
 my pistol ready to fire, its barrel resting on the carriage door. The man 
 did not stir, and so escaped. Had he but raised his hand I should have 
 fired. Good God! what a miserable guilty wretch I should have been! 
 How sincerely I thank God for my escape from such guilt!" 
 
 As we are on the subject of highwaymen and robbers, I may as well 
 give here O'Connell's account of the death of the notorious highwayman, 
 Brennan, who in our hero's earlier days, like many other more respectable 
 public characters, nourished for a good while at other people's expense. It 
 was when on his way from Maryborough in the Queen's county to Dub- 
 lin that O'Connell gave it to Mr. Daunt, the day after he related the last 
 anecdote. As they were passing by a gravel-pit he suddenly said, "That 
 is the spot where Brennan the robber was killed. Jerry Connor (of 
 Tralee, an attorney) was going from Dublin to Kerry, and was attacked 
 by Brennan at that spot. Brennan presented his pistol, crying, 'Stand!' 
 ' Hold !' cried Jerry Connor. ' Don't fire ; here's my purse.' The robber, 
 thrown off his guard by these words, lowered his weapon, and Jerry, 
 instead of a purse, drew a pistol from his pocket and shot Brennan in 
 the chest. Brennan's back was supported at the time against the ditch, 
 so he did not fall. He took deliberate aim at Jerry, but feeling himself 
 mortally wounded, dropped liis pistol, crawled over the ditch and walked 
 slowly along, keeping parallel with the road. He then crept over an- 
 other ditch, under which he was found dead the next morning." Such 
 was the fate of Brennan the robber. 
 
 I remember having heard and read in my boyhood some other anec- 
 dotes of this unlucky knight of the road, Brennan ; how on one occa- 
 sion he was chased into a wood by some militia soldiers ; how he con- 
 cealed himself in some tangled undergrowth ; how, when they were 
 beating about and searching for him, the sergeant, thrusting all round 
 with his bayonet, stuck him three times ; how Brennan's endurance 
 was so great as to enable him to refrain from uttering a cry till the pain 
 of the third stab forced him to give in. 
 
 Also, I remember reading that, when Brennan was lodged in jail, a 
 certain banker whose credit at the time was none of the highest, and 
 whose notes people were not over fond of receiving as payment, came, 
 
THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 15-i 
 
 like numbers of other gobemouches, to gratify his curiosity by stariug at 
 his brother rogue. " I'm glad to see you there at last," said the banker, 
 addressing Brennan with rather vindictive emphasis. "Well now, 
 really," replied Brennan with sly humor, " I must say you're a most 
 ungrateful man, for I never objected to take your notes when everybody 
 else was refusing them." 
 
 During the same journey, at a part of the road between Kildare and 
 Rathcoole, O'Connell pointed out the spot where Leonard MeNally the 
 attorney, son to the barrister of the same name, who was a well-known 
 character in Ireland in the days of O'Connell's early bar life, asserted he had 
 been robbed of a heavy sum of money. He tried to indemnify himself 
 for this alleged loss by levying an equivalent sum off the county. " A 
 pair of greater rogues than father and son never lived," said O'Connell; 
 " and the father was busily endeavoring to impress upon every person 
 he knew a belief that his son had been really robbed. Among others, 
 he accosted Parsons, then member of Parliament for the King's county, 
 in the hall of the Four Courts. 'Parsons! Parsons, my dear fellow !' said 
 old Leonard, 'did you hear of my son's robbery?' 'No,' answered Par- 
 sons, quietly, ' I did not. Whom did he rob?' " 
 
 O'Connell used sometimes to indulge in pleasant and genial reminis- 
 cences of the inns where weary and travel-stained guests found their 
 " warmest welcome " in his earlier days. Often and often, when on circuit, 
 basking on a winter's evening in the warmth of the bright and cheering 
 hearths of those inn-parlors, he enjoyed the merry social converse of his 
 bar contemporaries, not less brilliant with its continual flashes of w T it and 
 humor than the firelight that glowed and sparkled in the rich, ruddy 
 wine on the table and danced all around on the walls and the ceiling. 
 How cozily these jolly companions slumbered at last after their fatigues 
 and revelry in the comfortable beds, buried deep amid piles of feathers! 
 And then how famous for their capital breakfasts and substantial din- 
 ners were some of these old hostelries! In such abodes of superabundant 
 hospitality, Dugald Dalgetty himself, if he were once more on earth, 
 would find it an easy and most enjoyable task at one meal "to victual 
 himself for at least three days." 
 
 "There," cries O'Connell, "was the Coach and Horses Inn, at Asso- 
 las, in the county Clare — I dare say you remember it, Tom, close to the 
 
158 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 bridge." [He ivas addressing no less a person than Ms faithful and eccentric 
 squire, Tom Steele.) "What delicious claret they had there! It is lev- 
 elled with the ground these many years. Then there was that inn near 
 Maryborough; how often I have seen the old trooper who kept it 
 smoking his pipe on the stone bench at the door, and his fat old wife 
 sitting opposite to him ! They kept a right good house. She inherited 
 the inn from her father and mother, and was trained up early to the 
 business. She was an only child, and had displeased her parents by a 
 runaway-match with a dragoon soldier. However, they soon relented, 
 and received her and her husband into favor. The worthy trooper took 
 charge of the stable department, for which his habits well adapted him, 
 and the in-door business was admirably managed by his wife. 
 
 "Then there was that inn at Naas — most comfortably kept and 
 excellent wine. I remember stopping to dine there one day, posting up 
 from the Limerick assizes. There were three of us in the chaise, and 
 
 was tipsy; his eyes were bloodshot and his features swollen from 
 
 hard drinking on the previous night, besides which he had tippled a little 
 in the morning. As he got out of the chaise I called him ' Parson,' to 
 the evident delight of a Methodist preacher who was haranguing a 
 crowd in the street, and who deemed his own merits enhanced by the 
 contrast with a sottish minister of the Establishment." 
 
 Speaking of the inn at Milstreet, in the county Cork, he remarked to 
 his friend Mr. Daunt, " The improved roads have injured that inn. I 
 well remember when it was the regular end of the first day's journey 
 from Tralee. It was a comfortable thing for a social pair of fellow-trav- 
 ellers to get out of their chaise at nightfall, and to find at the inn (it 
 was then kept by a cousin of mine, a Mrs. Cotter) a roaring fire in a 
 clean, well-furnished parlor, the whitest table-linen, the best beef, the 
 sweetest and tenderest mutton, the fattest fowl, the most excellent wines 
 (claret and Madeira were the high wines then — they knew nothing about 
 champagne), and the most comfortable beds. In my early days it was 
 by far the best inn in Munster. But the new roads have enabled the 
 travellers from Kerry to get far beyond Milstreet in a day, and the inn 
 being therefore less frequented than of old, is, of course, not so well 
 looked after by its present proprietor." 
 
 Between Milstreet and Macroom, O'Connell used to point out the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 159 
 
 old mountain-roads, over which, in former days, the judges when on cir- 
 cuit were obliged to travel. If persons observed to him that these roads 
 seemed quite impassable for wheel-carriages, he would remark that the 
 old infirm judges travelled over them in their carriages at a foot-pace; 
 the younger judges went circuit on horseback. 
 
 On one occasion Mr. Daunt asked O'Connell "whether he admired 
 and sympathized with Arthur O'Connor?" Arthur O'Connor, it is 
 scarcely necessary to observe, was one of the most prominent leaders of 
 the " United Irishmen." He was also uncle to Fergus O'Connor, O'Con- 
 nell's assistant-agitator at a later period of his career. 
 
 "More no than yes," was O'Connell's reply to Mr. Daunt' s inquiry. 
 " I had, indeed, admired him until Curran disclosed to me that he had a 
 plan for an agrarian law, dividing the land in equal portions among all 
 the inhabitants. That, I saw at once, involved consequences so anti-so- 
 cial that it greatly cooled my admiration of him." 
 
 Mr. Daunt observes that, except from O'Connell, he never heard of 
 Arthur O'Connor's plan for the division of the land He seems inclined 
 to conjecture that it may, after all, have been a plan for a small allot- 
 ment system, calculated to promote " the comfort of the humbler classes 
 without encroaching upon the interests or rights of the landed aristoc- 
 racy," involving, in short, no "anti-social results." 
 
 We have seen O'Connell travelling with Harry Deane Grady, but in 
 the earlier portion of his career he sometimes had far more distinguished 
 fellow-travellers. He once travelled with the illustrious Curran in the 
 Cork mail. At the period of this journey travellers by the mail reached 
 Dublin from Cork in eight-and-forty hours. On this occasion there 
 were six insides and unlimited outsides (in later times the number of 
 passengers a ?»a*7-coach could carry was limited, if I remember rightly, 
 to eight ; ordinary day-coaches were licensed to carry nineteen, but they 
 often crowded more on the top of the luggage on the roof). The passen- 
 gers got off the coach and walked two or three miles on the rising ground 
 on the Dublin side of Clonmel. It was during that walk that Curran 
 talked to O'Connell of Arthur O'Connor's supposed agrarian scheme. 
 
 In the course of a conversation, in which the name of Arthur O'Con- 
 nor chanced to turn up, that gentleman's celebrated letter to Lord Cas- 
 
 tle-reagh, written in 1798, was spoken of. "Do you know," said O'Con- 
 11 
 
160 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 nell to Mr. Daunt, "who got that letter printed? It was your friend, 
 old Cornelius McLoughlin. He was walking past Kilmainham prison, 
 and was hailed by Arthur O'Connor from a window. Arthur threw his 
 manuscript out, saying, 'Will you do me the service of getting that 
 printed?' 'If I find on perusal that it merits publication, I will,' 
 said McLoughlin. 'Promise me positively!' 'No; but if I like the 
 production I shall gladly bear the expense of printing it.' So saying, 
 McLoughlin took it home, read, approved, and got it printed. For act- 
 ing thus, Cornelius was brought before the select committee of the 
 House of Commons. When asked who got the pamphlet printed, he 
 boldly answered, ' It was I .' ' Why did you do so ?' ' Because I ap- 
 proved of the principles contained in it.' Whereupon Castlereagh said, 
 1 That's a brave fellow ! We won't inflict any punishment upon him.' " 
 
 Mr. Daunt, feeling somewhat surprised at this instance of lenity in 
 Castlereagh, remarked that "he had not thought his lordship had so 
 much good in him." 
 
 " Oh," replied the Liberator, " he had a good deal of pluck, and liked 
 spirit in others. Besides, at that period, as the Union was virtually car- 
 ried, there did not exist any pressing occasion to shed innocent blood." 
 
 O'Connell, contrasting the reputation for wit which the Irish bar 
 enjoyed at the close of the eighteenth century with that which it pos- 
 sessed at a much later period of his life, admitted, indeed, that in the 
 more recent period the profession could boast no such wit as Curran, 
 but that still it had within its ranks members largely endowed with the 
 talent for provoking laughter. "Holmes," said he, "has a great share of 
 very clever sarcasm. As for myself, to the last hour of my practice at 
 the bar, I kept the court alternately in tears and in roars of laughter. 
 Plunket had great wit. He was a creature of exquisite genius. Noth- 
 ing could be happier than his hit in reply to Lord Redesdale [Mitford, 
 the historian of Greece's brother — a dry Englishman sent over to be Irish 
 chancellor) about the kites. In a speech before Redesdale, Plunket had 
 occasion to use the phrase ' kites ' very frequently, as designating fraud- 
 ulent bills and promissory notes. Lord Redesdale, to whom the phrase 
 was quite new, at length interrupted him, saying, ' I don't quite under- 
 stand your meaning, Mr. Plunket; in England kites are paper play- 
 things used by boys ; in Ireland they seem to mean some monetary 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 161 
 
 transaction.' 'There is another difference, my lord,' said Plunket; 
 'in England the wind raises the kites; in Ireland the kites raise the 
 witicV 
 
 " Curran was once defending an attorney's bill of costs before Lord 
 Clare [chancellor of Ireland, an infamous Irishman, ivho ivas mainly in- 
 strumental in carrying the accursed act of Union that extinguished the 
 legislative independence of his country). 'Here, now,' said Clare, 'is a 
 flagitious imposition: how can you defend this item, Mr. Curran: "To 
 writing innumerable letters, £100" ? ' 'Why, my lord,' said Curran, 
 'nothing can be more reasonable. It is not a penny a letter /' And Cur- 
 ran' s reply to Judge Robinson is excpiisite in its way. ' I'll commit you, 
 sir,' said the judge. ' I hope you'll never commit a worse thing, my 
 lord !' retorted Curran. 
 
 "Wilson Croker, too, had humor. When the crier wanted to expel 
 the dwarf O'Leary, who was about two feet four inches high, from the 
 jury-box in Tralee, Croker said, ' Let him stay where he is — De minibus 
 non curat lex.'' (About very small things the laiv cares not.) And when 
 Tom Goold got retainers from both sides, ' Keep them both,' said Croker; 
 ' you may conscientiously do so. You can be counsel for one side, and 
 of use to the other.' " 
 
 It was probably during the early days of his professional life that 
 O'Connell was about to write a novel. When asked what his story was 
 to have been, he said, "Why, as to the story, I had not that fully deter- 
 mined on. But my hero was to have been a natural son of George III. 
 by Hannah Lightfoot, his Quaker mistress. The youth was to have been 
 early taken from his mother, and I meant to make him a student at 
 Douay, and thence to bring him through various adventures to the West 
 Indies. He was to be a soldier of fortune — to take part in the American 
 war— and to come back finally to England imbued with republican 
 principles." Mr. Daunt failed to remember clearly whether O'Connell 
 intended that this young adventurer, on his return to his native land, 
 should be confronted with the king his father. 
 
 O'Connell was a zealous advocate of the beautiful and unfortunate 
 Mary queen of Scots. This doughty champion was inclined to do des- 
 perate battle for the honor of her name and memory in the teeth of all 
 the charges and aspersions levelled and flung against her fair fame. In 
 
162 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 fact, he seems to have felt a glow of downright enthusiasm for the mem- 
 ory of the hapless queen, and to have almost reverenced any relics of her 
 still remaining. "I saw her manuscript," said he, "in the Advocates' 
 Library at Edinburgh ; I kissed the writing and pressed it to my heart." 
 This was rather a high-flown style of devotion or chivalry, to say the 
 least. Few persons, in the present stage of the nineteenth century at 
 all events, could be made to admire or even comprehend such a cherish- 
 ing of royal souvenirs, and such a thorough devotion to those old if not 
 obsolete feelings and sentiments of loyalty that were felt rather on 
 account of the associations hanging around a dynasty than on account 
 of the sovereign's own sterling merits. This extreme admiration of 
 Mary queen of Scots formed, no doubt, a large part of the romance of our 
 hero's more youthful days. 
 
 But his heart and imagination could not for any length of time 
 remain contented with a mere ideal romance, in which the ill-starred 
 and beautiful Scottish queen of the sixteenth century should reign as 
 the sole heroine. His soul now began to long for an object of love and 
 devotion having more touch of reality than the melancholy historic or 
 poetic phantoms of the past. And soon these cravings of his whole being 
 were more than satisfied, for his fair cousin, Mary O'Connell, glided 
 before him a most "delightful vision" — real, indeed, yet idealized too 
 by his own enamored fancy, and made all-radiant by the "purple light 
 of love." The dreams and longings of both are indeed more than real- 
 ized. Youth's magic power carries them for a time far away from "-dull 
 earth," and they wander blissfully hand in hand through regions of 
 delicious enchantment, O'Connell himself gives us a glimpse of the 
 supreme moment of happiness in this the love-romance of his life. " I 
 never," he says, "proposed marriage to any woman but one — my Mary. 
 I said to her, 'Are you engaged, Miss O'Connell?' She answered, ' I am 
 not.' 'Then,' said I, 'will you engage yourself to me?' 'I will,' was 
 her reply. And I said I would devote my life to make her happy. She 
 deserved that I should : she gave me thirty-four years of the purest hap- 
 piness that man ever enjoyed. My uncle was desirous I should obtain 
 a much larger fortune, and I thought he would disinherit me. But I 
 did not care for that. I was richly rewarded by subsequent happiness." 
 Had his uncle and other relatives, who were indignant at the match, not 
 
THE LIKE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 163 
 
 relented, his profession would, even from the outset, have sufficed to make 
 him independent. 
 
 The lovers were privately married on the 23d of June, 1802, in Dame 
 street, Dublin, at the lodgings of Mr. James Connor, the lady's brother- 
 in-law. The bride was the daughter of a physician in Tralee, who was 
 indeed skilful in his profession, but not sufficiently rich to give a mar- 
 riage-portion with his daughter. This it was which caused the resent- 
 ment of O'Connell's family when they came to know of the marriage, 
 for it was kept secret for several months. The Reverend Mr. Finn, then 
 parish priest of Irishtown, was the clergyman who pronounced the nup- 
 tial benediction. 
 
 The young wife resided in Tralee with her grandmother. It used to 
 be O'Connell's delight to quiz the old lady by pretending to complain of 
 her granddaughter's want of temper. "Madam," he would say, "Mary 
 would do very well, only she is so cross." 
 
 "Cross, sir?" the old lady would hastily reply, in the greatest state 
 of amazement and vexation. "My Mary cross? Sir, you must have 
 provoked her very much. Sir, you must yourself be quite in fault. Sir, 
 my little girl was always the gentlest, sweetest creature born !" 
 
 " And so she was," O'Connell would exclaim, when recalling in after 
 days these tender passages of his early wedded life. "She had the 
 sweetest, the most heavenly temper, and the sweetest breath." 
 
 O'Connell used to tell this anecdote of his wife's days of childhood : 
 "When my wife was a little girl she was obliged to pass, on her way to 
 school every day, under the arch of the jail, and Hands, the jailer of 
 Tralee, a most gruff, uncouth-looking fellow, always made her stop and 
 courtesy to him. She despatched the courtesy with all imaginable expe- 
 dition, and ran away to school to get out of his sight as fast as possible." 
 
 Here is a specimen of O'Connell's style of responding to a toast given 
 in honor of Mrs. O'Connell: "There are some topics of so sacred and 
 sweet a nature that they may be comprehended by those who are happy, 
 but cannot possibly be described by any human being. All that I shall 
 do is to thank you in the name of her who was the disinterested choice 
 of my youth, and who was the ever-cheerful companion of my manly 
 years. In her name I thank you. And this you may readily believe — 
 for experience, I think, will show to us all that a man cannot battle and 
 
164 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 struggle with the malignant enemies of his country unless his nest at 
 home is warm and comfortable — unless the honey of human life is com- 
 mended by a hand he loves. " 
 
 With the above contrast the following passage, which was delivered 
 at a temperance soiree that was given to him in Belfast, in the year 1841, 
 by four hundred and fifty ladies of various religious sects. It was re- 
 ported in " The Belfast Yindicator " of the 20th of January, 1841 : "But 
 that subject brings me back to a being of whom I dare not speak in the 
 profanation of words. No, I will not mention that name. The man 
 who is happiest in his domestic circle may have some idea of what my 
 happiness was. ' Yes, I was her husband then. Did I say was? Oh, 
 yes ! I am her husband still. The grave may separate us for a time, but 
 we shall meet again beyond it, never, I trust, to be separated more." 
 
 Mr. Fao;an tells us in his life of O'Connell that Mrs. O'Connell was 
 an exceedingly amiable, strong-minded woman ; and Mr. O'Connell, it 
 was said, was, during her life, very much guided by her advice. 
 
 Perhaps it may not be out of place here to give some curious remarks 
 of O'Connell on the subject of courtship. Speaking one day of the assi- 
 duities of a friend (I believe Tom Steele) to a certain widow, he ob- 
 served : " One blunder the fellow made was, that he asked her to many 
 him at far too early a period of the courtship. This was highly injudi- 
 cious. Now, by this precipitation he lost the advantage which female 
 curiosity would have otherwise given him. He might have been tender 
 and assiduous, but he should not have declared himself until after he 
 had rendered her considerably curious as to whether he would propose 
 for her or not. This would have created, at all events, an interest about 
 him. 
 
 " Then, again, as to his telling her that he was confident of brilliant 
 political distinction, and holding out as a lure that she would be the 
 sharer of his honors — it showed great want of tact, great want of know- 
 ledge of human nature. If he had tact he would have said, ' I am open- 
 ing a career of ambition ; perhaps I overrate my prospects of success in 
 public life ; but there is one thing which I deeply feel would essentially 
 contribute to it, and that is domestic felicity.'' He should have spoken 
 this with a tender earnestness, and left her to conjecture his meaning. 
 But instead of thus delicately feeling his way, the fellow blurted out his 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. JG5 
 
 trashy brag of successful ambition and fame and his offer of marriage 
 all at once. Then as to the raptures — why every woman past girlhood 
 laughs at raptures ! had fine opportunities, only that the block- 
 head didn't know how to make use of them." 
 
 It is probable that the fact of his being obliged, owing to the hostility 
 of his uncle and other near relations to this marriage with an undowered 
 bride, to trust for a time to his own exertions, had the most salutary 
 effect upon his future fortunes. All the vast energies of his being were 
 aroused that he might be able the better to place his beloved one in 
 such a position as he believed she merited and was fitted to adorn. 
 From this time forward he became every day more and more conspicuous 
 among the public men of his own country for his marvellous industry 
 and activity, his broad views and mastery of details, his amazing fertility 
 of resources. Indeed, in these qualities he was inferior to the public 
 men of no country in the world. Ere long it became quite evident that 
 he was destined to succeed equally in his professional career and in 
 political life. 
 
 I remember once hearing or reading an account of some rich indi- 
 vidual who went to Lord Chief-justice Kenyon, I believe, to ask him as 
 a friend what were likely to be the chances of his son at the bar. The 
 chief-justice made the following reply: " Sir, your son must spend his for- 
 tune; let him marry and spend his wife's ; and then he may be expected 
 to apply in earnest." In " Curran's Life," too, we find that he attributes 
 his success to the fact of his being left without a shilling. " C'est des ch'f- 
 ficidUs quinaissent les miracles.'" (" It is difficulties which give birth to 
 miracles.") 
 
 Rather different was the advice given, some years ago, by one of the 
 senior fellows of Trinity College, Dublin, who was a lay-fellow and a bar- 
 rister, to a friend who came to consult him about the law-books his son 
 should study in order to secure success at the bar. "Books!" cries the 
 old fellow. " Oh, don't trouble yourself about books. Let your son go to 
 a shooting-gallery and practice pistol-shooting for two hours every day 
 for a year. That's the way to rise at the bar in Ireland." The old gen- 
 tleman had been living a secluded life for at least a score of years. In his 
 learned retreat he had failed to observe the changes that had taken place 
 in Ireland, both in society in general and forensic training in particular. 
 
166 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 He imagined that the age of Irish duelling, when all questions were liable 
 to be decided by the arbitrament of the pistol, had not yet passed away 
 — that rising lawyers might still be able to boast, Uke the sanguinary 
 Toler, that they owed their success in life to the parental present of a 
 pair of good duelling-pistols and the skill and courage requisite to make 
 good use of them on any and every possible occasion. He had not, good, 
 easy old man, the remotest idea that it had come to pass at length that 
 it was of far more importance, even in Ireland, for the aspirant after 
 forensic distinction to be master of the contents of dry and crabbed tomes 
 of legal lore than to be the most formidable " crack shot " of the day. 
 He was blissfully ignorant, in short, of the important fact that his life 
 had glided on into a dull prosaic age, when even the fate of Irish elec- 
 tions was wont to be decided without the occurrence of a single " affair 
 of honor " between either the rival candidates or their counsel or any of 
 their supporters, and when a man might become the most prominent of 
 Irish politicians without having once in his whole life pulled a hair- 
 trigger in anger. 
 
 To return to O'Connell. Perhaps if at this period of his life he had 
 seen before him the certainty of affluence independent of his own exer- 
 tions, he might have sunk into ignoble sloth. Something like this hap- 
 pened in the case of a talented barrister named Colbs, with whom our 
 hero was intimate during the early portion of his career at the bar. This 
 Collis, in 1800, wrote an anti-union pamphlet, in which he predicted that 
 the ruin of Ireland would result from that baleful measure. Afterwards, 
 in 1826, he insisted that things had turned out just as he had foretold. 
 O'Connell, in speaking of Collis, described him as " a clever fellow. He 
 had talent enough to have made a figure at the bar if it had not been 
 for the indolence induced by his comfortable property. His wife was a 
 Miss Kashleigh, an uncommonly beautiful woman. He and I went cir- 
 cuit together. Going down to the Monster circuit by the Tullamore 
 boat, we amused ourselves on deck firing pistols at the elms along the 
 canal. There was a small party of soldiers on board, and one of them 
 authoritatively desired us to stop our firing. 
 
 " 'Ah, corporal, don't be so cruel,' said Collis, still firing away. 
 
 " ' Are you a corporal ?' asked I. He surlily replied in the affirmative. 
 
 " 'Then, friend,' said I, 'you must have got yourself reduced to the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'UOXNELL. 167 
 
 ranks by misconduct, for I don't see the V's upon your sleeve.' This 
 raised a laugh at his expense, and he slunk off to the stern quite chap- 
 fallen." 
 
 On the occasion of this Counsellor Collis's marriage with the beau- 
 tiful and rich co-heiress, Miss Rashleigh, the perpetrators of puns were 
 guilty of an indifferent one enough. They said " that he had been a 
 long time thinking of marrying, and at last he married ' RashMgh.' 1 " 
 
 Among O'Connell's earlier contemporaries was a young barrister who 
 on one occasion was retained as counsel against a eow-stealer. He burst 
 into a vehement denunciation of the rogue, who had branded his own 
 name on the horns of the stolen cow. The closing words of the perora- 
 tion of the advocate's harangue were a singularly happy instance of un- 
 conscious burlesque: "If, my lord, the cow were a cow of any feeling, 
 how could she bear to have such a name branded on her horns?" 
 
 It was Bully Egan, I believe, who in those days uttered a sentence of 
 magnificently-audacious nonsense that can hardly be paralleled, not to 
 say surpassed, even in the speeches of our old friend. "Mine Ancient 
 Pistol." Interrupted on some occasion or other by one of the opposing 
 counsel, who happened to have black eyebrows and a hot temper, Egan 
 turned on him with a glare of theatric fierceness and exclaimed, " I 
 would have my learned friend to know that, in the fulfilment of my 
 sacred duty to my client, I am not the man to be intimidated by the 
 dark oblivion of a brow." " Egan," whispered one of his colleagues 
 beside him, eagerly plucking at his gown, " what the devil do you mean ? 
 Sure, that's infernal nonsense you're talking." " I know it is," says 
 Egan, answering the " aside " speech of his friend in another of the sub- 
 limest effrontery, "but it is good enough for a jury!" 
 
 Some of my readers will be astonished to learn that Daniel O'Con- 
 nell became a member of the society of Free and Accepted Masons in 
 the year 1799. His lodge met in Dublin, and consisted of one hundred 
 and eighty-nine members. O'Connell was, it appears, master of the 
 lodge. He writes thus about this passage of his life : " It is true, I was 
 a Freemason and master of a lodge. It was at a very early period of 
 my life, and either before an ecclesiastical censure had been published 
 in the Catholic Church in Ireland prohibiting the taking of the Masonic 
 oaths, or at least before I was aware of that censure. Freemasonry in 
 
168 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Ireland may be said to have (apart from its oaths) no evil tendency, 
 save so far as it may counteract the exertions of those most laudable 
 and useful institutions, the temperance societies. The important objec- 
 tion is the profane taking in vain the awful name of the Deity in the 
 wanton and multiplied oaths — oaths administered on the book of God — 
 without any adequate motive." 
 
 Of course O'Connell after a time left the Masonic body. A Mason, 
 speaking of this withdrawal, uses language which is another tine speci- 
 men of unconscious burlesque : " A dark hour came upon him, and he 
 shunned the light." 
 
 The following entertaining piece of autobiography is given by Mr. 
 O'Neill Daunt in page 148 of the second volume of his amusing "Per- 
 sonal Recollections of O'Connell." 
 
 " In the winter of 1801," said O'Connell, " I had been supping at the 
 Freemasons' Hotel, at the corner of Golden lane, with a jovial party. 
 "We were returning home late, after having drunk a good stoup of claret, 
 when a fire broke out in a timber-yard and spread rapidly. I was pro- 
 voked at the awkwardness of a fellow who was beating the ground with a 
 pickaxe, but making no progress in getting at the water-pipes. I shoul- 
 dered him away, seized the pickaxe, and soon got at the plug; but, 
 instead of stopping then. I kept working away con amove, and would soon 
 have disturbed the paving-stones all over the street if I had not been 
 prevented. There was a large crowd. Sheriff Macready (an old auc- 
 tioneer) kept order, with the aid of a party of the Buckinghamshire 
 militia. I was rather an unruly customer, being a little under the influ- 
 ence of a good batch of claret, and on my refusing to desist from pick- 
 ing up the street one of the soldiers ran a bayonet at me, which was 
 intercepted by the cover of my hunting- watch. If I had not had the 
 watch, there was an end of the Agitator." 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Daunt, after he had listened to the Liberator's rela- 
 tion of this anecdote, "but Ireland would have had other agitators. A 
 country so aggrieved could not have lacked patriot leaders, though they 
 might not have agitated prudently or wisely." 
 
 "Wisely!" echoed O'Connell. "Why, when I took the helm I found 
 all the Catholics full of mutual jealousies ; one man trying to outrival 
 another ; one meeting rivalling another ; the leaders watching to sell 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 1G9 
 
 themselves at the highest penny. sold himself. Woulfe sold him- 
 self—sold himself, and no doubt at a marvellous price." 
 
 O'Connell, long after he got to the head of Irish affairs, remarked to 
 a Father Barry of Clare, on that gentleman's expressing surprise at the 
 appointment to office of certain place-hunters, who, to judge from their 
 utter insignificance, were miserable bargains for the British government 
 to think of buying: "My dear friend, you have no idea what carrion 
 finds a ready sale in the markets of corruption." 
 
 As you travel from Killarney to Milstreet, on the left-hand side of 
 the road stands the farm of Lisnababie. Pointing this out to a friend, 
 O'Connell once exclaimed, " I may say with honest pride that I was a 
 good help to keep that farm in the hands of its rightful owner, Lalor of 
 Killarney. I was yet very young at the bar when Jeny Connor (the 
 attorney concerned for Lalor) gave me two ten-guinea fees in the Lisna- 
 babie case. Lalor remonstrated with Connor, stating that the latter had 
 no right to pay so expensive a compliment out of his money to so young 
 a barrister. This was at a very early period of the cause, which was 
 tried in Dublin before Sir Michael Smith ; but a motion being made in 
 court to dismiss Lalor's bill, I rose and combated it so successfully that 
 Sir Michael Smith particularly complimented me ; and Lalor wrote to 
 Jerry Connor, saying that I gave him the full worth of his money, and 
 desiring (what indeed was a matter of course) that I should be retained 
 for the assizes. "We were finally successful, and I had the chief share in 
 the triumph." 
 
 O'Connell received a whimsical compliment from a client a few 
 months after he commenced practising at the bar. After our hero had 
 succeeded in obtaining his acquittal, the fellow took the first opportu- 
 nity of saying to him with great enthusiasm, " I have no way here to 
 show your honor my gratitude, but I wish to God I saAV you knocked 
 down in my own parish, and maybe I wouldn't bring a faction to res- 
 cue you! Whoop! Long life to your honor!" O'Connell was, it may 
 easily be believed, immensely amused at this singular demonstration 
 of gratitude. 
 
 I shall conclude this chapter with a curious story told by O'Connell, 
 which presents a vivid picture of the corruption which polluted the judi- 
 cial bench towards the close of the last century. O'Connell, on one of 
 
170 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 his political tours, after breakfasting at 'Fermoy in the county Cork, was 
 passing the bridge at Moorepark. He said to his friend, Mr. Daunt, " There 
 is a story connected with this place which shows how the law was ad- 
 ministered in Ireland some seventy or eighty years ago. I think Lord 
 Annaly was the judge who figured in it, but as I am not quite sure, I don't 
 like to attach a discreditable tale to his name without stating my uncer- 
 tainty on this point. He was coming to the Cork assizes, where he was 
 to try a heavy record involving the right of a gentleman named Nagle 
 to a large estate. This bridge did not then exist, and the road descend- 
 ing to the ford was of course a great deal steeper than it is at present, 
 and you see it is bad enough now. The judge's carriage was encoun- 
 tered in the stream by a large drove of bullocks, and considerable delay 
 arose to his progress from the crowded and unruly animals. He bore it 
 in silence for a few minutes, but at length, impatient of the continued 
 impediment, he angrily called out to the driver of the herd, 'Halloo, 
 friend! make way there at once. How dare you stop me?' 'I can't 
 help it, sir,' returned the bullock-driver; 'I'm obeying the orders of 
 
 my master, Mr. Nagle, who ordhered me to drive these beasts to ' 
 
 (naming Lord Annaly's residence in another county). On this announce- 
 ment his lordship's ire softened down considerably. He inquired who 
 Mr. Nagle, the owner of the bullocks, was, and having satisfied himself 
 that the drove were intended by that gentleman as a douceur for his 
 lordship previously to the pending trial, he awaited the clearance of the 
 passage in philosophic silence. When the trial came on he took excel- 
 lent care to secure a verdict in favor of Nagle. On his return to his own 
 abode after the circuit had closed, the first question he asked was, 
 ' "Where the drove of bullocks were ?' But bullocks, alas ! there were 
 none! Nagle had fairly bit the judge. The fact was, that his cause 
 had been disposed of at an early period of the Cork assizes, and seeing 
 no utility in giving away his bullocks for a verdict which was now 
 secured, he despatched an express, who overtook the drover within six 
 miles of the judge's residence, and ordered him to countermarch. Here 
 is another story for you : The noted Denis O'Brien had a record at Nc- 
 nagh; the judge had talked of purchasing a set of carriage-horses, and 
 Denis accordingly sent him a magnificent set, hoping they would answer 
 his lordship, etc., etc. The judge graciously accepted the horses and 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 171 
 
 praised their points extravagantly, and, what was more important for 
 Denis, he charged the jury in his favor and obtained a verdict for him. 
 The instant Denis gained his point he sent in a bill to the judge for the 
 lull value of the horses. His lordship called Denis aside to expostulate 
 privately with him. ' Oh, Mr. O'Brien,' said he, ' I did not think you 
 meant to charge me for those horses. Come now, my dear friend, why 
 should I pay you for them?' 'Upon my word that's curious talk,' re- 
 torted Denis in a tone of defiance ; ' I'd like to know why your lord- 
 ship should not pay me for them ?' To this inquiry of course a reply 
 was impossible; all the judge had for it was to hold his peace and 
 pay the money." * 
 
 * The books to which I am chiefly indebted for the materials of the above chapter are O'Neill 
 Daunt's " Personal Recollections," Fagan's " Life of O'Connell," Mitchel's " Continuation of Mac- 
 Geoghegan," "Curran's Life," by his son, "Memoirs of Theobald Wolfe Tone," "Select Speeches 
 of O'Connell, with Historical Notices," by his son John, etc. 
 
CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 Theobald Wolfe Tone and the "United Irishmen" — Peep-o'-Day Boys and Defend- 
 ers — Orange atrocities — Tone in Bantry Bay — Injustice and tyranny of Lord 
 Camden's government' — Secession of Grattan and his friends from the House of 
 Commons — O'Connell's comments on this step — The Texel expedition — Arrests at 
 Bond's house — Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald — Rebellion of '98 horrors- 
 John P. CURRAN DEFENDS THE UNITED IRISHMEN — DEATH OF WOLFE TONE AND OTHERS 
 
 — The Union — Clare and Castlereagh — Daniel O'Connell's first appearance on 
 
 THE POLITICAL STAGE AS AN ORATOR — HlS ANTI-UNION SPEECH — HENRY GrATTAN's SUD- 
 DEN REAPPEARANCE IN PARLIAMENT — HlS FIERCE INVECTIVE AGAINST CoRRY — DUEL BE- 
 TWEEN Grattan and Corry — Grattan's Anti-Union speeches — The Union carried — 
 Insurrection of 1803 — Robert Emmett's speech in the dock — His execution — O'Con- 
 nell's opinion of Emmett's attempt. 
 
 UKING the year in which Daniel O'Connell was called to the 
 bar an historical event, in itself most serious and attended with 
 momentous consequences to the people of Ireland, took place. 
 This was the rebellion of '98, of which it is necessary to say some- 
 thing here. So early as the end of 1791 the first club of "Uni- 
 ted Irishmen " was founded in Belfast by the celebrated Theobald Wolfe 
 Tone. Soon, however, so many prominent men came forward to occupy 
 the leading positions that he Avas completely in the shade for a time. 
 This, of course, pleased him, as he was a thoroughly earnest and single- 
 minded man, "My object," he says, "was to secure the independence 
 of my country under any form of government, to which I was led by a 
 hatred of England so deeply rooted in my nature that it was rather an 
 instinct than a principle. I left to others better qualified for the inquiry 
 the investigation and merits of the different forms of government, and 1 
 contented myself with laboring on my own system, which was luckily 
 in perfect coincidence as to its operation with that of those men who 
 viewed the question on a broader and juster scale than I did at the time 
 I mention." Indeed, the professed objects of the society did not at that 
 period go the length even of national independence. The opening sen- 
 tence of the constitution of the first club at Belfast is very moderate in 
 its language : "1st. This society is constituted for the purpose of for- 
 
 172 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 178 
 
 warding a brotherhood of affection, a communion of rights and a union 
 of power among Irishmen of every religious persuasion, and thereby to 
 obtain a complete reform in the legislature, founded on the principles of 
 civil, political and religious liberty." But ere long the principles of the 
 French Revolution began gradually to influence and carry the members 
 of the society beyond the limits within which they were originally con- 
 fined. Tiie government, too, began to persecute the association. In 
 January, 1794:, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, a prominent member, was 
 convicted of sedition by a packed jury. Their place of meeting, at the 
 Taylors' Hall, in Buck lane, was shortly after invaded by the police, the 
 meeting dispersed and their papers seized. The timid now fell off, but 
 the determined members of the society resolved on reorganizing it on a 
 bolder and more revolutionary basis. Other prosecutions were menaced. 
 Indeed, the Reverend William Jackson, an emissary from France, was 
 convicted on the testimony of the informer Cockayne, but avoided a pub- 
 lic execution by committing suicide in the dock. He had furnished him- 
 self with arsenic for the purpose. His dying words, addressed to his advo- - 
 cate, were those spoken by the chief conspirator Pierre" to his friend Jaf- 
 fier in the tragedy of " Venice Preserved," when the latter stabs Pierre to 
 save him from being broken on the wheel : "We have deceived the senate !" 
 Tone had to quit the country to avoid a similar conviction on Cock- 
 ayne's testimony. Hamilton Rowan, who was also liable to a fresh 
 prosecution (this time for high treason), to be sustained by the evidence 
 of the same informer, contrived to escape from Newgate and to reach 
 France, whence he subsequently proceeded to America. Other causes 
 tended to inflame the people besides those I have mentioned. In '95 
 Lord Fitzwilliam was sent over as viceroy on the understanding that 
 complete Catholic emancipation was to be made a government measure. 
 The hopes of the people were high. Grattan was prepared to support 
 the new lord-lieutenant in his beneficent measures ; other patriots were 
 to accept office in order to be in a better position to assist in carrying 
 them through. Probably, if the policy of Lord Fitzwilliam had taken 
 effect, the people would have been satisfied and the rebellion of '98 
 might never have occurred. But all these -ardent hopes that had been 
 raised in the minds of the people were doomed to bitter disappointment. 
 The partisans of the faction of Ascendency began to tremble for their 
 
174 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 places and influence when they saw Mr. Beresford — one of their most 
 prominent men and a member of one of the most powerful Protestant 
 houses — dismissed by Lord Fitzwilliam from his post of commissioner of 
 the revenue. Beresford complained to Mr. Pitt, and even to the king him- 
 self, not without effect. It is said, too, that Pitt, England's prime min- 
 ister, even wished to see Ireland plunged in rebellion, that he might the 
 more easily accomplish a legislative union between the two countries. 
 Be this as it may, Lord Fitzwilliam was speedily recalled. The Catholic 
 Relief Bill, that had been brought forward by Henry Grattan with every 
 prospect of success, fell to the ground, and was no more heard of till 1829. 
 It is in no degree surprising that the people of Ireland, seeing their 
 expectations thus dashed to earth, should every day, from this time for- 
 ward, put more and more faith in French ideas, and begin to look to rev- 
 olution as the only likely method of achieving emancipation and reform. 
 Indeed, French principles were in those days more or less disseminated 
 in almost every part of Europe. Even in England itself several soci- 
 eties modelled on the revolutionary pattern had sprung up from time 
 to time. The Protestants and Catholics of Ireland were fast becoming 
 united in the cause of their country's independence. However, it must 
 be owned that this brotherly feeling was by no means universal. A 
 set of wretches called by the several names of "Peep-of-Day Boys," 
 "Wreckers" or "Protestant Boys," who were afterwards developed into 
 the too famous or notorious " Orange Society," had come into existence 
 in the North of Ireland some few years before. Their main article of 
 belief was the lawfulness, and even desirableness,. of exterminating "pa- 
 pists." Their fanaticism was spurred on in 1795 by agents of the place- 
 holding gentry to increased hostility to the Catholics. Those in place and 
 power at that time naturally feared the union of Irishmen, and tried 
 hard to prevent or break it up. It was in '95 that the " Peep-of-Day 
 Boys " assumed the name of Orangemen. Mr. Thomas Verner was the first 
 grand-master. Their form of oath is said to have been : " In the awful 
 presence of Almighty God, I, A. B., do solemnly swear that I will, to the 
 utmost of my power, support the king and the present government ; and 
 1 do further swear that I will use my utmost exertions to exterminate 
 all the Catholics of the kingdom of Ireland." To protect themselves 
 against the hostility of the "Peep-of-Day Boys," the Catholics in the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 175 
 
 North had formed an association called the " Defenders." The two hos- 
 tile bodies came into sanguinary collision at the village of the Diamond, 
 in the county Armagh, on the 21st of September, 1795. This is the en- 
 counter known as "the Battle of the Diamond." The Catholics, who 
 were almost totally unarmed, were, as might be expected, defeated by 
 the Orangemen, who had abundance of weapons and were sure of mag- 
 isterial protection to boot, A few Defenders were hilled and several 
 more were wounded. This miserable and shameful affair, magnilo- 
 quently styled by the Orangemen a battle, has been boastfully toasted 
 at their drunken orgies and celebrated in doggerel ballads, the sanguin- 
 ary spirit of which is disgraceful not merely to the Orange Society, but 
 to human nature itself. 
 
 The Orangemen after this contemptible skirmish gave full scope to 
 their fury. They commenced a persecution of the northern Catholics 
 which was perfectly fiendish. Thomas Addis Emmett, in his " Pieces of 
 Irish History," tells us that "they posted up on the cabins of these un- 
 fortunate victims this pithy notice, 'To Hell or Connaught,' and appointed 
 a limited time in which the necessary removal of persons and property 
 Mas to be made. If after the expiration of that period the notice had 
 not been complied with, the Orangemen assembled, destroyed the furni- 
 ture, burned the habitations and forced the ruined families to fly else- 
 where for shelter." The magistrates seemed more inclined to help than 
 to oppose these outrages. Dr. R. E. Madden, the author of " The Lives 
 of the United Irishmen," has preserved and printed many of the ill- 
 spelled notices that were affixed to the cabin doors. The Orangemen 
 also indulged in the exciting pastime of committing fearful murders ; but 
 in the year 1796 they surpassed themselves. It is calculated that in 
 that year not less than seven thousand of the unresisting Catholics were 
 either slain or expelled from their homes in the one small county of Ar- 
 magh. These wretched outcasts had no place of shelter to fly to. They 
 wandered about the mountains — some died, others were lodged in prison. 
 The younger men, in pursuance of a suggestion of the Irish commander- 
 in-chief, Lord Carhampton, were unceremoniously packed off to one or 
 other of the seaports, placed on board a tender and thence finally drafted 
 on board an English man-of-war. This outraging of all law and justice 
 was, by a delicate euphemism, styled "a vigor beyond the law." Lein- 
 
 12 
 
176 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 ster and Minister, as well as Ulster, were under a sort of reign of tenor 
 this year. Arbitrary arrests and imprisonments occurred every day. We 
 can learn even from that rabid partisan of the Protestant Ascendency, 
 Sir Richard Musgrave, how the Catholic peasantry were treated by Lord 
 Carhampton and the squirearchy : " In each county he (Lord Carhamp- 
 ton) assembled the most respectable gentlemen and landholders in it, 
 and having in concert with them examined the charges against the lead- 
 ers of this banditti (the Catholic peasantry) who were in prison, but defied 
 justice, he, with the concurrence of these gentlemen, sent the most nefa- 
 rious of them on board a tender stationed at Sligo to serve in His Ma- 
 jesty's navy." Is it any way wonderful that every day the masses of 
 the Catholics became more and more disaffected towards the king's gov- 
 ernment, that connived at and tolerated, if it did not actually prompt, 
 these atrocities of the Orange brigands and of Lord Carhampton and 
 the squirearchy ? Or is it any wonder that the people so hunted and tor- 
 tured should begin to long for a complete separation of the two islands, 
 which would necessarily place them on an equal footing with their Prot- 
 estant countrymen ? 
 
 The tyranny went on. Lord Camden, the new viceroy, called for laws 
 against dangerous secret societies. An insurrection act was passed 
 against " The Defenders." An act of indemnity was passed to indem- 
 nify magistrates and officers of the army against the consequences of any 
 of their illegal and unconstitutional outrages upon the Catholics. But no 
 bill was passed against the Orange banditti who were the real distuib- 
 ers of the peace and well-being of the country. Mr. Grattan denounced 
 this gross partiality of the government in his usual splendid style of 
 eloquence. He then showed that the Orangemen had robbed, massacred 
 and endeavored to exterminate the Catholics ; that these lawless brigands 
 had, in point of fact, "repealed by their own authority all the laws 
 recently passed in favor of the Catholics;" that they had established 
 instead "the inquisition of a mob, resembling Lord George Gordon's 
 fanatics, equalling them in outrage, and surpassing them far in perse- 
 verance- and success." He denounced the system of terror they had 
 established ; masters, by intimidation, were forced to dismiss their Cath- 
 olic servants; landlords, to eject their Catholic tenantry. Catholic wea- 
 rers were illegally seized as deserters by these " Orange boys or Protest- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 177 
 
 ant boys — that is, a banditti of murderers, committing massacre in the 
 name of God and exercising despotic power in the name of liberty." 
 The alleged deserters were sometimes tried by a set called " the Commit- 
 tee of Elders;" if the accused gave this expeditious tribunal liquor or 
 money, he might be discharged ; if he failed to offer them either money 
 or a bottle, the thirsty elders would send him "to a recruiting officer as 
 a deserter." The notices to quit served by the Orangemen on the Cath- 
 olics were generally in words short but plain: "Go to Hell, Connaught 
 won't receive you — fire and faggot. Will Tresharn and John Tbrustout." 
 Shortly after giving such a notice they would pay .a visit to the house of 
 the poor Catholic, rob or destroy his property, and force him to leave 
 home and everything with his miserable family and take refuge in vil- 
 lages. " In many instances this banditti of persecution threw down the 
 houses of the tenantry, or what they called racked the house, so that the 
 family must fly or be buried in the grave of their own cabin." Murders 
 of Catholics had been of frequent occurrence. In fact, "the Catholic 
 inhabitants of Armagh had been actually put out of the protection of the 
 law. The magistrates were supine or partial." To this supineness the 
 success of the brigands was owing. At last, the evil of these disorders 
 went to so shameful an excess that the magistrates felt obliged "to cry 
 out against it." Thirty of them, in a resolution, declared that the Roman 
 Catholic inhabitants of Armagh " are grievously oppressed by lawless 
 persons unknown, who attack and plunder their houses by night and 
 threaten them with instant destruction unless they abandon immediately 
 their lands and habitations." 
 
 Mr. Grattan's speeches, Mr. Mitchel says, " more than any records 01 
 documents, illustrate this period of the history of his country." Here is 
 Grattan's commentary on "the Indemnity Act," passed early in 1796 
 along with "the Insurrection Act:" "A bill of indemnity went to secure 
 the offending magistrates against the consequences of their outrages and 
 illegalities — that is to say, in our humble conception, the poor were 
 stricken out of the protection of the law and the rich out of its penalties ; 
 and then another bill was passed to give such lawless proceedings against 
 His Majesty's subjects continuation — namely, a bill to enable the magis- 
 trates to perpetrate by law those offences which they had before com- 
 mitted against it — a bill to legalize outrage, to barbarize law and to give 
 
178 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 the law itself the cast and color of outrage. By such a bill the magis- 
 trates were enabled, without legal process, to send on board a tender 
 His Majesty's subjects, and the country was divided into two classes, or 
 formed into two distinct nations, living under the same king and inhab- 
 iting the same island — one consisting of the king's magistrates and the 
 other of the king's subjects — the former without restraint and the latter 
 without privilege." 
 
 No wonder that the "United Irish Society" continued to live and 
 flourish and multiply. I may here observe that the " Irish Revolution- 
 ary Brotherhood" in Iceland, commonly but incorrectly called the "Fe- 
 nian Organization " (the " Fenian Brotherhood " was, in reality, merely 
 an American-Irish society affiliated with the home or purely Irish move- 
 ment ; originally, indeed, it was a subordinate branch of the home move- 
 ment"), — the "Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood," I say, seems to be in 
 our own days the legitimate successor of the society of "United Irish- 
 men " in '98. Mr. Mitchel is certainly mistaken in the following pas- 
 sage of his "Continuation of MacGeoghegan :" "The 'Whiteboy' organ- 
 ization, which was itself the legitimate offspring of the ' Rapparees,' and 
 which in its turn has given birth to ' Ribbonism,' to the ' Terry alts,' and 
 finally to the ' Fenians.' The principle and meaning of all these various 
 forms of secret Irish organization has been the same at all times," etc. 
 It is not so ; Mr. Mitchel is here astray. The " Irish Revolutionary 
 Brotherhood" and the "Fenian Brotherhood" have no special resem- 
 blance to any of the other organizations mentioned by Mr. Mitchel, which 
 were all for the most part agrarian, and even local. The " Ribbon " so- 
 ciety has a sectarian element also, but, like the " Whiteboys " and "Ter- 
 ryalts," it has little or nothing, properly speaking, of a political or revo- 
 lutionary complexion ; whereas, both the " Irish Revolutionary Brother- 
 hood " and the " Fenian Brotherhood " are unsectarian and purely political 
 and revolutionary, precisely like the " United Irishmen " of '98. Possibly, 
 certain individual acts of members of the three last-named bodies may 
 have a slight resemblance to some of the deeds of the "Whiteboys" or 
 " Ribbonmen," but such exceptional cases, assuming that there are such, 
 cannot in the slightest degree affect the general political and revolution- 
 ary character of either the " Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood," the "Fen- 
 ian Brotherhood " or the society of the " United Irishmen " of '98. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 179 
 
 I have stated that Theobald Wolfe Tone was compelled to go into 
 exile in the year 1795. He went in the first instance to the "United 
 States " of America, but as he had promised his friends that he would 
 ultimately proceed to France, with a view to negotiating an alliance 
 between the French republic and the republicans of Ireland, having 
 temporarily settled his wife and children in America as best he could, 
 he lost the least time possible in setting about fulfilling his promise. 
 He sailed from America, and landed at Havre, on the coast of Brittany, 
 the 1st day of February, 1796, bearing an introduction from the French 
 envoy at Philadelphia to Charles de la Croix, minister of foreign affairs. 
 He also had a letter of introduction to James Monroe, then the repre- 
 sentative of the American republics in Paris. Monroe kindly guided 
 him in his efforts to gain a favorable hearing from the French statesmen. 
 Although imperfectly acquainted with French at the time, he managed 
 to produce a great impression on the minds of De la Croix, General 
 Clarke, afterwards one of the great Napoleon's ministers and duke of Fel- 
 tre, and, above all, the illustrious "organizer of victory," Carnot, then at 
 the head of the French Directory. He wrote two able " memorials " upon 
 the state and resources of Ireland, which, on being translated into 
 French, were laid before those high functionaries. He became inti- 
 mately acquainted with the celebrated General Hoche, who conferred 
 with him confidentially about the projected expedition to Ireland, and 
 who seems all through to have entertained for him the most friendly 
 feelings. At a much later period he was introduced to the still more 
 renowned Bonaparte, who also appears to have been most favorably 
 impressed by him, and to have even desired, when he was meditating 
 his romantic expedition to Egypt, to take him along with him to that 
 country. The high rank of general of brigade in the French service 
 was conferred on Tone. In short, this poor and apparently friendless 
 your>g barrister, by the almost unaided efforts of his own persuasive pow- 
 ers and varied abilities, in the face of difficulties that would have daunted 
 any one less earnest and enthusiastic, succeeded in inducing the govern- 
 ment of the French republic to fit out three successive expeditions, two 
 of them on a very formidable scale, with a view to making a descent in 
 force on the shores of Ireland. 
 
 The first expedition consisted of seventeen sail of the fine, thirteen 
 
frigates, five corvettes, making, with transports, forty-three sail. This 
 fleet was commanded by Admiral Morand de Galles. The troops on 
 hoard amounted to 13,975 men, with abundance of artillery and ainmu 
 nition, and arms for 45,000 men. The army was commanded by the 
 brave and talented Hoche. Unfortunately, as events turned out, the 
 unskillful, or irresolute, or unlucky Grouchy (perhaps he was all three , 
 some have even accused him, though probably unjustly, of treachery) 
 was the second in command. Tone was on board the line-of-battle-ship 
 the Indomptable, of 80 guns. All were on board the fleet on the 15th of 
 December, 1796. Tone's journal, which is in the highest degree inter- 
 esting, gives us a full account of all the hopes and fears and anxieties 
 and unlucky accidents and incidents of this expedition, which seemed at 
 first to promise so well for Ireland's freedom. Almost immediately after 
 leaving Brest water, in fact the first night the fleet was at sea, the frig- 
 ate, on board which were both the admiral and the general-in-chief, parted 
 company with the rest of the fleet, nor was she " sighted " again while 
 the expedition lasted. This was the first instance of the fatality that 
 continued to dog them. 
 
 On December the 21st the Indomptable was under Cape Clear. Thirty- 
 five vessels were now in company ; seven or eight were absent, amongst 
 them, unfortunately, the frigate of the admiral and general. Tone says, 
 " It is most delicious weather, with a favorable wind, and everything, in 
 short, that we can desire, except our absent comrades. At the moment 
 I write this we are under easy sail, within three leagues, at most, of the 
 coast, so that I can discover here and there patches of snow on the moun- 
 tains. What if the general should not join us? If we cruise here five 
 days, according to our instructions, the English will be upon us, and 
 then all is over." Again Tone very naturally exclaims : "I am in inde- 
 scribable anxiety. . . . There cannot be imagined a situation more pro- 
 vokingly tantalizing than mine at this moment, within view, almost 
 within reach, of my native land, and uncertain Avhether I shall ever set 
 my foot on it." He cannot bear the idea of leaving the coast of Ireland 
 without attempting a landing ; it fills him with rage to think of such a 
 thing for a moment. He says: "At half-after one the Atalanta, one of 
 our missing corvettes, hove in sight ; so now again we are in hopes to see 
 the general. Oh, if he were in Giouchy's place he would not hesitate 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 181 
 
 one moment." On the 22d lie says : " All rests now upon Grouchy, and 
 I hope he may turn out well ; he has a glorious game in his hands, if he 
 has spirit and talent to play it. If he succeeds, it will immortalize 
 him." Tone goes on to say that the staff seem too despondent; though 
 personally brave, they seem to lack the spirit of enterprise. "They 
 stared at me this morning when I said that Grouchy was the man in the 
 whole army who had least reason to regret the absence of the general, 
 and began to talk of responsibility and difficulties, as if any great enter- 
 prise was without responsibility or difficulties. I was burning with rage ; 
 however I said nothing, and will say nothing until I get ashore, if ever I 
 am so happy as to arrive there. ... I am now so near the shore that I 
 can see distinctly two old castles, yet I am utterly uncertain whether I 
 shall ever set foot on it. According to appearances, Bouvet [the admiral 
 commanding in the absence of ' Morand de Galles) and Grouchy are resolved 
 to proceed ; that is a great point gained, however. ... I have been 
 looking over the schedule of our arms, artillery and ammunition. We are 
 well provided ; we have 41.160 stand of arms, twenty pieces of field artil- 
 lery and nine of siege, including mortars and howitzers ; 61,200 barrels 
 of powder, 7,000,000 musket cartridges and 700,000 flints, besides an 
 infinite variety of articles belonging to the train. ... I continue very 
 discreetly to say little or nothing, as my situation just now is rather a 
 delicate one ; if we were once ashore and things turn out to my mind, I 
 shall soon be out of my trammels ; and perhaps in that respect I may be 
 better off with Grouchy than with Hoche. If the people act with spirit, 
 as I hope they will, it is no matter who is general, and if they do not, 
 all the talents of Hoche would not save us ; so it comes to the same 
 thing at last." 
 
 The instructions given to officers commanding vessels had been 
 that, in case of separation, they should, on arriving off the coast of Ire- 
 land, cruise there for five days. There was, of course, danger of the Eng- 
 lish fleet coming upon them, which would ruin everything. Accordingly, 
 when on the 21st there were thirty-five sail in company, Tone thought 
 that, instead of looking on the separation as such a one as would warrant 
 their following the letter of their instructions, the commanders should act 
 like men of spirit and decision, land immediately, " and trust to their 
 success for justification." But this course was not adopted. On the 
 
182 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 23d the fleet was greatly scattered in consequence of a gale which the 
 night previously had blown from the east. There were still, however, six- 
 teen sail, including nine or ten of the line, anchored in Bantry Bay. 
 Bou vet and Grouchy were with them. " It is curious to see how things 
 are managed in this best of all possible worlds. We are here sixteen 
 sail, great and small, scattered up and down in a noble bay, and so dis- 
 persed that there are not two together in any spot save one, and there 
 they are now so close that if it blows to-night as it did last night, they 
 will inevitably run foul of each other, unless one of them prefers driving 
 on shore. "We lie in this disorder, expecting a visit from the English 
 every hour." He finds fault with the apparent absence of due precau- 
 tion. Looking over the returns with Waudre, the chief of staff of the 
 artillery, he finds such a diminution of their means as causes him to 
 think the success cf an attempt there almost hopeless. He now pro- 
 poses a daring, if not desperate, plan to General Cherin, the military 
 commander on board the Indom/ptable. " I proposed to him to give me 
 the Legion des Francs, a company of the artillerie legere (light artillery), 
 and as many officers as desired to come volunteers in the expedition, 
 with what arms and stores remained, which are now reduced by our sep- 
 aration to four field-pieces, twenty thousand firelocks at most, one thou- 
 sand pounds of powder and three million cartridges, and to land us in 
 Sligo Bay, and let us make the best of our way. . . . Finally, I added, 
 that though I asked the command, it was on the supposition that none 
 of the generals would risk their reputation on such a desperate enter- 
 prise, and that if another was found I would be content to go as a sim- 
 ple volunteer." He also observed that his situation as a foreigner in the 
 French service was a delicate one — that if he were simply an officer he 
 would obey in silence, but that having got, owing to his connections in 
 Ireland, the confidence of the Directory, who had made him chief of 
 brigade, and of General Hoche, who had named him adjutant-general, he 
 thought it his duty both to France and Ireland to speak. Cherin said 
 he did right to give his opinion, and promised to take him along with 
 him to the council of war next day, where he could press his views. 
 
 "December 24th. This morning the whole etat major has been 
 miraculously converted, and it was agreed, in full council, that General 
 Cherin, Colonel Waudre, chef d'etat major of the artillery, and myself 
 
THE MINSTREL BOY 
 
. ^ i ^ • ....^. eM, in the yr„. US6&, by T. Fafdl 4" **■, i/i C7<ri'« jJW ^ /H* a v' 17 i A» i-*Jir-> Dt-t <y~ * r. 
 
 THE PATRIOT BISHOP OF ROSS 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL OTOXXELL. 1S3 
 
 should go aboard the Immortaiite and press General Grouchy in the 
 strongest manner to proceed on the expedition with the ruins of our 
 scattered army. Accordingly we made a signal to speak with the ad 
 miral. and in about an hour we were aboard. I must do Grouchy the 
 justice to say that the moment we gave our opinion in favor of pro- 
 ceeding, he took his part decidedly and like a man of spirit. He in- 
 stantly set about preparing the ordre dc battaillc (order of battle), and we 
 finished it without delay. We are not more than 6500 strong, but they 
 are tried soldiers who have seen fire, and I have the strongest hopes that, 
 after all, we shall bring our enterprise to a glorious termination. It is a 
 bold attempt, and truly original. All the time we were preparing the 
 ordre dc battaille we were laughing most immoderately at the poverty of 
 our means, and I believe, under the circumstances, it was the merriest 
 council of war that was ever held ; but ' des chevaliers Francais tel est le 
 caractere ' (of French chevaliers such is the character). Grouchy, the com- 
 mander-in-chief, never had so few men under his orders since he was 
 adjutant-general. Waudre, who is lieutenant-colonel, finds himself now 
 at the head of the artillery, which is a furious park, consisting of cue 
 piece of eight, one of four and two of six-inch howitzers. When he was 
 a captain he never commanded fewer than ten pieces, but now that he 
 is in fact general of the artillery, he prefers taking the field with four. 
 He is a gallant fellow, and offered, on my proposal last night, to remain 
 with me and command his company, in case General Grouchy had agreed 
 to the proposal I made to Cherin. It is altogether an enterprise truly 
 unique; we have not one guinea; Ave have not a tent; we have not a 
 horse to draw our four pieces of artillery ; the general-in-chief marches 
 on foot; we leave all our baggage behind us; we have nothing but the 
 arms in our hands, the clothes on our backs and a good courage ; bu fc 
 that is sufficient. With all these original circumstances, such as I be- 
 lieve never were found united in an expedition of such magnitude as 
 that we are about to attempt, we are all as gay as larks. I never saw 
 the French character better exemplified than in this morning's business. 
 Well, at last I believe we are about to disembark. God knows how 1 
 long for it." The east wind, however, keeps them from landing on the 
 23d. Tone remarks: "The enemy has now had four days to recover 
 from his panic and prepare to receive us. So much the worse; but I do 
 
134 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 not mind it. We purpose to make a race for Cork, as if the devil were in 
 our bodies, and when we are fairly there, we will stop for a day or two to 
 take breath and look about us. From Ban try to Cork is about forty- 
 rive miles, which, with all our efforts, will take us three days, and I sup- 
 pose we may have a brush by the way, but I think we are able to deal 
 with any force that can at a week's notice be brought against us." 
 
 The next morning, the 2oth, however, he was " devoured by the most 
 gloomy reflections." The wind continuing right ahead prevented them 
 from working up to the landing-place ; the same wind would be favorable 
 to the arrival of an English fleet in the bay, so that the French fleet was 
 every hour becoming more liable to be "caught as in a trap." The 
 delay also, as a matter of course, would give the enemy time to assemble 
 his forces in the neighborhood, and make himself superior to the French 
 in "the three arms," not to speak of money and supplies. Their position, 
 in short, was in the highest degree critical. Tone says: " Had we been 
 able to land the first day and march directly to Cork, we should have 
 infallibly carried it by a coup de main (sudden attack), and then we 
 should have a footing in the country ; but as it is, if we are taken, 1113' 
 late will not be a mild one ; the best I can expect is to be shot as an 
 emigre ventre (returned emigrant), unless I have the good fortune to be 
 killed in the action, for most assuredly if the enemy will have us he must 
 fight for us. Perhaps I may be reserved for a trial for the sake of strik- 
 ing terror into others, in which case I shall be hanged as a traitor and 
 embowelled, etc. As to the embowelling, if ever they hang me (hey are 
 welcome to embowel me if they please. These are pleasant prospects ! 
 Nothing on earth could sustain me now but the consciousness that I am 
 engaged in a just and righteous cause. For my family I have, by a des- 
 perate effort, surmounted my natural feelings so far that' I do not think 
 of them at this moment. ... In this desperate state of affairs 1 pro- 
 [ios&d to Cherin to sally out with all our forces, to mount to the Shannon, 
 and disembarking the troops make a forced march to Limerick, which is 
 probably unguarded ; the garrison being, I am pretty certain, on its 
 march to oppose us here; to pass the river at Limerick, and by forced 
 marches push to the North. I detailed all this on a paper, which I will 
 keep, and showed it to Captain Bedout and all the generals on board — 
 Cherin, Simon and Chasseloup. They all agreed as to the advantages of 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 18i) 
 
 the plan, but after settling it we find it impossible to communicate with 
 the general and admiral, who are in the Immortulitc, nearly two leagues 
 ahead, and the wind is now so high and foul and the sea so rough that 
 do boat can live. ... 1 cannot conceive for what reason the two com- 
 manders-in-chief are shut up together in a frigate. Surely they should 
 l>e on board the flag-ship; but that is not the first misfortune resulting 
 from this arrangement. Had General Hoche remained, as he ought, on 
 board the Indomptable with his etat major, he would not have been sep- 
 arated and taken by the English, as he most probably is. . . . "Well, it 
 does not signify complaining. Our first capital error was in setting sail 
 too late from the bay of Camaret, by which means we were obliged to 
 pass the llaz in the night, which caused the loss of the Seduisant, the 
 separation of the fleet, the capture of the general [Tone thought HocJiewas 
 taken), and, above all. the loss of time resulting from all this, and which 
 is never to be recovered. Our second error was in losing an entire day 
 In cruising off the bay, when we might have entered and effected a land- 
 ing with thirty-five sail, which would have secured everything ; and now 
 our third error is having our commander-in-chief separated from the etat 
 major, which renders all communication utterly impossible. My pros- 
 pects at this hour are as gloomy as possible. I see nothing before me, 
 unless a miracle be wrought in our favor, but the ruin of the expedition, 
 the slavery of my country and my own destruction. Well, if I am to fall, 
 at least I will sell my life as clear as individual resistance can make it. 
 So now I have made up my mind. I have a merry Christmas of it 
 to-day." 
 
 Daring the night the admiral's frigate ran under the quarter of the 
 Indomptable, hailed her and ordered her captain to cut Ins cable and 
 put to sea. Thinking it might be an English frigate that, after lurking 
 in the bottom of the ba}-, had taken advantage of the storm and dark- 
 ness to escape, and at the same time to separate the French squadron 
 by a stratagem, Commodore Bedout resolved to wait until the 27th. 
 Tone's diary of the 26th has the following reflections on the state of 
 affairs : " In all probability we are left without admiral or general; if so, 
 Cherin will command the troops and Bedout the fleet; but, at all events, 
 there is an end of the expedition. Certainly we have been persecuted 
 by a strange fatality from the very night of our departure to this hour. 
 
We have lost two commanders-in-chief, of four admirals not one 
 remains; we have lost one ship-of-the-line that we know of, and prob- 
 ably many others of which we know nothing ; we have been now six 
 days in Bantry Bay, within five hundred yards of the shore, without 
 being able to effectuate a landing ; we have been dispersed four times 
 in four days, and at this moment, of forty-three sail, of which the 
 expedition consisted, we can muster of all sizes but fourteen. There 
 only wants our falling in with the English to complete our destruction. 
 ... I confess, myself, I now look on the expedition as impracticable. 
 The enemy has had seven days to prepare for us, and three, or perhaps 
 four, days more before we could arrive at Cork ; and we are now too 
 much reduced in all respects to make the attempt with any prospect of 
 success. So all is over! . . . Notwithstanding all our blunders, it is 
 the dreadful stormy weather and easterly winds, which have been blow- 
 ing furiously and without intermission since we made Bantry Bay, that 
 have ruined us. Well, England has not had such an escape since the 
 Spanish Armada, and that expedition, like ours, was defeated by the 
 weather; the elements tight against us, and courage is here of no avail. 
 Well, let me think no more about it ; it is lost, and let it go." 
 
 On the 2Gth also several vessels, including the Indomptabk, dragged 
 their anchors, and it was not without great difficulty that they rode out 
 the gale. In short, the state of the squadron on the 27th was such that 
 Commodore Bedout (a good seaman, according to Tone) made signal to 
 get under way. A delay was caused by the circumstance that one of 
 the ships required an hour to get read)'. During this hour a council of 
 war was held, consisting of the principal military officers, including Tone 
 himself and Commodore Bedout, who was invited to assist. It was 
 agreed at this council that the numbers and resources of the expedition 
 being so grievously reduced, " this part of the country being utterly wild 
 and savage, furnishing neither provisions nor horses, and especially as 
 the enemy, having seven days' notice, together witli three more which it 
 would require to reach Cork, supposing we even met with no obstacle, 
 had time more than sufficient to assemble his forces in numbers suf- 
 cient to crush our little army; considering, moreover, that this prov- 
 ince is the only one of the four which has testified no disposition to 
 revolt; that it is the most remote from the party which is ready for 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 187 
 
 insurrection ; and finally, Captain Bedout having communicated his 
 instructions, which are to mount as high as the Shannon, and cruise 
 there live days, — it was unanimously agreed to quit Bantry Bay directly 
 and proceed for the mouth of the Shannon, in hopes to rejoin some of our 
 scattered companions ; and when we arc there we will determine, accord- 
 ing to the means in our hands, what part we shall take. I am the more 
 content with this determination as it is substantially the same with the 
 paper which I read to General Cherin and the rest the day before yes- 
 terday." Not without difficulty the squadron managed to get out of 
 Bantry Bay. 
 
 After some very stormy weather, the commodore, rinding that there 
 was no chance of the fleet reassembling off the coast of Ireland (indeed 
 on the 28th several vessels parted company with him, tins being the 
 sixth separation), made the signal to steer for France. On the 1st of 
 January, 1797, the squadron, consisting of only seven sail, reached the 
 island of Ushant. Tone makes this suggestive remark : "I am utterly 
 astonished that we did not see a single English ship of war going or 
 coming back. They must have taken their measures very ill not to 
 intercept us, but perhaps they have picked up some of our missing ships. 
 Well, this evening will explain all, and we shall see now what is become 
 of our four admirals and of our two generals-in-chief." Fifteen days 
 after Tone's arrival at Brest the missing frigate La FratcrnM, with Gen- 
 eral Hoche and the admiral on board, reached La Kochelle, after passing 
 through many perils. I may add one slight particular respecting the 
 conduct of the French officers during this expedition, very characteristic 
 of the gay nation they belonged to: when they were not speaking of the 
 expedition, they were always playing cards or laughing. 
 
 Such was the termination of the celebrated Bantry Bay expedition. 
 I have given these copious extracts from General Tone's diary because 
 I consider the Bantry Bay expedition the most suggestive episode in 
 the history of " the United Irishmen's " conspiracy. Indeed, in some 
 respects, it is one of the most instructive passages in all Irish history. 
 1 have suo-^ested some of the lessons, which Tone's career inculcates. 
 Tone's own diary suggests others. The expedition, above nil, signally 
 demonstrates the absurdity of those who would persuade us that the Eng- 
 lish fleet at any time rendered the shores of Great Britain safe from all 
 
chances of invasion. In these days of steam-navigation the British 
 islands are even less entitled than in the days of Tone to be considered 
 impregnable against all descents from hostile squadrons. Indeed, many 
 other historical events, as well as the Bantry Bay expedition, suffice to 
 show that hostile ships, or even fleets, can elude the boasted vigilance of 
 the British navy and reach shores committed to its care. 
 
 It was altogether against the wishes and counsel of Tone that the 
 French licet arrived at the south-west coast of Ireland. He desired that 
 the landing should be attempted somewhere near Dublin or Belfast. 
 The people of the south-west at that time knew nothing of the French 
 republic, and hardly anything more about "the United Irishmen" or 
 their ideas. So utterly unprepared were they for the liberating army that 
 they mistook it for a host of enemies. A boat was sent ashore from the 
 French squadron to reconnoitre. Plowden tells us "it was immediately 
 captured, and multitudes appeared on the beach in readiness to oppose 
 a landing." 
 
 We learn also from the Report of the Secret Committee of the House 
 of Lords in 1798 that the English government were in possession of com- 
 plete information as to the whole plan of invasion. They knew of the 
 proceedings of Edward John Lewins, the ambassador or emissary of "the 
 United Irishmen " to the French republic. They knew of negotiations 
 or arrangements, which took place in 1706 in Switzerland, near the 
 French frontier, on the subject of invasion, between Lord Edward Fitzger- 
 ald and Mr. Arthur O'Connor on the one side, and General Hoche on the 
 other. It appears, too, from the report that, some time previous to the sail- 
 ing of the expedition, a letter from France was received by the Irish Direct- 
 ory, vihkh was considered by them as authentic, stating that the projected 
 descent was put off for some months. This helped to save English 
 dominion in Ireland from destruction, for the Irish Directory, thrown off 
 their guard by contradictory communications, neglected to prepare the 
 people of the south-west for the reception of the liberating army. In 
 truth, this preservation of British dominion in '96 was almost miraculous 
 Even the Tory historian, Sir Archibald Alison, believer as he is in Brit- 
 ish might, admits this in his voluminous history. He more than insin- 
 uates that the rule of moral and religious England was thus saved by a 
 special interposition of Providence. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CON'NELu ISO 
 
 Still, England was not secure yet: a rebellion in Ireland had become 
 almost inevitable. During the whole of the year 179G the government 
 acted as if their sole object had been to drive the people of Ireland 
 to despair. Armagh was covered with the ruined homes of the poor 
 Catholics. Thousands of victims of all ages and of both sexes were 
 houseless, starving wanderers. Though the grand jury of that county 
 talked at length of justice and impartiality, nothing but injustice pre- 
 vailed. A venal press defended all the iniquitous acts of the govern- 
 ment and their accomplices, the Orange banditti. A hireling print 
 called Faulkner's Journal applauded to the shies all the bloody and law- 
 less deeds of this league of blind besotted bigots, who were wont to sally 
 forth on excursions of cold-blooded murder and mutilation, or even to 
 burn whole hamlets. While Faulkner's Journal was doing this base 
 work for government pay, The Northern Star, an able and patriotic Bel- 
 fast journal, was suppressed, like the patriotic papers of '48 and The 
 Irish People in these latter days, by military violence ; its office Avas 
 ransacked ; Samuel Neilson, the editor, and several others were arrested, 
 brought to Dublin, cast into prison and kept there for more than a year 
 without trial. In vain Grattan lifted his voice to demand justice, and 
 that such laws should be enacted as would "ensure to all His Majesty's 
 subjects the blessings and privileges of the constitution without any 
 distinction of religion." In vain the eloquent and patriotic Curran 
 demanded that evidence should be heard at the bar of the Common =>, 
 which would satisfy the House that not less than fourteen hundred fam- 
 ilies had been barbarously driven in open day from house and home to 
 wander miserable outcasts about the neighboring counties. Some, in- 
 deed, had been butchered or burned in their cabins ; fatigue and famine 
 had ended the sufferings of others. This was the substance of Cumin's 
 testimony. But the voice of an angel would have failed to move the fell 
 government of Lord Camden or the corrupted legislature that sustained 
 and abetted him in his tyranny. Had not the Parliament suspended 
 the habeas corpus act this session, thereby placing outside the pale of 
 the constitution near nine-tenths of the nation ? 
 
 When Parliament met again, in January, '97, the patriotic party in 
 the Commons were most anxious to have a permanent popular force for 
 the defence of the country. Sir Lawrence Parsons and Grattan strug- 
 
 
190 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 gled hard for another people's army. The government opposed them 
 violently. The patriotic motion of Sir Lawrence was of course lost — 
 only 25 voting for it, while 125 voted against it. 
 
 During December '96, and the early months of '97, several districts 
 of Ulster were proclaimed under the insurrection act. The terrible reign 
 of martial law had commenced. General Lake was dragooning the peo- 
 ple. Vainly Grattan uttered eloquent protests in behalf of justice and 
 reform, and maintained that the government severities only increased 
 the influence of the ''United Irishmen." He concluded his speech and 
 the debate thus: "We have offered you our measure; you will reject it. 
 We deprecate yours ; you will persevere. Having no hopes left to per- 
 suade or dissuade, and having discharged our duty, we shall trouble you 
 no more, and after this day shall not attend the House of Commons." 
 Filled with despair of effecting any further good for their country in 
 that corrupt and venal assembly, Grattan and Lord Henry Fitzgerald 
 refused to allow themselves to be re-elected for Dublin at the next gen- 
 eral election. Curran, Arthur O'Connor and Lord Edward Fitzgerald 
 adopted a similar course. When Tone heard of this secession, he ob- 
 served in his journal : " I see those illustrious patriots are at last forced 
 to bolt out of the House of Commons and come amongst the people, as 
 John Keogh advised Grattan to do long since." Arthur O'Connor and 
 Lord Edward, indeed, speedily joined the "United Irishmen;" but Grat- 
 tan, Curran and Lord Henry Fitzgerald kept aloof from them. Accord- 
 ingly, while some, like Mr. O'Connell, blame them for seceding at all, 
 others blame them because having taken that step they didn't go farther 
 and join the " United Irishmen." Mr. Mitchel, for various reasons, which 
 are certainly not without weight, hesitates to blame them for not doing 
 so. Possibly many will consider his views on this question the most 
 just of any. 
 
 O'Coimell's disapproval of this step was expressed in a conversation 
 with Mr. O'Neill Daunt in the year 1843. I may as well give the con- 
 versation here : 
 
 " It was a false move," said O'Connell ; " a bad copy of a worse pre- 
 cedent. Fox and seventy other members had quitted the British House 
 before.'.' 
 
 "Their Irish imitators," said Mr. Daunt, "quitted the only place 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 191 
 
 where they could have then been of the least use ; for they had then no 
 popular organization out of doors to fall back upon." 
 
 "None," rejoined O'Connell, "except an organization of treason. 
 Grattan could use liberty of speech in the House, which he could not 
 then use out of doors." 
 
 "Apropos of quitting Parliament," said Mr. Daunt, "you blame that 
 step — yet have not you yourself quitted Parliament this session, j List 
 because you are as hopeless of good from it as Grattan and Fox were on 
 previous occasions?" 
 
 "Ay; but I have not quitted the Imperial Parliament as a secession, 
 but merely because I preferred out-door political labor. I have not 
 said or done anything to bar my returning thither at any moment that 
 such a step should appear to be of the least use." 
 
 To return to the year 1797. Every day the state of Ireland became 
 more horrible. The revived Morning Star, because its directors did not 
 print in obedience to military command an article reflecting on the loy- 
 alty of the people of Belfast, was now violently suppressed. A detach- 
 ment of soldiers marched out of the barracks, attacked the printing- 
 office, and made a total wreck of the whole concern, smashing the 
 presses, scattering the types and seizing the books. This was the final 
 eclipse of the Morning Star. Military violence from this time forth had 
 full swing. It was assumed that the disaffection was too deeply rooted 
 to yield to the ordinary rule of law. In May Lord Carhampton pub- 
 lished the following order: "In obedience to the order of the lord-lieu- 
 tenant in council, it is the commander-in-chiefs command that the 
 military do act without waiting for directions from the civil magistrates 
 in dispersing any tumultuous or unlawful assemblies of persons threat- 
 ening the peace of the realm and the safety of the lives and properties 
 of His Majesty's loyal subjects, wheresoever collected." Thus, to use the 
 words of the infamous Castlereagh, " means were taken to make the 
 'United Irish' system explode." The pamphlet entitled "Views of the 
 Present State of Ireland," published in '97 in London (no printer in Ire- 
 land dared publish it), and reprinted by the author of " The Lives of the 
 United Irishmen," gives numerous instances of the atrocities perpetrated 
 under the military despotism that then raged throughout the length and 
 breadth of Ireland. In May a party of Essex Fencibles and Enniskillen 
 
 13 
 
192 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Yeoman Infantry came to Farmer Potter's house, five miles from Ennis- 
 killen, in the county Fermanagh, to arrest him on the charge of being a 
 " United Irishman." 
 
 " To be a ' United Irishman,' " says his wife boldly, " is an honor, not 
 a disgrace. But my husband went from home yesterday on business; 
 he has not yet returned." 
 
 " If your husband doesn't surrender himself within three hours, we'll 
 burn his house." Such was the reply of the ruffian soldiery. 
 
 " I do not exactly know," rejoins Mrs. Potter, " where he now is, but 
 even if I did know, I believe it would be impossible to have him home 
 in so short a time." 
 
 The three hours have not expired when the miscreants set fire to the 
 house, which is comparatively new and neat. The servants bring out 
 whatever property they think it possible to save, but the soldiers fling 
 everything back into the dames. The loss may be estimated at about 
 seven hundred pounds sterling. Mrs. Potter and her seven children, one 
 not a month old, are driven out into the fields at the hour of midnight. 
 
 In June the Ancient Britons (Welsh fencibles, commanded by Sir 
 Watkin "William Wynne), searching in vain for arms in the house of Mr. 
 Rice, innkeeper of the town of Coolavil, Armagh county, hear some 
 country-people talking Irish as they sit drinking. The soldiers damn 
 their " denial Irish souls" insist that their talk is treasonous, fall upon 
 them with their swords and wound several desperately. Miss Pice's life 
 is despaired of ; her father barely escapes, having received many sabre- 
 cuts. 
 
 In June, too, the house and extensive property of Mr. M'Cormick, 
 an innkeeper of Newtonards, county Down, were burned because he 
 denied having any knowledge of certain persons, who were alleged to 
 have been overheard uttering seditious words in his house. Among 
 other outrages in this town and barony, the house of Dr. Jackson was 
 torn down on suspicion of his being a " United Irishman." In the same 
 month similar destructive acts were committed in Belfast. 
 
 Some fencibles, accompanied by the First Fermanagh Yeomanry, 
 issued forth from the town of Enniskillen and marched into an adjoining 
 county. At two in the morning they arrived at Farmer Durnian's house. 
 They break it open without any warning. Then one of the fencibles 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 193 
 
 discharges his musket through the roof of the house, and an officer fires 
 his pistol into a bed where two young men are lying, wounding both. 
 One of these, Durnian's only child, faint with loss of blood, rises with 
 difficulty. A fencible thrusts his bayonet through his bowels. His 
 frantic mother runs to support him, but sinks to earth covered with the 
 blood of her hapless son. Another fencible deliberately kneels down 
 and presents his musket at the other youth, who is now on his knees 
 imploring mercy and protesting his innocence. He is about to fall a 
 victim to the assassin's deadly aim, when a sergeant of yeomanry rushes 
 in and forcibly prevents his murder. Some of those present are amused 
 at the sergeant's soft-heartedness. 
 
 Those especial military butchers, the Ancient Britons, failing to find 
 concealed arms in a house near Newry, compensate themselves for their 
 disappointment by setting it on tire. The surrounding peasantry, not 
 understanding the origin of the conflagration, run together from all sides 
 to extinguish it. As they come up they are attacked at all points by 
 the Welsh cut-throats. Thirty are killed, including a woman and two 
 children. An old man of seventy escaped for a few moments to some 
 rocks close at hand. Pursued by the soldiers, he fell on his knees and 
 piteously implored for mercy, but one of the Welsh miscreants cut off 
 his head at a single blow. 
 
 The Orangemen broke into the house of Mr. Bernard Crossan, of the 
 parish of Mullanabrack, because he was a reputed Catholic. They killed 
 himself, together with his son and daughter. On the same pretence the 
 house of Hugh McFay, of the parish of Seagoe, was attacked ; his furni- 
 ture was destroyed, himself wounded, his wife shamefully outraged. 
 
 To the village of Kilrea, county Deny, at three in the morning, came 
 a "reverend magistrate, accompanied by a clergyman and a body of sol- 
 diers." These, not finding the men they came to capture, "burned all 
 their houses, except four, which could not be burned without endanger- 
 ing the whole village. These they gtdted and consumed their contents." 
 {"View of the Present State of Ireland. 11 ) 
 
 The ferocious John Claudius Beresford admitted shortly before this 
 (on the 30th of March), in his place in Parliament, that he had stated 
 " that there tvere certain parts of the north of Ireland in a state of con- 
 sealed rebellion ; and that he wished those places were rather in a state 
 
194 THE LIFE OP DAXIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 of open rebellion, that the government might see the rebellion and 
 crush it." 
 
 The " United. Irish " Society began to absorb " Defenderism " in the 
 North. It spread elsewhere too. Several persons were successfully 
 defended during the summer assizes against charges of being "United 
 Irishmen " by Cumin on the north-east circuit. At the same time the 
 conspiracy was carried on with increased secresy. Owing to this, and 
 the apparent tranquillity of the people under all their persecutions, and 
 a partial revival of trade, the secret committee of the House of Com- 
 mons seem to have been deceived into a temporary notion that the dis- 
 affection was subsiding. In reality, it was spreading fast. The fab- 
 rication of pikes was going on everywhere. Soon the partisans of 
 government were undeceived, and saw that treason, so far from dying 
 out, was waxing stronger than ever. The committee slanderously 
 attributed an increase of crimes — murder of those who refused to join 
 the "United Irish" Society and a revival of the agrarian offences oi 
 " burning the corn and houghing the cattle of those against whom their 
 resentment was directed "—to the spread of the " union " conspiracy. In 
 reality, wherever the " United Irishmen " got a footing all these crimes 
 diminished. Mr. Mitchel justly observes that "it may be laid down as 
 universally true that the Irish people, on the eve of an insurrection or in 
 any violent political excitement, are always free from crime to a most 
 exemplary extent, which is always considered an alarming symptom by 
 the authorities." Miles Byrne, the insurgent chief, afterwards chef-de- 
 butaillon in the service of the great Napoleon, tells us in his Memoirs 
 "that the good effects of the ' United Irish' system in the commencement 
 were soon felt and seen throughout the counties of Wexford, Carlow and 
 Wicklow, which were the parts of the country I knew best. // gave th 
 first alarm to the government ; they suspected something extraordinary 
 was going on, rinding that disputes, fighting at fairs and other places of 
 public meeting had completely ceased. The magistrates soon perceive! 
 this change, as they were now seldom called on to grant summons or 
 warrants to settle disputes. Drunkenness ceased also; for an United 
 Irishman to be found drunk was unknown for many months. . . . Such 
 was the sanctity of our cause." Even the hostile Plowden admits the 
 freedom of the United Irishmen from ordinary crimes. When the slan- 
 
THE LIFE OK DANIEL U'CONXELL. 195 
 
 deroiis report of the committee was presented in the House, a "Mr. 
 Fletcher said that if coercive measures were to be pursued, the whole 
 country must be coerced, for the spirit of insurrection had pervaded 
 every part of it. Mr. Beresford ordered the clerk to take down these 
 words, and the gallery was instantly cleared. When strangers were 
 again admitted the debate on the address still continued, and in the 
 coarse of it Mr. J. C. Beresford thought himself called on to defend the 
 secret committee against an assertion which had fallen from Mr. Fletcher 
 in the course of his speech. The assertion was, in substance, that he 
 feared the people would be led to look on the report of the committee as 
 fabricated rather to justify the past measures of government than to 
 shite facts." {John MitcheVs Continuation, vol. i., p. 240.) 
 
 In Lord Cloncurry's "Personal Eecollections," we find a striking exam- 
 ple of the military murders that so often, during the period under notice, 
 were suffered to take place, to the eternal disgrace of the government. 
 The barony of Carbury, in the county of Kildare. was in this year (1797) 
 brought under the provisions of the Insurrection Act, and a camp of the 
 Frazer Fencibles, a Scotch regiment, established there. One evening, Cap- 
 tain Frazer, the commanding officer of this detachment, on his way from 
 Maynooth to his cam}), passed through a district not proclaimed. He 
 came up with an old man who was busied outside his own door mend- 
 ing his cart. The gallant captain, flushed with his copious after-dinner 
 potations, was in a mood of loyalty and irritability at once thoroughly 
 irrational and thoroughly vicious. He lost no time in challenging the 
 old man for being out after sundown. He was neither in a condition 
 nor temper to listen to his very reasonable excuse, that the district was 
 not a proclaimed one, and that he was at his lawful business, preparing 
 to go to the Dublin market on the following day. Captain Frazer took him 
 prisoner on the spot, and caused him to mount behind his orderly. Soon 
 they reached a turnpike gate, and here an altercation took place between 
 the choleric votary of Mars and Bacchus and the tollkeeper. The old 
 countryman watched his opportunity, and, while the captain was busy 
 wrangling, he dropped down from the orderly's horse and made off in the 
 direction of his cabin. But the affair, which up to this wore an air of 
 absurdity, now became tragic, for the drink-infuriated captain and his 
 orderly immediately gave chase, and having speedily overtaken the nn- 
 
196 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 lucky fugitive, they hacked his body with sixteen sabre wounds : of these 
 nine were declared to be mortal when the coroner's inquest took place. 
 Having accomplished this bloody and inhuman deed, the two military 
 murderers galloped back to their cam]). 
 
 The coroner's inquest returned a verdict of "wilful murder" against 
 Captain Frazer, but when a magistrate went to the camp with a war- 
 rant for his apprehension, the Frazer Fencibles showed their lawless 
 determination to protect their unworthy commander by driving away 
 the civil functionary. Nor did an application to the commander-in- 
 chief, Lord Carhampton, to surrender the body of the assassin, meet 
 with greater respect or success. His Excellency coolly refused to do so. 
 However, at the ensuing assizes Frazer went to the county-town of Kil- 
 dare and gave himself up. He had the monstrous effrontery to ride into 
 the town in a sort of triumphant fashion, with a band playing before 
 him. But if his impudence or audacity was outrageous, that of the 
 judge who tried him was more outrageous still. The solicitor-general, 
 the infamous Toler, afterwards earl of Norbury, Avas on this occasion 
 acting judge of assize. In the teeth of facts and proofs, so clearly 
 brought home to the prisoner as to leave not the slenderest shadow of a 
 doubt as to his guilt, the corrupt and sanguinary buffoon on the bench 
 directed the jury to acquit him. The judicial jester's strange address 
 on this occasion almost defies belief that any one, in the position of a 
 judge, could, even in those all-evil times, deliver a charge to a jury so 
 utterly senseless and inhuman. He said that li Frazer was a gallant 
 officer, who had only made a mistake ; that if Dixon was a good man, as he 
 was represented to be, it was well for him to be out of this wicked world; 
 but if he was as bad as many others in the neighborhood, it was well 
 for the country to be quit of him." 
 
 During the summer of this year the " United Irish " organization spread 
 vigorously through almost every county of the province of Leinster. It 
 was strong in Dublin, Kildare, Meath, Westmeath, the King's county and 
 Carlow. There were many in the province of Minister sworn in too. But 
 Ulster was the " union's" greatest place of strength still. It has been 
 frequently stated that the gallant county of Wexford, which bore the 
 brunt of most of the hard fighting when the insurrection at last broke 
 out, was at this period the most backward county of Leinster in the organ- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 197 
 
 ization ; in fact, that the Wexford men in the ranks of the "United Irish " 
 society were so few in number, up to the close of 1797, as not to be 
 included in the returns of the organized counties in February. Yet this 
 statement must be to a greater or less degree exaggerated. Colonel 
 Miles Byrne was sworn in a "United Irishman" in the summer of '97. 
 Speaking of the Wexford people, he says: "Before a month had elapsed 
 almost every one had taken the test;" also, "We soon organized paro- 
 chial and baronial meetings, and named delegates to correspond with 
 the county members. Robert Graham of Corcannon, a cousin of my 
 mother's, was named to represent the county at the meeting to be held 
 in Dublin, at Oliver Bond's." Again he says : " Nothing could exceed 
 the readiness and good-will of the United Irishmen to comply with the 
 instructions they had received to procure arms, ammunition, etc., not- 
 withstanding the difficulties and perils they underwent in purchasing 
 those articles. Pikes were easily had at this time, for almost every 
 blacksmith was a United Irishman. The pike-blades were soon had, 
 but it was more difficult to procure poles for them ; and the cutting 
 down of young ash trees for that purpose awoke great attention and 
 caused great suspicion of the object in view." 
 
 In the report of the secret committee of the House of Lords we have 
 a precise account of the United Irishmen's plan of organization. They 
 had now become a military body. 
 
 "It appears to your committee that the organization, as it is called, by 
 which the Directory of the Irish Union was enabled to levy a revolution- 
 ary army, was completed in the province of Ulster on the 10th of May. 
 1795 ; that the scheme of extending it to the other provinces was adopted 
 at an early period by the Irish Directory ; but it does not appear that it 
 made any considerable progress beyond the northern province before the 
 autumn of 1796, when emissaries Avere sent into the province of Lein- 
 ster to propagate the system. The inferior societies, at their original 
 institution, consisted each of thirty-six members ; they were, however, 
 afterwards reduced to twelve. These twelve chose a secretary and a trea- 
 surer, and the secretaries of five of these societies formed what was called 
 a lower baronial committee, which had the immediate direction and 
 superintendence of the five societies that thus contributed to its insti- 
 tution. From each lower baronial committee thus constituted, one mem- 
 
198 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 ber was delegated to an upper baronial committee, which in like manner 
 assumed and exercised the superintendence and direction of all the lower 
 baronial committees in the several counties. The next superior commit- 
 tees were, in populous towns, distinguished by the name of district com- 
 mittees, and in counties by the name of county committees, and were 
 composed of members delegated by the upper baronials. Each upper 
 baronial committee delegated one of its members to the district or 
 county committee, and these district or county committees had the 
 superintendence and direction of all the upper baronials who contrib- 
 uted to their institution. Having thus organized the several counties 
 and populous towns, a subordinate directory was erected in each of the 
 four provinces, which superintended the county and district committees 
 in each province, and a general executive directory, composed of five per- 
 sons, was elected by the provincial directories ; but the election was so 
 managed that none but the secretaries of the provincials knew on whom 
 the election fell. It was made by ballot, but not reported to the elec- 
 tors : the appointment was notified only to those on whom the election de- 
 volved, and the executive directory thus composed assumed and exercised 
 the supreme and uncontrolled command of the whole body of the union. 
 "The manner of communicating the orders issued by the executive 
 directory was peculiarly calculated to baffle detection. One member of 
 the executive alone communicated with one member of each provincial 
 committee or directory. The order was transmitted by him to the see • 
 retary of each county or district committee in his province. The secre- 
 taries of the county and district committees communicated with the sec- 
 retaries of the upper baronials in each county ; they communicated with 
 the secretaries of the lower baronial committees, who gave the order tp 
 the secretaries of each subordinate committee, by whom it was given to 
 the several inferior members of the union. It appears that the leaders 
 and directors of this conspiracy, having completed this their revolution- 
 ary system in the province of Ulster so early as the 10th of May, 1795, 
 and having made considerable progress in establishing it in the autumn 
 and winter of 1 796 in the province of Leinster, proceeded at that period 
 to convert it into a military shape and form for the undisguised project 
 of rebellion. ... It appears that the military organization, as they 
 termed it, was grafted on the civil ; that the secretary of each subordi- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 109 
 
 note society, composed of twelve, was appointed their petty or non- 
 commissioned officer; that the delegate of five societies was com- 
 monly appointed captain of a company composed of the five soci- 
 eties who had so delegated him, and who made up the number of 
 sixty privates; and that the delegate of ten lower baronials to the 
 district committee was commonly appointed colonel of a battalion, 
 which was thus composed of six hundred men; that the colonels of 
 battalions in each county sent in the names of three persons to the 
 executive directory of the union, one of whom was appointed by them 
 adjutant-general of the county, whose duty it was to receive and com- 
 municate military orders from the executive to the colonels of bat- 
 talions, and in general to act as officers of the revolutionary staff. In 
 addition to this establishment, it appears that a military committee was 
 appointed (at a later period) by the executive directory to prepare a 
 regular plan for assisting a French army, if any such should make a 
 landing in this kingdom, by directing the national military force, as it 
 was called, to co-operate with them, or to form a regular plan of insur- 
 rection in case it should be ordered, without waiting for French assist- 
 ance." 
 
 The essential difference between the " United Irish " Society and the 
 I. K. B. of our own days was that while the former was elective, in the 
 latter all power came from above. The supreme chief appointed his 
 centres, and they in turn their sub-centres. At least this was the sys- 
 tem of the I. R. B. up to '67, or possibly a little later. 
 
 After the failure of the Bantry Bay expedition, Hoche was appointed 
 commander-in-chief of the army of the Sambre and Meuse, and Theobald 
 Wolfe Tone went with him as adjutant-general. Shortly after, John 
 Edward Lewines arrived on the Continent with instructions from the 
 Executive Committee of the United People of Ireland to apply to France, 
 Holland and Spain for assistance in men, arms and money. He got into 
 communication at Hamburg with Sehor Nava, a Spanish navy officer of 
 rank, who was there on an important mission. Sehor JNTava entered into 
 his views, wrote to Madrid, and received an answer in general terms, but 
 of a favorable nature. However, France and Holland were powers in a 
 better position to give immediate and practical assistance than Spain. 
 Tone was anxious to impress on his friend and commander, Genera] 
 
200 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 Hoclie, " the necessity of an immediate exertion in order to profit by the 
 state of mutiny and absolute disorganization in which the English navy 
 is at this moment, in which Lewines heartily concurred ; and we both 
 observed that it ivas not a strong military force that we wanted at this 
 moment, but arms and ammunition, with troops sufficient to serve as a 
 noyau oVarmee [a kernel of an army), and protect the people in their first 
 assembling ; adding that five thousand men sent now, when the thing 
 was feasible, would be far better than twenty-five thousand in three 
 months, when perhaps we might find ourselves again blocked up in Brest 
 harbor; and I besought the general to remember that the mutiny aboard 
 the English fleet would most certainly be soon quelled, so that there was 
 not a moment to lose ; that if we were lucky enough to arrive in Ireland 
 before that took place, I looked upon it as morally certain that, by 
 proper means, we might gain over the seamen, who have already spoken 
 of steering the fleet into the Irish harbors, and so settle the business per- 
 haps without striking a blow." Tone here referred to the famous mutiny 
 of the Nore. Hoche agreed with Tone's opinions, and showed him a 
 letter containing an assurance from the French Directory "that they 
 would make no peace with England wherein the interests of Ireland 
 should not be fully discussed, agreeably to the wishes of the people of 
 that country." He added, however, a piece of intelligence which made 
 it appear that the second great expedition for the deliverance of Ireland 
 was, after all, likely to sail from Holland. He said " that preparations 
 were making also in Holland for an expedition, the particulars of which 
 he would communicate to us in two or three days, and in the mean time 
 desired us to attend him to — 
 
 " June 24th. Cologne, for which place we set off; arrived the 24th. 
 
 "June 25th. At nine o'clock at night the general sent us a letter 
 from General Daendels, commander-in-chief of the army of the Bata- 
 vian republic." This letter told Hoche that the army and navy were 
 ready for the descent on Ireland, and in the highest spirits ; that the 
 committee for foreign affairs desired to see him without loss of time, and 
 also desired to see the deputy of the Irish people. Hoche at once sent 
 off Tone and Lewines to wait for him at The Hague. I resume Tone's 
 journal : 
 
 " June 27th. The Hague, where we arrived accordingly, having trav- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONKELL. 201 
 
 elled day and night. In the evening we went to the Comedie, where we 
 met the general in a sort of public incognito — that is to say, he had 
 combed the powder out of his hair and was in a plain regimental frock. 
 After the play we followed him to his lodgings at the Lion d'Or, where he 
 gave us a full detail of what was preparing in Holland. He began by 
 telling us that the Dutch governor-general, Daendels, and Admiral 
 De Winter were sincerely actuated by a desire to effectuate something 
 striking to rescue their country from that state of oblivion and deca- 
 dence into which it had fallen ; that, by the most indefatigable exertions 
 on their part, they had got together at the Texel sixteen sail of the line 
 and eight or ten frigates, all ready for sea and in the highest condition; 
 that they intended to embark fifteen thousand men, the whole of their 
 national troops, three thousand stand of arms, eighty pieces of artillery, 
 and money for their pay and subsistence for three months ; that he had 
 the best opinion of the sincerity of all parties and of the courage and 
 conduct of the general and admiral; but that here was the difficulty : the 
 French government had demanded that at least five thousand French 
 troops, the elite of the army, should be embarked instead of a like num- 
 ber of Dutch, in which case, if the demand was acceded to, he would 
 himself take the command of the united army and set off for the Texel 
 directly ; but that the Dutch government made great difficulties, alleging 
 a variety of reasons, of which some were good ; that they saw the French 
 troops would never submit to the discipline of the Dutch navy, and that, 
 in that case, they could not pretend to enforce it on their own without 
 making unjust distinctions and giving a reasonable ground for jealousy 
 and discontent to their army. 'But the fact is, ; said Hoche, 'that the 
 committee, Daendels and De Winter, are anxious that the Batavian repub- 
 lic should have the whole glory of the expedition if it succeeds. They 
 feel that their country has been forgotten in Europe, and they are risk- 
 ing everything, even to their last stake — for if this fails they are ruined 
 — in order to restore the national character. The demand of the French 
 government is now before the committee. If it is acceded to, I will go 
 myself, and at all events I will present you both to the committee, and wc 
 will probably then settle the matter definitively.' Both Lewincs and 1 
 now found ourselves in a considerable difficulty. On the one side it was 
 ah object of the greatest importance to have Hoche and his five thousped 
 
202 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 grenadiers ; on the other it was most unreasonable to. propose anything 
 whieh could hurt the feelings of the Dutch people at a moment when 
 they were making unexampled exertions in our favor, and risking, as 
 Hoche himself said, their last ship and last shilling to emancipate us. 
 I cursed and swore like a dragoon. It went to my very heart's blood 
 and midriff to give up the general and our brave lads, three thousand 
 of whom I would prefer to any ten thousand in Europe. On the other 
 hand, I could not but see that the Dutch were perfectly reasonable in the 
 desire to have the reputation of an affair prepared and arranged entirely 
 at their expense, and at such an expense ! I did not know what to say. 
 Lewines, however, extricated himself and me with considerable address. 
 After stating very well our difficulty, he asked Hoche whether he thought 
 that Daendels would serve under his orders, and, if he refused, what effect 
 that might have on the Batavian troops. I will never forget the mag- 
 nanimity of Hoche on the occasion. He said he believed Daendels 
 Avould not, and, therefore, that the next morning he would withdraw 
 the demand with regard to the French troops, and leave the Dutch gov- 
 ernment at perfect liberty to act as they thought proper. When it is con- 
 sidered that Hoche has a devouring passion for fame ; that his great object. 
 on which he has endeavored to establish his reputation, is the destruction 
 of the power of England ; that he has for two years, in a great degree, 
 devoted himself to our business and made the greatest exertions, includ- 
 ing our memorable expedition, to emancipate us ; that he sees at last the 
 business likely to be accomplished by another, and of course all the glory 
 he had promised to himself ravished from him; when, in addition to all 
 this, it is considered that he could by a word's speaking prevent the possi- 
 bility of that rival's moving one step, and find, at the same time, plaus- 
 ible reasons sufficient to justify his own conduct, I confess his renoun- 
 cing the situation which he might command is an effort of very great 
 virtue. It is true, he is doing exactly what an honest man and a good 
 citizen ought to do — he is preferring the interests of his country to his 
 own private views. That, however, does not prevent my regarding his 
 conduct in this instance with great admiration, and I shall never forget 
 it. This important difficulty being removed, after a good deal of gen- 
 eral discourse on our business, we parted late, perfectly satisfied with 
 each other, and having fixed to wait on the committee to-morrow in the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 203 
 
 forenoon. All reflections made, the present arrangement, if it has its 
 dark, has its bright sides also, of which more hereafter." 
 
 On the 28th of June, at 10 A. M., General Hoche, Tone and Lewines 
 wont to the committee for foreign affairs. General Daendels was present. 
 Hoche, pursuant to his promise to Tone the night before, did everything 
 to smooth matters. He even withdrew the demands of the French gov- 
 ernment. Tone says : " It was easy to see the most lively satisfaction 
 on all their faces at this declaration of General Hoche, which certainly 
 does him the greatest honor. General Daendels especially was be}*ond 
 measure delighted. They told us then that they hoped all would be 
 ready in a fortnight, and Halm (one of the committee) observed, at the 
 same time, that, as there was an English squadron which appeared 
 almost every day at the mouth of the Texel, it was very much to be 
 desired that the Brest fleet should, if possible, put to sea, in order to 
 draw off at least a part of the British fleet, because, from the position 
 of the Texel, the Dutch fleet was liable to be attacked in detail in sail- 
 ing out of the port ; and even if they beat the enemy, it would not be 
 possible for them to proceed, as they must return to refit. To this Gen- 
 eral Hoche replied that the French fleet could not, he understood, be 
 ready before two months, which put it out of the question ; and as to 
 the necessity of returning to refit,- he observed that during the last war 
 the British and French fleets had often fought, both in the East and 
 West Indies, and kept the seas after ; all that was necessary being to 
 have on board the necessary articles of rechange; besides, it was cer- 
 tainly the business of the Dutch fleet to avoid an action by all possible 
 means. General Daendels observed that Admiral de Winter desired 
 nothing better than to measure himself with the enemy ; but we all — 
 that is to say, General Hoche, Lewines and myself — cried out against it, 
 his only business being to bring his convoy safe to its destination. A 
 member of the committee — I believe it was Van Leyden- — then asked us, 
 supposing everything succeeded to our wish, what was the definite object 
 of the Irish people. To which we replied, categorically, that it was to 
 throw off the yoke of England, break for ever the connection now existing 
 with that country and constitute ourselves a free and independent people. 
 They all expressed their satisfaction at this reply, and Van Leyden 
 observed that he had travelled through Ireland, and, to judge from the 
 
L.'U4 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 luxury of the rich and the misery of the poor, no country in Europe had 
 so crying a necessity for a revolution. To which Lewines and I replied, 
 as is most religiously the truth, that one great motive of our conduct in 
 this business was the conviction of the wretched state of our peasantry, 
 and the determination, if possible, to amend it." It was arranged at 
 this meeting of the Dutch committee of foreign affairs, in a manner the 
 most flattering to Wolfe Tone, that he was to accompany the expedition 
 from the Texel. He was to have the same rank with the Dutch that he 
 held hi the French service. Mr. Mitchel, commenting on these events, 
 says, justly: " The mutations of history are sometimes strange. Here, 
 in 1797, we find the Dutch nation preparing for a grand national effort 
 to liberate and redeem the very same people whom a century before it 
 had so powerfully contributed, with the prince of Orange and its ' Dutch 
 Blues,' to hurl prostrate at the feet of this very England which the 
 Dutch republic was now so eager to overthrow." 
 
 In a memoir intended for the French government, and entrusted to 
 Dr. Mac Neven, one of the principal leaders of the "United Irishmen," 
 which mysteriously fell into the hands of the British authorities in Ire- 
 land through the skilful agency of their spy-system on the Continent, we 
 find that about this time there were 150,000 United Irishmen organized 
 and enrolled in Ulster, a great part of them regimented, and one-third 
 ready to march out of the province. The memoir also stated that the 
 organization was progressing in Cork, and that Bandon was another Bel- 
 fast; that Tyrone, Fermanagh and Monaghan were among the counties 
 best affected to the cause ; that the places best organized were Louth, 
 Armagh, Westmeath, King's county and the city of Dublin ; that if the 
 object were to take Cork, the foreign auxiliary force should disembark at 
 Oyster Haven ; that, in the North, Lough Swilly and Killebes were good 
 landing-places, and that the Donegal people would join the French. 
 The memoir also spoke of the lively feelings of gratitude the Irish had 
 towards France and Spain, and of many other most important matters. 
 
 In Tone's diary we find the following noteworthy passage: "I took 
 occasion to speak (with Hoche) on a subject which had weighed very 
 much upon my mind; I mean the degree of influence which the French 
 might be disposed to arrogate to themselves in Ireland, and which I had 
 p:reat reason to fear would be greater than we might choose to allow 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 205 
 
 them. In the Gazette of that day there was a proclamation of Bona- 
 parte's, addressed to the government of Genoa, -which I thought most 
 grossly improper and indecent, as touching on the indispensable rights 
 of the people. I read the most obnoxious passages to Hoche, and ob- 
 served that if Bonaparte commanded in Ireland, and were to publish 
 there so indiscreet a proclamation, it would have a most ruinous effect; 
 that in Italy such dictation might pass, but never in Ireland, where we 
 understood our rights too well to submit to it. Hoche answered me, ' I 
 understand j r ou, but you may be at ease in that respect ; Bonaparte has 
 been my scholar, but he shall never be my master.' He then launched 
 out into a very severe critique on Bonaparte's conduct, which certainly 
 has latterly been terribly indiscreet, to say no worse of it, and observed 
 that, as to his victories, it was easy to gain victories with such troops as 
 he commanded, especially when the general made no difficulty to sacri- 
 fice the lives of his soldiers, and that these victories had cost the republic 
 two hundred thousand men. A great deal of what Hoche said was very 
 true, but I could see at the bottom of it a very great jealousy of Bona- 
 parte. I am also sorry to see the latter losing so fast that spirit of mod- 
 eration which did him as much honor at first as his victories. Hoche 
 and I then talked of our own business; he said we must calculate on 
 being opposed at the landing by eight or ten thousand men ; that if 
 they were not there, so much the better, but we must expect them ; that 
 the British would probably act as they did in America last Avar — retreat 
 and burn the towns behind them; that he did not desire more than 
 twelve, or, at most, fifteen thousand troops, and had made his arrange- 
 ments so that the maintenance of that force should not cost the Irish 
 people above 12,000,000 livres, equal to £500,000 sterling. " 
 
 Tone and his friends were treated with the greatest possible atten- 
 tion by the Dutch authorities. What was more important, the greatest 
 zeal was shown in hurrying on the preparations for the grand expedi- 
 tion. Indeed, the Dutch government on this occasion were, in the 
 familiar but expressive language of General Hoche, "like a man 
 stripped to his breeches, who has one shilling left, which he throws 
 in the lottery in the hope of being able to buy a coat." At last, on 
 the 8th of July, we find Tone at the Texel and on board Admiral de 
 Winter's ship, the Vryheid, a superb vessel of seventy-four guns. He 
 
206 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 is on the best terms both with General Daendels and the admiral — highly 
 pleased with both. He says, '' There is a frankness and candor in tlieii 
 manners which is highly interesting." He finds, too, that the best pos- 
 sible spirit reigns in both soldiers and sailors. The vessels are " in very 
 tine condition, incomparably better than the fleet at Brest." At first 
 his hopes are high. 
 
 But, alas ! some malignant fate, just as in the Bantry Bay expedi- 
 tion, seemed to take pleasure in baffling those generous hopes at the 
 very moment when all difficulties appeared on the point of vanishing 
 and the promise of triumph sure. Adverse winds set in steadily, con- 
 tinuing for weeks. During July and August the supplies on board the 
 wind-bound fleet became exhausted. The English admiral, Duncan, 
 was reinforced too. Like a curbed steed Tone chafes. Sometimes he 
 and De Winter try to kill time playing duets on the flute. He says the 
 admiral plays well. In the beginning of August, Tone exclaims : "Wind 
 still S. W. Damn it ! Damn it! I am to-day twenty-live days aboard, 
 and at a time when twenty-five hours are of importance. There seems 
 to be a fate in this business. Five weeks — I believe six weeks — the Eng- 
 iish fleet was paralyzed by the mutinies at Portsmouth, Plymouth and 
 the Nore. The sea was open, and nothing to prevent both the Dutch 
 and French fleets from putting to sea. Well, nothing was ready. That 
 precious opportunity, which we can never expect to return, was lost ; and 
 now that, at least, we are ready here, the wind is against us, the mutiny 
 is quelled and we are sure to be attacked by a superior force. At Brest 
 it is, I fancy, still worse. Had we been in Ireland at the moment of the 
 insurrection of the Nore, we should, beyond a doubt, have had at least 
 that fleet, and God only knows the influence which such an event might 
 have had on the whole British navy. The destiny of Europe might 
 have been changed for ever; but, as I have already said, that great 
 occasion is lost, and we must now do as well as we can, ' Le vin est 
 tire, il faut le boire' ('The wine is drawn — it is necessary to drink it')." 
 
 There was at length talk of a change of plan. Descents on (lie 
 coasts of England or Scotland were proposed. Tone is in a terrible 
 state of mind. In his diary he says: " All I had to say was, that if the 
 Batavian republic sent but a corporal's guard to Ireland, I was ready to 
 make one. So here is our expedition in a hopeful way. It is most ter- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 207 
 
 dble. Twice within nine months has England been saved by the winds. 
 It seems as if the very elements had conspired to perpetuate our slavery 
 and protect the insolence and oppression of our tyrants. What can 1 do 
 at this moment ? Nothing." General Daendels charges Tone, in Septem- 
 ber, with a mission to the head-quarters of the army of the Sambre and 
 Meuse to confer with Hoche. Tone's diary now becomes doubly melan- 
 choly, and even painful, for the gallant and generous and single-minded 
 Hoche is dying fast: " September 15, 16, 17. The general's health is in 
 a most alarming state, and nobody Lore seems to suspect it, at least to the 
 extent that I do. I look on it as a moral impossibility that he should 
 hold out long if he persists to remain at the army, as he seems deter- 
 mined to do. As for his physician, I have no great faith in his skill, and, 
 in short, I have the most serious alarms for his life. I should be sin- 
 cerely sorry, for every reason public and private, that we should lose 
 him. Urgent as the affair is on which I am here, I have found it impos- 
 sible to speak to him about it, and God knows when or whether I may 
 ever find an opportunity; which, in addition to my personal regard and 
 love for him, is a circumstance which very much aggravates my uneasi- 
 ness. To-day he has been removed by four grenadiers from one chamber 
 to another, for he is unable to walk. It is terrible to see a fine, hand- 
 some fellow, in the very iiower of his youth and strength, so reduced. 
 My heart bleeds for him. I am told that the late attacks made on him 
 by the royalists in the Convention, and the journalists in their pay, 
 preyed exceedingly on his spirits, and are the probable cause of his 
 present illness. Is it not strange that a man, who has faced death a 
 thousand times with intrepidity in the field, should sink under the cal- 
 umny ot a rabble of miscreants ? 
 
 " September 18th and 19th. My fears with regard to General Hoche 
 were but too well founded. He died this morning at four o'clock. His 
 lungs seemed to me quite gone. This most unfortunate event has so 
 confounded and distressed me that I know not what to think nor what 
 will be the consequences. Wrote to my wife and to General Daendels 
 instantly." 
 
 Tone now despaired of the Texel expedition, and got leave to go to 
 Paris to join his wife and children. However, the Texel fleet was des- 
 tined to tight the English and be beaten. De Winter, in October 
 
 14 
 
208 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 was suddenly ordered to put to sea, the English fleet having gone to 
 Yarmouth Eoads to refit. Duncan hastened to sea again. The two 
 fleets met and engaged off Camperdown on the coast of Holland. 
 The English had the advantage in weight of metal. The Dutch and 
 their admiral fought with desperate bravery. When De Winter's ship 
 struck it was a sinking wreck. The Dutch lost ten ships of the line and 
 two frigates. Duncan was ennobled by the title of Lord Camperdown. 
 Thus ended the Texel expedition and the naval career of Holland. 
 
 Here I cannot refrain from briefly relating an amusing anecdote of 
 Admiral de Winter. After the battle he sat down to play a game of 
 chess with Admiral Duncan, who won the game. De Winter good-hu- 
 moredly observed to Duncan that "it was too bad he should give him 
 two beatings in one day." 
 
 Hoche was the greatest loss to Ireland. He was an enthusiast in 
 her cause ; besides, he wished to strike down England. Even when he 
 was dying be was meditating fresh plans for the invasion of Ireland. 
 Tone lost a true friend in Hoche. Bonaparte, with whom he now became 
 acquainted, only amused him with visionary hopes. Soon that great 
 warrior went off to Egypt. In St. Helena he seems afterwards to have 
 regretted his neglect of the project for the liberation of Ireland. There 
 too he spoke of his rival Hoche as " one of the first of French generals," 
 and gave it as his opinion that, if he had succeeded in landing in Ire- 
 land, he would have certainly expelled the English. 
 
 I have dwelt on the details of the two great foreign expeditions for 
 Ireland's deliverance at considerable length, because I consider them 
 peculiarly interesting and instructive. I must hurry over the other 
 events connected with the history of the rebellion of '98. Pitt and his 
 Irish auxiliary, Castlereagh, so far from desiring to prevent a rebellion, 
 were determined that it should burst forth, in order that they might have 
 an excuse for keeping up such a military regime, as would enable them 
 to carry the union by violence in conjunction with fraud and corruption. 
 Hence every measure that could be adopted to goad the people into 
 insurrection was resorted to. Judicial murders, like that of the gallant 
 and much-loved William Orr, condemned on palpably perjured testimony, 
 and whose memory was kept alive in the hearts and on the lips of all by 
 the words, " Remember On-!" awoke the desire of vengeance in the pop- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 200 
 
 nlar mind. In the early part of '98 the Press newspaper, on account of 
 ;i letter signed Marcus, which commented severely on Lord Camden's 
 conduct in suffering Orr to be done to death by perjury and unheard-of 
 treachery, was prosecuted. Father Coigley was taken and hanged in 
 England. Arthur O'Connor was arrested. General Lake was named com- 
 mander-in-chief provisionally. Lord Carhampton and his successor, the 
 gallant Sir Ralph Abercrombie, had severally resigned that position — the 
 latter because his humane nature recoiled in disgust from the odious ser- 
 vices required at his hands ; the former because, however cruel he may 
 have been, he at least desired to suppress the conspiracy before it burst 
 forth into actual revolt. He even " publicly declared that some deep 
 and insidious scheme of the minister was in agitation, for, instead of 
 suppressing, the Irish government was obviously disposed to excite, an 
 insurrection." Abercrombie, before he resigned, stated in general orders 
 that his army, owing to its disorganization, "would soon be much more 
 formidable to their friends than to their enemies." Two regiments of 
 foreign mercenaries, the ruthless and licentious Hessians, were intro- 
 duced into Ireland to aid in dragooning the people. On the 30th of 
 March, 1798, the whole country was placed under martial law by proc- 
 lamation. This was the first time Wexford had been proclaimed under 
 the " Insurrection Act." " From that moment," Miles Byrne tells us, 
 "every one considered himself walking on a mine, ready to be blown 
 up, and all sighed for orders to begin." The military had now full 
 license ; any officer might have recourse to any measures of repression 
 lie might deem proper. The magistrates too might outrage law, secured 
 as they were by the " act of indemnity." Castlereagh was determined 
 that the rebellion should break out immediately. "Free quarters" were 
 resorted to as a judicious means of goading the people to desperation 
 when they would see a licentious soldiery living in their houses and 
 amongst their families. In the absence of their male relatives, women 
 were now continually forced to submit to the grossest insults and brutal- 
 ities from the military ruffians quartered in their homes. These were 
 the days of free-quarters, half-hangings, picketing*, pitch-caps, floggings, 
 house-burnings, military executions, especially in the counties of Kildare, 
 Carlow and Wicklow. These were the days of the infamous torturing mag- 
 istrates, Hawtry White, Solomon Richards and Parson Owens, the latter. 
 
210 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 above all, notorious for putting on the pitch-cap. These were the days 
 when the still more infamous and inhuman Hunter Gowan (who was, 
 however, ultimately shot like a dog) could murder with impunity in cold 
 blood his Catholic countrymen — such as poor Garret Fennel! and "James 
 Darcy, a poor inoffensive man, the father of rive children." Miles Byrne 
 tells us this, and also how "twenty-eight fathers of families were shot 
 and massacred in the Ball Alley of Carnew without trial. Mi. Cope, the 
 Protestant minister, was one of the principal magistrates who presided 
 at this execution. I knew several of the murdered men, particularly 
 Pat Murphy of Knockbrandon, at whose wedding I was two years 
 before. He was a brave and worthy man, and much esteemed. Wil- 
 liam Young, a Protestant, was amongst the slaughtered." 
 
 He tells us also how " at Dunlavin, county of Wicldow, previous to 
 the rising, thirty-four men were shot without any trial ; officers, to their 
 disgrace, presiding and sanctioning these proceedings." I myself remem- 
 ber hearing an aged countrywoman, some years ago, tell with what hor- 
 ror she gazed in " fatal '98 " on the bleeding corpses of, I think, fourteen 
 farmers' sons, all young men, on Dunlavin green. Such was the miser- 
 able condition of parts at least of Ireland at the beginning of May, 1708. 
 To maintain this terrible reign of martial law General Lake had now in 
 the island a force of more than 130,000 men, including regular troops, 
 English, Welsh and Scotch feneible regiments, Irish militia and the fell 
 Hessians. The Orange yeomanry were among the most ferocious tor- 
 turers of the people of Leinster. 
 
 But while Pitt and Castlereagh desired a rebellion in order that they 
 might afterwards the more easily carry the Act of Union, they knew that 
 such a policy was attended with risk. The rebellion might chance to 
 succeed — Ireland might in the struggle shake oft' the yoke of England. 
 To guard against this, in the words of the cold-blooded Castlereagh him- 
 self, "measures were taken by government to cause its premature explo- 
 sion." Then disunion was stirred up among the patriots by means of lies 
 and calumnies and forgeries — some of which remind us of "the miserable 
 man Barry's" false charges against the so-called "Fenians," who were 
 arrested in Dublin in '65 — and doubts of their Catholic brethren were 
 sown in the minds of some of the Protestant members of the "Union." 
 In fact, many Presbyterian "United Irishmen" were becoming lukewarm 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCOXNELL. 211 
 
 and separating from the Catholics. As Mr. Mitchel says, " From one 
 cause or another it is evident that towards the close of '97 the union 
 rather abated than increased." Some of the Catholics, too, first in the 
 North and then elsewhere, published addresses and resolutions hostile to 
 the principles of the "United Irishmen." Indeed, there were numerous 
 loyal addresses from both Dissenters and Catholics. The bishops and 
 higher clergy tried to procure these Catholic addresses of loyalty. In 
 February, '98, the parliamentary grant to the Royal College of May- 
 nootli — a college which had been incorporated by law for the education 
 of Catholic ecclesiastical students in '95 — was increased from £8000 to 
 £10,000. This measure tended to throw dust in the eyes of weak Cath- 
 olics, and it was referred to to justify their servility by selfish and time- 
 serving members of that persuasion. A speedy complete emancipation 
 too was promised, if not expressly, at least by implication. 
 
 But while the vigor of the " union " had in some degree broken up in 
 the North, in some other parts of the island it was still augmenting in 
 strength. The conspiracy might after all prove too strong for the Mac- 
 chiavellian statesmen, who, in order to carry out their sinister policy, had 
 so long connived at its existence. It was above all desirable then that, 
 when the rebellion would burst forth, the people should be deprived of 
 leaders. To attain this end the services of informers were called into 
 requisition. The first of these wretches, who demands notice, was the 
 notorious Thomas Reynolds. He was a Dublin silk-mercer, and posses- 
 sor by purchase of an estate in the county Kildare called Kilkea Castle. 
 His wealth gave him considerable influence over his Catholic co-religion- 
 ists. He was in the confidence of Oliver Bond and Lord Edward Fitz- 
 gerald. He had been sworn in as a " United Irishman " at the house of 
 the former, and had successively filled in the organization the offices of 
 colonel, treasurer and representative of Kildare, and delegate for Lei li- 
 ster. It happened, in the early part of '98, that he and a Dublin mer- 
 chant, named Cope, had occasion to travel together to the country — to a 
 place called Castle-Jordan — on business connected with a mortgage in 
 which both were interested. In the course of their conversation, Cope 
 was lamenting the troubled state of the country, which seemed to por- 
 tend an immediate rebellion. Reynolds said he was acquainted with a 
 United Irishman who, he thought, had repented his rashness in joining a 
 
212 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL, 
 
 treasonable league and would fain make atonement to society by defeat- 
 ing the plans of the conspirators. In short, Reynolds made terms with 
 Cope, received his first instalment of blood-money and agreed to betray 
 his associates. On the 12th of March, in consequence of informations 
 given bv this miscreant, Oliver Bond and fourteen other Leinster del- 
 egates were arrested by Major Swan and his myrmidons in colored 
 clothes, at Bond's house, in Lower Bridge street, Dublin. Other leaders 
 were arrested the same day — Thomas Addis Emmet, Dr. McNeven, Sweet- 
 man, Henry and Hugh Jackson. Warrants were also issued against 
 Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Counsellor Sampson and Mr. McCormick, but 
 they, receiving timely notice, escaped for the present at all events. 
 
 A few days after these arrests the principal committee met at the 
 "Brazen Head Hotel." It was there and then proposed by one Rey- 
 nolds, a distant relative of his, that the traitor Reynolds should be made 
 away with. The proposal was unanimously rejected. It is also stated 
 that Bond had been warned prior to the arrests. He is said to have 
 even held a pistol to Reynolds's breast, and to have demanded of him, 
 "What would you do to the traitor who would reveal our secrets, if he 
 were in your power?" 
 
 " I'd shoot him through the heart !" replied Reynolds without flinch- 
 ing. Bond was staggered, and began to think he had been misinformed. 
 In short, Reynolds's cool intrepidity saved his worthless life. 
 
 Every effort was made by the patriots to supply the loss of the lead- 
 ers who were thrown into prison, and to keep the people quiet till the ar- 
 rival of a French auxiliary force. The brothers, Henry and John Sheares, 
 both barristers, stepped into the vacant post of leadership. They took 
 steps to rally the nation. A circular, said to have been written by Lord 
 Edward Fitzgerald, was handed round among the people. Its last words 
 were: "Be firm, Irishmen, but be cool and cautious. Be patient yet 
 a while. Trust to no unauthorized communication ; and, above all, we 
 warn you — again and again we warn you — against doing the work of 
 your tyrants by premature, by partial or divided exertion. If Ireland 
 shall be forced to throw away the scabbard, let it be at her own time, 
 not theirs." "But," as Mr. Mitchel says, "Lords Camden, Clare and 
 . Castlereac;h were determined that it should be at their time." The 
 proclamation of the 30th of March, already referred to, was doing its 
 
THE LIFE OF DAXIEL-OTOXXEEL. 21! 
 
 work; also the manifesto of the 3d of April, which Sir Ralph Aber- 
 crombie had been obliged to issue from his head-quarters at Kildare, 
 requiring the inhabitants of the county to surrender their arms within 
 ten days, and threatening them, in case of non-compliance, with "free 
 quarters." Confessions of concealed arms and of plots were wrung from 
 some individuals by torture. Any one "wearing the green" was of 
 course outraged. Any one wearing short hair was looked on as a revo- 
 lutionist, called "a croppy, and subjected to the grossest insults." Malev- 
 olent individuals, under pretence of loyalty, would gratify private malice 
 by fixing on the heads of those to whom they might bear some grudge, 
 if they. chanced to wear short hair, "pretended loyalist caps of coarse 
 linen or strong brown paper, smeared with pitch on the inside, which 
 in some instances, adhered so firmly as not to be disengaged without a 
 laceration of the hair and even skin." The "croppies" sometimes, with 
 a sort of grim humor, retaliated on the loyalists by cropping their hair 
 short, thus rendering them liable to outrages from other loyalists, real or 
 counterfeit. We have the authority of persons altogether in the interests 
 of the British government for the atrocities inflicted on the Irish people 
 by the sustainers of English rule. The gallant and humane Sir John 
 Moore, who held a command in Ireland in the year '98, gives it as his 
 opinion " that moderate treatment by the generals, and the preventing 
 of the troops from pillaging and molesting the people, would soon restore 
 tranquillity, and the latter would certainly be quiet if the gentry and yeo- 
 men would only behave with tolerable decency, and not seek to gratify 
 their ill-humor and revenge upon the poor." Major-general Sir William 
 Napier, the admirable and high-souled author of that famous military 
 classic, the " History of the Peninsular War," in a review of the life of 
 Sir John Moore in the "Edinburgh Review," bursts into the following 
 indignant strain: "What manner of soldiers were thus let loose upon 
 the wretched districts which the Ascendency-men ivere pleased to call dis- 
 affected? They were men, to use the venerable Abercrombie's words, 
 who were 'formidable to everybody but the enemy.' We ourselves were 
 young at the time ; yet, being connected with the army, Ave Ave re contin- 
 ually amongst the soldiers, listening with boyish eagerness to their con- 
 versation, and Ave Avell remember — and with horror to this day — the 
 tales of lust and blood and pillage — the record of their oavii actions 
 
214 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 against the miserable peasantry — which they used to relate." All this, 
 be it remembered, took place before any insurrection Lad broken out. 
 Mr. Gordon, a Protestant clergyman, in his "History of the Rebellion," 
 tells the following: "Thomas Fitzgerald, high-sheriff of Tipperary, seized 
 at Clonmel a gentleman of the name of Wright, against whom no grounds 
 of suspicion could be conjectured by his neighbors, caused five hundred 
 lashes to be inflicted on him in the severest manner, and confined him 
 several days without permitting his wounds to be dressed, so that his 
 recovery from such a state of torture and laceration could hardly be 
 expected. In a trial at law, after the rebellion, on an action of dam- 
 ages brought by Wright against this magistrate, the innocence of the 
 plaintiff appeared so manifest, even at a time when prejudice ran amaz- 
 ingly high against persons accused of disloyalty, that the defendant was 
 condemned to pay live hundred pounds to his prosecutor. Many other 
 actions of damages on similar grounds would have been commenced, if 
 the Parliament had not put a stop to such proceedings by an act of 
 indemnity for all errors committed by magistrates from supposed zeal 
 for the public service. A letter written in the French language, found in 
 the pocket of Wright, was hastily considered a proof of guilt, though the 
 letter was of a perfectly innocent nature." 
 
 On one occasion Sir John Moore, on his march from Fermoy, entered 
 the town of Clogheen, in Tipperary. The first sight which struck him 
 was an unfortunate man tied up and undergoing the torment of the lash. 
 The street was lined with country-folks on their knees. Sir John was 
 informed that the high-sheriff, Sir Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald, was mak- 
 ing great discoveries by Hogging the truth out of many respectable per- 
 sons. His plan, it appears, was " to flog each person till he told the 
 truth." Sir John Moore was filled with intense disgust, both towards 
 the sheriff and his infallible method of arriving at "the truth." 
 
 It is almost unnecessary to add that the memory of this wretch is 
 embalmed in the traditional hatred of the people of Tipperary; so much 
 so that a few years ago, when his grandson, under the pressure of some 
 private misfortunes, committed suicide by tying a heavy stone round his 
 neck and drowning himself, the rage of the peasantry would hardly suf- 
 fer his remains to receive human, not to say Christian, burial. It was 
 with the utmost difficulty that the unfortunate man's body finally found 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL OX'OXXELL. 
 
 215 
 
 ft grave. It appears Sir Thomas's son also met Avltli a violent death, and 
 that his great-grandson hung himself by accident when showing s< uie 
 playmates how his grandfather used to hang the "Croppies.'' 
 
 Lord Edward Fitzgerald had been in concealment since the 12th of 
 March. Towards the middle of May the bloodhounds of the Caslle, 
 headed by the notorious Major Sirr, were hot upon his track. On the 
 night of the 17th he had a very narrow escape in Watling street, Dub- 
 lin. A scathe took place between Lord Edward's party and the myr- 
 midons of Sirr. Sirr was pinioned by two of Lord Edward's attend- 
 ants. One of them — Pat Gallagher — struck at him several times with 
 a dagger, but Sirr was protected by a coat-of-mail worn beneath his uni- 
 form. The major's was as much a hairbreadth escape as Lord Edward's. 
 
 But on the 19th of May the fatal hour arrived : it was seven o'clock 
 in the evening. Lord Edward was reposing on a bed in the house of a 
 citizen named Murphy. The house was Xo. 153 Thomas street, Dublin. 
 Murphy entered the room to ask him would he take a cup of tea. Lord 
 Edward thanked him, and said he would after awhile. They then chat- 
 ted for some time on indifferent topics, when suddenly Murphy heard the 
 trampling of feet upon the stairs. He turned round with a startled air 
 and saw Major Swan at the door. According to Murphy, some person 
 in a soldier's jacket, with a sword in his hand, was behind him. Mur- 
 phy placed himself between Swan and the bed. Swan, however, looked 
 over him, and saw Lord Edward. He then informs his lordship that 
 he has a warrant against him and that resistance will be vain, assu- 
 ring him at the same time that he will treat him with the greatest 
 respect. Then Swan advances towards the bed, but, as he does so, 
 Lord Edward springs up in an instant, snaps a pistol at him, which 
 misses fire, then "like a tiger" (this is Murphy's expression) closes 
 with him. Swan now puts his hand in his breast pocket, but Lord 
 Edward, perceiving the motion, strikes at him with the dagger he has 
 drawn from beneath the pillow, pinioning his hand to his breast. Swan 
 loses three fingers and receives a superficial wound in the side, but man- 
 ages in the struggle to lire his pistol and hit Lord Edward in the shoul- 
 der. Lord Edward staggers and falls against the bed, but, rousing all 
 his energies, immediately rallies, springs again upon his antagonist, and 
 by a grand sudden effort flings him to the other side of the room. Swan 
 
21G THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 has already cried out, "Evan, Ryan! I am basely murdered!"' Captain 
 Ryan has heard these words while engaged in searching another part of 
 the house ; so now he arrives on the scene of deadly conflict — deadly 
 for him as for the heroic Geraldine. In the act of entering the room he 
 aims his pistol, pulls the trigger, but misses fire. He next mahes a 
 lunge at Lord Edward with a sword-cane, as he is still engaged with 
 Swan. The blade bends on Fitzgerald's ribs, affecting him so much for 
 the moment that he throws himself on the bed. But when Ryan throws 
 himself upon him, the scuffle becomes fiercer and more terrible. Lord 
 Edward does fearful execution with his " awfully-constructed double-edged 
 dagger." He inflicts wound after wound on Ryan to the number of four- 
 teen, one of which lays open the lower part of his belly, so that his bowels 
 arc falling out. Lord Edward tries to make his way to the door, tramp- 
 ling Ryan under his feet. The latter, however, clings to him with tena- 
 cious death-grasp and impedes his endeavors to escape. According to 
 the account of Captain Ryan's son, Mr. D. F. Ryan, of the excise in Lon- 
 don, the captain's hands were at this stage of the ferocious struggle dis- 
 abled, so that it was with his legs he clung round Lord Edward. But 
 Major Sirr's account is somewhat different. " On my arrival," the major 
 writes to Mr. D. F. Ryan, " in view of Lord Edward, Ryan and Swan, I 
 beheld his lordship standing with a dagger in his hand, as if ready to 
 plunge it into my friends, while dear Ryan, seated on the bottom step 
 of the flight of the upper stairs, had Lord Edward grasped with both 
 his arms by the legs or thighs, and Swan in a somewhat similar situa- 
 tion, both laboring under the torment of their wounds, when, without 
 hesitation, I fired at Lord Edward's dagger-arm, lodging several slugs in 
 his shoulder, and the instrument of death fell to the ground. Having 
 secured the titled prisoner, my first concern was for your dear father's 
 safety. I viewed his intestines with grief and sorrow." 
 
 Sirr up to this moment had been below with from two to three hun- 
 dred men, and had been busy placing guards round the house to prevent 
 the possibility of escape. "When he came up the stairs he was accom- 
 panied with a strong body of soldiers. In truth, it was hardly safe to 
 ascend without them. Even after his dagger-arm was disabled, the 
 indomitable Geraldine refused to give in. He made one desperate effort 
 to burst through the guard of soldiers, but was at last overpowered and 
 
! r 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL Q'COXNELL. 217 
 
 rendered insensible by repeated blows. The whole struggle lasted little 
 more than a minute. He was carried down stairs in a sheet taken off 
 the bed in which he lay. The soldiers brutally kicked him : a wretched 
 drummer wounded him in the back of the neck. This wound was the 
 source of exquisite torture to the noble patriot in his last moments. At 
 the time of his capture lie was already in bad health : he was suffering 
 from an attack of cold, and was quite feverish. 
 
 All the soldiers, however, were not so savage. When Sirr called upon 
 them to follow him up stairs, one soldier exclaimed : 
 
 " I fought by Lord Edward's side in America. He was a kind and 
 brave officer, and by G — d I'll never assist in capturing him !" 
 
 Sirr reported him to his commanding officer: he was shot next 
 
 morning. 
 
 In the biographies of Lord Edward the reader will find related in 
 detail tlie sad sequel of this story; how calm Lord Edward became 
 when he was brought to the castle, just as the fighting Swedish king, 
 Charles XII., after his fiercs combat against overwhelming numbers of 
 Turks and Tartars in the house at Bender, became immediately all- 
 smiling and serene ; how, when he was lodged in Newgate prison, the 
 under-jailer having been heavily bribed, he enjoyed the last delight of 
 one brief stolen interview with his young French wife, the gentle and 
 lovely Pamela, illegitimate daughter of the duke of Orleans bv the eel- 
 ebrated Madame de Genlis, and half-sister to King Louis Philippe ; how 
 the mean British viceroy and his meaner Irish advisers forced Lady Pamela 
 Fitzgerald into exile while he was still lingering on his dungeon death- 
 bed (but when did British statesmen show aught like magnanimity to a 
 fallen foe, especially if that foe were Irish?); how his wounds, which at 
 first appeared not to show fatal symptoms, at last grew worse ; how, 
 when raging fever set in the night before his death, in his wild delirium 
 he fancied himself again in that fierce grapple of life and death, and 
 shouted to his imaginary foes, " Come on, damn you ! come on !" finally, 
 how the base legislature after his death pursued both him and his with 
 craven vindictiveness. They were so lost to all feeling of manhood as 
 to pass a bill of attainder to rob his wife and children of all means of 
 subsistence. Beynolds, the informer, was the chief " credible " witness 
 examined on this occasion. Vainly Curran, at the bar of the House of 
 
Commons, denounced him in accents of noble wrath, and pleaded with 
 generous pathos for the hapless widow and orphans. " I have often," he 
 said, "of late gone to the dungeon of the captive, but never have 1 gone 
 to the grave of the dead to receive instructions for his defence, nor. in 
 truth, have I ever before been at the trial of a dead man!" Cumin 
 entered into an elaborate argument, contending that a posthumous 
 attainder was at variance with the principles of British law; was, in 
 its nature, inhuman, impolitic and against all notions of equity. The 
 close of his speech is one of the noblest outbursts of Irish eloquence: 
 " One more topic you will permit me to add. Every act of the sort 
 ought to have a practical morality flowing from its principles. If loy- 
 alty and justice require that these infants should be deprived of bread, 
 must it not be a violation of that principle to give them food or shelter? 
 Must not every loyal and just man wish to see them, in the words of the 
 famous Golden Bull, 'always poor and necessitous, and for ever accompa- 
 nied by the infamy of their father, languishing in continued indigence 
 and finding their punishment in living and their relief in dying'? If 
 the widowed mother should carry the orphan heir of her unfortunate 
 husband to the o;ate of any man who might feel himself touched with 
 the sad vicissitudes of human affairs, who might feel a compassionate 
 reverence for the noble blood that flowed in his veins, nobler than the 
 royalty that first ennobled it, that like a rich stream rose and ran till it 
 hid its fountain, — if, remembering the many noble qualities of his unfor- 
 tunate father, his heart melted over the calamities of the child, if his 
 heart swelled, if his eyes overflowed, if his too precipitate hand were 
 stretched out by his pity or his gratitude to the poor excommunicated 
 sufferers, how could he justify the rebel tear or the traitorous humanity?" 
 He then conjures them to reflect that the fact "of guilt or innocence, 
 which must be the foundation of this bill, is not now, after the death of 
 the party, capable of being tried, consistently with the liberty of a free 
 people or the unalterable rules of eternal justice; and that as to the for- 
 feiture and the ignominy which it enacts, that only can be punishment 
 which lights upon guilt, and that can be only vengeance which break;- 
 upon innocence!" 
 
 The death of Lord Edward was a terrible blow to the Irish cause. 
 He was a brave and skilful soldier. In the British army he had been a 
 
1'IIE LIFE OF DANIEL OXOXXELL. 2L ( J 
 
 major, and had distinguished himself in the latter years of the Amer- 
 ican war. No military leader of any great importance now remained to 
 the "United Irishmen," at least in Ireland. Seeing what the insurgents 
 were able to do even without leaders or discipline, it may he doubted 
 whether, if Lord Edward had lived to place himself at their head, they 
 might not have held out against the whole power of England, in spite of 
 all the drawbacks that crippled their efforts, till France could come to 
 the rescue with forces adequate to the task of securing Ireland's libera- 
 tion. The intrepidity, which nerved Lord Edward in his desperate strug- 
 gle against his captors, he showed all through life on every occasion cal- 
 culated to call it forth. On the battle-field, in encounters in the lonely 
 woods of America, where single-handed he fought against odds, in the 
 Irish House of Commons, where he defied the rage of the venal majority, 
 and in various other situations of difficulty, he braved alike hostile opin- 
 ion or physical danger with fearless eye and soul. A trifling incident 
 that occurred to him one evening, when he was riding home from the 
 races at the Curragh of Kildare, in company with Arthur O'Connor, will 
 serve to show his power of proper self-assertion. He was in the habit, 
 at the time, of wearing a green cravat. A party of dragoon officers, 
 who were also at the races, saw this symbol of disaffection round 
 his neck, and determined to take it from him. As Lord Edward and his 
 friend rode along side by side, the band of British champions galloped 
 past, and then wheeled round and faced the two gentlemen. Thus, as it 
 Avere, intercepted, Lord Edward, reining in his steed, asked the mean- 
 ing of this unlooked-for impertinence. The spokesman of the British 
 cavaliers at once made a demand that he should "doff" the rebel sym- 
 bol, which offended them as British officers. 
 
 " The uniform you wear," said Lord Edward in reply to their polite 
 request, " would lead one to suppose that you are gentlemen ; your con- 
 duct, however, conveys a very different impression. As to this neck- 
 cloth that so offends you, all I can say is, here I stand; let any man 
 among you, who dares, come forward and take it off." 
 
 Lord Edward could hardly say or do more than this to oblige them or 
 meet their wishes halfway, but, singular to say, not a man of the British he- 
 roes budged an inch forward. If they didn't exactly stand with their lin- 
 gers in their mouths, at least their faces looked wondrous blank and foolish. 
 
220 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'C-OjSNELL. " 
 
 Bat if Lord Edward showed an anxiety to do everything in reason to 
 make himself agreeable to those loyal cavaliers, his politeness was noth- 
 ing to the obliging courtesy of Arthur O'Connor. This gentleman, desi- 
 rous to gratify their love of fighting, which he thought only natural in 
 military men, and believing the pistol to be the proper arbitrator in all 
 such disputes, at once himself proposed that they should select two of 
 their number. " Just select two," says he, " and my friend, Lord Edward, 
 and myself will be most happy to meet them, and give them every sat- 
 isfaction about the green cravat that gentlemen can desire." 
 
 But all this polite compliance went for nothing. Instead of jumping 
 with alacrity at Mr. O'Connor's amiable suggestion of "pistols for four 
 and coffee for two," the British heroes suddenly felt their generous indig- 
 nation at " the wearing of the green " cool down a bit. Thev felt their 
 valor, like that of their countryman, Bob Acres, rapidly "oozing out, as it 
 were, at the palms of their hands." The cravat, which smelt of sedition at 
 least, if not " Hat burglary," and irritated so dreadfully their loyal nervous 
 systems, remained intact on Lord Edward's neck. In short, these paladins 
 in embryo absolutely sneaked away just as if they were bullies or cowards, 
 or both. The most imaginative of British bards could hardly sing of their 
 retreat — 
 
 " Oh, 'twas a glorious sight to see 
 The march of English chivalry !" 
 
 In fact, the ladies at the county ball, which was held in Kildare a 
 short time after, seemed to regard them as actually bullies and pol- 
 troons, for they all refused to dance with them. 
 
 In almost every age of Irish history some one or other of the Ger- 
 aldincs has appeared in arms against British rule. Lord Edward was the 
 representative Geraldine of Ms clay. Indeed, he may be called the last 
 genuine patriot of his house, though a feeble gleam of patriotic feeling- 
 is still now and then perceptible in the once glorious family of Leinster. 
 Lord Henry Fitzgerald, an elder brother of Lord Edward, might justly 
 claim the praise due to patriotism. But their eldest brother, William 
 Robert, duke of Leinster, though amiable and liberal in his opinions, was 
 weak and vacillating. Yet one incident in his life struck a terror as 
 great, albeit absurd, into the hearts of the English people as the appear- 
 ance of his brother Edward at the head of 100,000 "United Irishmen," 
 
THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. 221 
 
 in '98, could possibly have inspired. Though the occurrence may be a 
 little out of place in this part of my narrative, yet, as a sort of relief to 
 the terrible scenes with which I have crowded this chapter, I may be 
 allowed to introduce it. During the glorious volunteer movement the 
 duke was appointed commander of the Dublin volunteers. The cere- 
 mony on the day of his assuming the command was conducted with the 
 utmost pomp and military display. The artillery was drawn out in Col- 
 lege Green, and multitudinous masses of spectators cheered enthusias- 
 tically for the popular chief of the popular House of Leinster. "While 
 the triumphant shouts of the populace are still ringing through the 
 air, the captain of an English collier chances to land on the Dublin 
 quays. He hears the din, and quickly, with eyes and mouth all open, 
 he asks those standing near, " What is the meaning of all this rejoicing?" 
 "Oh!" quoth a wag, "they are crowning William Robert, duke of 
 Leinster, king of Ireland!" 
 
 The poor skipper hastily concludes that, under such a revolutionary 
 state of things, it would not be safe for him and his cargo to remain in 
 Ireland. In a twinkling he hurries on board his ship again, weighs 
 anchor, and makes sail for England as if pursued by Paul Jones or the 
 devil himself. Once he finds himself safe in Liverpool, without losing 
 a moment he makes an affidavit before the worshipful mayor that he saw 
 the cluke of Leinster crowned king of Ireland. An express forthwith 
 conveys the startling intelligence to London. A cabinet council is sum- 
 moned. The alarming news spreads like wildfire. The modern Babylon 
 remains panic-stricken till the regular mail arrives, after which the por- 
 tentous rumor is heard no more. 
 
 We have seen that the testimony of Reynolds was used to furnish 
 grounds for the posthumous bill of attainder. That wretch had been 
 under the greatest obligations to the generosity of the noble Geraldine, 
 yet he did not for a moment shrink from the odious task of helping to 
 rob his benefactor's wife and children of their means of subsistence. 
 His base ingratitude need not in the slightest degree excite our aston- 
 ishment. The man, who is a traitor to his country, will be equally faith- 
 less to his friends, if by his faithlessness he can promote his seeming self- 
 interest. Indeed, this base ingratitude is one of the most salient charac- 
 teristics of the informer tribe. We find the infamous Nagle, the informer 
 
222 THE LIFE OF DANIEL - COX:s"FLL. 
 
 of our own days, obliged to admit in cross-examination at one of the 
 state prosecutions of '65, that he owed the possession of two situations 
 — his daily bread, in short — to the writer of these pages, whom he had 
 just helped to consign to penal servitude under a sentence of twenty 
 years. 
 
 For long years the source, whence the English government derived 
 their knowledge of Lord Edward's place of concealment, was a complete 
 mystery. Some persons, altogether innocent, fell under the dishonoring 
 suspicion of having disclosed the secret hiding-place. It was unchari- 
 tably whispered by many that poor Murphy, who suffered imprisonment 
 and was utterly ruined in consequence of his connection with Lord Ed- 
 ward, was the traitor. Honest, rough, manly Samuel Neilson. who dined 
 with him the very day on which he was captured, was by others sus- 
 pected of having done this deed of perfidy. Time and research and the 
 publication of certain letters and state papers, bearing on the events of 
 '08, have at last brought the truth to light. The innocent Murphy and 
 Neilson are cleared of all taint of suspicion, and the treachery is, to all 
 appearance, brought home to the door of a sleek, respectable Catholic law- 
 yer named Francis Magan. Dr. Madden and Mr. Fitzpatrick may claim 
 a large share of whatever merit belongs to this discovery. The lan- 
 guage of Dr. Madden in the following passage is somewhat cautious, if 
 not exactly hesitating : " To those who may be disposed to follow up 
 these efforts of mine to bring the villain's memory to justice, I would 
 suggest: Let them not seek for the betrayer of Lord Edward Fitzgerald 
 in the lower or middle classes of the society of ' United Irishmen ;' and per- 
 haps, if they are to find the traitor a member of any of the learned profes- 
 sions, it is not the medical one that has been disgraced by his connec- 
 tion with it." In truth, there is little doubt that Francis Magan was 
 the traitor. This gentleman enjoyed to the close of his life a snug pen- 
 sion from the Castle government for his valuable services. The " Corn- 
 wallis Correspondence" makes us aware of the fact that that other 
 double-dyed monster of perfidy, Higgins, otherwise called " the sham 
 squire," was made the channel through which the information, fatal to 
 Lord Edward, reached the government. 
 
 There were unhappily others besides Magan who, in those dark times, 
 stood high in the confidence of the United Irishmen, while they were 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 223 
 
 secretly in the pay of the alien government, and who contrived to con- 
 ceal (heir rascality to the very end of their lives. Such a one was Leon- 
 ard MacNally, the barrister. We have already heard O'Connell tell a 
 [imnorous anecdote, in which he and his son figure more comically than 
 creditably. This man was associated with the illustrious Curran in the 
 defence of most of the prisoners tried daring the state prosecutions of 
 those days. In fact, MacNally was himself a "United Irishman." 
 Curran had boundless confidence in this arch-deceiver. Both were retained 
 for the defence of Patrick Finney. On this occasion Curran could n< it refrain 
 from impulsively throwing his arm round the rascal's neck and saying, with 
 emotion, " My old and excellent friend, I have long known and respected 
 the honesty of your heart, but never until this occasion was 1 acquainted 
 with the extent of your abilities." W. H. Curran, in his excellent life 
 of his father, talks of " the uncompromising and romantic fidelity " of 
 friendship shown by MacNally to Curran for forty-three years. The elo- 
 quent Charles Phillips refused to believe him a betrayer. When his guilt 
 became known after his death, Curran's son was horrified. Such was the 
 extreme good-nature or weakness of the latter that he refrained from 
 bringing out a fresh edition of the biography of his father, in order to 
 avoid hurting the feelings of MacNally's family by the remarks which 
 he should necessarily have to make on the old sinner, Leonard. Per- 
 haps it is not so very wonderful that men were deceived by MacNally's 
 specious semblance of patriotism. He constituted himself the cham- 
 pion of the " United Irishmen " when Sir Jonah Barrington sneered at 
 them, and actually fought their quarrel in a duel with that eccentric and 
 exquisitely humorous knight, People on the patriot side, during Leon- 
 ard's" life, thought it a horrible grievance that the government would 
 never give him a silk gown. His friend, Curran, when the Whigs came 
 into power, used all his influence with the duke of Bedford to get him 
 made a king's counsel. But His Grace, for some private reason, reso- 
 lutely refused to call him to the inner bar. In 1807, General Sir Arthur 
 Wellesley, afterwards the famous "Iron Duke" of Wellington, wrote the 
 following letter to Mr. Trail, an officer of the Irish government : " I en- 
 tirely agree with you respecting the employment of our informer. Such 
 a measure would do much mischief. It would disgust the loyal of all 
 descriptions; at the same time it would render useless our private com- 
 
224 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OC0XXELL. 
 
 munieation with Mm, as no further trust would be placed in him by the 
 disloyal." This letter is believed to have reference to MadNalLy. The 
 following passage from a letter of Sir Arthur to Lord Hawkesbury, writ- 
 ten in 1808, also throws a lurid light on the ghastly spy-system of those 
 noble. Britons, who, if you believe themselves, hate anything like a 
 crooked or concealed policy, and are always manly and aboveboard in 
 their dealings. It is curious to find the blunt and apparently straight- 
 forward Arthur Wellesley busying himself in these dirty doings in the 
 dark, and apparently such a proficient in the noble art of state " hugger- 
 mugger." Here is the passage: " The extracts of the letters sent to you 
 
 by Lord Grenville were sent to us by , the Catholic orator, two 
 
 months ago. The mentioned is a man desirous of being em- 
 ployed by the government as a spy, and his trade is that of a spy to all 
 parties. He offered himself to Lord Fingal and others, as well as to me, 
 and we now watch him closelv." 
 
 O'Connell, like so many others, was somewhat astonished when the 
 fact of MacNally's guilt became publicly known. This took place after 
 his death, in 1820, when, his family claiming the reversion of his reg- 
 ular pension of £300 a year, Lord Wellesley demanded a statement of 
 the terms on which it had been granted. Besides this regular pension, 
 he received, according to the secret service papers, various other pay- 
 ments. In 1803 he was Robert Emmet's counsel (such was the trust 
 reposed in him), and on the 14th of September, a few days before the 
 trial, it would appear from an entry that L. M. received £100 from the 
 Castle. In the same year we find this government record: "Mr. Pol- 
 lock for L. M., £1000." He visited Emmet in prison, and on the morn- 
 ing of his death took leave of him, apparently with all the emotion and 
 grief of a faithful friend. From MacNally's case, and others like it, 
 O'Connell used to deduce arguments against secret societies. He used 
 to say the MacNallys were not all dead yet. Doubtless this is more or 
 less true. It cannot reasonably be denied that secret societies are ex- 
 posed to the danger of informers, any more than that soldiers are liable 
 to be shot in battle or seamen to go to " Davy Jones's locker." But this 
 obvious fact does not make conspiracies, in some shape or form, one whit, 
 the less absolutely necessary to struggling nations under various conceiv- 
 able circumstances. Of course they are dangerous, but how eau men 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 225 
 
 free a nation without risking liberty and life in various ways? In this 
 life danger is at all times all around us. You can hardly walk down the 
 crowded street of a great city without incurring the danger of being run 
 over, or the danger of having your skull split with a tumbling tile or 
 some other danger. At a certain stage, Mr. O'Connell's or any similar 
 open political movements, in Ireland or elsewhere, would be sure to 
 become fully as dangerous and liable to treachery as secret ones. In- 
 deed, all the prudence and caution, with which the great Irish Tribune 
 conducted his grand Repeal agitation of '43, did not avail to save himself 
 and some of his leading followers from being caught in the meshes of 
 British law in '44, when they were found guilty, by constructive and 
 other proof, on a charge of seditious conspiracy. 
 
 Lord Edward Fitzgerald's arrest was followed closely by that of the 
 two brothers Sheares, who were both taken in their house in Baggot 
 street, Dublin, on the morning of the 21st of May. The informer who 
 betrayed them was, if possible, a more abandoned scoundrel than Rey- 
 nolds. He was named John Wameford Armstrong. He was a man of 
 some property and position, and a captain in the Kildare militia. He 
 contrived to meet the brothers in a bookshop, wormed himself into their 
 confidence, and was asked to dine. at their house. The arrest took place 
 on the following morning. Dr. Madden says of this hideous instance of 
 human treachery : " Captain Armstrong, in .his evidence on the trial of 
 the Sheares, did not think it necessary to state that at his Sunday's 
 interview (May 20th, 1708) he shared the hospitality of his victims; 
 that he dined with them, sat in the company of their aged mother and 
 affectionate sister, enjoyed the society of the accomplished wife of cue 
 of them, caressed his infant children, and on another occasion — refer- 
 red to by Miss Steele — was entertained with music— the wife of the un- 
 fortunate man, whose children he was to leave in a few days fatherless, 
 playing on the harp for his entertainment ! These things are almost too 
 horrible to think on. 
 
 " Armstrong, after dining with his victims on Sunday, returned to 
 their house no more. This was the last time the cloven foot of treachery 
 passed the threshold of the Sheares. On the following morning they 
 were arrested and committed to Kilmainham jail. The terrible iniquity 
 of Armstrong's conduct on that Sunday — when he dined with Ids vie- 
 
tims, sat in social intercourse with their families a few hours only before 
 he was aware his treachery would have brought ruin on that household 
 — is unparalleled." 
 
 This miscreant, in his old age, had an interview with tlic author of the 
 "Lives of the United Irishmen" touching some alleged inaccuracies in 
 that work. Armstrong took pains to deny having caressed any children 
 at Sheares's. " He never recollected," he said, " having seen the children 
 at all; but there was a young lady of about fifteen there whom he met 
 at dinner. The day he dined there (and he dined there only once) he 
 was urged by Lord Castlereagh to do so. It was wrong to do so, and he 
 (Captain Armstrong) was sorry for it; but he was persuaded by Lord 
 Castlereagh to go there to dine for the purpose of getting further infor- 
 mation." 
 
 Upon this statement Mr. Mitchel justly observes: "Perhaps the his- 
 tory of no other country can show us an example of the first minister of 
 state personally exhorting his spies to go to a gentleman's house and 
 mingle with his family in social intercourse, in order to procure evidence 
 to hang him. However, his lordship did procure the information he 
 wanted. He found that the leaders of the ' United Irishmen,* being at 
 length convinced of the impossibility of restraining the people and keep- 
 ing them quiet under such intolerable tyranny, had decided on a general 
 rising for the 23d of May." The United Irishmen of Leinster were to 
 act in concert. The stopping of all the mail-coaches was to be the signal 
 for the people everywhere to rise and commence the war. The camp of 
 Loughlinstown, the artillery at Chapel-izod and the Castle of Dublin 
 were to be seized by a coup de main [sudden and successful attack) the 
 first night. One hour was to be allowed between the seizure of the 
 camp at Loughlinstown and the artillery at Chapel-izod, and an hour 
 and a half between the seizure of the artillery and the surprise of the 
 Castle. The different bands of insurgents from the country were to enter 
 Dublin at the same moment. Simultaneously a great insurrection was 
 to take place at Cork. Among the leaders there was some disagreement 
 regarding the plans. Neilson and others were bent upon first attacking 
 the county prison of Kilmainham and Newgate jail in order to set free 
 their comrades. These attacks, then, were also fixed for the night of the 
 23d. Seeing the danger of complicating their plans by trying to effect 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 227 
 
 too much at once, the Ihearcscs ami others desired to put off the at- 
 tempts on the jails till alter the general insurrection. 
 
 In truth, it was impossible for human patience to bear any longer the 
 outrages perpetrated by the ruffian soldiery. The people were maddened. 
 The following passage from Lord Holland's "Memoirs of the Whig 
 Party" gives one a fearful idea of the atrocities which were daily taking 
 place, and which were, to all appearance, the result of a premeditated 
 plan on the part of the government: "The premature and ill-concerted 
 insurrections which followed in the Catholic districts were quelled, rather 
 in consequence of want of concert and skill in the insurgents than of 
 any good conduct or discipline of the king's troops, whom Sir Ralph 
 Abercrombie described very honestly as formidable to none but their 
 friends. That experienced and upright commander had been removed 
 from his command, even after those just and spirited general orders in 
 which the remarkable judgment just quoted was conveyed. His recall 
 was hailed as a triumph by the Orange faction, and they contrived, about 
 the same time, to get rid of Mr. Secretary Pelliam, who, though some- 
 what time-serving, was a good-natured and a prudent man. Indeed, 
 surrounded as they were with burning cottages, tortured backs and fre- 
 quent executions, they were yet full of their sneers at what they whim- 
 sically termed ' the clemency ' of the government and the weak character 
 of the viceroy, Lord Camden. . . . The fact is incontrovertible that the 
 people of Ireland were driven to resistance, which, possibly, they medi- 
 tated before, by the free quarters and expenses of the soldiery, which were 
 such as are not permitted in civilized warfare, even in an enemy s country. 
 Trials, if they must so be called, were carried on without number under 
 martial law. It often happened that three officers composed the court, 
 and that, of the three, two were under age and the third an officer of the 
 yeomanry or militia, who had sworn, in his Orange lodge, eternal hatred 
 to the people over whom he was thus constituted a judge. Floggings, 
 pieketings, death were the usual sentences, and these were sometimes 
 commuted into banishment, serving in the lleet, or trarsference to a for- 
 eign service. Many were sold at so much per head to the Prussians. 
 Other more legal, but not more horrible, outrages were daily committed 
 by the different corps under the command of government. Even in the 
 si reels of Dublin a man was shot and robbed of £30, en the loose recol- 
 
228 TITE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 lection of a soldier's having seen him in the battle of Kilcallev* and no 
 proceeding was instituted to ascertain the murder or prosecute the mur- 
 derer. Lord Wycombe, Avho was in Dublin, and who was himself shot 
 at by a sentinel between Black Rock and that city, wrote to me many 
 details of similar outrages, which he had ascertained to be true. Dr. 
 Dickson, lord bishop of Down, assured me that he had seen families 
 returning paaceably from mass assailed, without provocation, by drunk- 
 en troops and yeomanry, and their wives and daughters exposed to every 
 species of indignity, brutality and outrage, from which neither his remon- 
 strances nor those of other Protestant gentlemen could rescue them. The 
 subsequent indemnity acts deprived of redress the victims of this wide- 
 spread cruelty." 
 
 The contrast between the manner in which the rebels and that in 
 which the king's soldiery demeaned themselves towards females in '98 is 
 very striking, and altogether in favor of the former. The Kev. Mr. Gor- 
 don, a Protestant clergyman, though in no degree partial to the rebels or 
 their cause, admits that they cannot with justice be accused of violating 
 in any way the respect due to female honor. "In one point," he says, 
 " I think we must allow same praise to the re'bels. Amid all their atroci- 
 ties, the chastity of ths fair S3x was respected. I have not been able to 
 ascertain one instance to the contrary in the county of Wexford, though 
 many beautiful young Avomen were absolutely in their power." Indeed, 
 without vouching for its accuracy, I have seen it stated in more places 
 than one that some of the fair royalist ladies — "dames exuberant with 
 tingling blood," to borrow Thomas Davis's expression — complained of 
 the coldness and insensibility to female charms of the United Irishmen. 
 In short, they are asserted to have accused " the Croppies " of want of 
 gallantry. 
 
 It is not possible in a brief and hasty sketch of the conspiracy of the 
 " United Irishmen," like the present, to give the reader any adequate idea 
 of the atrocious means by which the government succeeded in precipita- 
 ting the insurrection. In the numerous works devoted expressly to the 
 subject the reader will find ample details of the baleful arts of Pitt, Cas- 
 tlereagh, Clare and the rest of the set, and notices of the vile instru- 
 ments employed by these statesmen to aid in giving effect to their hell- 
 
 * Kilcullcn. (?) 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL OT'OXXF.LL. 225) 
 
 ish schemes. I have been able to do little more than mention the names 
 of Sir Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald, Hunter Gowan, and John Claudius Ber- 
 cstbrd, whose "riding-school" became famous or infamous for its scenes 
 of rebel-torturing. Of these monsters of infernal cruelty it is enough 
 to say (and the remark applies to many more of their contemporaries) 
 that by their deeds they have consecrated their names to lasting infamy. 
 
 Of one of the inhuman wretches of that day, however (Lieutenant 
 Hcmpenstall), I shall say a few passing words. His cruelties are gro- 
 tesque as well as horrible. Their strange aspect even makes them seem 
 incredible, but they are sufficiently well authenticated. His name is 
 somewhat in keeping with his pursuits and pastimes. He was a man 
 of gigantic stature, and his great delight was to hang rebels over his 
 shoulders. Hence he received the odd nickname of " the walking gal- 
 lows." Without troubling himself in the least about forms of law, of 
 which probably he understood little and cared nothing at all, he con- 
 demned and executed "right away," to use the American phrase, what- 
 ever unlucky wights he suspected to be hatching treason. A master of 
 the lugubrious "craft" of coffin-making, in the suburb of Harold's Cross, 
 Dublin, was "within an ace" of swinging from the lieutenant's herculean 
 shoulders because he had rashly painted on his sign-board, "Patent cof- 
 fin-maker to His Majesty." Catching sight of or hearing of this audacious 
 inscription, the ultra-loyal Hempenstall at once took it into his sage "nod- 
 dle" that this was " compassing and imagining the king's death" with a 
 vengeance, and consequently manifest high treason. He therefore re- 
 solved to execute the traitor without a moment's delay. Some kind 
 friend, however, forewarned the builder of final tenements for Adam's 
 children, who made haste to demolish the rebel sign and to lly for his 
 precious life. He thus escaped from the loyal fury of "the walking- 
 gallows." 
 
 Sir Jonah Barrington, in his Memoirs of the Irish Union, referring to 
 these atrocities, says : " Mr. Pitt counted on the expertness of the Irish 
 government to effect a premature explosion. Free quarters were now 
 ordered on the Irish population. . . . Slow tortures were inflicted under 
 the pretence of extorting confession. The people were driven to mad- 
 ness. . . . Ireland was reduced to a state of anarchy, and exposed to 
 crime and cruelties to which no nation had ever been subject. The 
 
230 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 people could no longer bear their miseries, Mr. Pitt's object was nos\ 
 effected. These sanguinary proceedings will, in the opinion of posterity, 
 be placed to the account of those who might have prevented them." 
 
 Driven, then, at length, to utter desperation, on the arrival of the night 
 of the 23d of May the brave but hapless peasantry rose tumultuously 
 in various localities. They were destitute of ammunition and everything 
 requisite for the successful prosecution of a war, except courage. Above 
 all, they were now bereft of all their leaders. That very evening Neil- 
 son and some others had been arrested — Neilson while reconnoitering 
 Newgate prison. Still, brave hearts as they were, they went stoutly and 
 boldly to work. That night they stopped the Northern and Connaught 
 coaches. On the 24th a party attacked Naas unsuccessfully. Another 
 party surprised the town of Prosperous. A detachment of British sol- 
 diers, stationed at the village of Clane, had to cut their way to Naas with 
 considerable loss. At Kilcullen another body vigorously fought General 
 Dundas. Shortly after, a party of insurgents near Dublin, commanded 
 by two gentlemen named Lcdwieh and Keough, were defeated by Lord 
 Koden. The leaders were taken, tried by court-martial, and hung. No- 
 tices or proclamations were issued by Lieutenant-general Lake, com- 
 manding the king's forces in Ireland, and bv the lord-mavor of Dublin. 
 
 O CD a/ •) 
 
 Lord Casilereagh presented a message from the viceroy to the House of 
 Commons, demanding the support of the members. During the first few 
 days of the rebellion several other combats took place. At Dunboyne and 
 Barretstown the people had the best of it. At Carlow, Monasterevan and 
 other places the insurgents were repulsed. On the Curragh of Kildare 
 an inhuman and perfidious massacre of three hundred and fifty Irishmen. 
 worthy of the blackest days of British misrule, was perpetrated by Major- 
 general Sir James Duff. About three thousand insurgents offered terms of 
 submission to General Dundas. That humane officer at once sent Gen- 
 eral Welford to receive their arms and grant them protection. Before he 
 could arrive, Duff, marching from Limerick, arrived on the field. One 
 of the rebels discharged his piece in the air previously to giving it up. 
 Duff and his men took advantage of this, fell on the defenceless, unre- 
 sisting crowd, and massacred three hundred and fifty of them. This 
 hideous affair occurred at the Gibbet Bath of the Curragh of Kildare, 
 on the 3d of June. The peasantry still call the scene of this sad occur- 
 
i giatai;® mt -m\i vb&bib©. 
 

 '. TISL3E BmAVlS" 
 
 
 
xHE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 2ol 
 
 renee, which tlie English impudently speak of as if it were a fair battle 
 ■• the plae2 of slaughter." On the 26th of May the insurgents had n 
 ivith another repulse and considerable loss at Tara, the old scat cf Mile- 
 sian royalty in Meath, By this time the insurrection was wellni; h 
 stamped out in Kildare, Duhlin and Meath. Mr. Mitchel says, "The 
 slaughter of the people was out of all proportion to the resistance." 
 Mr. Gordon says, "I have reason to think more men than fell in battle 
 were slain in cold blood. No quarter was given to persons taken pris- 
 oners as rebels, with or without arms." 
 
 But in the county of Wexford, which, up to a recent period, had been 
 perhaps the most peaceful county in Ireland, and in which the United 
 system had made far less way than in the other counties of Leinster. a 
 far more formidable insurrection was destined to break out and to rage 
 for some weeks. It is needless to say that it was the system of torture 
 and persecution pursued by the magistrates and the military that finally 
 goaded to revolt, not merely the populace of Wexford, but some of the 
 priests, who up to the very outbreak of the rebellion had counselled the 
 people to maintain peace, and had even in some cases refused to hear the 
 confessions of any of the United Irishmen. Hunter Gowan was raging 
 around Gorey like a Head incarnate. The week before the insurrection 
 he entered Gorey with a human finger stuck on the point of his sword. 
 Then, at a friend's house, where his daughters were stopping, he gratified 
 those amiable and refined young ladies by letting them play with it, and 
 he himself with arch pleasantry dropped it into the bosom of a young 
 lady, who was so weak and silly as to be shocked and disgusted at the 
 exhibition. The North Cork militia were quartered in the county. Many 
 members of this corps were Orangemen. These have the credit of intro- 
 ducing the pitch-cap torture into Wexford. A sergeant of this corps, 
 nicknamed Tom the devil, was most ingenious in inventing novel tor- 
 tures. Moistened gunpowder was frequently rubbed into the close-cut 
 hair and set on fire. During the process of cropping, persons suspected 
 of disaffection sometimes had the tips of their ears — sometimes bits of 
 their noses — snipped off. Retaliations would ensue. On the 25th of 
 May a cold-blooded massacre took place in Carnew. A party of pris- 
 oners were deliberately shot in the ball-alley by the yeomen and the An- 
 trim Rifles in presence of their officers. House-burnings were frequent. 
 
It was the burning of his house and chapel by the cowardly yeo- 
 manry, who, thinking the people had surrendered all their arms, had 
 now commenced burning and destroying all around them, that drove; 
 Father John Murphy of Boolevogue, an accomplished and worthy priest, 
 into rebellion, at the head of his persecuted flock. He had exerted him- 
 self to the utmost to preserve peace and to oblige the people to surren- 
 der their arms. But now he felt it his duty to tell his suffering flock, 
 who crowded round him in the woods asking for advice, that it was bet- 
 ter for them to die bravely in the field than be butchered in their houses. 
 They all promised to follow him. Almost immediately he defeats the 
 Camolin veomanrv. Their acting commander, Lieutenant Bookev, is 
 killed. On the 27th of May he defeats Colonel Footc and the North Cork 
 militia in the memorable combat of Oulart Hill. His skirmishers retire 
 up the hill before the royalists, who are blown and disordered in the pur- 
 suit. As the North Cork approach the summit of the hill, Father John 
 and his merry men jump up from behind a ditch which serves them as 
 an intrenchment. The North Cork fire a volley. Before they can reload 
 the insurgents dash forward and swarm round them. In a few minutes 
 all is over. The persecuting North Cork are cut to pieces. N'one of 
 them escape save Colonel Foote, a sergeant, a drummer and two privates. 
 The different cavalry corps, who are mere helpless spectators of the fight, 
 retreat precipitately— some to Wexford, some to Gorey, some to Ennis- 
 corthy. They commit atrocities of every kind on their retreat, shooting 
 men and burning houses. The next victory gained by Father John wjis 
 that of Enniscorthy on the 28th of May. After some hard fighting the 
 town was left in the hands of the insurgents. Some additional royalist 
 checks having followed, the garrison of Wexford became panic-stricken 
 and abandoned the town, which was surrendered to the peasant army. 
 Before the close of the month of May, the whole of the county Wexford 
 was in open insurrection. 
 
 The space at my disposal does not permit me to enter into any length- 
 ened details regarding the events of this rebellion, or even to mention the 
 names of all the combats that were fought. The battle of Tubberneering 
 or Clough was a complete victory for the insurgents of the camp of Cor- 
 rigrua. As they were inarching towards Gorey they suddenly met the 
 column of Colonel Walpole, who was on his way to attack their camp. 
 
r 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL 0C0XNELL. 23:1 
 
 This officer was completely surprised. The insurgents opened a heavy 
 fire from the fields. Early in the action Walpole was shot through the 
 head. His troops fled in great confusion, severely punished, and obliged 
 to leave their three pieces of cannon in the hands of the reliefs. 
 
 The battle of New Ross, fought on the .3th of June, was very obsti- 
 nately contested. The insurgents, under Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey, a 
 Protestant barrister and man of property, who had been elected com- 
 mander-in-chief of the Wexford army, were anxious to drive General 
 Johnson out of New Ross, because then they would be in communica- 
 tion with Kilkenny and Minister. They expected, in short, that a gen- 
 eral rising of the south of Ireland would follow if they could win the 
 town of New Ross. Nothing could exceed the impetuosity and despera- 
 tion of the rebel attack. The town was carried, the royal troops driven 
 across the wooden bridge over the Barrow into Kilkenny. Unhappily, 
 the Irish then began to drink, and soon hundreds were imbecile and be- 
 sotted with liquor. Johnson rallies the troops and returns to the assau.lt. 
 After some fierce righting he is once more master of the town, the out- 
 skirts of which are now in dames, tired by the insurgents, as Enniscorthy 
 had been on the 28th. Again, the rebels, having rallied, advance to the 
 assault. Again the troops give way. The lost ground is regained by the 
 Irish, but they repeat their folly, and are once more driven out. A third 
 time their obstinate bravery penetrates to the heart of the town ; the 
 tiring continues till night-time, but at last, wanting officers to direct 
 them, the main body of the insurgents are finally driven out, after an obsti- 
 nate engagement of more than ten hours, leaving behind them some thou- 
 sands of their comrades, hundreds of whom are put to the sword. Ac- 
 cording to Sir Jonah Barrington, "more than live thousand were either 
 hilled or consumed in the conflagration." Such was the well-fought com- 
 bat of New Ross, which was lost mainly, if not solely, through the intox- 
 ication of a large portion of the insurgents. A horrible deed — the burn- 
 ing of the barn of Scullabogue — the same night, stained the noble cause 
 of the insurgents. Some fugitives from New Ross, headed by John Mur- 
 phy of Loughgur. excited and maddened by the deeds cf cold-blooded 
 slaughter perpetrated both on that day and on other occasions by the 
 royalists, deliberately set tire to the barn, containing about a hundred 
 prisoners, and consumed it and its inmates by way of retaliation. Bar- 
 
234 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'.COXXELL. 
 
 rington, Plowden, Mitcliel and others prove clearly, by impartial testi- 
 mony, that the rebels were induced to do this horrid deed solely by the 
 circumstance "that they had received intelligence that the military were 
 again putting all the rebel prisoners to death in the town of Boss, as 
 they had done at Dunlavin and Camew." 
 
 After the defeat of New Ross, Bagenal Harvey, who was horrified and 
 anguish-stricken at the massacre of Scullabogue, was deposed from his 
 command, and Father Philip Roche was elected in his stead. Harvey 
 was an amiable and patriotic man — clever, too, but he wanted military 
 talent and energy. He had sat up carousing the night before the bat- 
 tle. Though personally brave, during the conflict he showed himself 
 alike destitute of decision and mental resources. 
 
 On the 9th of June twenty thousand insurgents, about five thousand 
 of whom had guns of some sort or other, the rest being armed with pikes, 
 with three pieces of cannon, commanded by Fathers John and Michael 
 Murphy, attacked on all sides, at four o'clock in the evening, the kind's 
 forces in Arklow. These insurgents were the men who had totally de- 
 feated the unfortunate Walpole's column at Tubberneering. This battle 
 also was obstinately contested. General Needham, the king's general, 
 was only prevented from retreating by his second in command. Skerrih 
 These officers, be it remarked here in passing, were both Irishmen. 
 Both sides claim the victory. Sir Jonah Barrington terms the light "a 
 drawn battle." Miles Byrne says the insurgents won, but admits that 
 they did. not follow up their victory with vigor. Possibly their ardor was 
 damped by the death of Father Michael Murphy, who fell as he was 
 bravely leading them to the attack. The brave Esmond Ryan, who skil- 
 fully directed the three pieces of rebel artillery, was wounded. Possibly, 
 if they had possessed an energetic commander to lead them on to Dub- 
 lin, it might have been all over with British rule in Ireland. 
 
 Much has been said by the partisans of England of the cruelties per- 
 petrated by the insurgents in Wexford town while their short-lived repub- 
 lic had sway there. These cruelties have been grossly exaggerated, but 
 if all that has been asserted against them by their enemies were true, 
 their crimes would not equal in number a third of those perpetrated 1 y 
 the English and the Orange Ascendency faction against the Irish people. 
 The Rev. Mr. Gordon is inclined to set down the number of persons exe- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 235 
 
 c-uted without law in Wexford during the insurgent regime at one hun- 
 dred and one. These were executed on the principle of retaliation. Mr. 
 Mitchel justly remarks: "Probably ten times that number of innocent 
 country-people had been, during the same three weeks, murdered in cold 
 blood by the yeomanry." 
 
 The insurgents of Wexford were distributed in several camps. The 
 chief of these was that in the centre at Vinegar Hill, on the banks of 
 the Slaney, at the foot of which eminence lies the town of Enniscorthy. 
 Here Father Philip Roche commanded. On the 21st of June the com- 
 mander-in-chief of the royal forces, Lieutenant-general Lake, having 
 concentrated from all quarters — Arklow, Ross and elsewhere — the differ- 
 ent bodies of troops under Lieutenant-general Dundas, Major-generals Sir 
 James Duff and Loftus, Johnson and Eustace, to the number of thirteen 
 thousand men (he had deemed twenty thousand necessary), advanced to 
 the attack of the rebel camp. Eustace and Johnson were to attack En- 
 niscorthy ; the other columns were to ascend the hill. The rebels had a 
 few pieces of half-disabled artillery. About two thousand were armed 
 with firearms of one sort or another, but the vast majority had nothing 
 better than pikes. Their supply of ammunition was scanty. In spite 
 of these great disadvantages, they made a gallant stand. Even Sir Arch- 
 ibald Alison, Tory and enemy of the Irish cause though he is, admits 
 that they fought much better than could have been expected under the 
 circumstances. Their leaders encouraged them by words, their women by 
 cries. They gave the enemy back defiant shouts as they laced with de- 
 spairing valor the storm of shot and shell that burst on the four sides of 
 their position. Lake's horse was shot under him ; many of his officers 
 were killed or wounded, some ran away or hid themselves. But, in spite 
 of the intrepid front shown by the insurgents, the royal troops steadily 
 mounted the hill. Their superior armament at length prevailed over 
 the half-defenceless crowd of untrained peasants. The latter broke and 
 abandoned their position. It was fortunate for them that the non-arri- 
 val of General Needham's column at its appointed time left a space open 
 in their rear. Owing to this "the insurgents were enabled to retreat to 
 Wexford through a country where they could not be pursued by cavalry 
 or cannon." In short, they suffered no punishment worth speaking of 
 in the pursuit. 
 
 -_.. J 
 
23(5 THE LIFE Of DANIEL 0C0XXELL. 
 
 The battle of Vinegar Hill was the last engagement that took place 
 of any great importance. On this occasion atrocities were committed on 
 both sides. During the days preceding the battle the insurgents in the 
 camp at Vinegar Hill, maddened at seeing the track of the royal col- 
 umns everywhere marked by havoc, conflagration and ruin, shot or 
 piked about eighty-four (some say more) of their prisoners. On the 
 evening of the day of battle the royal troops, especially the Hessian 
 mercenaries, committed fearful excesses in Enniscorthy, treating loyal 
 ists as badly as rebels. Their " most diabolical act of this kind was the 
 Siring of a house which had been used as a hospital by the insurgents, 
 in which numbers of sick and wounded, who were unable to escape from 
 the flames, were burned to ashes." (MitcheVs Continuation.) The Rev- 
 erend Mr. Gordon, however, states that he heard the burning was acci- 
 dental. 
 
 I have not space to enter into any details of the horrors that now 
 took place. We have British breach of faith and British cruelty as of 
 yore. We have our anti-Irish countrymen of the Ascendency faction 
 emulating and outstripping the English in the race of atrocity. Of 
 course we have occasional sanguinary reprisals by the rebels. The for- 
 eign dragoons of General Ferdinand Hompesch are perhaps the most 
 savage of all. These brutal Germans not merely ill-treat women, but 
 occasionally shoot them. Such was the fate of a respectable lady of En- 
 niscorthy, at her own window — one Mrs. Stringer. "The rebels (though 
 her husband was a royalist) a short time after tcok some of those for- 
 eign soldiers prisoners, and piked them all, as they told them, l jitst to 
 teach them how to shoot ladies.'' " (Mitehel.) The rebels are admitted by 
 all authorities to have been guiltless of outrages against the fair sex. 
 
 In those terrible days you might have seen along the roads dead men 
 " with their skulls split asunder, their bowels ripped open and their 
 throats cut across ;" dead women, around some of whom their surviving 
 children were creeping and bewailing; dead children, too. In Gorey, 
 one day, you might have seen the pigs devouring the bodies of nine men 
 who had been hung the day before. Several others recently shot lay 
 there, some still breathing. 
 
 The Wexford insurgents held out for some time longer. Indeed, 
 Dwyer and other outlaws braved the British government for years in 
 
THE LIKE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 287 
 
 Hie mountain-fastnesses of TJ'icklow. I shall only, however, ere conclud- 
 ing this notice of the We&ford outbreak, refer to one more notable skirmish, 
 that of Ballyellis, in which " that infernal regiment" of cavalry, as Miles 
 Byrne properly styles them, the Ancient. Britons, were, by a just retribu- 
 tion, cut to pieces to the last man. On the 29th of June the Irish, worn- 
 out by constant marches and half starved, were on their march to Car- 
 new. The Ancient Britons pursued them. " At Ballyellis, one mile 
 from Carnew, the Ancient Britons, being in full gallop, charging, and as 
 they thought driving all before them, to their great surprise were suddenly 
 stopped by a barricade of cars thrown across the road, and at the same 
 moment that the head of the column was thus stopped, the rear was 
 attacked by a mass of pikemen, who sallied out from behind a wall, and 
 completely shut up the road, as soon as the last of tlie cavalry had 
 passed. The remains or ruins of an old deer-park wall, on the right- 
 hand side of the road, ran along for about half a mile — in many parts 
 it was not more than three or four feet high. All along the inside of 
 this our gunsmen and pikemen were placed. On the left-hand side of 
 the road there was an immense ditch, with swampy ground, which few 
 horses could be found to leap. In this advantageous situation for our 
 men the battle began — the gunsmen, half covered, tiring from behind the 
 wall, whilst the English cavalry, though well mounted, could only make 
 use of their carbines and pistols, for with their sabres they were unable 
 to ward off the thrusts of our pikemen, who sallied out on them in the 
 most determined manner. 
 
 "Thus, in less than an hour, this infamous regiment, which had been 
 the horror of the country, was slain to the last man, as well as the few 
 yeoman cavalry who had the courage to take part in the action ; for all 
 those who quit their horses and got into the fields were followed and piked 
 on the marshy ground. The greater part of the numerous cavalry corps 
 which accompanied the Ancient Britons kept on the rising ground, to the 
 right side of the road, at some distance, during the battle, and as soon as 
 the result of it was known they fled in the most cowardly way in every 
 direction, both dismayed and disappointed that they had no opportunity 
 on this memorable day of murdering the stragglers, as was their custom 
 on such occasions. I say ' memorable,' for during the war no action 
 occurred which made so great a sensation in the country — as it proved 
 
238 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 to the enemy, that whenever our pikemen were well commanded and 
 kept in close order, they were invulnerable. And, besides, it served to 
 elate the courage and desire of our men to be led forthwith to new com- 
 bats." * I could not deny mvself the pleasure of savins the reader these 
 extracts which relate the annihilation of the Ancient Britons. Their 
 fate was an instance of true poetic justice. I remember my father tell- 
 ing me how he had met a retired trooper of the Ancient Britons in Wales, 
 years after these events. The fellow had probably saved his life by being- 
 absent on the day of the combat of Ballyellis. My father amused him- 
 self by getting this survivor of the ruffian band to talk of his Irish cam- 
 paign. The old sinner complained bitterly that the government had 
 deceived his comrades and himself. He romanced about some promise 
 having been made to them, to the effect that they should each get an 
 estate in Ireland as a reward for their services. These consisted chiefly 
 in robberies, house-burnings, cold-blooded throat-cuttings and licentious 
 deeds of all sorts. 
 
 "And sure you did get estates! Your comrades did, at all events," 
 said my father. 
 
 "Estates! No, they didn't," quoth the ancient Briton, opening his 
 eyes in astonishment. " What estates did they get?" 
 
 "Didn't every man of them get six feet of ground — his own length 
 — at all events?" 
 
 Mr. Mitchel makes the following valuable observations at the close 
 of his narrative of the rebellion of '98: "It is to be remarked of this 
 insurrection in Wexford that scarcely any of its leaders were United 
 Irishmen. Father Murphy, who began it, and some fifteen other clergy- 
 men, who took an active part in it, not only were not United Irishmen, 
 but had done their utmost to discourage and break up that society — in 
 some cases even refusing the sacrament to those who were members. 
 Therefore, that insurrection was not the result of a conspiracy to make 
 an insurrection, but of the acts of the government to provoke one. 
 
 "Next it is to be observed that this was not a popish rebellion, 
 although every effort was made to give it a sectarian character — first, by 
 disarming and disgracing the Catholic yeomanry; next, by burning 
 chapels and maltreating priests; and further, by the direct incitements 
 
 * " Memoirs of Miles Byrne." 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 239 
 
 and encouragement given to the Orange yeomanry (who were brought 
 into the county for the purpose) to practice their favorite plan of exter- 
 minating Catholics. Yet some of the most trusted leaders of the pec j 
 were Protestants — as Harvey, Grogan, one of the two Golcloughs, Antony 
 Perry, and Keogh, commandant of Wexford. There was, it is true, cue 
 Protestant church defaced, as we have seen, but not till king after sev- 
 eral Catholic chapels had been demolished. It may be affirmed that 
 whatever there were of religious rancor in the contest was the work of 
 the government through its Orange allies, and with the express purpose 
 of preventing a union of Irishmen of all creeds — a thing which is felt to 
 be incompatible with British government in Ireland." 
 
 This Wexford insurrection, when considered in relation to its ultimate 
 consequences, is an instance which may be adduced as tending to refute 
 the widely-prevalent, but very erroneous, notions that unsuccessful rebel- 
 lions arc invariably injurious to the fortunes of a country, and that the 
 men who originate them are criminal as bringing en their native land 
 the, direst calamities. Foolish notions of pusillanimous spirits, of bcef- 
 aml-pudding patriots! Men who, in good faith, have fought stoutly and 
 bravely for their country may rest assured that they have done their duty 
 and have deserved well, whether their efforts have been crowned with 
 triumph or lost in ruin ; and it is a mistake to believe that good results 
 to that country will not eventually spring up proportionate to their heroic 
 efforts. It is true that men laboring to free their country ought always 
 to open their eyes to the dangers and difficulties before them. They 
 should measure their own strength and that of their antagonists, and 
 make every preparation possible under the circumstances ere risking the 
 issue of battle. Thus they may most reasonably hope to brave and over- 
 come the trials and contingencies of a perilous crisis. But, on the other 
 hand, if they wait till the visible resources of their country be a match 
 for those of the enemy, they will have to wait for ever, for the visible 
 resources of an oppressed nation can never equal those of its oppressor. 
 It is the duty of patriots, in short, daringly to strike for freedom when- 
 ever fortune gives them a decent opportunity, and whenever they feel the 
 spirit of manhood alive and strong in their hearts and in the hearts of 
 their followers. They should bear in mind that if once the delirium of 
 patriotic enthusiasm tires the soul, it braces the arm with triple strength, 
 
swells small resources to giant stature, and enables men to perforin prod- 
 igies. " God eives not the race to the swift nor the battle to the strong. " 
 In truth, the nations or individuals who, at all hazards, strike boldly and 
 manfully to win or to guard liberty, always come off better in the long 
 run than submissive dastards. 
 
 The outbreak of '98, though at the time disastrous, was ultimately a 
 source of benefit to the countv Wexford. Hear and mark the following 
 passages from that essay of our noble patriot, Thomas Davis, called 
 "Memorials of Wexford": '"Twixt Croghan-Kinshela and Hook Head, 
 'twixt Camsore and Mount Leinster, there is as good a mass of men as 
 ever sustained a state by honest franchises, by peace, virtue and intelli- 
 gent industry, and as stout a mass as ever tramped through a stubborn 
 battle. There is a county where we might seek more of stormy romance 
 and there is a county where prospers a shrewder economy, but no county 
 in Ireland is titter for freedom than Wexford. 
 
 "They are a peculiar people, these Wexford men. Their blood is for 
 the most part English and Welsh, though mixed with the Danish and 
 Gaelic, yet they are Irish in thought and feeling. They are a Catholic- 
 people, yet. on excellent terms with their Protestant landlords. Out- 
 rages are unknown, for though the rents are high enough, they are not 
 unbearable by a people so industrious and skilled in farming. 
 
 " Go to the fair, and you will meet honest dealing and a look that 
 heeds no lordling's frown, for the Wexford men have neither the base 
 bend nor the baser craft of slaves. Go to the hustings, and you will see 
 open and honest voting — no man shrinking or crying for concealment, or 
 extorting a bribe under the name of his expenses. Go to their farms, 
 and you will see a snug homestead, kept clean, prettily sheltered (much 
 what you'd see in Down), more green crops than even in Ulster, the Na- 
 tional School and the Repeal Reading-room well filled, and every relig- 
 ious duty regarded. 
 
 "Wexford is not all it might be, or all that, with more education and 
 the life-hope of nationality, it will be. . . . Yet, take it for all in all, it 
 is the most prosperous, it is the pattern county of the South. . . . 
 
 "Nor are we indifferent to the memories of Wexford. It owes much 
 of its peace and prosperity to the war it sustained. It rose in '98 with 
 little organization against intolerable Avrong, and though it was finally 
 
 : _J 
 
; r 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCOXXELL. 2-11 
 
 bsaten by superior forces, it taught its aristocracy and the government 
 a lesson not easily forgiven, to be sure, but far harder to be forgotten — 
 a lesson that popular anger could strike hard as well as sigh deeply, 
 and that it was better to conciliate than provoke those who even lor an 
 hour had felt their strength. The red rain made Wexford's harvest 
 grow. Theirs was no treacherous assassination, theirs no stupid riot, 
 theirs no pale mutiny. They rose in mass, and swept the country by 
 sheer force. 
 
 " Nor in their sinking fortunes is there anything to blush at. Scul- 
 labogue was not burned by the lighting men. 
 
 "Yet nowhere did the copper sun of that July burn upon a more 
 heart-piercing sight than a rebel camp." 
 
 He then vividly paints the aspect of a camp of Wexford peasants in 
 '03 — the gray frieze-coated thousands " scattered on a hilltop or screened 
 in a gap," with memories maddened by wrongs and tortures, hope dying 
 oat, "their brows full of gloomy resignation." Then they are ill-armed 
 and almost destitute of powder. "They have no potatoes ripe, and they 
 have no bread — their food is the worn cattle they have crowded there, 
 and which the first skirmish may rend from them. There are women 
 and children seeking shelter — seeking those they love." Worst of all, 
 they want skilful leaders. Davis calls the leaders " busier, feebler, less 
 knowing, less resolved than the women and children." 
 
 But still, amid all these disadvantages, their worth was precious as 
 gold seven times tried in the furnace. Each peasant of that woe-stricken 
 crowd was as true as steel. The sympathetic genius of the tender and 
 manly Davis nays easer homage to their fidelity and valor in the follow- 
 ing eloquent outburst: "Great hearts! how faithful ye were! how ye 
 bristled up when the foe came on ! how ye set your teeth to die as his 
 shells and round-shot fell steadily! and with how firm a cheer ye dashed 
 at him if he gave you any chance at all of a grapple ! From the wild 
 burst with which ye triumphed at Oulart Hill, down to the faint gasp 
 wherewith the last of your last column died in the corn-fields of Meath, 
 th re is nothing to shame your valor, your faith or your patriotism. Yen 
 wanted arms, an 1 you wanted leaders. Had you had them, you would 
 have guarded a green flag in Dublin Castle a week after you beat Wal- 
 poie. Isolated, unorganized, unofficered, half armed, girt by a swarm of 
 
 . 
 
242 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 foes, you ceased to fight, but you neither betrayed nor repented. Your 
 sons need not fear to speak of '98." 
 
 In the rebellion of '98 we find that peculiar feature of all past Irish 
 revolts and civil wars, on which I have dwelt so often already in the pre- 
 liminary portion of this work. Mere fractions of the Irish people con- 
 tended for freedom against the whole might of England, assisted (alas!) 
 by other sections of the Irish nation, chiefly the Orange yeomanry and 
 militia — in other words, the selfish, sordid faction of the Ascendency. 
 At the first glance this appears an altogether gloomy and depressing fact, 
 without the slightest redeeming element ; and gloomy beyond all doubt 
 it is to a very great degree. Still, after all, the existence of these very 
 divisions, if viewed from a certain peculiar point of view, is suggestive 
 of a conclusion absolutely encouraging to the Irish nationalist. This 
 rebellion of '98 may almost be styled exclusively a rebellion of the 
 county Wexford. The revolts in the other Leinster counties were im- 
 mediately suppressed. Even the insurrections in Antrim and Down- 
 shire, which, in consequence of the arrest of some of (he leaders, were 
 delayed for a couple of weeks after the risings elsewhere, were suppressed 
 long before the termination of the Wexford struggle. The men of An- 
 trim county attacked the town of that name on the 7th of June; they 
 were victorious at first, but finally defeated. The men of Downshire 
 were near succeeding in the skirmish of Saintfield. They were finally 
 defeated, under the command of Henry Munroe of Lisburn, near Ballina- 
 hinch. Lord O'Neill (a king's O'Neill) was killed at Antrim. Shortly 
 after the northern insurrection was suppressed, Henry Joy McCracken, 
 the gallant Presbyterian, who led the men of Antrim, was executed in 
 Belfast, The brave Presbyterian, Munroe, who commanded the 
 Downshire rebels, was hung at his own door in Lisburn, his wife and 
 family being in the house. A short-lived insurrection likewise broke 
 out in the county Cork. The insurgents wellnigh defeated the West- 
 meath militia, under their lieutenant-colonel, Sir Hugh O'Reilly (a 
 king's O'Reilly), at the village of Ballymascarty on the 19th of Jv.r.\ 
 It is obvious, then, that, during the greater portion of the time the 
 rebellion lasted, Wexford county had to bear the brunt of the contest 
 single-handed, or almost single-handed. At that period England had 
 in Ireland a military force of not less than 137,000 troops. For various 
 
THE LIFE OF DASIEL O'COXXEEL. 2-13 
 
 reasons it would be impossible for lier to muster such a force in Ireland 
 at present. Lord Castlereagh did not think a single man of those could 
 be spared, even in February, 1799. The rebellion and its suppression, 
 and other measures immediately connected with the rebellion, cost the 
 government £21,573,547. It is calculated that from 50,000 to 70,000 
 human bungs perished, of whom a large proportion were on the side of 
 the government, probably not less than 10,700 men. If the United 
 Irishmen, at a time when Ireland possessed a vastly inferior population 
 to what she has even at present, not half what she had during the Repeal 
 agitation of '-13 — or, to speak more accurately, if, in spite of the usual 
 Irish divisions, the county Wexford insurgents were able to give Eng- 
 land, backed by such mighty resources in men and money, such trouble 
 to put them down — if, in fact, that small county was able to put British 
 dominion in Ireland in jeopardy, what would have been the result if 
 united Ireland, from Rathlin to Cape Clear, from Ben Hedir to the Isles 
 of Arran, had struck for independence ? Where would the supremacy of 
 England have been ere the year '98 departed ? Why. even as things were, 
 if the rebels had not finally lost by their mad and wicked drunkenness 
 their thrice-won victory of New Ross, Kilkenny and the South would in 
 all probability have been in arms. Could England have then prevailed, 
 considering the difficulty she found in crushing Wexford alone ? At least 
 the Irish could then have held out till the arrival of the French. English 
 supremacy would even have been in a critical position if the rebels had at 
 once followed up their success over Walpole at Tubberneering, or if, at the 
 battle of Arklow, they had possessed a skilful and energetic commander. 
 In the writings of Dr. Madden and others the reader will find the 
 fullest and most minute details of the terrible events of those times; 
 how, after the insurrection was crushed, a reign of terror prevailed for a 
 few weeks in New Ross, Enniscorthy, Gorey, Newtownbarry and Wex- 
 ford town; how multitudes were hung and transported, among these 
 Father John Redmond, who, so far from having taken a part in the rebel- 
 lion, was looked on by the rebels as an enemy of their cause; how this 
 priest's body, after death, underwent the most indecent mutilation ; 
 how Dublin was kept under military law while the insurrection lasted ; 
 how, indeed, it was terrorized and virtually ruled over by the detestable 
 "triumvirate" of Sirr, Swan and Sandys, the "three majors," as they 
 
244 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCO>*XELL. 
 
 were called ; how these miscreants organized a band of informers, called 
 " the battalion of testimony," or " the majors' people," who took up their 
 quarters, some in the Castle, some in a house opposite Kilmainham jail, 
 called the "Stag House," and some, who could not be trusted with lib- 
 erty, in a portion of that prison called the "Stag Yard;" how the cor- 
 rupt Sandys took bribes from the prisoners, in return for which he gave 
 them petty indulgences or spared them some torture; how floggings, 
 even to the death, pitch-cappings, picketings drew forth piercing 
 shrieks from numberless miserable victims, day after day, in various 
 places of torture throughout the city, the most notorious being the 
 riding-school in Marlborough street, presided over by John Claudius 
 Beresford, a member of the powerful house of Waterford. 
 
 State trials, or rather the mockery of trials, fed the scaffolds. Those 
 who were executed without any trial were not a whit more the victims 
 of injustice than those who were condemned by forms of law. In de- 
 fending the state prisoners Curran now won immortal glory. A throng 
 of armed men generally tilled the courts. He would often have to pro- 
 ceed with his defence at midnight, exhausted in body and mind. While 
 the lamplight streamed over faces menacing, or at least hostile to him, 
 he would denounce, in words of fire, the villainy of the informers and 
 the villainy of the corrupt and tyrannous government that employed 
 them, fearless of all intimidation and danger. During the trial of Oliver 
 Bond a clash of arms was heard amongst the military in the court. 
 "What is that?" Curran sternly demanded. Some of those (the sol- 
 diers) who were nearest to the advocate appeared, from their looks and 
 gestures, about to offer him personal violence ; upon which, fixing Lis 
 eye sternly upon them, he exclaimed, "You may assassinate, but you 
 shall not intimidate me." (Life of Curran, by his son.) 
 
 It was at the hour of twelve at night that, worn-out with fifteen 
 hours of anxiety, in a densely-thronged court, hot to suffocation with 
 the breath of midsummer, he was called on to commence his speech in 
 defence of the brothers Sheares. "My lord," said he, "before I address 
 you or the jury, I would wish to make one preliminary observation; it 
 may be an observation only, it may be a request ; for myself I am indif- 
 ferent, but I feel I am now unequal to the duty — I am sinking under 
 the weight of it. We all know the character of the jury; the interval 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 24£ 
 
 of their separation must be short, if it should he deemed necessary tc 
 separate them. I protest I have sunk under this trial. If I must g.: 
 on, the court must bear with me, the jury may also bear with me; I will 
 go on until I sink. But after a sitting of sixteen hours, with only 
 twenty minutes' interval, in these times, I should hope it would not be 
 thought an obtrusive request to hope for a few hours' interval for repose, 
 or rather for recollection." 
 
 Lord Carleton, the presiding judge, says: "What say you, Mr. 
 Attorney-general ?" 
 
 Mr. Attorney-general (the sanguinary Toler, who had been appointed 
 attorney-general a day or two before): "My lords, I feel such public 
 inconvenience from adjourning cases of this kind that I cannot consent. 
 The counsel for the prisoners cannot be more exhausted than those for 
 the prosecution. If they do not choose to speak to the evidence, we shall 
 give up our right to speak, and leave the matter to the court altogether. 
 They have had two speeches already" (Mr. Ponsonby had opened for 
 Henry and the celebrated Plunket for John Sheares), " and leaving them 
 unreplied to is a great concession." 
 
 Lord Carleton: "We would be glad to accommodate as much as pos- 
 sible. I am as much exhausted as any other, but we think it better to 
 
 go on." 
 
 Then the great patriot-advocate flamed into noble and consuming 
 wrath. If his eloquence failed to save the lives of his hapless clients 
 from "the packed jury and partisan judges" before whom they were 
 arraigned, at least it has held up to execration, and will hold up through 
 all time, the infamy of those who in '98 sat in the " high places " in Ire- 
 land. Curran is the real victor. 
 
 "Gentlemen of the jury, it seems that much," he thus began, "has 
 been conceded to us. God help us! I do not know what has been 
 conceded to me, if so insignificant a person may have extorted the 
 remark. Perhaps it is concession that I rise in such a state of mind 
 and body, of collapse and deprivation, as to feel but a little spark of 
 indignation raised by the remark that much has been conceded to the 
 counsel for the prisoners— much has been conceded to the prisoners. 
 Almighty and merciful God, who lookest down upon us! what are the 
 times to which we are reserved, when we are told that much has been 
 
THE LIFE OF IUXIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 conceded to prisoners who are put upon their trial at a moment like 
 this, of more darkness and night of the human intellect than a darkness 
 of the natural period of twenty-four hours ; that public convenience can- 
 not spare a respite of a few hours to those who are accused for their 
 lives, and that much has been conceded to the advocate, almost ex- 
 hausted in the poor remarks which he has endeavored to make upon it. 
 
 "My countrymen, I do pray you, by the awful duty which you owe 
 your country, by that sacred duty which you owe your character (and I 
 know how you feel it), I do obtest you, by the almighty God, to have 
 mercy upon my client — to save him, not from guilt, but from the base- 
 ness of his accusers, and the pressure of the treatment under which I 
 am sinking." 
 
 The Shearcses were both found guilty and hung. The draft of a stern 
 proclamation, got in the papers of John Sheares, was fatal to them. 
 Wh 'ii found guilty they immediately fell into each other's arms. 
 
 In his defence of Oliver Bond, on the 24th July, '98, Curran thus de- 
 nounced the infamous Reynolds: 
 
 " I know that Reynolds has labored to establish a connection between 
 t lie prisoner and the meeting held at his house. But how does he man- 
 age it? He brings forward asserted conversations with persons who 
 cannot confront him — with McCann, whom he has sent to the grave, and 
 with Lord Edward Fitzgerald, whose premature death leaves his guilt a 
 matter upon which justice dares not to pronounce, lie has never told 
 you that he has spoken to any of them in the presence of the prisoner. 
 Are you then prepared — in a case of life and death, of honor and of 
 infamy — to credit a vile informer, the perjurer of a hundred oaths, a 
 wretch whom pride, honor or religion could not bind ? The forsaken 
 prostitute of every vice calls upon you, with one breath, to blast the 
 memory of the dead and to blight the character of the living. Do you 
 think Reynolds to be a villain? It is true he dresses like a gentle- 
 man, and the confident expression of his countenance and the tones 
 of his voice savor strong of growing authority. He measures his value 
 by the coffins of his victims, and in the field of evidence appreciates 
 his fame, as the Indian warrior does in fight, by the number of scalps 
 with which he can swell his triumphs. He calls upon you, by the sol- 
 emn league of eternal justice, to accredit the purity of a conscience 
 
washed in his own atrocities. He has promised raid betrayed; he 1 as 
 sworn and forsworn; and whether his soul shall go to heaven or to hell 
 lie seems altogether indifferent, for he tells von that he has cstablh 1 
 un interest in both. He has told you that he has pledged himsell 
 treason and to allegiance, and that both oaths has ho contemned and 
 broken. At this time, when Reason is affrighted from her seat and giddy 
 Prejudice takes the reins — when the wheels of society are set in confla- 
 gration by the rapidity of their own motion — at such a time does he call 
 upon a jury to credit a testimony blasted by his own accusation. Vile, 
 however, as this execrable informer must feel himself, history, alas! 
 holds out too much encouragement to his Lopes ; for, however base and 
 however perjured, 1 recollect few instances, in cases between the subject 
 and the Crown, where informers have not cut keen and rode a while tri- 
 umphant on public prejudice. I know of few instances wherein the 
 edge of his testimony has not been fatal, or only blunted by the extent 
 of its execution, and retiring from the public view beneath a heap of 
 its own carnage. ... 1 caution you against the greatest and most fatal 
 resolution — that of putting the sceptre into the hands of the informer. 
 These are probably the last words I shall ever speak to you (the orator 
 here probably alludes to the ''inhuman interruptions" and menaces of the 
 licentious soldier// in court, that had several times compelled him to stop his 
 address for some minutes and sit dovm)\ but these last are directed to 
 your salvation and that of your posterity. I tell you that the reign of 
 the informer is the suppression of the law. My old friends, I tell you, 
 that, if you surrender yourselves to the mean and disgraceful insi i u- 
 nientality of your own condemnation, you will mark yourselves fit ob- 
 jects of martial law— you will give an attestation to the British min- 
 ister that you arc fit for. and have no expectation of any other, than 
 martial law, and your liberties will be flown, never, never to return ! 
 Your country will be desolated, or only become the jail of the living, 
 until the informer, fatigued with slaughter and gorged with blood, shall 
 slumber over the sceptre of perjury. No pen shall be found to undertake 
 the disgusting office of your historian, and some future age shall ask, Wl at 
 became of Ireland? Do you not see that the legal carnage which takes 
 place day after day has already depraved the feelings of your wretched 
 population, which seems impatient and clamorous for the amusement of 
 
2 i8 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELE. 
 
 an execution ? It remains with you — in your determination it lies — 
 whether that population shall he alone composed of four species of men 
 — the informer to accuse, the jury to find guilty, the judge to condemn., 
 and the prisoner to suffer. It regardeth not me what impressions your 
 verdict shall make on the fate of this country, but you it much regard- 
 eth. The observations I have offered — the warning I have held forth — I 
 bequeath you with all the solemnity of a dying bequest ; and oh ! may the 
 acquittal of your accused fellow-citizen, who seeks refuge in your verdict 
 from the vampire who seeks to suck his blood, be a blessed and happy 
 promise of speedy peace, confidence and security to this wretched, dis- 
 tracted and self-devouring country!" 
 
 In the above splendid specimen of forensic eloquence?, Curran styles 
 Reynolds "the perjurer of a hundred oaths." The list of his oaths, as 
 given by himself in this trial, in the cours3 of his cross-examination by 
 Mr. Curran, if it were not a loathsome revelation of human debasement, 
 would, in a certain curious way, be almost amusing. 
 
 Q. (By Mr. Curran) : "Can you just tot up the different oaths that 
 you took upon either side?" A. "I will give the particulars." 
 
 Q. No; you may mention the gross?" A. "No; I will mention the 
 particulars. I took an oath of secresy in the county meeting — an oath 
 to my captains, as colonel. After this I took an oath, it has been said 
 — I do not deny it, nor do I say I took it, I was so alarmed, but I would 
 have taken one if required — when the United Irishmen were designing to 
 kill me, I took an oath before that I had not betrayed the meeting at 
 Bond's. After this I took an oath of allegiance." 
 
 Q. " Had you ever taken an oatli of allegiance before ?" A. "After 
 this. I took an oath before the Privy Council. I took two, at different 
 times, upon giving informations respecting these trials. I have taken 
 three since — one upon each of the trials — and, before I took any of 
 them, I had taken the oath of allegiance." 
 
 And many another oath the scoundrel swore before the state prose- 
 cutions of those days came to an end. His son was so foolish and impu- 
 dent as to write a life in defence of the wretch, is it any wonder that a 
 true-hearted United Irishman, also named Reynolds, who, together with 
 George Luby of Ovidstown and the gallant Aylmer, the nephew of Sir 
 Fenton Aylmer, led the rebels at the battle of Ovidstown, cursed his 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 249 
 
 hard fate in hearing a name polluted by such a wretch as this thrice- 
 aceurscd informer ? 
 
 On t lie morning following the trial of Bond, who was found guilty 
 in spite of Cumin's eloquent appeal, the revolt being now manifestly 
 crushed, a negotiation with the government was opened by the state 
 prisoners, and a compact entered into by Lord Clare, Lord Castlereagh 
 and Mr. Cooke on the part of the ministers, securing the lives of such 
 of the leaders as might be willing to agree to the treaty. In considera- 
 tion of this, these leaders were to describe the state of the affairs of the 
 United Irishmen, as far as they could so without in any degree compro- 
 mising individuals. They were the more ready to agree to this treaty, 
 as they were quite aware that the informers had already disclosed to the 
 government nearly all the facts of importance connected with the con- 
 spiracy. Their primary motive was to stop the government butchery. 
 Especially they were anxious to save the lives of Byrne and Oliver 
 Bond, who were both under sentence of death. A delay or hitch, how- 
 ever, occurred in the negotiations, of which the government took a base 
 and cruel advantage. As Bond, Thomas Addis Emmet and Byrne, with 
 the wives of the two former, were breakfasting together one morning in 
 one of the rooms or cells of the prison, one of the prison functionaries 
 entered and whispered something in Byrne's ear. This fine young scion 
 of the brave old Wicklow tribe, who was hardly more than twenty years 
 of age, rose at once from table, asked the ladies gayly to excuse him for 
 a few moments, and left the room with the careless step of light-hearted 
 youth. Before the expiration of a dozen minutes his spirit was in eter- 
 nity. The whisper had announced to him that his hour of doom was 
 come. His assumed airiness of manner in leaving the breakfast-table 
 was to spare the ladies the shock of even suspecting that he left it to 
 mount the scaffold. After his death the negotiations were resumed, and 
 the compact was finally settled on the 29th. The government, however, 
 violated it in more ways than one. By means of their venal press and 
 in their indemnity act they represented the chiefs of the United Irish- 
 men as confessing their guilt and supplicating pardon ; neither of which 
 they did. Instead of allowing them, according to the treaty, to ,eo into 
 exile, they held them prisoners in Dublin for a year, then sent them to 
 Fort George, in Scotland, where thev were detained till the treaty of 
 
 '0~-'J 
 
250 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 Amiens, in 1802. They were then suffered to go abroad. As for Oliver 
 Bond, lie derived no benefit from the compact, any more than his yoimq 
 friend. He died in the Dublin prison of apoplexy, according to the 
 statement of the authorities — murdered, if credence is to be given to a 
 rumor that was widely prevalent among the people of Dublin. Aithui 
 O'Connor, in his celebrated letter to Lord Castlereagh, denounced tin 
 perfidious conduct of the government. This letter has never been re- 
 plied to. We have already heard O'Conncll relating an anecdote in con- 
 nection with it. 
 
 The infamous rule of Lord Camden had terminated the day before the 
 battle of Vinegar Hill. On this day the marquis of Cornwallis arrived 
 in Ireland as viceroy and commander of the forces. After some time 
 the severities against the people were somewhat relaxed. Indeed, seme 
 give the praise of high honor and great humanity to this nobleman. 
 The history of his government of Ireland, however (especially viewed in 
 the light thrown on it by his own letters, published some years ago in 
 his Memoirs and Correspondence), is far from justifying this praise. 
 Many a deed of unnecessary severity, not to say atrocity, disgraces his 
 a 1 ministration. It was certainly somewhat fortunate for the sufferin; 
 p ople that General Lake was removed from his command in Wcxfold 
 on the 23th of June. General Hunter, who succeeded him, seems to 
 have been a just and humane officer Protections were now given to 
 those of the rebels who chose to submit. An amnesty bill, clogged. 
 indeed, with large exceptions, followed shortly after. The machinations 
 of the inveterate faction of the Ascendency neutralized, to a great extent, 
 whatever element of clemency was in these measures. Hunter, no 
 doubt, did his best to protect the people and tranquillize the distracted 
 districts under his command. He put a stop to the villainy of some of 
 the rabid country gentlemen who dared to tear up protections given to 
 the peasantry, by very properly threatening to iiog them at the cart\s 
 tail. A parson came to him with a fabricated story, ingeniously circum- 
 stantial, of an intended "massacre" of the Protestants. The g ri< i; I 
 heard him cut patiently, and then sternly replied: "Mr. Massacre, ii 
 you do not prove to me the circumstances you have related, I shall g ! 
 you punished in the most exemplary manner for raising false alarms, 
 which have already proved so destructive to this unfortunate countrj." 
 
THE LIFE OF DaXIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 251 
 
 The mendacious wretch only procured forgiveness by abject supplication 
 and professions of contrition. 
 
 TI13 general, however, rendered a still more signal service to Ihe 
 cause of humanity. He saved the dense population of the large district 
 in the county Wicklow, called the Macomons, from absolute extermina- 
 tion. Owing to misrepresentations made by the Ascendency magistrates 
 in and around Gorey, the viceroy sent orders to the commanders sta- 
 tioned near this district to form a cordon round it, and slaughter or drive 
 into the sea the population, alike men, women and children. Brigade- 
 major Fitzgerald, acting under the directions of General Hunter, brought 
 to light the savage misrepresentations concocted by the Ascendency fac- 
 tion, and, in consequence of his timely discovery, the general, to whose 
 discretion the execution of the infernal "exemplary measure" had been 
 confided, prevented it from being carried out. Hawtry White, too, the 
 ruffian captain of the Ballaghkeen cavalry, and a justice of the peace 
 for the county Wexford, nearly "came to grief" in the hands of the 
 general for indulging in the pastime of fabricating lying rumors. A 
 general rising, he said, was about to take place. Some of the com- 
 manders are alarmed. Fitzgerald investigates- as to the truth of White's 
 statement also, and reports that it is false. Hunter orders the hoary 
 sinner to be brought to Wexford and put under arrest. Hawtry persists 
 in his mendacity. The rebels are encamped, he says, in a certain island. 
 Orders are given to conduct him to the island, but (prodigy of prodigies !) 
 the island has vanished beneath the waves — at least no such island is 
 any longer visible. Hunter is about to have old Hawtry tried by court- 
 martial. That worthy is with gteat difficulty saved by the supplications 
 of a crowd of gentlemen and ladies, who plead that his great age might 
 account for his credulity. In spite of these instances of humane conduct 
 towards the people on the part of officers on the government side, the 
 number of attainders, executions and other enormities during the vice- 
 royalty of Lord Cornwallis was great. If I had space to quote a few of 
 the admissions contained in his own letters, the truth of this statement 
 would be manifest to every candid reader. 
 
 Meanwhile the gallant and untiring Tone was laboring with might 
 and main to urge on the government and generals of France to fit out 
 and send another expedition to the assistance of his new sorely-tried coun- 
 
r~ 
 
 252 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 toymen. Unluckily for Ireland, the French Directory was a feeble gov- 
 ernment. The affairs of the republic were at this period in a state of 
 great confusion. The most energetic and ablest of all her military chiefs. 
 the renowned Bonaparte, was far away in Egypt. It was only towards 
 the close of June, when the insurrection was almost crushed, that Tone 
 was summoned to Paris to consult with the ministers on the organiza- 
 tion of a new expedition. It was arranged that small bodies should be 
 sent from different ports to keep up the insurrection in Ireland till the ar- 
 rival of a favorable opportunity for landing the main body, held in reserve 
 under General Kilmaine, an Irishman (his original name was Jennings) and 
 an officer of great skill, who had won distinction in the memorable cam- 
 paigns of Bonaparte in Italy and on other theatres of warfare. This 
 plan, whatever its merits may have been even if it had been carried out 
 completely and judiciously, was adopted too late to be of much service 
 to the cause of Irish independence. Great indignation was naturally 
 enough felt in Ireland at the non-fulfilment of their promises by the 
 French government. Ai last, hoAvever, on the 22d of August, a paltry 
 expedition reached the coasts of Connaught. They landed, and at once 
 took the little town of Killala. The expedition did not number more 
 than a thousand men. The son of Wolfe Tone, who, after arriving at 
 manhood, served with distinguished bravery in the later campaigns of 
 Napoleon, gives the following account of the origin of General Hum- 
 bert's desperate enterprise : "The final ruin of the expedition was hur- 
 ried by the precipitancy and indiscretion of a brave but ignorant and 
 imprudent officer. This anecdote, which is not generally known, is a 
 striking instance of the disorder, indiscipline and disorganization which 
 began to prevail in the French army. Humbert a gallant soldier of 
 fortune, but whose heart was better than his head, impatient of the 
 delays of his government, and tired by the recitals of the Irish refugees, 
 determined to begin the enterprise on his own responsibility, and thus 
 oblige the Directory to second or to abandon him." I may add to this 
 that Tone's brother, Matthew, along with a few other Irishmen, accom- 
 panied Humbert's expedition. 
 
 English writers are fond of dwelling on whatever instances they can 
 find, by ransacking histories and memoirs, of rapacity and plunder on 
 the part of the French soldiery. We have the authority of Dr. Stock, 
 
THE LITE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 253 
 
 >o 
 
 the Protestant bishop of Killala, that notliing could surpass the disci- 
 pline and good conduct of Humbert's Frenchmen. He tells us that they 
 resisted every temptation to plunder, though in his house, called the Cas- 
 tle, which was made the French general's head-quarters, valuable arti- 
 cles of all sorts, including a sideboard of plate, lay within their reach. 
 Not a single article was touched. Their indifference, indeed, about relig- 
 ious sentiments and ceremonies, as contrasted with the devotion of their 
 allies to the Catholic faith, was curious. Here is a passage from the 
 bishop's description of the invaders. The bishop's candid testimony, it 
 seems, offended the English authorities, and prevented him from being 
 translated to a more lucrative see : " Intelligence, activity, temperance, 
 patience, to a surprising degree, appeared to be combined in the soldiery 
 that came over with Humbert, together with the exactest obedience to 
 discipline ; yet, if you except the grenadiers, they had nothing to cate'.i 
 the eye. Their stature, for the most part, was low, their complexion 
 pale and sallow, their clothes much the worse for the wear. To a super- 
 ficial observer they would have appeared almost incapable of enduring 
 any hardship. These were the men, however, of whom it was presently 
 observed that they could be well content to live on bread or potatoes, to 
 drink water, to make the stones of the' street their bed, and to sleep in 
 their clothes with no cover but the canopy of heaven. One-half of their 
 number had served in Italy under Bonaparte ; the rest were from the 
 army of the Rhine." 
 
 A green flag was hoisted over the castle gate with the inscription, 
 Erin go Bragh {Ireland for ever). Some Irish recruits at once joined the 
 French. The first comers, about a thousand, got full clothing and arms; 
 the second batch the same, minus, however, boots and shoes; the third 
 arms alone. Property was to be protected ; supplies of money were ex- 
 pected from France; meanwhile, whatever was purchased was paid for 
 by drafts on the coming Irish Directory. 
 
 Humbert lost no time in pushing forward into the interior, with a 
 view to rally the Irish around him. He established small posts behind 
 him. The garrison of Ballina fled at his approach, and hundreds of the 
 peasantry joined him, eagerly receiving arms and ammunition, lie next 
 advanced to attack the English army, six thousand strong, at Castlebar. 
 He was expected to arrive by one load: he chose another. When the 
 
254 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL 
 
 French and Irish deployed from the pass of Barnagcc they found that 
 the English had moved out of Castlebar. It seemed, lor a moment, 
 hopeless to think of encountering such a force. Indeed, if the Knglkh 
 had done their duty that morning, the French would have been driven 
 back into the pass, perhaps compelled to make an immediate surrender; 
 but the royal troops were demoralized and disorganized by their licen- 
 tious habits. Crueltv and cowardice go together. Besides, thev were 
 specially discontented that morning, seeing that General Lake had just 
 arrived and superseded General Hutchinson, who was their favorite. Sir 
 Jonah Barrington gives the following description of this battle of min- 
 utes, popularly known as the " Races of Castlebar'' : "The troops were 
 moved to a position about a mile from Castlebar, which to an unskilled 
 person seemed unassailable. They had scarcely been posted with nine 
 piecas of cannon, when the French appeared on the opposite side of a 
 small lake, descending the hill in columns, directly in front of the Eng- 
 lish. Our artillery played on them with effect. The French kept up a 
 scattered lire of musketry, and tick up the attention of cur amy by 
 irregular movements. In half an hour, however, our troops were alarmed 
 by a movement of small bodies to turn their left, which, being covered by 
 walls, they had never apprehended. The orders given were either mis- 
 taken or misbelieved ; the line wavered, and in a lew minutes the whole 
 of the royal army was completely routed; the flight of the infantry was 
 as that of a mob; all the royal artillery svas taken; our army tied to 
 Castlebar; the heavy cavalry galloped amongst the infantry and Lord 
 Jocelyn's Light Dragoons, and made the best of their way through thick 
 and thin to Castlebar and towards Tuam, pursued by such of the French 
 as could get horses to carry them. 
 
 " About nine hundred French and some peasants took possession of 
 Castlebar without resistance, except from a few Highlanders stationed in 
 the town, who were soon destroyed." 
 
 Boden's Foxhunters learned, in this brief battle, that it was one thing 
 to ride down defenceless peasants in Meath, and another to fight troops 
 like the war-bronzed veterans of the armies of Italy and the Rhine. 
 The panic-stricken fugitives never halted till they had put forty miles 
 between themselves and Castlebar. Even at Tuam they did not think 
 themselves quite safe from the French. They hurried on to Athlonc. 
 
THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXKELL. 255 
 
 In short, fear, as it were, giving them wings, they passed ever seventy 
 sniles in twenty-seven hours. 
 
 Immediately after the battle the French gave a ball and a su] 
 the ladies of Castlebar. It was well attended ; decorum observed. 
 French, says Sir Jonah Barrington, "paid ready money for every thii ; 
 in fact, the French army established the French character wherever they 
 occupied." 
 
 But they also established districts with elective magistrates, and 
 forme:! a provisional government, with Mr. Moore of Moore Hall, in 
 Mayo, as president. Proclamations were issued in the name of the 
 " Irish republic." Thus, we see that the patriotism of the eloquent 
 George Henry Moore of Moore Hall, who made such generous and stren- 
 uous exertions to rouse the public to force English ministers to liberate 
 the so-called Fenian state-prisoners, and whose sudden death, in 1870, 
 occasioned sach regret in the ranks of the Irish National party, was 
 hereditary. 
 
 The English and their party in Ireland were now thoroughly alarmed. 
 The reism of cruelty recommenced. Cornwallis drew together a great 
 army to crush Humbert. It is unnecessary to follow this officer's foot- 
 steps in detail. After various movements and some further successes, 
 he penetrated into the heart of the island. He passed the Shannon 
 with the view of reaching Granard, in the county Longford, where an 
 insurrection had already broken out. It was rumored, about the same 
 time, that forty thousand people were ready to assemble at the Crooked 
 Wood, in Westmeath, and join the French on their arrival in that county, 
 and then march with them on Dublin. All might, indeed, have turned 
 out well and gloriously if Humbert's force had been somewhat larger; 
 but, small as it was, it was now speedily surrounded. Lake and Craw- 
 ford were in Humbert's rear; Cornwallis cut him off from Granard. 
 At least thirty thousand troops were investing him on all sides. For 
 the honor of the French arms he made a last stand at Ballinanmek, in 
 Longford. He combated against overwhelming odds for more than half 
 an hour, and then surrendered. Early in the fight he had taken Lord 
 Rorlen and a body of dragoons prisoners. At this time all the Frenchmen 
 with him were 74(5 privates and 96 officers. The Irish insurgents who had 
 accompanied him, being excluded from quarter, fled in all directions. 
 
 i? 
 
256 TITE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL, 
 
 About five himdred of them were cut to pieces. These events took place 
 on the 8tli of September. 
 
 Executions and banishments followed. Mr. Moore, who was taken 
 on the field, had to go into exile. Matthew Tone, Bartholomew Tcelirjg, 
 General Bellew, Mr. Richard Bourke and others were hung. Thus ended 
 the insurrections of '98, provoked by inhuman tyranny and suppressed 
 with unheard-of barbarity. The wrongs of the people of Ireland at this 
 time, and the high-toned and self-sacrificing patriotism of most of their 
 leaders, cannot but excite, in every generous and unprejudiced mind, wrath 
 against the savagery of British tyranny, and sympathy for the struggle 
 of the oppressed race against such desperate odds. 
 
 While these events were taking place in Ireland, the French Directory, 
 in the first instance perplexed by Humbert's sudden attempt, and then 
 encouraged by his early successes, were making desperate efforts to hurry 
 off the division of General Hardv, at Brest, three thousand stromr. to his 
 support. The navy and arsenals of France, however, were in such a 
 state of disorder at this time, that the 20th of September had arrived 
 before a squadron consisting of one ship of the line and eight frigates, 
 commanded by Commodore Bompart, and having on board General 
 Hardy and his three thousand men, was ready to sail from Camarei 
 Bay. Before this, indeed, some Irish had sailed in a last-sailing vessel 
 with Napper Tandy at their head. Arriving at Rathlin Isle, off the 
 northern coast of Ireland, they heard of Humbert's surrender. They 
 contented themselves with scattering some proclamations, and escaped 
 to Norway. But now, in an evil hour for Ireland, the expedition of 
 Bompart and Hardy sailed, with Tone on hoard Bompart's ship, the 
 Hoche, of seventy-four guns. So little precaution had the French gov- 
 ernment taken to preserve due secresy, that, even before he had sailed, 
 Tone read in the Bim Informe, a Parisian newspaper, full particulars of 
 the preparations. His own name was even mentioned in full ; also the 
 fact of his being on board the Hoche. He saw little prospect of the suc- 
 cess of the enterprise : he had little faith in small armaments, where the 
 difficulties to be overcome were so great. Still, as he had always said, 
 that if the French government were to send only a corporal's guard to 
 Ireland, he would deem it his duty to accompany them, he could not 
 refuse to go with General Hardy. He was resolved, however, if he were 
 
THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 taken captive, to save himself from what he deemed the ignominy of 
 being hanged. 
 
 Bompart, a brave and skilful seaman, managed to reach the entrance 
 of Loughswilley, in the county Donegal. lie might reasonably expect 
 comparatively little vigilance on the part of the English in this quarter. 
 V>\it, as ill-luck would have it, at break of day, on the 11th of October, 
 Sir John Borlase Warren, commanding a squadron of six sail of the line, 
 one razee of sixty guns and two frigates, bore down upon him. There 
 was no escape for the French line-of-battle ship. Bompart signalled to 
 his frigates to escape through the shallow water, and prepared, though 
 of course hopeless of success, to fight alone for the glory of the French 
 Hag against the British squadron. A boat from the Bic/ie schooner came 
 on board for Bompart's last orders. The Biche, being the smallest vessel 
 in the squadron, had the best chance of escape. In effect, she did sue- 
 ;• sed in escaping. All the French officers earnestly besought Tone to get 
 on board of her. 
 
 'Our contest is hopeless," said they. "We will be prisoners of war. 
 but what will become of you?" 
 
 "Shall it be said," replied Tone, "that I fled while the French were 
 lighting the battles of my country?" 
 
 No persuasion could induce him to go on board*the Bic/ie. He re- 
 solved to light to the last on board the Hochc. 
 
 And now one of the most desperate sea-fights ever fought began. 
 Two men-of-war pursued two of the French frigates, the Loire and Rc- 
 sohte, while the ffoche was speedily surrounded by four ships of the line 
 and a frigate. With heroic obstinacy the French line-of-battle ship 
 resisted for six hours. Exposed to the unceasing fire of the whole Brit- 
 ish squadron, her masts and rigging were shot away, blood flowed like 
 water on her slippery decks, the cockpit was crowded with wounded. 
 At last, with five feet of water in her hold, her rudder shot away, 
 her dismounted batteries unable to reply to the incessant lire of the 
 enemy, she drifted a helpless wreck at the mercy of the waves and the 
 foenien. In this condition she struck. Most of the French frigates 
 were also taken. Ail through the battle, Tone, who commanded one 
 of the batteries, fought with desperation, like a man (so the French 
 officers afterwards reported) seeking to rush upon death. 
 
258 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 The prisoners were marched to Lettcrkcnny. At first there seemed 
 a probability that Tone would escape recognition and pass as one of the 
 French officers. IXis language and appearance were now thoroughly 
 French. Besides, the general impression seems to have been that lie 
 had perished in the action. It was reserved for an Orange grandee and 
 magistrate, Sir George Hill, who had been Tone's fellow-student in Trin- 
 ity College, Dublin, to undertake the disgraceful office of pointing him out 
 to the police. It appears, from Dr. Madden's accounts of the secret-ser- 
 vice money, that this titled detective was a regular secret agent of the 
 government, and received various private payments for performance of 
 his dirty spy functions. Such were, at least, some of the aristocrats of 
 the Ascendency faction in the days of '98. Tone's betrayal happened 
 in this wise : The earl of Cavan, who commanded in the district, invited 
 the French officers to breakfast. Tone was at the table unrecognized ; 
 not long, however, for Sir George enters, followed by police-officers. The 
 titled spy scrutinizes the faces of the company narroAvly. In a moment 
 he advances to Tone, and says, "Mr. Tone, I am very happy to sec you." 
 
 Tone rises at once, and replies with great composure, "Sir Geoige, 1 
 am happy to sec you. How are Lady Hill and your family?" 
 
 When he was brought into the next room, which was full of military, an 
 English general basely ordered him to be ironed as a traitor. Tone, stuns 
 to momentary wrath by this cowardly insult, flung off his uniform and 
 exclaimed: "These fetters shall never degrade the revered insignia of 
 the free nation which I have served !" He then speedily became quite 
 calm, held forth his arms to the irons, and when they were on, he said : 
 "For the cause which I have embraced, I feci prouder to wear these 
 chains than if I were decorated with the star and garter of England." 
 
 Fettered and on horseback, guarded by dragoons, he was at once 
 brought to Dublin. Captain Thackeray, afterwards a parson and rector 
 of Dundalk, commanded the escort, a body of Cambridgeshire cavalry. 
 Many a time, long after, the captain-rector talked of this journey, declar- 
 ing that Tone was the most delightful travelling-companion he ever came 
 across. 
 
 Before I tell the fate of Tone, I think it proper here, at the close of 
 the account of the French expeditions and descents, to quote a para- 
 graph from Mr. Mitchel's "Continuation cf MacGeoghegan," containing 
 
sonic reflections on Humbert's expedition. They anticipate sonic of my 
 own thoughts on the subject, and they place them in a more forcible 
 light than I could pretend to do: "From the terror which this handful 
 of French troops inspired, we may form some idea of the effects which 
 might have followed the landing of even Humbert's little force anywhere 
 in the south of Ireland, while the Wexford men were gallantly holding 
 their own county; or we may conjecture what might have been the 
 result if Humbert had brought with him ten thousand men instead of 
 one thousand, even in that month of August, crushed as the people had 
 been by the savage suppression of their insurrection, or if Grouchy had 
 marched inland with his six thousand men at the moment when the peo- 
 ple were eager to begin the rising and the English had but three thou- 
 sand regular troops in the island. It seemed as if England were des- 
 tined to have all the luck, and cither by favor of the elements or the 
 miscalculations of her enemies, to escape, one after another, the deadly 
 perils that for ever beset her empire." 
 
 And now I think the reader-will not grudge my devoting a page j; 
 two to the closing scene of the life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, one of oui 
 greatest and noblest men of action — certainly the greatest and noblest 
 that appeared from the death of Owen Roe O'Neill to the hour of his 
 own melancholy late. The English decided on trying him by court-mar- 
 tial — in other words, illegally. 
 
 Tone appeared before the court-martial in the uniform of a chef dc 
 brigade {chief of brigade). His noble demeanor won the respect, and 
 even admiration, of his very enemies. The gallant and humane Sir 
 John Moore, who afterwards fell gloriously in the moment of victory at 
 Corunna, has left on record his admiration of the elevation of soul dis- 
 played by Tone. 
 
 When asked to plead guilty or not guilty, Tone admitted all the facts, 
 "stripping the charge of its technical word traitorously." He declined 
 troubling them with any defence, bat asked permission to read an 
 address, giving his own view of the course he had pursued. This 
 request being acceded to by the court, he thus began : 
 
 '■Mr. President and gentlemen of the court-martial : I mean not to give 
 you the trouble of bringing judicial proof to convict me legally of having 
 acted in hostility to the government of His Britannic Majesty in Ireland. 
 
I admit the fact. From my earliest youth I have regarded the con- 
 nect ion between Ireland and Great Britain as the curse of the Irish 
 nation; and felt convinced that while it lasted this country could never 
 be free nor happy. My mind has been confirmed in this opinion by the 
 experience of every succeeding year, and the conclusions 'which I have 
 drawn from every fact before my eyes. In consequence, I determined to 
 apply all the powers which my individual efforts could move, in order to 
 separate the two countries. 
 
 •'That Ireland -was not able, of herself, to throw off the yoke, I knew. 
 I therefore sought for aid wherever it was to be found. In honorable 
 poverty I rejected offers which, to a man in my circumstances, might be 
 considered highly advantageous. I remained faithful to what I thought 
 (he cause of my country, and sought in the French republic an ally to 
 rescue three millions of my countrymen from — " 
 
 Here the president interrupted Tone, insisting that this language 
 was not relevant to the charge, nor such as should be delivered in court. 
 Another member of the court thought it inflammatory. The judge-advo- 
 cate childishly or knavishly said, that if Tone meant it to lie laid before 
 His Excellency in way of extenuation, if must have quite a contrary 
 effect, if any of the preceding portion were suffered to remain. 
 
 Some further conversation passed between Tone and General Loftus, 
 the president of the court-martial. Tone was desirous of expressing his 
 gratitude "towards the Catholic body, in whose cause he was engaged." 
 General Loftus wished him to confine himself to the charge against 
 him. After this interruption Wolfe Tone was suffered to proceed as 
 follows : 
 
 "1 shall, then, confine myself to some points relative to my con- 
 nection with the French army. Attached to no party in the French 
 republic, without interest, without money, without intrigue, the openness 
 and integrity of my views raised me to a high and confidential rank in 
 its armies. I obtained the confidence of the Executive Directory, the 
 approbation of my generals, and, I venture to add, the esteem and affee> 
 lion of my brave comrades. When I review these circumstances I feel 
 a secret and internal consolation which no reverse of fortune, no sent< nc \ 
 m the power of this court to inflict, can ever deprive me of, or weaken in 
 any degree. Under the flag of the French republic I originally engaged. 
 
with a view to save and liberate my own country. For that purpose ] 
 have encountered the chances of war amongst strangers; for that pur- 
 pose I have repeatedly braved the terrors of the ocean, covered, as 1 
 knew it to be, with the triumphant fleets of that power which it was my 
 glory and my duty to oppose. 1 have sacrificed all my views in life; I 
 have courted poverty; I have left a beloved wife unprotected, and chil- 
 dren, whom I adored, fatherless. After such sacrifices in a cause which 
 I have always conscientiously considered as the cause of justice and 
 freedom, it is no great effort at this day to add, ' the sacrifice of 
 my life.' 
 
 " But I hear it said that this unfortunate country has been a prey to 
 all sorts of horrors. I sincerely lament it. I beg, however, it may be 
 remembered that I have been absent four years from Ireland. To me 
 these sufferings can never be attributed. I designed, by lair and open 
 war, to procure the separation of the two countries. For open war i 
 was prepared; but if, instead of that, a system of private assassination 
 has taken place, I repeat, while I deplore it, that it is not chargeable 
 on me. Atrocities, it seems, have been committed on both sides. I do 
 not less deplore them; I detest them from my heart; and to those who 
 know my character and sentiments, I may safely appeal for the truth of 
 this assertion. With them I need no justification. 
 
 "In a cause like this success is everything. Success, in the eyes of 
 the vulgar, fixes its merits. Washington succeeded and Kosciusko 
 failed. 
 
 "After a combat nobly sustained — a combat which would have 
 excited the respect and sympathy of a generous enemy — my fate was fo 
 become a prisoner. To the eternal disgrace of those who gave the order 
 I was brought hither in irons, like a felon. I mention this for the sake 
 of others — for me I am indifferent to it; I am aware of the fate which 
 awaits me, and scorn equally the tone of complaint and that of suppli- 
 cation. 
 
 "As to the connection between this country and Great Britain, I 
 repeat it, all that has been imputed to me, words, writings and actions, 
 I here deliberately avow. I have spoken and acted with reflection and 
 on principle, and am ready to meet the consequences. Whatever be 
 the sentence of this court, I am prepared for it. Its members will 
 
202 THE LIFE OS DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 surely discharge their duty; I shall take care not to be wanting in 
 mine." 
 
 All who heard Tone deliver this address, not even excepting li 
 members of the court-martial, were greatly affected, so magnanimous 
 were his sentiments and so serenely noble the voice in which they were 
 uttered. For several moments a deep silence prevailed in the ball, 
 which, indeed, was iirst interrupted by Tone himself. He ashed was it 
 not the custom to assign an interval between the sentence and execu- 
 tion? The judge-advocate told him in reply that the opinions of the 
 court would be collected at once, and the result sent to the viceroy. 
 Now was the time for Tone to speak, if he wished to make further 
 observations. 
 
 Tone, resuming his address: "I wish to offer a few words relative to 
 one single point — to the mode of punishment. In Prance our emigres* 
 who stand nearly in the same situation in which I suppose I now stand 
 before you, are condemned to be shot. I ask that the court should 
 adjudge me the death of a soldier, and let me be shot by a platoon of 
 grenadiers. I request this indulgence rather in consideration of the 
 uniform which I wear — the uniform of a chef de brigade in the French 
 army — than from any personal regard to myself. In order to evince my 
 claim to this favor 1 beg the court may take the trouble to peruse my 
 commission and letters of service in the French army. It will appear 
 from these papers that I have not received them as a mask to cover 
 me, but that I have been long and bona fide an officer in the French 
 service." 
 
 Judije-adcocate: "You must feel that the papers you allude to will 
 serve as undeniable proofs against you/' 
 
 Tone: u Oh, I know it well. I have already admitted the facts, and I 
 now admit the papeis as full proofs of conviction." 
 
 General Loftus told him the court would assuredly transmit his 
 address and papers to the lord-lieutenant. The general, however, effaced 
 the portions which he had refused to give Tone permission to read. 
 Cornwallis, with the magnanimity of an Englishman, refused the pris- 
 oner's last demand. He was condemned to be hanged on the 12th of 
 November. All the proceedings in connection with this court-martial 
 
 * EmiuranU— that is, the royalists who had taken up arms against the republic. 
 
wore illegal. Tone was no English soldier that lie should be tried by 
 court-martial. The civil courts were then sitting; by them he should 
 have boon tried. But the people, even some of Tone's former friends, 
 looked on in terror-stricken silence — all, indeed, save one. 
 
 And that one was the brave and generous and fiery John Philpct 
 Curran. He determined, if possible, to gain time for (he French govern- 
 ment to interpose with a threat of retaliation; the case might thus be 
 changed into a political, or, so to speak, an international one. In the 
 end Tone might be saved. 
 
 On the 12th of November (the fatal day) Curran entered the court 
 of King's Bench, leading Tone's venerable father, who had made an affi- 
 davit bearing reference to the illegal court-martial. " I do not pretend,'' 
 said Curran, "that Mr. Tone is not guilty of the charges of which he is 
 accused. I presume the officers were honorable men. But it is stated 
 in this affidavit, as a solemn fact, that Mr. Tone had no commission 
 under His Majesty; and therefore no court-martial could have cogni- 
 zance of any crime imputed to him, whilst the court of King's Bench 
 sat in the capacity of the great criminal court of the land. In times 
 when war was raging, when man was opposed to man in the field, courts- 
 martial might be endured; but every law authority is with me whilst I 
 stand upon this sacred and immutable principle of the constitution — 
 that martial law and civil law are incompatible, and that the former 
 must caasc with the existence of the latter. This is not, however, (he 
 time for arguing this momentous question. My client must appear in 
 this court. lie is cast for death this very day. He may be ordered for 
 execution whilst I address you. I call on the court to support the law, 
 and move for a habeas corpus to be directed to the provost-marshal of 
 the barracks of Dublin and Major Sandys, to bring up the body of 
 Tone." 
 
 Chief-justice: "Have a writ instantly prepared." 
 Curran: "My client may die whilst the writ is preparing." 
 Chief-justice: "Mr. Sheriff, proceed to the barracks and acquaint the 
 provost-marshal that a writ is preparing to suspend Mr. Tone's execu- 
 tion, and see that he be not executed." 
 
 I he sheriff speedily returns and says to the court waiting, in breath- 
 less suspense: "My lord, I have been to the barracks in pursuance of 
 
your orders. The provost-inarshal says he must obey Major Sandys. 
 Major Sandys says lie must obey Lord Comwallis." Citrran announces, 
 too, that old Tone has served the habeas corpus, but that General Craig 
 refuses to obey it. The chief-justice cries out: "Mr. Sheriff, take the 
 body of Tone into custody, take the provost-marshal and Major Sandys 
 into custody, and show the order of the court to General Craig." 
 
 Was Tone going to be led forth to execution in defiance of the court 
 of King's Bench ? This was the question in every mind. Even Kil- 
 warden feared this, a just judge (destined, alas! to an untimely and 
 unmerited fate at the hands of the populace), who, at all times, rever- 
 enced the laws, and who, moreover, entertained the most kindly feelings 
 towards Tone. Before this he had protected him from government ven- 
 geance. His agitation on the present occasion was "magnificent." 
 
 Again the sheriff returns. This time he is the bearer of disastrous, 
 woeful intelligence. Tone had wounded himself dangerously in the throat 
 with a knife, and consequently cannot be removed. The fatal deed was 
 done while the soldiers were erecting a gibbet for his execution in the 
 yard before his window. He had first written a letter to the French 
 Directory, and a pathetic farewell to his wife. The wound was not skil- 
 fully inflicted. Tone lingered in dreadful torment seven days and nights.* 
 According to some, no one was permitted to see him save the prison-sur- 
 geon, Dr. Lentaigne, who is "said to have been humane," and a French 
 emigrant. According to Dr. Madden, a Mr. Fitzpatriek of Capel street 
 was allowed to see him once. When at length death relieved him from 
 his agony, his body was permitted to be carried away by a relative 
 named Dimbavin. He sleeps in the little churchyard of Bodenstown. 
 county Kildare. Thomas Davis has erected two monuments to liis mem- 
 ory — one, a slab over his grave, the other, one of his immortal ballads. 
 
 Such was the melancholy fate of the most formidable enemy 
 to British tyranny that Ireland has yet produced. A great organizer, 
 skilled to influence the minds of men of all classes and of various coun- 
 tries differing in language, manners and habits of thought, he was like- 
 wise brave, cheerful amid disasters, full of resources, indefatigable. 
 With these great qualities he was in his private and domestic relations 
 pleasant, amiable, genial and endearing. Dr. Madden, speaking of the 
 
 * A few persons, but I think erroneously, have doubted that Tone perished by his own hand 
 
THE LIKE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 260 
 
 melancholy clos-3 of his career, says: ''Thus passed away one of the 
 
 master spirits of his time. The carse of Swift was upon this man — he 
 was an Irishman. Had he been a native of any other European country, 
 his noble qualities, his brilliant talents would have raised him to the 
 first honors in the state, arid to the esteem of his fellow-citizens. His 
 name lives, however, and his memory is probably destined to survive as 
 long as his country has a history. Peace be to his ashes!" 
 
 1 cannot help giving a passage from Professor Goldwin Smith (as 
 being the testimony of one whose prejudices might naturally be expected 
 to lead him to look unfavorably on the great founder of the United Irish- 
 men), in which the rare merits of Tone are freely acknowledged. This 
 passage, while it does no more than justice to Theobald Wolfe Tone in 
 awarding him such high praise, is decidedly unfair to the other leading 
 United Irishmen. Surely Lord Edward was something more than a hot- 
 headed enthusiast. And there were other able men in the party besides 
 Tone. Both Thomas Addis Emmet and Arthur O'Connor, not to men- 
 tion others, were undoubtedly men of mark. Speaking of the men of 
 the lush revolutionary movement of the last century, Goldwin Smith 
 says; 'Most of these men were not in any respect above the average 
 level of the French Jacobin Club. Lord Edward seems to have been a 
 weak, hot-headed enthusiast. A crack-brained prelate -peer, the earl 
 of Bristol, bishop of Deny, took the part of the duke of Orleans, and 
 played Egalite to the Irish sans culottes. The only man of real mark in 
 the party was Wolfe Tone. Tone was not a first-class man of action, 
 but he was a first-rate man of the second class — brave, adventurous, 
 sanguine, fertile in resources, buoyant under misfortune, warm-hearted 
 and capable of winning, if not of commanding, men. Though his name 
 is little known among Englishmen, he was near being almost as fatal an 
 enemy to England as Hannibal was to Pome." Some persons, I may 
 here remark, have computed the number of enrolled " United Irishmen " 
 at five hundred thousand, but this is certainly an exaggeration. 
 
 Perhaps the finest tribute ever paid to the brave men of '98 was the 
 song entitled "The Memory of the Dead," contributed to the old Dublin 
 " Nation" in '43, during the full tide and might of O'Connell's last great 
 repeal "agitation," when the young men of Ireland were burning for one 
 more war of independence, and their hearts were throbbing with wild 
 
26(5 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXF.LL. 
 
 and eager expectancy. This soug: was signally honored by the British 
 government. "When O'Connell and his co-traverscrs were prosecuted, in 
 January, '44, on the charge of seditious conspiracy, the publication of 
 this song by the editor of the "Nation," Charles Gavan Duffy, was one 
 of the seditious acts alleged against the prisoners, and accordingly the 
 sons: was read by the attorney-general, Thomas Berry Cusack Smith 
 (nicknamed Alphabet Smith, from the troop of initial letters in his 
 name), with sufficiently good emphasis, in the course of his long-winded 
 address of eleven hours against the state prisoners. The author, the 
 Reverend Thomas Kells Ingram, has long been enjoying the otium arm 
 dignitate (case with dignify) of a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. lie 
 wrote this song in his student-days. As it relieved the monotony of 
 Alphabet Smith's interminable harangue, so it may enliven what some 
 may deem the tediousness of this long chapter. I shall make no 
 apology for quoting it here in full : 
 
 "THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD. 
 
 1. 
 
 "Who fears to speak of Ninety-eight? 
 
 Who blushes tit the name? 
 When cowards mock the patriot's fate, 
 
 Who hangs his head for shame} 
 He's all a knave, or half a slave, 
 
 Who slights his country thus; 
 But a true man, like you, man, 
 
 Will till your glass with us. 
 
 o. 
 
 "We drink the memory of the brave, 
 
 The faithful and the few — 
 Some lie far off beyond the wave — 
 
 Some sleep in Ireland, too ; 
 All — all arc gone — but still lives on 
 
 The fame of those who died — 
 All true men, like you, men, 
 
 Remember them with pride. 
 
 3. 
 "Some on the shores of distant lands 
 Their weary hearts have laid, 
 And by the stranger's heedless hands 
 Their lonelv graves were made; 
 
T!!F, LIFE OF DA XI EL OCO:v."F.I.L. 2G7 
 
 lint, though their e'-.iv l>c far away 
 
 Beyond the Atlantic foam — 
 In true men, like you, men, 
 Their spirit's still at home. 
 
 4. 
 "The dust of some is Irish earth; 
 Among their own they rest; 
 Ami the same land that gave them birtb 
 
 Has caught them to her breast; 
 Anil we will pray that from theiv eiay 
 
 Full many a race may start 
 Of true men, like you, men, 
 To act as brave a part. 
 
 6. 
 
 " They rose in dark and evil days 
 
 To right their native land; 
 They kindled here a living blaze 
 
 That nothing shall withstand. 
 Alas ! that Might can vanquish Right ! 
 
 They fell and passed away ; 
 But true men, like you, men, 
 
 Are plenty here to-day. 
 
 G. 
 "Then here's their memory — may it be 
 For us a guiding light, 
 To cheer our strife for liberty 
 
 And teach us to unite. 
 Through good and ill, be Ireland's still, 
 
 Though sad as theirs your fate; 
 And true men be you, men, 
 Like those of Ninety-eight." 
 
 And now, Ireland being in a prostrate condition at tlic feet of the 
 military might of England, the English government, aided by those two 
 false Irishmen, the earl of Clare, lord-chancellor of Ireland, and Lord 
 Castlereagh, the chief secretary, determined to carry the fatal and ac- 
 cursed Act of Union. To effect this object every engine of fraud and cor- 
 ruption was set in motion. Every method of intimidation was resorted 
 io in order to check opposition on the part of 1 lie people. Meetings to 
 protest against the government measure were dispersed by military vio- 
 lence. Sir John Parnell, the chancellor of the exchequer, and Mi'. Fitz- 
 gerald, the prime-sergeant, and others were dismissed from (heir offices 
 
for opposing the union. On the other hand, as Clare and Castlereagli 
 
 feared serious opposition from that influential and talented body, the Ear 
 of Ireland, the former created a host of new legal offices, which lie ex- 
 pected would tempt numbers of the lawyers to sell themselves and tlieii 
 country to the Castle. Lures, too, were held out to the Catholics to draw 
 them away from the patriot ranks. The nature of the arguments era- 
 ployed to seduce tiie Catholics from their allegiance to their country may 
 he seen in the following extract from a speech delivered in the Irish 
 House of Commons, in 1799, by Sir John Blaquiere, one of the corrupt 
 creatures of the government: "The honorable member who proposed 
 the amendment, with a flow of such transcendent eloquence as had sel- 
 dom been heard in that house, had expressly stated that the Roman 
 Catholics must oppose the union. He knew not the mind of the Catho- 
 lics on the subject, but he should speak his own — that the Roman Cath- 
 olics under the present order of things could never be accommodated, as he 
 feared, with what the// asked, without imminent danger to the Protestant 
 establishment, both in Church and State; but if once an union should be 
 adopted, all these difficulties wmdd vanish, and he should see none in granting 
 them everything the// desired." Unfortunately, the majority of the Cath- 
 olic bishops and cleigy, nobility and gentry, were cajoled by the agents 
 of the government, using such arguments, into lending their influence to 
 promote the union. They found out their mistake when the indepen- 
 dence of their country was extinguished, and the English government 
 evaded the performance of their implied promise to concede Catholic 
 emancipation. An Irish Parliament would have conceded it long before 
 1829. The majority of the Catholic people, however, remained loyal to 
 their country. Presently we shall see O'Connell commencing his polit- 
 ical career, by taking a noble stand for his country's independence. 
 
 Many persons, too, were foolishly led to approve of the union, think- 
 ing it would put an end to the corruption of Irish members of Parlia- 
 ment. Even Hamilton Rowan in his American exile seems to have 
 absurdly taken this view. Doubtless the Irish Parliament, in its de- 
 pendent state before *82, had been corrupt to a degree, and even afloi 
 '82 it had remained shamefully corrupt. In truth, nothing but total 
 separation could wholly secure Irish legislators from British corrupting 
 iuiluences. But Irish legislators must always be most liable to corn:})- 
 
Hon in a parliament of the empire sitting in London. Had a reform of 
 the Irish Parliament swept away the immense number of rotten bor- 
 oughs that existed in Ireland, and had a complete emancipation of the 
 Catholics been conceded at the same time, the Irish Parliament, if not 
 quite perfect, would nevertheless have exhibited a purer set of legisla- 
 tors than Ireland has ever possessed, either before or since the union. 
 Theobald Wolfe Tone's picture of their corruption would no longer have 
 been true to the life: "I have now seen the Parliament of Ireland, the 
 Parliament of England, the Congress of the United States of America, 
 the Corps Legislatif of France and the Convention of Batavia; I have 
 likewise seen our shabby Volunteer Convention in 1783, and the General 
 Committee of the Catholics in 1793; so that 1 have seen, in the way < i 
 deliberate bodies, as many, I believe, as most men; and of all those 1 have 
 mentioned, beyond all comparison, the most shamelessly profligate and 
 abandoned by all sense of virtue, principle, or even common decency, was 
 the legislature of my own unfortunate country — the scoundrels!" 
 
 Yet, in spite of all the corruption and intimidation that prevailed, so 
 fatal a measure as the union to the liberty, prosperity and glory of Ire- 
 land was not destined to pass without great opposition. In '09, at a 
 preliminary meeting of the Bar, a large majority declared against the 
 union. Some absurd speeches were made in favor of the measure, but 
 the feeling of the meeting was with the bold and singular speech of Mr. 
 Goold : "There are forty thousand British troops in Ireland, and with 
 forty thousand bayonets at my breast the minister shall not plant an- 
 other Sicily in the bosom of the Atlantic. I want not the assistance 
 of Divine inspiration to foretell, for I am enabled by the visible and 
 unerring demonstrations of nature to assert, that Ireland was destined 
 to be a free and independent nation. Our patent to be a state, not a 
 shire, comes direct from Heaven. The Almighty has, in majestic charac- 
 ters, signed the great charter of our independence. The great Creator 
 of the world has given our beloved country the gigantic outlines of a 
 kingdom. The God of nature never intended that Ireland should be a 
 province, and by G — d she never shall !" The room resounded with 
 acclamations. His words were taken up and repeated from mouth to 
 mouth. 
 
 Several other meetings were held in Dublin in '99. On December 17th 
 
','70 TIIK LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNFLL. 
 
 ( lie lord-mayor, slievifiy, commons and citizens met to denounce the union. 
 The merchants and bankers met and passed a resolution expressive of 
 1 1 101 1 abhorrence of the measure. The fellows and scholars of Trinitj 
 College at another meeting called on their representatives to oppose it. 
 Resolutions of similar import were passed in some borough or county 
 every day. For that year, in short, the measure was defeated in Parlia- 
 ment as elsewhere. Sir Lawrence Parsons opposed it with great force 
 and ability. Mr. Fitzgerald, ex-prime-sergeant, raised the constitutional 
 question as to the competency of the Irish Parliament to extinguish itself. 
 He also quoted Dr. Johnson's saying: "Don't unite with us; we shall 
 unite with you only to rob you ; we should have robbed the Scots if they 
 had anything to be robbed of." Hans Hamilton and Knox violently 
 attacked the union and the government. The celebrated Plunket de- 
 nounce:! them with great power and vehemence. He argued that Ihe 
 mmiber.s of the House of Commons were there to make laws, not legis- 
 lature i. IIj assailed tin government far the time they had chosen to 
 bring forward their measure, when Ireland was rilled with British troops 
 an 1 under a regime of military terror, courts-martial still sitting in many 
 parts of the kingdom and the habeas corpus act suspended. He ended 
 with great vehemence: "For his own part he would resist it (the union) 
 to the last gasp of his existence and with the last drop of his blood; and 
 when he felt the hour of his dissolution approaching he would, like the 
 father of Hannibal, take his children to the altar and swear than to eter- 
 nal hostility against the invaders of their countr if 's freedom" When Plunket 
 afterwards became English master of the rolls and then Irish chancellor 
 and a peer of the realm, when his interest had procured a bishopric for his 
 eldest son and snug places for all his younger ones, he was often twitted 
 with this heroic; oration. The famous Cobbet once quizzed him unmer- 
 cifully in the English House, to the great amusement of his auditors, in 
 a humorous speech, in which he grotesquely enumerated all the " young 
 Hannibals" — "Hannibal number one, Hannibal number two, number 
 three," etc. — and announced the "snug berths" which had fallen to 
 each. Others, too, remarked that Hamilcar, after swearing his son, 
 never helped the Romans to rule Carthage as a subject province. In 
 these union debates, however, Plunket was magnificent. In the second 
 debate, on the afternoon of the 24th of January, 1799, Colonel O'Don- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 271 
 
 nell, the eldest son of Sir Neil O'Donnell of the county Mayo, a gallant 
 gentleman, stung by Lord Castlereagh's invectives, by anticipation 
 "disclaimed all future allegiance if an union were effected. He held it 
 as a vicious revolution, and avowed that lie would take the field at the 
 head of his regiment to oppose its execution, and would resist rebels in 
 rich clothes as he had done the rebels in rags." For this speech he was 
 dismissed from the command of his regiment. In one of these debates, 
 Sir Boyle Roche, in one of his comical Irish bulls, stumbled happily on a 
 true description of the government policy. He said " he was for a union 
 to put an end to uniting between Presbyterians, Protestants and Cath- 
 olics to overturn the constitution." When the division was called for 
 there was a majority of six against the union. Sir Jonah Barrington 
 tells us, that as they walked in one bv one to be counted, "the eager 
 spectators, ladies as well as gentlemen, leaning over the galleries, igno- 
 rant of the result, were panting with expectation. Lady Castlereagh, 
 then one of the finest women of the court, appeared in the sergeants' 
 box, palpitating for her husband's fate. The desponding appearance 
 and fallen crests of the ministerial benches and the exulting air of the 
 opposition members as they entered were intelligible. Mr. Egan, chair- 
 man of Dublin county, a large, bluff, red-faced gentleman, was the last 
 who entered. As No. 110 was announced, he stopped a moment at the 
 bar, flourished a stick which he held in his hand over his head, and. 
 with the voice of a Stentor, cried out, ' And I'm a hundred and eleven !' ' 
 
 After this Mr. Ponsonby moved "That this House will ever maintain 
 the undoubted birthright of Irishmen, by preserving an independent 
 Parliament of Lords and Commons residing in this kingdom, as stated 
 and approved by His Majesty and the British Parliament in 1782." 
 
 This resolution was carried at first with only two negatives, those of 
 Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Toler, but, unluckily, the Speaker, desiring 
 to be quite accurate, asked Mr. Ponsonby to write his resolution. The 
 delay gave time to the venal portion of Mr. Ponsonby's followers to cool 
 clown and reflect. They did not wish the government to be so hopelessly 
 defeated that Cornwallis and Castlereagh would have to resign. In 
 fact, they wished to be bought, if only they could get their price. 
 When the Speaker read the resolution and put the question a second 
 time, a loud l -Ay" indeed, burst forth ; but Chichester Fortcscue. of the 
 
 18 
 
272 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 county Lowth, interposed and spoke : " He was adverse to the union- 
 had voted against it — but did not wish to bind himself for ever: possible 
 circumstances might occur which should render that measure expedient 
 for the empire." Several hesitated now — some honest, some rogues — 
 and caught at this suggestion. Finally, Mr. Ponsonb-y did not press his 
 motion, fearing defeat. The corrupt Sir Henry Cavendish sarcastically 
 observed that "it was a retreat after a victory." 
 
 A victory, however, had been gained for the time, though in the 
 House of Lords the insolent and domineering upstart Lord Clare carried 
 everything with a high hand. In that chamber of coroneted slaves few 
 dared to oppose the haughty chancellor. Of the spiritual peers only 
 two attempted anything like resistance ; one of these was Dr. Marlay, 
 bishop of Limerick, Henry Grattan's uncle. But. outside, the populace 
 were in a high state of glorification and rejoicing. Men shook each 
 other by the hand. They took the horses from the carriage of Foster, 
 the Speaker, and drew him home in triumph. They even desired to liar 
 ness the arrogant chancellor to his coach. Clare had to fly, and take 
 refuge in a receding doorway in Clarendon street, pistol in hand. The 
 people only laughed derisively as they saw him crouching in terror 
 against the door. They offered him no further violence. 
 
 Dick Martin, the king of Connemara, another partisan of govern- 
 ment (notorious subsequently for his bill to prevent cruelty to animals), 
 owed his escape from a rough handling in the hostile crowd to his pres- 
 ence of mind and a whimsical blundering speech that gratified the 
 mob's Irish appetite for fun and humor. He turned boldly on his 
 hunters, some ten thousand or so in number, presented a small pocket- 
 pistol at them, and swore vehemently that, if they advanced six inches 
 on him, "he would at once shoot every mother's babe of them as dead as 
 that paving-stone;" and he kicked one of those beneath his feet. 
 
 Meanwhile, the question of the union was debated in the English 
 Parliament, and there, in spite of some powerful opposition, Mr. Pitt, 
 the English minister, succeeded in getting his resolutions for union 
 passed. Mr. Pitt did his best to prove that the union would be a source 
 of the greatest prosperity to Ireland. He said she would gain by tin 1 
 measure complete protection and security, the most effectual means of 
 increasing her commerce and improving her agriculture; English capi- 
 
i r 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANTEL O'CONNELL. 273 
 
 tal ; English manners and industry ; means of terminating her fends 
 and dissensions; avenues to all the honors and distinctions of the em- 
 pire opened to her sons — in short, all the blessings of British civiliza- 
 tion. "Among the great and known defects of Ireland, one of the most 
 prominent features was its want of industry and of capital. How were 
 those wants to be supplied but by blending more closely with Ireland 
 the industry and capital of Great Britain ?" Of course he made his bid 
 for the Catholics. The concessions they sought, he said, could not be 
 made to the Catholics while Ireland remained a separate kingdom; but 
 the question of their emancipation could be agitated safely in an united 
 imperial Parliament. When he argued that Irish dissensions and ignor- 
 ance were to be put an end to by the union, he forgot to tell the English 
 Commons that both were the creation of the British government. He 
 admitted that the absenteeism sure to be caused or increased by the 
 union might be some injury to Ireland; but it would be more than com- 
 pensated by the numerous advantages that would result from that bene- 
 ficial measure. As for looking on the union as a means of subjecting 
 Ireland to a foreign yoke, any such idea was monstrous. The two invin- 
 cible nations were to be amalgamated on terms of the most perfect 
 equality. It is needless to say that "the silent refutation of time" has 
 overthrown this fabric of ingenious sophistry. After the experience of 
 near seventy-two years of union, Ireland is almost the only country in 
 Europe that has retrograded in prosperity. Mr Mitchel. giving a sum- 
 mary of Pitt's great speech, says: "All this looks to-day like cruel and 
 deadly irony. It was with the most severe gravity, however, that Mi-. 
 Pitt enumerated all the great blessings which would flow from the union 
 to Ireland. If England was to benefit by it, he did not seem to be 
 aware of that circumstance — did not think of it apparently at all ; so 
 much absorbed was he by the generous thought of binding up the bleed- 
 ing wounds of Ireland and whispering peace to her distracted spirit.*' 
 
 That most brilliant and versatile Irishman, Richard Brinsley Sheri- 
 dan, opposed the union strenuously in the English House of Commons. 
 " Let no suspicion," said he, " be entertained that we gained our object 
 by intimidation or corruption. Let our union be a union of affection 
 and attachment, of plain dealing and free will. Let it be a union of 
 mind and spirit as well as of interest and power. Let it not resemble 
 
274 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 those Irish marriages which commenced in fraud and were consummated 
 by force. Let us not commit a brutal rape on the independence of Ire- 
 land, when, by tenderness of behavior, we may have her the willing part- 
 ner of oar fate. The state of Ireland did not admit such a marriage. 
 Her bans ought not to be published to the sound of the trumpet with 
 an army of forty thousand men. She was not qualified for hymeneal 
 rites, when the grave and the prison held so large a share of her pop- 
 ulation." 
 
 The furious Clare determined to repress the tumultuous rejoicings of 
 the Dublin populace. He had the privy council hastily summoned to- 
 gether, and impressed on them the necessity of making a salutary example 
 in the usual government style. A party of soldiers silently sallied forth. 
 They were commanded by a mere sergeant. They had no civil magis- 
 trate along with them. They arrived in Cape! street, where the populace 
 were indulging in loud huzzas for their friends. There and then, with- 
 out any reading of the Riot Act, without any tumult to justify the inter- 
 ference of troops, without being attacked, these soldiers fired a volley of 
 ball-cartridge into the crowd. A few were killed and wounded. Among 
 the killed were a woman and a boy. A man was shot dead at the feet 
 of Mr. P. Hamilton, the king's proctor of the admiralty, who was merely 
 amusing himself by looking on at the illumination and other signs of 
 popular joy. This incident gives a fair specimen of the system of ter- 
 ror adopted by the government to carry through the accursed Act of 
 Union. 
 
 The cold-blooded Castlereagh, however, chiefly relied on government 
 patronage and corruption. Even felons in jails were promised pardon 
 if they would consent to sign union petitions. Lord Cornwallis himself 
 set out on an experimental tour through the parts of the country where 
 the nobles and gentry were most likely to entertain him, and where he 
 had the best chance of meeting corporations at public dinners. Ireland, 
 in short, was canvassed. The memoirs of this viceroy prove that he was 
 a willing instrument of intimidation and the vilest corruption. In his 
 letters he sometimes feels, or affects to feel, scorn for the persons cor- 
 rupted by him; he even occasionally feels his toe itching to kick some 
 nobleman at once rude, and corrupt. He affects not to like his job ; still. 
 he never shrinks from doing Pitt's dirty work. He labors hard to pro- 
 
Tllr. LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 cure the fifty majority, without which that minister says the measure 
 should not be pressed. This man, Comwallis, has got an unmerited 
 reputation with some for honor and humanity. Certainly, he somewhat 
 relaxed the cruelties that had stained Camden's administration ; he does 
 not seem to have been altogether destitute of a sense of justice. The 
 Orangemen, indeed, because he showed any mercy at all to rebels, nick- 
 named him "Croppy Corney." However, at best, he was, like nearly all 
 his predecessors, when occasion required, a corrupter, if not himself 
 corrupt — false, unscrupulous, tyrannical. The marquis of Downshire 
 soon experienced this. Seeing the determination of the government to 
 carry the union by any and every means, foul or fair, this nobleman, the 
 venerable earl of Charlemont, and William Brabazon Ponsonby, member 
 for Kilkenny county, sent circulars abroad calling on the people to ex- 
 press their sentiments on the question of the legislative union in peti- 
 tions to Parliament. In consequence of this step, the marquis of Down- 
 shire was at once dismissed from the government of his county and the 
 colonelcy of the Royal Downshire regiment of twelve hundred men; his 
 name, too, was erased from the list of privy councillors. In spite of all 
 the efforts of the government, however, countless petitions poured in 
 against the union — scarcely any for it. Protestants and Catholics 
 indiscriminately signed the anti-union petitions. Most of the Orange- 
 men, indeed, were for the union ; the grand master and grand secretary, 
 who were both members of Parliament, voted for it, I have already 
 intimated that the government had succeeded in winning over to their 
 side a large proportion of the Catholic aristocracy and clergy. Others 
 were simply indifferent to the national cause. Mr. Plowden accounts for 
 this by "the severities and indignities practiced upon them after the rebel- 
 lion by many of the Orange party, and the offensive confusion in the use 
 of the terms papist and rebel producing fresh soreness in the minds of 
 many." Mr. Mitchel is not satisfied with this way of accounting for 
 their union proclivities. He remarks very justly that if the Catholics 
 did see some Orangemen in the national ranks, "they also saw there all 
 their old and tried friends and advocates." Probably the true method 
 of accounting for the course pursued in this crisis of the nation's destiny 
 by the Catholic clergy and aristocracy is suggested to our minds by the 
 following passages from t'.e writings of Sir Jonah Barrington : 
 
276 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 " The viceroy knew mankind too well to dismiss the Catholics with- 
 out a comfortable conviction of their certain emancipation ; he turned 
 to them the honest side of his countenance ; the priests bowed before 
 the soldierly condescensions of a starred veteran. The titular arch- 
 bishop was led to believe he would instantly become a real prelate, and, 
 before the negotiation concluded, Dr. Troy was consecrated a decided 
 unionist, and was directed to send pastoral letters to his colleagues to 
 promote it." 
 
 Again, Sir Jonah informs us that " some of the persons assuming to 
 themselves the title of Catholic leaders sought an audience in order to 
 inquire from Marquis Cornwallis, ' What would be the advantage to the 
 Catholics if an union should happen to be effected in Ireland ?' 
 
 "Mr. Bellow (brother to Sir Patrick Bellew), Mr. Lynch, and some 
 others, had several audiences with the viceroy; the Catholic bishops 
 were generally deceived into the most disgusting subservience; rewards 
 were not withheld; Mr. Bellew was to be appointed a county judge, but 
 that being found impracticable, he got a secret pension, which he has 
 now enjoyed for thirty-two years." 
 
 But all the Catholics of position and intelligence were not weak and 
 base enough to yield to these insidious and soul-corrupting influences. 
 For example, the trading and commercial class of Catholics in Dublin 
 were violently hostile to the bare idea of the union. On the 13th of 
 January, 1800, a meeting of the Catholic citizens of Dublin was held in 
 the hall of the Royal Exchange to pro-test against the union. This meet- 
 ing is memorable as being the occasion on which Daniel O'Connell com- 
 menced his political career. On this day he delivered his first speech at a 
 public meeting. I shall presently give the speech in full, because it is 
 specially interesting to mark how his sentiments in the opening scenes of 
 his public life entirely correspond with his most cherished opinions at life's 
 close. As his last and greatest movement was the repeal "agitation," so 
 this his earliest effort was to save the legislative independence of his coun- 
 try. His son tells us that this meeting in 1800 was mainly " got up by 
 his efforts." His friends, including his uncle Maurice, were all opposed to 
 his putting himself forward in any public struggle. It was difficult lor 
 a lawyer at that time to rise in his profession unless he were willing to 
 be the parasite and the slave of the government. O'Connell saw clearly 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 277 
 
 enough that strong reasons existed which counselled him to keep himself 
 out of political strife; and that, by engaging in the turmoil of politics, 
 he would expose himself to man) disadvantages and obstacles, if not 
 absolute dangers. But, at the same time, he saw just as clearly that a 
 crisis in the affairs of his country and his co-religionists had arrived, 
 when, if he were a true Irishman, all mere prudential considerations 
 should be Hung to the winds, and his only course should be to step 
 boldly into the arena. The "natural leaders" of the Catholics, as they 
 were styled, hung back timidly, or they were bribed or deluded into a 
 short- sighted acquiescence in the fatal measure. The bulk of the Cath- 
 olics, though sound in their views on the vital question of legislative 
 independence, were unaccustomed to act in concert. It was absolutely 
 necessary, then, that some one should come forward and show them the 
 way to maintain the reputation and the independence of the Catholic 
 body. Fortunately, the requisite man for the hour was there to do his 
 duty. Fortunately, too, that man was the promising young barrister 
 Daniel O'Connell. 
 
 The first impulse of the tyrannical Clare was to prevent the meet- 
 ing by that military violence which was still of every-day occurrence, 
 although the alleged necessity for it had ceased with the extinction, 
 more than a year previously, of the last embers of the civil war. How- 
 ever, it was finally resolved to suffer the meeting to proceed. Still, in 
 the earh r part of the proceedings, a panic was created by the arrival of 
 Major Sirr at the head of a band of soldiers. The rumor of the medi- 
 tated interference on the part of government had already got abroad. 
 When, then, the measured tramp of the soldiery was heard, and the red 
 uniforms became visible under the portico of the Exchange, which faces 
 Parliament street, when they halted suddenlv and brought their raus- 
 kets to the flag-stones with a clash, a sensible diminution took place on 
 the outskirts of the meeting, However, the exertions and exhortations 
 of O'Connell and other gentlemen present rallied the crowd, so that the 
 main body of the assemblage stood firm. O'Connell then advanced to 
 parley with the redoubtable Sirr. 
 
 " Let me see the resolutions," demanded that sinister-looking func- 
 tion a ly. 
 
 " Here they are," said the chairman, Mr. Ambrose Moore. 
 
 i 
 .1 
 
27S THE UEE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 The major scrutinized them closely. At last, evidently disappointed 
 at the peace and good order and readiness to submit to law which cha- 
 racterized the meeting, the baffled major threw down the resolutions and 
 growled forth, " There is no harm in them." Reluctantly he suffered the 
 meeting to proceed, and took himself and his myrmidons off. 
 
 Then Counsellor O'Connell rose, and in the following short speech 
 introduced the resolutions. He said "that the question of the union 
 was confessedly one of the first magnitude and importance. Sunk, 
 indeed, in more than criminal apathy must that Irishman be who could 
 feel indifference on the subject. It was a measure to the consideration 
 of which we were called by every illumination of the understanding and 
 every feeling of the heart. There was, therefore, no necessity to apolo- 
 gize for the introducing the discussion of the question amongst Irish- 
 men ; but before he brought forward any resolution he craved permis- 
 sion to make a few observations on the causes which produced the neces- 
 sity of meeting as Catholics — as a separate and distinct body. In doing 
 so, he thought he would clearly show that they were justifiable in at 
 length deviating from a resolution which they had hitherto formed. The 
 enlightened mind of the Catholics had taught them the impolicy, the 
 illiberality and the injustice of separating themselves on any occasion 
 from the rest of the people of Ireland. The Catholics had therefore 
 more than once resolved — and they had wisely resolved — under the cir- 
 cumstances of the present day and the systematic calumnies flung at the 
 Catholic character, never more to appear before the public in political 
 discussion as a mere sect — as a distinct and separate body; but they 
 did not, they could not, then foresee the unfortunately existing circum- 
 stances of this moment. They could not then foresee that they would be 
 reduced to the necessity either of submitting to the disgraceful imputa- 
 tion of approving of a measure as detestable to them as it was ruinous 
 to their country, or once again, and he trusted for the last time, of com- 
 ing forward as a distinct body. 
 
 " This resolution which they had entered into gave rise to an exten- 
 sive and injurious misrepresentation, and it was daringly asserted by the 
 advocates of the union — daringly and insolently asserted — that the Ro- 
 man Catholics of Ireland were friends to the measure of union, and silent 
 allies to that conspiracy formed against the name, the interests and the 
 
 
rn^i by J . 
 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 279 
 
 liberties of Ireland. This libel on the Catholic character was strength- 
 ened b) r the partial declarations of some mean and degenerate members 
 of the communion, wrought upon by corruption or by fear, and, unfortu- 
 nately, it was received with a too general credulity. 
 
 " There was no man present but was acquainted with the industry 
 with which it was circulated that the Catholics were favorable to the 
 union, a measure which would annihilate the name of their country. In 
 vain did multitudes of that body, in different capacities, express their 
 disapprobation of the measure. In vain did they concur with others of 
 their fellow-subjects in expressing their abhorrence of it, as freemen or 
 freeholders, electors of counties or inhabitants of cities ; still, the cal- 
 umny was repeated. It was printed in journal after journal ; it Avas 
 published in union pamphlet after pamphlet ; it was uttered in speech 
 after speech; it was circulated with activity in private companies; it 
 was boldly and loudly proclaimed in public assemblies. How this clam- 
 or was raised and how it was supported was manifest — the motives of 
 it were apparent. 
 
 " In vain had the Catholics (individually) endeavored to resist the 
 torrent. Their future efforts, as individuals, would be equally vain and 
 fruitless ; they must oppose it collectively. 
 
 " In the speeches and pamphlets of anti-unionists it was rather admit- 
 ted than denied, so that at length the Catholics themselves were obliged 
 to break through the resolution which they had formed, in order to guard 
 against misrepresentation, for the purpose of repelling this worst of mis- 
 representations. To refute a calumny directed against them as a sect, 
 they were obliged to come forward as a sect, and in the face of their 
 country to disavow the base conduct imputed to them, and to declare 
 that the assertion of their being favorably inclined to the measure of a 
 legislative incorporation with Great Britain was a slander the most vile 
 — a libel the most false, scandalous and wicked — that ever was directed 
 against the character of an individual or a people. 
 
 "There was another reason why they should come forward as a dis- 
 tinct class — a reason which he confessed had made the greatest impres- 
 sion upon his feelings. Not content with falsely asserting that the 
 Catholics favored the extinction of Ireland, this their supposed inclina- 
 tion was attributed to the foulest motives — motives which were most 
 
280 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 repugnant to their judgments and most abhorrent to their hearts. It 
 was said that the Catholics were ready to sell their country for a price 
 or, what was still more depraved, to abandon it, on account of the unfor- 
 tunate animosities which the wretched temper of the times had pro- 
 duced. Can they remain silent under so horrible a calumny? This 
 calumny was flung on the whole body — it was incumbent on the whole 
 body to come forward and contradict it ; yes, they will show every friend 
 of Ireland that the Catholics are incapable of selling their country ; they 
 will loudly declare that if their emancipation were offered for their con- 
 sent to the measure — even were emancipation after the union a benefit 
 — they would reject it with prompt indignation." [This sentiment, we are 
 told, met with approbation.) "Let us show to Ireland that we have 
 nothing in view but her good ; nothing in our hearts but the desire of 
 mutual forgiveness, mutual toleration and mutual affection; in fine, 
 let every man who feels with me proclaim, that, if the alternative were 
 offered him of union, or the re-enactment of the penal code in all its 
 pristine horrors, he would prefer without hesitation the latter as the 
 lesser and more sufferable evil; that he would boldly meet a proscrip- 
 tion and oppression which would be the testimonies of our virtues ; that 
 he would rather confide in the justice of his brethren, the Protestants of 
 Ireland, Avho have already liberated him, than lay his country at the 
 feet of foreigners." [This sentiment, John 'Council assures us, was met 
 unth much and marked approbation.) "Yes, I know — I do know, that 
 although exclusive advantages may be ambitiously held forth to the Irish 
 Ccdholic, to seduce him from the sacred duty which he owes his country, 
 I know that the Catholics of Ireland still remember that they have a 
 country, and that they will never accept of any advantages as a sect 
 which would debase and destroy them as a peopled 
 
 In conclusion, he observed that, " with regard to the union, so much 
 had been said, so much had been written on the subject, that it was 
 impossible any man should not before now have formed an opinion of it. 
 He would not trespass on their attention in repeating arguments which 
 they had already heard, and topics which they had already considered; 
 but if there was any man present who could be so far mentally degraded 
 as to consent to the extinction of the liberty, the constitution, and even 
 the name of Ireland, he would call on him not to leave the direction and 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 281 
 
 management of his commerce and property to strangers, over whom he 
 could have no control." He then moved the following resolutions, which 
 being seconded, passed unanimously. John O'Connell tells us that 
 these resolutions were drawn up by O'Connell himself. On this account, 
 and because this was his first public meeting, I give them in full; 
 though, I must remark, that elsewhere it is stated that these resolutions 
 were drawn up by the celebrated John Philpot Curran. Be this as it 
 may, here they are : 
 
 "Royal Exchange, Dublin, January 13, 1800. 
 
 " At a numerous and respectable meeting of the Roman Catholics of 
 the city of Dublin, convened pursuant to public notice, Ambrose Moore, 
 Esq., in the chair — 
 
 "Resolved, That we are of opinion that the proposed incorporate union 
 of the legislature of Great Britain and Ireland is, in fact, an extinction 
 of the liberty of this country, which would be reduced to the abject con- 
 dition of a province, surrendered to the mercy of the minister and legis- 
 lature of another country, to be bound by their absolute will and taxed 
 at their pleasure by laws in the making of which this country would 
 have no efficient participation whatsoever. 
 
 "Resolved, That we are of opinion that the improvement of Ireland for 
 the last twenty years, so rapid beyond example, is to be ascribed wholly 
 to the independency of our legislature, so gloriously asserted in the yeai 
 1782, by virtue of our Parliament co-operating with the generous recom- 
 mendation of our most gracious and benevolent sovereign, and backed 
 by the spirit of our people, and so solemnly ratified by both kingdoms 
 as the only true and permanent foundation of Irish prosperity and Brit- 
 ish connection. 
 
 "Resolved, That we are of opinion that if that independency should 
 ever be surrendered, we must as rapidly relapse into our former depres- 
 sion and misery, and that Ireland must inevitably lose, with her liberty, 
 all that she has acquired in wealth and industry and civilization. 
 
 "Resolved, That we are firmly convinced that the supposed advantages 
 of such a surrendei are unreal and delusive, and can never arise in fact ; 
 and that even if they should arise, they would be only the bounty of the 
 master to the slave, held by his courtesy, and resumable at his pleasure. 
 
 "Resolved, That, having heretofore determined not to come forward any 
 
282 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 more in the distinct character of Catholics, but to consider our claims 
 and our cause not as those of a sect, but as involved in the general fate 
 of our country, we now think it right, notwithstanding such determina- 
 tion, to publish the present resolutions, in order to undeceive our fellow ■ 
 subjects, who may have been led to believe, by a false representation 
 that we are capable of giving any concurrence whatsoever to so foul 
 and fatal a project ; to assure them that we are incapable of sacrificing 
 our common country to either pique or pretension ; and that we are of 
 opinion that this deadly attack upon the nation is the great call of na- 
 ture, of country and posterity upon Irishmen of all descriptions and per- 
 suasions, to every constitutional and legal resistance ; and that we sa- 
 credly pledge ourselves to persevere in obedience to that call as long as 
 we have life. 
 
 " Signed, by order, James Ryan, Sec." 
 
 When these resolutions had passed unanimously, the meeting broke 
 up. Such was Daniel O'ConneH's first appearance in public as a polit- 
 ical orator and a patriot. It would appear from a statement made by 
 Mr. Daunt that O'Couuell never wrote a speech beforehand. Of this 
 his maiden speech, however, he wrote the heads, a mode of preparation 
 not unusual with him during the subsequent part of his oratorical career. 
 After the close of the anti-union meeting he gave a full report of his first 
 speech to the "Dublin Evening Post.''' O'Connell used to contrast his 
 natural embarrassment in delivering this maiden effort of his faculty for 
 swaying popular masses by eloquence with the matchless ease and self- 
 possession which constant practice in public speaking and long expe- 
 rience of the varying tempers of audiences bestowed upon him later 
 in life. "My face," he would say, "glowed and my ears tingled at the 
 sound of my own voice, but I got more courage as I went on." O'Con- 
 nell also declared repeatedly that this maiden speech of his, denouncing 
 as it did the accursed Act of Union, should be looked on as the text- book 
 of his entire political life. 
 
 Here is his own account of the state of his feelings in 1800, while 
 the struggle for and against the uuion was raging : " The year of the 
 union I was travelling through the mountain-district from Killarney to 
 Kenmare ; my heart was heavy at the loss that Ireland had sustained, and 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 283 
 
 the day was wild and gloomy. That desert district, too, was congenial 
 to impressions of solemnity and sadness. There was not a human hab- 
 itation to be seen for many miles ; black, giant clouds sailed slowly 
 through the sky and rested on the tops of the huge mountains : my soul 
 felt dreary, and I had many wild and Ossianic inspirations as I traversed 
 the bleak solitudes. 
 
 " It was the union that first stirred me up to come forward in politics. 
 My uncle Maurice was scarcely pleased at my taking a public part; 
 not that he approved of the union, but politics appeared to him to be 
 fraught with great peril ; and he would have preferred my appearing on 
 some question which would, in his opinion, have more directly concerned 
 the Catholics." 
 
 Mr. Daunt asked O'Connell if he was in Dublin when the union 
 passed ? 
 
 "Yes," O'Connell answered, "but there was less excitement than 
 you would imagine ; the hatred which all classes (except the small gov- 
 ernment clique) bore to the measure had settled down into sulky 
 despondency. I was maddened when I heard the bells of St. Patrick's 
 ringing out a joyful peal for Ireland's degradation, as if it was a glorious 
 national festival. My blood boiled, and I vowed, on that morning, that 
 the foul dishonor should not last if I could ever put an end to it." 
 
 But this is anticipating. It is necessary that I should complete my 
 sketch of the passing of the fatal act. During the whole of the year '99, 
 the government made superhuman efforts to purchase a majority in 
 Parliament and to intimidate the nation. Some members were directly 
 bought ; others, for a consideration, accepted the escheat orships of Mini- 
 ster, Leinster or Connaught. These (somewhat analogous to the stew- 
 ardships of the Chiltern Hundreds in England) were nominal offices 
 with salaries of forty shillings, on acceptance of which members should 
 necessarily vacate their seats. The government would immediately fill 
 the vacant seats with their partisans. Under-secretary Cooke was the 
 immediate agent of corruption for Cornwallis and Castlereagh. Indeed, 
 Castlereagh himself boldly and openly declared his determination to 
 carry the measure by bribery, or, as he styled it, compensation for losses. 
 To every nobleman who would return union members to Parliament he 
 promised fifteen thousand pounds. Every member purchasing a seat 
 
was promised repayment of the purchase-money out of the Irish treasury. 
 To all members of Parliament or others who should be losers by the 
 union a full recompense for their losses was promised. One million five 
 hundred thousand pounds were to be appropriated for this purpose. This 
 sum, however, represents but a small portion of the bribery. O'Connell, 
 in his grand speech in favor of repeal, delivered in the Dublin corpora- 
 tion early in 1843, estimates the bribes paid out of the secret service- 
 money at more than one million sterling. About forty new peerages 
 were conferred as bribes. Eight thousand pounds, or an office worth 
 two thousand pounds per annum, was the price of a vote. Ten bishop- 
 rics, one chief-justiceship, six puisne-judgeships, besides regiments and 
 ships to officers of the army and navy, were given away. The amount 
 of all this in money has been estimated at live million pounds. By 
 means of these bribes, men who had made the most ostentatious display 
 of patriotism at the banquet of one hundred and ten patriotic members, 
 held at the close of the session of 1799 — men who had there spouted 
 forth the most vehement patriotism, given strong anti-union toasts, 
 vowed before God and man "war to the knife" against so pestilent a 
 measure, sung anti-union songs of their own composition, — by means of 
 these bribes, I say, certain noisy patriots of '99 were brought round to 
 admit in 1800 the superior force of the minister's reasoning, and to sing- 
 songs in favor of the union. Just such a patriot was Mr. William Hand- 
 cock, the member for Athlone. He received a large money-bribe. 
 "But," says Barrington, "still he held out until title was added to the 
 bribe ; his own conscience was not strong enough to resist the charge ; 
 the vanity of his family lusted for nobility. He wavered, but he yielded ; 
 his vows, his declaration, his song, all vanished before vanity, and the 
 vear 1800 saw Mr. Handcock of Athlone, Lord Castleniaine." 
 
 The strength of the opposition was the more easily undermined by 
 the government from the heterogeneous nature of the elements composing 
 it. Side by side in the ranks of the anti-unionists were reformers and 
 enemies of reform ; Catholic emancipationists and foes of the Catholic 
 cause, even rabid Orangemen. Then men, who had hitherto supported 
 the measures of the court, were now obliged reluctantly to submit to the 
 leadership of the knot of talented men who had ever been hostile to the 
 Castle. 
 
Violent means of intimidation were also resorted to by the govern- 
 ment. In Birr a meeting of magistrates and people was dispersed by 
 military force. A column of troops, with four pieces of cannon in front 
 and matches lighted, approached the session-house where the meeting 
 was held, prepared to attack it. Major Rogers, the commander of the 
 troops, said that he waited but for one word from the sheriff that he 
 might blow them to atoms. Many other meetings were prevented by 
 simple "dread of grape-shot." Anti-union addresses were stigmatized 
 by the hireling scribes of the government faction as seditious and dis- 
 loyal, " while," as Sir Jonah Barrington tells us, "those of the compelled, 
 the bribed and the culprit were printed and circulated by every means 
 that the treasury and the influence of the government could effect." 
 Yet, in spite of all the terrorism that prevailed, seven hundred thou- 
 sand persons petitioned against union ; and all the seductions of the 
 government could only persuade three thousand to sign petitions in 
 favor of the measure, and of these three thousand, most were govern- 
 ment officials or prisoners in the jails. 
 
 At a dinner-party at Lord Castlereagh's house, in Merrion Square, Dub- 
 lin, about twenty Irish members of Parliament, of what were then termed 
 " fighting families," were brought together. The dinner was exquisite. The 
 choicest vintages of Champagne and Madeira sparkled on the table. After 
 dinner,whenthe guests had become sufficiently exhilarated, and many loyal 
 and joyous toasts had been sent round amid great mirth and flashes of jo- 
 vial wit and humor, the convivial but at the same time astute and polished 
 Sir John Blaquiere (afterwards, for his services in helping to carry the 
 union, Lord de Blaquiere) proposed "a gentlemanly, convivial, fighting- 
 conspiracy, " as Barrington terms it, of unionist members, to be always 
 on hand during the ensuing session, equally ready to make a House or 
 to fasten a quarrel, should it seem expedient to do so, on any obnoxious 
 member of the opposition. After affecting " some coquetry, lest this 
 idea should seem to have originated with him," Lord Castlereagh 
 assented to the strange proposal. Immediately "one of his lordship's 
 prepared accessories (as if it were a new thought) proposed, humor- 
 ously, to have a dinner for twenty or thirty every day in one of the 
 committee chambers, where they could be always at hand to make up a 
 House, or for any emergency which should call for an unexpected rein- 
 
286 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNFLL. 
 
 forcement during any part of the discussion." This novel idea, so whim- 
 sical and humorous, was eagerly embraced. "Wit and puns began to 
 accompany the bottle." Under-secretary Cooke, with nods and smirks, 
 began to hint at lucrative official rewards for all the company. "Sir 
 John Blaquiere pleasantly observed that, at all events, the)' would be 
 sure of a good Cook at their dinners. After much wit and many flashes 
 of convivial bravery, the meeting separated after midnight, fully resolved 
 to eat, drink, speak and fight for Lord Castlereagh." (Barrington.) The 
 preparations of the government for the coming struggle might now be 
 deemed complete. 
 
 The last session of the Irish Parliament began on the 15th of Jan- 
 uary, 1800. No reference was made to the union in the viceroy's speech. 
 Sir Lawrence Parsons, after a powerful oration, moved an amendment to 
 the address declaratory of the resolution of Parliament to preserve the 
 settlement of '82 and maintain the independence of Ireland. Lord Cas- 
 tlereagh commenced the bullying system, and spoke contemptuously of 
 the arguments of Sir Lawrence. A fierce debate followed, in which Pon- 
 sonby, Bushe and Plunket distinguished themselves on the patriot side. 
 Mr. Egan was speaking warmly against the union, when a whisper began 
 to run through the House. The name of Grattan, who, since his seces- 
 sion from Parliament, had been an invalid and most of the time away 
 from Ireland trying to recruit his broken health, was mentioned. But 
 an expression of incredulity was visible on the faces of nearly all who 
 were present. The ministerialists even smiled derisively. Presently, 
 Mr. George Ponsonby and Arthur Moore stood up, and left the House. 
 Suddenly, along College Green a tremendous shout arose; an instant 
 after it was taken up within the walls of the Parliament House, and 
 rang through the corridors. The doors of the chamber of the Commons 
 are flung wide open. The inspired countenance of Henry Grattan is 
 seen once more. His emaciated form and his eye, kindling preternat- 
 urally as he surveys the theatre of his former glory on the eve of being 
 closed for ever, give him an unearthly aspect. As he totters feebly for- 
 ward towards the table, supported by Ponsonby and Moore, the Avhole 
 House rises respectfully; cheer follows cheer. There are tears in the 
 eyes of many. Even the ministerialists feel themselves compelled to do 
 him honor. Castlereagh himself, cold as he usually is, rises at the head 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 287 
 
 of tlie whole treasury bench, bows with stately courtesy, and remains 
 standing till Grattan has taken the oaths and his seat. 
 
 Grattan had just been returned, almost against his will, for the close 
 borough of Wicklow, which belonged to Mr. Tighe. When the vacancy 
 occurred, the government withheld the writ as long as possible, in order 
 to keep Grattan out of Parliament till the discussion should be past. 
 In fact, it was only on the day of the opening of the session that the 
 writ reached the returning officer. Through the exertions of Grattan's 
 friends the election was held at once. Their energy was such that voters 
 enough were got together to return him before midnight. The return 
 reached Dublin by 5 o'clock in the morning. Friends of Grattan has- 
 tened to the house of the proper officer ; he was forced out of bed and 
 made to present the writ to Parliament before seven, while the fierce 
 debate on the union was still going on. Meanwhile, Mr. Tighe had 
 ridden from Wicklow to Dublin, and called at Grattan's house in Baggot 
 street. "Will they not let me die in peace?" Grattan exclaimed 
 when he heard of Mr. Tighe's arrival. But his brave-hearted wife tells 
 him at once that "he must get up immediately and go down to tlie 
 House." In his old volunteer uniform, with a brace of loaded pistols in 
 his pocket, he is borne to the House in a sedan chair. His wife looks 
 anxiously after him. When a friend assures her that, in the event of a 
 personal quarrel with the bravoes of the Castle, others would take the 
 part of Grattan, she stoutly replies, like a true Geraldine, "My husband 
 cannot die better than in the defence of his country." 
 
 Bully Egan makes no attempt to resume his harangue. Willingly 
 he gives way to the great orator. And now that he is about 
 
 "To thunder again those iron words that thrill like the clash of spears," 
 
 Grattan feels the glow of his former energj 7 reviving within his wearied 
 heart and wasted frame. A smile brightens his face. Still, when he 
 attempts to rise, he finds himself unable to stand at first ; he is obliged 
 to ask permission to speak sitting. His soul, rising supreme over his 
 bodily frailty, soon bears him rushing along into the full swing, tide 
 and tempest, so to speak, of his grandest oratory. For two hours his 
 eloquence blazes before the House with unprecedented fire and 
 splendor : 
 
 19 
 
288 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 " Sir, the gentleman who spoke last but one (Mr. Fox) has spoken 
 the pamphlet of the English minister (Pitt) — I answer that minister. 
 He has published two celebrated productions, in both of which he 
 declares his intolerance of the constitution of Ireland. He concurs with 
 the men whom he has hanged in thinking the constitution a grievance, 
 and differs from them in the remedy only; they proposing to substitute 
 a republic, and he proposing to substitute the yoke of the British Par- 
 liament — the one turns rebel to the king, the minister a rebel to the 
 constitution. . . . 
 
 " I will put this question to my country. I will suppose her at the 
 bar, and I will ask her : Will you fight for a union as you would for a 
 constitution ? Will you right for that Lords and that Commons who, in the 
 last century, took away your trade, and in the present your constitution, 
 as for that King, Lords and Commons who have restored both ? Well, 
 the minister has destroyed this constitution; to destroy is easy; the 
 editices of the mind, like the fabrics of marble, require an age to build, 
 but ask only minutes to precipitate; and as the fall of both is an effort, 
 of no time, so neither is it a business of any strength ; a pickaxe and a 
 common laborer will do the one — a little lawyer, a little pimp, a wicked 
 minister the other. 
 
 "The constitution, which, with more or less violence, has been the 
 inheritance of this country for six hundred years; that modus tenendi 
 pari lament ii m [method of holding parliament), which lasted and out- 
 lasted of Plantagenet the Avars, of Tudor the violence, and of Stuart the 
 systematic falsehood ; the condition of our connection — yes, the consti- 
 tution he destroys is one of the pillars of the British Empire. He may 
 walk round it and round it, and the more he contemplates the more 
 must he admire ; such a one as had cost England of money millions and 
 of blood a deluge, cheaply and nobly expended ; whose restoration had 
 cost Ireland her noblest efforts, and was the habitation of her loyalty— 
 we are accustomed to behold the kings of these countries in the keeping 
 of Parliament — I say of her loyalty as well as of her liberty, where she 
 had hung up the sword of the volunteer — her temple of fame as well as 
 of freedom — where she had seated herself, as she vainly thought, in 
 modest security and in a long repose. 
 
 "I have done with the pile which the minister batters; I come to 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 289 
 
 the Babel which lie builds; and as he throws clown without a principle, 
 so does he construct without a foundation. This fabric he calls a union, 
 and to this his fabric there are two striking objections : fbst, it is no 
 union — it is not an identification of people, for it excludes the Catholics; 
 secondly, it is a consolidation of the Irish legislatures — that is to say, a 
 merger of the Irish Parliament, and incurs every objection to a union, 
 without obtaining the only object which a union professes — it is an 
 extinction of the constitution and an exclusion of the people. Well, he 
 lias overlooked the people as he has overlooked the sea. I say he 
 excludes the Catholics and he destroys their best chance of admission — 
 the relative consequence. Thus he reasons : That hereafter, in a course 
 of time (he does not say when), if they behave themselves (he does not say 
 how), they may see their subjects submitted to a course of discussion 
 (lie does not say with what result or determination) ; and as the ground 
 for this inane period, in which he promises nothing, and in which, if he 
 did promise much, at so remote a period he could perform nothing, 
 unless he, like the evil he has accomplished, be immortal— for this inane 
 sentence, in which he can scarcely be said to deceive the Catholic, or 
 suffer the Catholic to deceive himself, he exhibits no other ground than 
 the physical inanity of the Catholic body accomplished by a union, 
 which, as it destroys the relative importance of Ireland, so it destroys 
 the relative proportion of the Catholic inhabitants, and thus they become 
 admissible because they cease to be anything. Hence, according to him, 
 their brilliant expectation. 'You were,' say his advocates, and so im- 
 ports his argument, ' before the union as three to one ; you will be by 
 the union as one to four.' Thus he founds their hopes of political power 
 on the extinction of physical consequence, and makes the inanity of 
 their body and the nonenity of their country the pillars of their future 
 ambition. . . . 
 
 "The minister has not done with bribes; whatever economy he 
 shows in argument, here he has been generous in the extreme. Parson, 
 priest (I think one of his advocates hints the Presbyterians) are not for- 
 gotten ; and now the mercantile body are all to be bribed, that all may 
 be ruined. He holds out commercial benefits for political annihilation ; 
 he offers you an abundance of capital, but first he taxes it away ; he takes 
 away a great portion of the landed capital of the country by the necessary 
 
290 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. 
 
 operation of union ; he will give you, however, commercial capital in its 
 place ; but first lie will give you taxes. It seems it is only necessary to 
 break the barriers of liberty and the tides of commerce will flow in of 
 course; take away her rival in landed capital, and then commercial 
 capital advances without fear. Commerce only wants weight — i. e., taxes 
 — it seems, in order to run with new spirit. He not only linds commerce 
 in the retreat of landed capital, but he linds corn also. His whole 
 speech is a course of surprises ; the growth of excision, the resource of 
 incumbrance and harvests sown and gathered by the absence of the pro- 
 prietors of the soil and of their property. All these things are to come. 
 When ? He does not tell you. Where ? He does not tell you. You 
 take his word for all this. I have heard of a banker's bill of exchange, 
 Bank of England's notes, Bank of Ireland's notes, but a prophet's prom- 
 issory note is a new traffic; all he gets from Ireland is our solid loss; all 
 he promises are visionary, distant and prophetic advantages. He sees 
 — I do not — British merchants and British capital sailing to the prov- 
 inces of Connauglit and Minister; there they settle in great multitudes, 
 themselves and families. He mentions not what description of manu- 
 facturers — who from Birmingham, who from Manchester; no matter, he 
 cares not; he goes on asserting, and asserting with great ease to him- 
 self, and without any obligation to fact. Imagination is the region in 
 which he delights to disport; where he is to take your Parliament, 
 where he is to take away your final judicature, where he is to increase 
 your tax>es, where he is to get an Irish tribute, there he is a plain, direct, 
 matter-of-fact man ; but where he is to pay you for all this, there he is 
 poetic and prophetic ; no longer a financier, but an inspired accountant. 
 Fancy gives her wand ; Amalthea takes him by the hand ; Ceres is in 
 her train. . . . 
 
 "He [the minister) proposes to you to substitute the British Parlia- 
 ment in your place, to destroy the body that restored your liberties, and 
 to restore that body which destroyed them. Against such a proposition, 
 were I expiring on the floor, I should beg to utter my last breath and 
 record my dying testimony." 
 
 But all this eloquence was unavailing. The ministers, indeed, became 
 savage, and Castlereagh incited one of the Castle bravoes, Isaac Cony, 
 to make a truculent attack on Grattan, which he was too much exhausted 
 

THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 291 
 
 by his unwonted exertions to notice on that occasion. The government 
 defeated the motion of Sir Lawrence Parsons by a bribed majority of 
 forty-two. Even Plowden, a decided unionist, admits the profligate 
 means by which this majority was obtained, and that the minister had 
 but slender grounds for triumphing in it ; also that it was far from rep- 
 resenting " the genuine sense of the independent part of that House and 
 of the people of Ireland." In the Lords, about the same time, Clare 
 spoke that able and celebrated, but unscrupulous, libel on his country- 
 men, to which Grattan afterwards wrote an answer. "His idea," said 
 Grattan, " was to make the Irish history a calumny against their ances- 
 tors, in order to disfranchise their posterity." 
 
 On the 5th of February Grattan ably argued against the union on 
 constitutional grounds, giving copious quotations from the greatest 
 writers on political science and government and jurisprudence, in support 
 of his opinion that Parliament was incompetent to pass such an act. 
 He says, prophetically, "The project of union appears to me to be noth- 
 ing less than the surrender of the constitution. It reduces the Commons 
 of Ireland to one-third, leaving the Parliament of England their present 
 proportion ; it reduces the Commons of Ireland, I say, to one-third ; it 
 transfers that third to another country, where it is merged and lost in 
 the superior numbers of another Parliament. He strikes off two-thirds, 
 and makes the remaining English. Those Irish members residing in 
 England will be nominally Irish representatives, but they will cease to he 
 Irishmen. Thev will find England the seat of their abode, of their 
 action, of their character, and will find, therefore, the great principles of 
 action — namely, sympathy and fame — influencing them no longer in favor 
 of their own country, but prepollent motives to forget Ireland, to look up 
 to England, or rather the court of England, exclusively for countenance, for 
 advancement and for honors, as the centre from which they circulate and 
 to which they tend. 
 
 " I therefore maintain that the project of a union is nothing less than 
 to annul the Parliament of Ireland, or to transfer the legislative authority 
 to the people of another country. To such an act the minister main- 
 tains the Irish Parliament to be competent, for, in substance, he main- 
 tains it to be omnipotent. I deny it ; such an act in the Parliament, 
 without the authority of the jjeoplc, is a breach of trust. Parliament is 
 
292 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 not the proprietor, but the trustee, and the people the proprietor, and 
 not the property. Parliament is called to make laws, not to elect law- 
 makers." 
 
 He fortifies these views by the high authority of Locke, Puffendorf, 
 Hooker, Mr. Lechmere, Sir Joseph Jekyl, Edmund Burke, Lord Boling- 
 broke and Junius, and he concludes a powerful argumentative speech 
 with the following noble words: "The question is not now such as occu- 
 pied you of old — not old Poyning's, not peculation, not plunder, not an 
 embargo, not a Catholic bill, not a reform bill : it is your being — it is 
 more— it is your life to come, whether you will go with the Castle at 
 your head to the tomb of Charlemont and. the volunteers" [Charlemont 
 had died recently, and had been succeeded by his son Francis) " and erase 
 his epitaph, or whether your children shall go to your graves saying, 
 ' A venal, a military court attacked the liberties of the Irish, and here 
 lie the bones of the honorable dead men who saved their country!' 
 Such an epitaph is a nobility which the king cannot give his slaves ; 
 it is a glory which the crown cannot give the king." 
 
 The faction of the Castle now thirsted for Grattan's blood. On the 
 14th of February the "right honorable" bravo, Cony, made another 
 truculent personal attack on him. To this Grattan replied in one of the 
 finest and most scathing invectives in any language : " Has the gentle- 
 man done ? Has he completely done ?" thus Grattan bursts forth. " He 
 was unparliamentary from the beginning to the end of his speech. . . . 
 I did not call him to order — why ? because the limited talents of some 
 men render it impossible for them to be severe without being unparlia- 
 mentary. But before I sit down I will show him how to be severe and 
 parliamentary at the same time. ... I know the difficulty the right 
 honorable gentleman labored under when he attacked me, conscious 
 that, on a comparative view of our characters, public and private, there 
 is nothing he could say which Avould injure me. The public would not 
 believe the charge. I despise the falsehood. If such a charge were 
 made by an honest man, I would answer it in the manner I shall do 
 before I sit down. But I shall first reply to it when not made by an 
 honest man. 
 
 "The right honorable gentleman has called me 'an unimpeached 
 traitor.' I ask why not 'traitor' unqualified by any epithet? I will 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 293 
 
 tell him ; it was because he dare not. It was the act of a coward, who 
 raises his arm to strike, but has not the courage to give the blow. I 
 will not call him villain, because it would be unparliamentary, and he 
 is a privy counsellor. I will not call him fool, because he happens to 
 be chance. 1 lor of the exchequer. But I say he is one who has abused the 
 privilege of Parliament and freedom of debate to the uttering language, 
 which, if spoken out of the House, I should answer only with a blow. 
 I care not how high his situation, how low his character, how contempt- 
 ible his speech; whether a privy counsellor or a parasite, my answer 
 would be a blow. . . . 
 
 "The right honorable member has told me I deserted a profession 
 where wealth and station were the reward of industry and talent. If I 
 mistake not, that gentleman endeavored to obtain those rewards by the 
 same means ; but he soon deserted the occupation of a barrister for 
 those of a parasite and a pander. He fled from the labor of study to 
 flatter at the table of the great. He found the lord's parlor a better 
 sphere for his exertions than the hall of the Four Courts ; the house of 
 a great man a more convenient way to power and to place ; and that it 
 was easier for a statesman of middling talents to sell his friends than 
 for a lawyer of no talents to sell his clients. . . . 
 
 "The right honorable gentleman says I fled from the country after 
 exciting rebellion, and that I have returned to raise another. IS T o such 
 thing. The charge is false. The civil war had not commenced when I 
 left the kingdom, and I could not have returned without taking a part. 
 On the one side there was the camp of the rebel, on the other the camp 
 of the minister, a greater traitor than that rebel. The stronghold of the 
 constitution was nowhere to be found. I agree that the rebel who rises 
 against the government should have suffered, but I missed on the scaf- 
 fold the right honorable gentleman. Two desperate parties were in arms 
 against the constitution. The right honorable gentleman belonged to 
 one of those parties, and deserved death. I could not join the rebel- — I 
 could not join the government — I could not join torture — I could not join 
 half-hanging — I could not join free quarter — I could take part with 
 neither. I was therefore absent from a scene where I could not be 
 active without self-reproach, nor indifferent with safety. 
 
 "Many honorable gentlemen thought differently from me; I respect 
 
294 THE I/IFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 their opinions, but I keep my own ; and I think now, as I thought then, 
 that the treason of the minister against the liberties of the people was infi- 
 nitely worse than the rebellion of the people against the minister. 
 
 " I have returned, not, as the right honorable member has said, to 
 raise another storm — I have returned to discharge an honorable debt of 
 gratitude to my country that conferred a great reAvard for past services, 
 which, I am proud to say, was not greater than my desert. I have 
 returned to protect that constitution, of which I was the parent and the 
 founder, from the assassination of such men as the honorable gentleman 
 and his unworthy associates. They are corrupt — they are seditious — 
 and they, at this very moment, are in a conspiracy against their 
 country. T have returned to refute a libel, as false as it is malicious, 
 given to the public under the appellation of a report of the committee 
 of the Lords. Here I stand ready for impeachment or trial. I dare 
 accusation. I defy the honorable gentleman ; I defy the government ; 
 I defy their whole phalanx ; let them come forth. I tell the ministers I 
 will neither give them quarter nor take it. I am here to lay the shat- 
 tered remains of my constitution on the floor of this House in defence of 
 the liberties of my country." 
 
 Grattan and Corry both left the House immediately after the close 
 of this terrible philippic. Lest he should be arrested and so prevented 
 from lighting, Grattan kept away from home, but he tells us he sent for 
 his favorite duelling-pistols. He had already refused to listen to a pro- 
 posal for an amicable arrangement made to him by the Speaker, who 
 had sent for him to his chamber (the House being at the time in com- 
 mittee), Grattan remarking that he saw and had been for some time 
 aware of a set made at him to pistol him off on that question. Next 
 morning, in a field by the Dodder bank, not far from Ball's bridge, Grat- 
 tan and Corry met to exchange shots. A crowd was present, all sym- 
 pathizing with the great patriot. Suddenly there is a cry of "the 
 sheriff." The antagonists are told to fire at once, without waiting for 
 the regular formalities. When the sheriff and his myrmidons approach, 
 General Cradock, Cony's second, shoves that functionary into a ditch 
 and holds him there while the duel takes place. The result of the first 
 rapid tire is that Corry is wounded in the arm, while Grattan stands 
 unscathed. Grattan tells us he could have killed Corry if he willed 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 295 
 
 to do so. A second exchange of shots takes place ; but this time Grat- 
 tan fires in the air, while Cony, having discharged his pistol, falls bleed- 
 ing on the ground. The populace cheer; there was reason to believe 
 that, if any harm befel Grattan, Cony would have fallen a sacrifice to 
 the popular fury. And now Grattan is hurried off' the field by his friends. 
 As he passes Cony he shakes hands with him. Years after Grattan is 
 in Brighton. A man broken down in health and spirit knocks at his 
 door. The members of Grattan's family are disinclined to admit the 
 strange visitor. At last Grattan himself opens the door, stretches forth 
 his hand and warmly grasps that of the stranger, who, sick in body, is 
 more bruised and sore in spirit from humiliations in the British senate, 
 from remorse and vain regrets. Grattan's kindness deeply affects Cony, 
 for the visitor is Grattan's old foe. This unmerited kindness stabs the 
 worn-out and dying courtier to the heart. He crawls away. On this 
 side of the grave they meet no more. 
 
 Mr. Ponsonby's proposal that an address should be presented to the 
 king, stating that twenty-six counties and various cities and towns had 
 petitioned against the union, was insolently rejected. The proposals of 
 Mr. Saurin and Sir John Parnell, that an appeal should be made to the 
 people by a dissolution of Parliament, had no better fate. Still the 
 patriots hoped against hope ; they fought the government inch by inch. 
 On the 19th of March, Grattan delivered another splendid anti-union 
 oration. Speaking of the advocates of the measure, he said, "that 
 according to their doctrine, should the government of France, Bonaparte 
 for instance, be able to corrupt a majority of the two Houses of the 
 British Parliament, that majority is competent to transfer the powers 
 of the British legislature to Paris." He argued that the numerous anti- 
 union petitions showed that there was no real feeling of identification 
 between the two nations. The peroration was splendid : " I might here 
 appeal to the different branches of the constitution, which you are going- 
 bo devote. To the Lords : will they burn their robes, overset the throne, 
 disgrace their ancestors, disqualify their blood, and consent to become 
 slaves with nicknames, instead of peers with privileges?" Indeed, the 
 conduct of the less powerful lords, who had only Irish peerages, was 
 absolutely suicidal. The Irish peers were only to be represented in the 
 Parliament of the empire by four spiritual and twenty-eight temporal 
 
296 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. 
 
 peers. The Irish lords, then, who could not get themselves chosen as rep- 
 resentative peers, could have no voice as Irishmen in Parliament, for they 
 were debarred by law from sitting in the House of Commons for Ireland. 
 An English constituency, indeed, might send them to the lower House. 
 Hence Mr. Speaker Foster complained that the article relating to the 
 Irish peerage created a sort of mongrel peer — half lord, half commoner. 
 He also pointed out as a natural consequence of the eligibility of Irish 
 peers as members of the Commons for English constituencies, to which 
 they were strangers (while absurdly and even monstrously they could 
 not be chosen legislators where they had connections, property and dwell- 
 ings), that, in order to solicit interest, these nobles would necessarily be- 
 come absentees, and gradually cease all intimate acquaintance with their 
 native land. Mr. Grattan, after appealing to the Lords, asks the Commons, 
 who remember '82, "Will you violate the obsequies of our dead general 
 and renounce publicly and deliberately for ever your constitution and 
 renown ? ... Do not now scandalize your own professions on that occa- 
 sion, as well as renounce your former achievements, and close a political 
 life of seven hundred years by one monstrous, self-surrendering, self- 
 debasing act of relinquishment, irretrievable, irrecoverable, flagitious 
 and abominable." He even appeals to the king not to sink his house 
 "to the level of other kings by corrupt and unconstitutional victories ob- 
 tained over the liberties and charters of his subjects." It was the spirit 
 c.f a free constitution, he says, "that in former times drove old Bourbon 
 in battle; it was this that made His Majesty's subjects men, not slaves; 
 and it is this which you are going in Ireland, along with the constitu- 
 tion from whence it emanated, to extinguish for ever. 
 
 "I conclude, in these moments — they seem to be the closing moments 
 of your existence — by a supplication to that Power whom I tremble to 
 name, that Power who has favored you for seven hundred years with the 
 rights and image of a free government, and who has lately conducted 
 you out of that desert where for a century you had wandered, that He 
 will not desert you now, but will be pleased to permit our beloved consti- 
 tution to remain a little longer among us, and interpose His mercy 
 between the stroke of death and the liberties of the people." 
 
 All was now gloom and terror in Dublin. The Houses of Parliament 
 were constantly surrounded by bodies of soldiers, skilfully posted in Col- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 207 
 
 lege Green and in Dame and Westmoreland, streets. This was by way 
 of preserving the peace, but the real object was manifestly to crush or 
 prevent the expression of popular feeling. The anti-unionists wanted, 
 unity of direction and organization. Cooke's persuasive powers were 
 every day making fresh converts. The Catholic bishop of Kilkenny, Dr. 
 Lanigan (like other Catholic prelates), and his clergy, sent in an address 
 to the viceroy favorable to the union. This grievously pained the Cath- 
 olic body. However, an amusing blunder in the servile document made 
 them laugh till their sides ached. Cornwallis had a queer defect in one 
 of his eyes : it was diminutive and always moving in some grotesque, 
 nervous way. Unluckily for their reputation as adroit courtiers, Dr. 
 Lanigan and his clergy had never seen His Excellency. Wherefore they 
 oddly and awkwardly commenced their abject address in these somewhat 
 inappropriate terms: "Your Excellency has always kept a steady eye on 
 the interests of Ireland." The marquis forgot to thank his right- reverend 
 and reverend admirers for this graeefal compliment. 
 
 In the Lords everything went smoothly for the government. Two 
 amendments to the act were carried by Chancellor Clare. One was to the 
 effect that always, on the extinction of three Irish peerages, one might be 
 created, till the number of Irish peers should be reduced to one hundred, 
 after which a new one might be created in place of every peerage that 
 should become extinct ; the other amendment declared that the quali- 
 fications of Irish members in the United Parliament should be the same 
 with those of the English members. In the last days of March, after 
 the articles of union had been separately argued and assented to, both 
 Houses addressed the king in favor of the union of the two kingdoms. 
 After this the business rested in the Irish Parliament, while the British 
 Parliament was doing its share of the work so fatal to the liberties of 
 Ireland. There was some opposition in the English Houses. Lord Hol- 
 land opposed the measure in the Lords. In the Commons, Sheridan 
 nobly fought the battle of his native country. The year before he had 
 boldly said that " such an insult would not have been offered to her 
 while her volunteers were in arms." This year his opposition to the 
 baleful measure was fully as vigorous. He insisted that the people of 
 Ireland were opposed to the measure. He denounced the corrupt means 
 employed to carry it; he asserted that no attempt had been made to deny 
 
298 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELI. 
 
 - 1 
 
 the notorious fact, that sixty-five seats had been vacated to make places 
 for men whose obsequiousness would not permit them to oppose the 
 measure. It is pleasant to find our brilliant Sheridan "true to his sire- 
 land " in this terrible crisis of her fate : " My country has claims upon me 
 which I am not more proud to acknowledge than ready to liquidate to 
 the full measure of my ability." This he said in the English Commons 
 in '99. We find in Grattan's Memoirs, by his son, vol. v., p. 68, the fol- 
 lowing passage, in which an utterance most honorable to Sheridan occurs : 
 "Unquestionably, Lord Clare and Lord Castlereagh deserved to die. 
 The popular execution of such state criminals would have been a 
 national as well as a noble judicial sentence. 
 
 " Some weak old women might have cried out ' Murder!' but it would 
 have been the deed of a Brutus ; and in the eyes of posterity the people 
 ■would have been justified, for the union was a great and legitimate 
 cause of resistance. Sheridan, in a conversation he had with Mr. Grat- 
 tan on the subject, exclaimed, ' For the Irish Parliament I would have 
 fought England — ay, I would have fought up to my knees in blood.' " 
 But, to return, Mr. Grey, afterwards Earl Grey, also opposed the union 
 strenuously in the English Commons— he even moved to " suspend pro- 
 ceedings on the union till the sentiments of the people of Ireland should 
 be ascertained;" but his vote was negatived by a vote of two hundred 
 and thirty-six against thirty. In short, Pitt had no difficulty in hurry- 
 ing the act of union through the English Houses. His partisans in the 
 Lords cushioned a motion of Lord Holland's intended to give the Cath- 
 olics some pledge for the abolition of their disabilities. 
 
 On the' 21st of May, Castlereagh, in the Irish Commons, formally 
 moved for leave to bring in his bill for the legislative union. Grattan 
 denounced the bill with a divine fury. Lord Castlereagh, in a style of 
 insolent menace, censured what he called the inflammatory language of 
 Mr. Grattan. " But he defied their incentives to treason, and had no 
 doubt of the energy of the government in defending the constitution 
 against every attack." In the fiery debates that ensued, Plunket, after- 
 wards a peer of the empire and Irish chancellor, Bushe, afterwards chief- 
 justice of Ireland, and Saurin, afterwards Irish attorney-general, spoke 
 those memorable passages against the union, which, as O'Connell was 
 always repeating them in his "Repeal'' speeches and letters, must ever 
 
TIIE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 2 C J'J 
 
 form an indispensable part of any complete biography of " the Liberator." 
 Plunket said, "You are appointed to act under the constitution, and not 
 to alter it ; and if you do so, your act is a dissolution of the government. 
 . . . Sir, I state doctrines that are not merely founded on the immutable 
 laws of truth and reason, . . . but I state the practice of our constitu- 
 tion as settled at the era of the revolution, and I state the doctrine 
 under which the House of Hanover derives its title to the throne." He 
 would not sacriiice British connection to revolutionary projects. "But," 
 says he, "I have as little hesitation in saying that, if the wanton 
 ambition of a minister should assail the freedom of Ireland, and compel 
 me to the alternative, I would fling the connection to the winds and clasp 
 the independence of my country to my heart." The year before, Plunket 
 had said, when denying the competency of the Irish Parliament to trans- 
 fer its rights to another legislature, "Yourselves you may extinguish, but 
 Parliament you cannot extinguish. It is enthroned in the hearts of the 
 people. It is enshrined in the sanctuary of the constitution. It is 
 immortal as the island it protects. As well might the frenzied suicide 
 hope that the act which destroys his miserable body should extinguish 
 his immortal soul. Again, I therefore warn you, do not dare to lay your 
 hands on the constitution : it is above your power." At the same time 
 he galled Castlereagh by describing him as "this young philosopher, 
 who has been transplanted from the nursery to the cabinet to outrage 
 the feelings and understanding of the country." He also, while the 
 splendid Lady Castlereagh was sitting in the gallery, called her husband 
 "a green and sapless twig." This was a withering allusion to the 
 suspected impotency of the childless minister, who, in the wantonness 
 of his arrogance, had described the opposition as "a desperate faction," 
 led by " levellers and pettifoggers," and trading on the prejudices of a 
 barbarous people. 
 
 Bushe says, " I see nothing in it (the union) but one question, Will 
 you give up the country ? . . . I look upon it simply as England reclaim- 
 ing in a moment of your weakness that dominion which you extorted 
 from her in a moment of your virtue — a dominion which she uniformly 
 abused, which invariably oppressed and impoverished you, and from the 
 cessation of which you date all your prosperity.'' 1 He then speaks of the 
 " fraud and oppression and unconstitutional practice," which were re- 
 
oOO THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 sorted to for the purpose of carrying the measure, as possibly justifying 
 refusal of obedience to it. He says, " If this be factious language, Lord 
 Somers was factious, the founders of the revolution were factious, Wil- 
 liam III. was an usurper, and the revolution was a rebellion." 
 
 Mr. Saurin spoke thus: "You may make the union binding as a 
 law, but you cannot make it obligatory on conscience. It will be 
 obeyed so long as England is strong, but resistance to it will be in the 
 abstract a duty, and the exhibition of that resistance will be a mere 
 question of prudence." 
 
 But our illustrious Grattan on the 26th of May surpassed himself. 
 His magnificent speech on that occasion might almost be called the 
 " death-song " of the Irish nation, if it were not that, to use his own 
 expression, though " in a swoon, . . . she is not dead." In this marvel- 
 lous speech he denounces the corruption that prevailed : "From the bad 
 terms which attend the union, I am naturally led to the foul means by 
 which it has been obtained — dismissals from office ; perversions of the 
 place bill; sale of peerage; purchase of boroughs; appointment of 
 sheriffs with a view to prevent the meetings of freemen and freeholders 
 for the purpose of expressing their opinions on the subject of a legisla- 
 tive union, — in short, the most avowed corruption, threats and strata- 
 gems, accompanied by martial law, to deprive a nation of her liberty." 
 He assails the partiality of the measure: "We follow the minister. In 
 defence of his plan of union, he tells us the number of Irish representa- 
 tives in the British Parliament is of little consequence. This doctrine 
 is new, namely, that between two nations the comparative influence is 
 of no moment. According to this, it would be of no moment what 
 should be the number of the British Parliament, No, says the minister, 
 the alteration is to be limited to the Irish Parliament; the number and 
 fabric of the British is to remain entire, unaltered and unalterable. 
 What now becomes of the argument of mutual and reciprocal change ?" 
 He shows, in fact, that the union was a "merger of her (Ireland's) Par- 
 liament in the legislature of the other." He next shows that all the 
 talk of the identification of the two nations is an impudent piece of 
 mockery. 
 
 "The minister goes on, and supposes one hundred Irish will be 
 sufficient, because he supposes any number will be sufficient ; and he 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 301 
 
 supposes any number would be sufficient, because the nations are identi- 
 fied. Thus he speaks as if identification was at once a cause to flow 
 from representation, and an event which preceded it. You are one 
 people — such is his argument — because you are represented, and what 
 signifies how, or, indeed, whether you be represented? But the fact is, 
 that you are identified (if you be identified, which I deny) in the single 
 point of representation, and that representation is absorbed in the supe- 
 rior numbers of the English Parliament, and that apparent identification 
 is, of course, lost, while you remain a distinct country — distinct in inter- 
 est, reA-enue, law, finance, commerce, government." 
 
 The close of this glorious oration is wonderful in its surpassing beauty 
 and pathos : 
 
 "The constitution may be for a time so lost; the character of the 
 country cannot be lost. The ministers of the crown will or may per- 
 haps at length find that it is not so easy to put down for ever an ancient 
 and respectable nation by abilities, however great, and by power and 
 by corruption, however irresistible ; liberty may repair her golden beams, 
 and with redoubled heat animate the country ; the cry of loyalty will 
 not long continue against the principles of liberty ; loyalty is a noble, a 
 judicious and a capacious principle, but in these countries loyalty, dis- 
 tinct from liberty, is corruption, not loyalty. 
 
 "The cry of the connection will not, in the end, avail against the 
 principles of liberty. Connection is a wise and a profound policy, but 
 connection without an Irish Parliament is connection without its own 
 principle, without analogy of condition, without the pride of honor that 
 should attend it, is innovation, is peril, is subjugation, not connection. 
 
 "The cry of disaffection will not, in the end, avail against the prin- 
 ciples of liberty. 
 
 " Identification is a solid and imperial maxim, necessary for the pres- 
 ervation of freedom, necessary for that of empire; but without union 
 of hearts, with a separate government, and without a separate Parlia- 
 ment, identification is extinction, is dishonor, is conquest, not identifi- 
 cation. 
 
 " Yet I do not give up the country ; I see her in a swoon, but she is 
 not dead ; though in her tomb she lies helpless and motionless, still there 
 is on her lips a spirit of life, and on her cheek a glow of beauty. 
 
302 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 ' Thou art not conquered ; beauty's ensign yet 
 Is crimson on thy lips and in thy cheeks, 
 And death's pale flag is not advanced there.' 
 
 " While a plank of the vessel sticks together, I will not leave her. 
 Let the courtier present his flimsy sail, and carry the light bark of his 
 faith with every new breath of wind ; I will remain anchored here with 
 fidelity to the fortunes of my country, faithful to her freedom, faithful to 
 her fall." 
 
 But vain were all the efforts of genius, eloquence, fidelity, patriotism 
 and valor. On the 7th of June the bill was read for the third time in 
 the House of Commons, and passed. Most of the anti-unionists rose and 
 left the House, in order not to witness the extinction of their country's 
 independence by her own degenerate sons. I remember having heard 
 an old Church-of-England clergyman relate with what indignant scorn 
 he and his fellow-students of Trinity College turned aside, that night, 
 from Dr. Brown, one of the members of the University — an American by 
 birth — who had sold himself to the minister. All refused to speak to 
 him. Indeed, the names of most of the renegades to their country's 
 cause are tenaciously held in memory and execration by the Irish peo- 
 ple to this day. And those who held out gallantly to the last are em- 
 balmed in the honored, in the affectionate remembrance of their coun- 
 trymen. 
 
 It cannot be denied that the Irish Parliament was corrupted ; but 
 the Irish representatives in London are, to-day, far more easily and 
 surely corrupted ; and, as Mr. Mitchel justly observes, no assembly in 
 the world's history was ever exposed to such extraordinary temptation 
 as the two Houses of the Irish Parliament. Four commissioners were 
 appointed to carry the provisions of the compensation statute into exe- 
 cution. The records of their scandalous proceedings, Barrington tells 
 us, were "unaccountably disposed of." Still, it is known that "Lord 
 Shannon received for his patronage in the Commons forty-five thousand 
 pounds, the marquis of Ely forty-five thousand pounds, Lord Clanmorris 
 (besides a peerage) twenty-three thousand pounds, Lord Belvidere (be- 
 sides his douceur) fifteen thousand pounds, and Sir Hercules Langrishe 
 fifteen thousand pounds." Let it be remembered that Castlereagh was 
 not afraid nor ashamed to say in the House of Commons, " Half a million 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 30o 
 
 or more was expended, some years ago, to break an opposition ; the same, 
 or a greater sum, may be necessary now." Mr* Grattan is our authority 
 for these audacious words of Castlereagh. In his "answer to Lord 
 Clare," Mr. Grattan, after quoting the sentence, says : " So said the prin- 
 cipal servant of the Crown. The House heard him ; I heard him ; he 
 said it standing on his legs to the astonished House and an indignant 
 nation, and he said so in the most extensive sense of bribery and cor- 
 ruption. The threat was proceeded on, the peerage was sold, the caitiffs 
 of corruption were everywhere — in the lobby, in the street, on the steps, 
 and at the door of every parliamentary leader, whose thresholds were 
 worn by the members of the then administration, offering titles to some, 
 amnesty to others, and corruption to all." 
 
 But in reality, as I stated before, the purchase-money of the union 
 amounted to at least five million pounds. There is much truth in John 
 Mitchel's observation on this wholesale bribery : " What Parliament or 
 Congress has ever been tempted so ? There is no need to make invidious 
 or disparaging reflections, but Englishmen, and Frenchmen, and Amer- 
 icans should pray that their respective legislatures may never be sub 
 jected to such an ordeal." He adds a note to this passage : " If bribery 
 upon the same scale, say one hundred million dollars, were now 
 judiciously administered in the English Parliament, a majority could be 
 obtained which would annex the three kingdoms to the United States." 
 In spite of the undeniable corruptness of the majority in both Houses of 
 the Irish Parliament, I am even inclined to agree with the opinion to 
 which Mr. Mitchel gives expression in the following sentences: "In 
 fact, he {Castlereagh) felt, with uneasiness, that the genius and eloquence 
 of the land, as well as its integrity, were full against him ; and no legis- 
 lative body, ever yet sitting in one House, has possessed so large a pro- 
 portion of grand orators, learned lawyers and accomplished gentlemen. 
 It may be fearlessly added, that no Parliament has ever had so large a 
 proportion of honorable men. Had it not been so, the splendid bribes 
 then ready to be thrust into every man's hand would have ensured to the 
 Castle a much greater majority, and Ave should not have seen the noble 
 ranks of unpurchasable patriots thronging so thick on the Opposition 
 benches to the last." It is also to be borne in mind that apparently 
 some few members voted for the union from a sincere, but mistaken, con- 
 
 20 
 
304 THE LIFE OF DA2TIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 viction that the measure would prove beneficial to Ireland. These were 
 uninfluenced by fear or favor, their hands were clean. 
 
 I regret that want of space prevents me from giving the list of the 
 names of the purchased lawyers and other traitors who voted for the 
 union. It is well to hand their infamy down to posterity ; it is well that 
 the manner in which certain powerful Irish families rose to title and 
 eminence should be generally known. The case of Mr. Trench of Wood- 
 lawn, afterwards created Lord Ashtown, was one of the most nefarious 
 and barefaced instances of bargain and sale that occurred during the 
 entire " union " struggle. The minister was from an early period bidding 
 for Mr. Trench's honor and conscience, but for a time he failed to bid suf- 
 ficiently high. One night Trench declares in the House of Commons that 
 he will vote against the minister. The minister and Cooke immediately 
 whisper together and look anxiously, but still in an undecided manner, 
 towards Trench. Cooke retires to a back seat to count the House. Is 
 Trench worth the price he wants? That is the question. Cooke and 
 Castlereagh again confer in whispers, looking wistfully and affectionately 
 at the unconscious Trench. At last, however, the eyes of Cooke and 
 Trench met. One glance only, and they understood each other. Cooke 
 is quickly by his side. He finds Trench open to conviction. A smile 
 and they part. Presently Trench takes occasion to apologize to the 
 House for having spoken unguardedly against the measure; on reflection 
 he finds lie was rash. Being convinced of his error, he will vote for the 
 minister. This shameless sale of himself by a man of fortune, family 
 and reputation took place under the eyes of two hundred and twenty 
 gentlemen. (See Barring-ton' s "Rise and Fall.") Three Trenches are in 
 the "Black List," and one of them, in addition to his other bribes, was 
 made an ambassador. The names of those, who voted for and against 
 the union, are given in the " Red " and " Black Lists," and may be found 
 in Plowden's "Appendix" and in Sir Jonah Barrington's "Rise and Fall 
 of the Irish Nation." The sayings and protests of the ablest lawyers 
 and purest patriots of Ireland against the union, during the long and 
 fierce debates on that question, are a noble set-off to the infamy of the 
 false and parricidal Irishmen, who betrayed and destroyed their country's 
 independence, and those glorious words live and will live to influence 
 succeeding patriots to redeem Ireland. In the words of John Mitchel, 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 those "solemn and well-weighed words of warning and expostulation, if 
 the}' could not save the country for that time, remain on record as a pro- 
 test, as a continual claim and perpetual muniment of title, on behalf of 
 the independence of the Irish nation." O'Connell was never tired of 
 referring to them. 
 
 When the bill was read the third time in the Irish upper House, 
 several lords voted against it. The dissenting peers also signed an 
 indignant protest, Here is the concluding paragraph: "Because the 
 argument made use of in favor of the union, namely, that the sense of 
 the people of Ireland is in its favor, we know to be untrue ; and as the 
 ministers have declared that they would not press the measure against 
 the sense of the people, and as the people have pronounced decidedly, 
 and under all difficulties, their judgment against it, we have, together 
 with the sense of the country, the authority of the minister, to enter our 
 protest against the project of union, against the yoke which it imposes, 
 the dishonor which it inflicts, the disqualification passed upon the peer- 
 age, the stigma thereby branded on the realm, the disproportionate prin- 
 ciple of expense it introduces, the means employed to effect it, the dis- 
 contents it has excited and must continue to excite. Against all these, 
 and the fatal consequences they may produce, we have endeavored to 
 interpose our votes, and, failing, we transmit to after times our names 
 in solemn protest, on behalf of the parliamentary constitution of this 
 realm, the liberty which it secured, the trade which it protected, the con- 
 nection which it preserved, and the constitution which it supplied and 
 fortified. This we feel ourselves called upon to do in support of our 
 characters, our honor and whatever is left to us worthy to be transmitted 
 to our posterity." This document is signed by the following peers: 
 "Leinster, Arran, Mountcashel, Farnham, Belmore, by proxy, Massy, 
 by proxy, Strangford, Granard, Ludlow, by proxy, Moira, by proxy, 
 Rev. Waterford and Lismore, Powerscourt, De Vesci, Charlemont, Kings- 
 ton, by proxy, Eiversdale. by proxy, Meath, Lismore, by proxy, Sun- 
 derlin." In the English House of Lords the marquis of Downshire, 
 who, like many other Irish peers, had an English peerage also, said 
 "that his opinion of the measure remained unaltered, and that he 
 would, therefore, give the bill his decided negative." 
 
 The scenes in the Irish Commons on the night when the bill finally 
 
306 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 passed there — that of June 7th — were solemn and impressive, yet, 
 like most Irish scenes, there was a certain element of the ludicrous 
 mixed with the tragic features of the drama. Mr. O'Donnell moved a 
 postponement of the third reading (he is supposed to have moved or 
 declared, on the 5th, that the people ought to resist the union by force). 
 Mr. Francis Dobbs, a learned lawyer and accomplished gentleman, who 
 however, was a fanatic, if not an out-and-out madman, on the one sub- 
 ject of the millennium, rose to support him in a most extraordinary 
 speech. This gentleman believed that Ireland was decreed by Provi- 
 dence to be an independent state for ever. Ireland was also to be the 
 birthplace of Antichrist, and in Ireland the Messiah was destined, at 
 his second coining, to reign. The oration of Mr. Dobbs — which was the 
 last noteworthy speech delivered against the union — embodied whimsical 
 notions of this description. The divided and convulsed state of Europe 
 was a fulfilment of one of Daniel's prophecies; consequently it was 
 manifest the millennium was drawing near. The detestable measure of 
 the union occasioned him (Mr. Dobbs) little fear or concern, as he felt 
 that it could never be operative. The house was partly amused and 
 partly shocked by this singular discourse. Of course O'Donnell's motion 
 was lost. 
 
 Sir Jonah Barrington gives a graphic, though it has been thought 
 somewhat theatrical, description of the closing scene that night. Some 
 touches in the picture may, indeed, be slightly exaggerated, yet I am 
 inclined to think that, on the whole, Sir Jonah's account gives us a true 
 and vivid idea of what really took place. He particularly describes the 
 grief and embarrassment of the Speaker, Foster, who was an uncompro- 
 mising enemy of the measure, yet obliged by his office to proclaim its 
 consummation. Mr. Foster's disturbed feelings were visible in the agi- 
 tated expression of his countenance and in the tones of his voice. The 
 following paragraphs from Barriugton cannot fail to interest, at least, 
 every Irish reader whose mind is animated by a single spark of 
 patriotism : 
 
 " The galleries were full, but the change was lamentable. They were 
 no longer crowded with those who had been accustomed to witness the 
 eloquence and to animate the debates of that devoted assembly. A 
 monotonous and melancholy murmur ran through the benches; scarcely 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 307 
 
 a word was exchanged amongst the members. Nobody seemed at ease ; 
 no cheerfulness was apparent, and the ordinary business for a short time 
 proceeded in the usual manner. 
 
 "At length the expected moment arrived. The order of the day — ■ 
 for the third reading of the bill for a legislative union between Great 
 Britain and Ireland — was moved by Lord Castlereagh. Unvaried, tame, 
 cold-blooded, the words seemed frozen as they issued from his lips, and 
 as if, a simple citizen of the world, he seemed to have no sensation on 
 the subject. 
 
 "The Speaker, Mr. Foster, who was one of the most vehement oppo- 
 nents of the union from first to last, would have risen and left the House 
 with his friends, if he could; but this would have availed nothing. 
 With grave dignity he presided over 'the last agony of the expiring 
 Parliament.' He held up the bill for a moment in silence, then asked 
 the usual question, to which the response, ' Ay, 1 was languid, but un- 
 mistakable. Another momentary pause ensued. Again his lips seemed 
 to decline their office. At length, with an eye averted from the object 
 which he hated, he proclaimed, with a subdued voice, 'The ayes have it.' 
 For an instant he stood statue-like, then, indignantly and in disgust, 
 flung the bill upon the table and sunk into his chair with an exhausted 
 spirit." 
 
 This is the picture, be it remembered, of an eye-witness. On this 
 disastrous and memorable night, bands of red soldiery were drawn up 
 under the colonnades of that Senate House, which, -to borrow the lan- 
 guage of the late Thomas Francis Meagher, "lends an Italian glory" to 
 the Irish metropolis. Batteries of artillery, too, were kept in readiness 
 to sweep the surrounding streets on the first symptoms of a popular 
 outbreak. I may here remark that Sir Jonah Barrington deserves the 
 praise due to every member of the expiring legislature, who, spurning 
 alike bribes and intimidation, strove hard to the last to prevent the act 
 of union from passing into law. The humorous knight's staunchness 
 during this entire struggle ought to cover many a fault. Mr. Mitchel 
 says of this night's proceedings: "Doubtless to many readers this 
 closing performance will appear somewhat histrionic and melodramatic. 
 Yet, in sad and bitter earnest, that scene was deep tragedy ; and its 
 catastrophe is here with us at this day, in thousands upon thousands 
 
of ruined cabins, and pining prisoners, and outlawed rebels, and the 
 poverty and hunger that move and scandalize the world." 
 
 The English bill received the royal assent on the 2d of July. On 
 the 29th of July, in proroguing the last separate legislature of Great 
 Britain, the king congratulated his Parliament, and said he should ever 
 consider the union "the happiest event of his reign." 
 
 Though the Irish bill had passed before the English, yet the royal 
 assent was not given in Ireland till the 1st of August, the anniversary 
 of the accession of "brutal Brunswick's" line to the throne of the three 
 kingdoms. In putting an end to the last session of the last Irish Par- 
 liament, next day, Lord Cornwallis communicated, "by His Majesty's 
 express command," to the bribed legislators, who had annihilated the 
 independence of their country, "his warmest acknowledgments for that 
 ardent zeal and unshaken perseverance," which they had shown in 
 "maturing and completing" the union. With facetious irony, he com- 
 plimented them on "the proofs" given by them of "uniform attachment 
 to the real interests of their country," which, he still more humorously 
 adds, will "not only entitle you to the full approbation of your sovereign 
 and to the applause of your fellow-subjects, but must afford you the 
 surest claim to the gratitude of posterity." This speech is a perfectly 
 beautiful specimen of double-distilled British cant. When all was over, 
 Gastlereagh, in person, coolly locked the doors of the Parliament House 
 and carried off the keys. 
 
 The union took effect on the 1st of January, 1801. On that day a 
 new imperial standard (the one ever since in use) floated over the Tower 
 of London and on the castles of Dublin and Edinburgh. This standard 
 is "quartered, first and fourth England, second Scotland, third Ireland." 
 It was then Ireland's harp got its place on England's great banner. 
 The union jack, with its crosses of St. Andrew, St. Patrick and St. 
 George, was ordained at the same time. 
 
 The debt of Ireland had been not above four millions sterling pre- 
 vious to the rebellion. But the expenses of the large army, required to 
 crush the revolt and overawe the people, and of the nefarious devices 
 employed to carry the union, had, in three years, swelled it to 
 £26,841,219. Ireland, in short, had to pay the bill for the slaughtei 
 of her sons and the extinction of her nationality. Referring to this, 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONXELL. 309 
 
 O'Connell observed, with bitter, sarcastic humor, "It was strange that 
 [reland was not afterwards made to pay for the knife with which Lord 
 Castlereagh, twenty-two years later, cut his own throat." Under Eng- 
 lish management, the debt went on increasing twice as fast as the 
 English debt. In 1801 the Irish debt was to the English as one to 
 sixteen and a half. By clever British manipulation it was in a few 
 years as one to seven and a half. This increased debt was made the 
 pretext for raising Ireland's taxation to the high British standard. The 
 two conditions of amalgamation required by the union being in this 
 fashion fulfilled, the two debts were consolidated in 1817, and Ireland 
 was henceforward liable to the pre-union debt of Great Britain. "Woe 
 to the land on whose judgment-seats a stranger sits, at whose gates a 
 stranger watches!'' Mr. Mitchel adds, "Whose books a stranger keeps !" 
 Immediately after the passing of the act of the union those Catholic 
 prelates and gentlemen, who had been seduced into the pro-union ranks, 
 found that they had been swindled by the false promises of the British 
 government. The hopes of speedy emancipation were all a delusion, and 
 remained so till O'Connell's victory at the Clare election in 1829. Pitt 
 juggled the Catholic unionists famously. He resigned, that a necessary 
 peace might be made with France, which his pride prevented him from 
 negotiating himself. It would not do, however, to admit his real mo- 
 tives. He pretended, then, that the cause of his resignation was the 
 obstinate refusal of George III. to tolerate the notion of Catholic eman- 
 cipation. But the king's inveterate obstinacy on this point had been 
 just as well known to Pitt when he was holding out deceitful hopes to 
 the Catholic prelates and men of influence. Plowden the historian was 
 one of those Catholic supporters of the union. Ten years later he writes 
 in the very first page of the second series of his " Historical Collections," 
 " They {the Catholics) now beheld the baleful measure of the union in its 
 full deformity." The paper* given by Lord Cornwallis to Dr. Troy, the 
 Catholic archbishop of Dublin, and the earl of Fingal, though intended 
 to be kept secret, was soon made public. Mr. Grey, afterwards Earl 
 Grey, in the House of Commons charged the promises to the Catholics 
 with having been given without sincerity and without authority. He 
 accused the government of criminality, and called for inquiry. Pitt said 
 
 * A paper showing plainly that the minister had promised emancipation. 
 
310 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 "he had no part in the wording of that paper. It was drawn np by 
 Lord Castlereagh." He denied "that any pledge had been given to the 
 Catholics by himself, Lord Cornwallis, or the noble lord near him (Cas- 
 tlereagh)." Mr. Plowden wrote to Cornwallis, who replied that the 
 paper "was hastily given by him to Dr. Troy, to be circulated amongst 
 his friends with a view of preventing any immediate disturbances or 
 other bad effects." Such was the infamous manner in which these hon- 
 orable English warriors and statesmen wriggled out of the performance 
 of their pledges to the Catholics. But if emancipation was refused to the 
 Irish, the ministers delayed not to give them a fresh act to suspend the 
 writ of habeas corpus and establish martial law. Thus by Castlereagh's 
 management fresh alarms were excited by the report of a secret com- 
 mittee. This was following in the footsteps of Pitt's policy. 
 
 If we accept Mr. Plowden's statement, " none but the Catholic sup- 
 porters of the union had to complain of ministerial infidelity in the 
 observance of previous stipulations and promises." But the story of the 
 celebrated Chancellor Clare's well-merited fate seems to contradict this 
 assertion. Though Pitt spoke of Lord Clare as " that great luminary of 
 the law who had rendered such eminent services to his country," he at 
 the same time cautioned Mr. Addington, the new premier, against ad- 
 mitting him to any share of power in the imperial councils. In the 
 English House of Lords the Irish chancellor, when he tried, in his old 
 style, to browbeat the Whig lords, and presumed to call them "Jaco- 
 bins," was soon rudely pulled up and snubbed by the duke of Bedford. 
 The duke told Lord Clare that his language was "such as they wouldn't 
 brook from their own equals, much less from the upstart pride of chance 
 nobility." In vain Clare pandered to English prejudice by running 
 down his own country. He was allowed no voice in the new ministerial 
 arrangements. The cravings of his inordinate ambition were left wholly 
 unsatisfied. He had betrayed his country to the English government, 
 and, instead of being rewarded with vast power, he was even treated 
 with humiliating neglect. Stung by these mortifications and the pangs 
 of baffled ambition, he would frequently express, in the bitterest terms, 
 his selfish and unavailing regret at having assisted to carry the union. 
 He would complain, that while formerly alike the highest appointment 
 and the lowest favor depended on his pleasure, he was now without the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 311 
 
 smallest influence or control. He determined to withdraw from the 
 political theatre where he played so poor a part, and confine himself to 
 the duties of his office in Ireland. But with the union the Irish chan- 
 cellorship had lost its highest importance. Clare's retreat was only a 
 modified form of disgrace. The rage of his proud spirit wasted his 
 frame, so that he died in January, 1802. lie was buried with pomp in 
 St. Peter's churchyard, Dublin, but the populace threw a shower of dead 
 cats on his grave. Thus the elevation, won by so much talent and 
 energy, such crimes and baseness, was to Lord Clare, in the end, but a 
 mockery and a snare. The union, instead of being the path to power 
 and glory, led him only to his grave and ignominy. His titles and 
 honors even, such as they were, are extinct. His last heir male, the 
 young Lord Fitzgibbon, perished in the light cavalry charge at Bala- 
 klava. A superstitious person would say the house could have had no 
 better luck. The founder of its fortunes, the chancellor's father, had, in 
 the course of his life, "played many parts." He had been successively 
 a vagrant boy, a Catholic ecclesiastical student, a priest, a renegade and 
 an unscrupulous lawyer. The closing words of Grattan's reply to the 
 earl of Clare, written in April, 1800, were almost prophetical: "Consider- 
 ing his situation more than he has done himself, I consign him to judges 
 more severe than I could be, and to him the most awful, and, on this side 
 the grave, the most tremendous — his country and his conscience!" 
 
 The end of the other arch-traitor to Ireland, Castlereagh, was miser- 
 able also. Twenty-two years later than the passing of the act of union, 
 driven on by the furies of insanity, he inflicted on himself a mortal 
 wound in the neck. His countrymen in London assembled around 
 Westminster Abbey on the day of his burial, and welcomed the be- 
 trayer of their country to his grave with three vociferous cheers. Mr. 
 Mitchel says: "It is singular that the only two eminent men who were, 
 within the present century, borne to their graves amidst the hootings 
 of the people were the earl of Clare and the marquis of Londonderry 
 (Castlereagh), the two able tools of British policy in ruining the inde- 
 pendence of their country." To Londonderry, Lord Byron has given an 
 evil immortality in "Don Juan," especially in the lines where he calls 
 him 
 
 "Carotid artery-cutting Castlereagh." 
 
b'12 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Before bringing this chapter to a close, it is necessary to say some- 
 thing of Robert Emmet and the insurrection of 1803. Robert Emmet, 
 the son of a distinguished Dublin physician, was the younger brother 
 of the "United Irish" leader, Thomas Addis Emmet. He was born on 
 the 4th of March. 1778. When a student of Trinity College, Dublin, 
 he was distinguished in the College Historical Society by his eloquent 
 advocacy of national and democratic principles. Of Emmet, Tommy 
 Moore writes thus in his life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald : " "Were I to 
 number the men among all I have ever known who appeared to me to 
 combine in the greatest degree pure moral worth with intellectual power, 
 I should among the highest of the few place Robert Emmet. ... He 
 was wholly free from the follies and frailties of youth, though how capa- 
 ble he was of the most devoted passion events afterwards proved." Of 
 his oratory Moore says: "I have heard little since that appeared to me 
 of a loftier, or, what is a far more rare quality in Irish eloquence, purer 
 character." Of his personal appearance he says: "Simple in all his 
 habits, and with a repose of look and manner indicating but little move- 
 ment within, it was only when the spring was touched that set his feel- 
 ings, and through them his intellect, in motion that he at all rose above 
 the level of ordinary men. No two individuals, indeed, could be much 
 more unlike to each other than was the same youth to himself before 
 rising to speak and after; the brow that had appeared inanimate and 
 almost drooping at once elevating itself to all the consciousness of power, 
 and the whole countenance and figure of the speaker assuming a change 
 as of one suddenly inspired." So great was the effect produced among 
 the students by his eloquence that the heads of the college, on several 
 occasions, sent one of the ablest of their body to the debates of the His- 
 torical Society in order to refute the arguments of the "young Jacobin." 
 They did not deem even this measure of precaution sufficient, for in 
 February, 1798, they expelled Robert and several of his political asso- 
 ciates from the university. After '98, as he had participated in the acts 
 of the leaders of the conspiracy, he was obliged to take refuge on the 
 Continent. He traveled through the south of France, Switzerland and 
 part of Spain. He also visited Amsterdam and Brussels, to which city 
 his brother had repaired on his release. Some of the other political 
 prisoners, who had been released from Fort George, were in France now. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 He burned to strike another blow for Ireland's independence. And 
 there were many circumstances to encourage him in thinking such an 
 attempt might be crowned with success. It was evident that the English 
 had not made the Peace of Amiens with France in good faith — -that they 
 had only agreed to it to gain a little breathing-time to recover from their 
 exhaustion. They perfidiously refused to fulfil their engagement to give 
 up Malta. Bonaparte was justly indignant at this breach of faith. In 
 a word, a fresh war was inevitable. In 1802 Emmet had interviews 
 with the first consul and the celebrated Talleyrand, who gave him reason 
 to hope for assistance from France. Later, some of the refugees, espe- 
 cially Thomas Addis Emmet, Dr. McNeven and Arthur O'Connor, 
 entered into regular negotiations with Bonaparte. Indeed, there is 
 reason to believe that the project of Robert Emmet's attempt did not 
 originate with himself. 
 
 We have proof positive, too, that at this time a great panic prevailed 
 in England. Lord Charles Bentinck writes, on the 2d June, 1802, to 
 his brother, Lord William Bentinck, governor of Madras : " If Ireland 
 be not attended to it will be lost ; these rascals" (evidently his lordship's 
 pet-name for the Irish) "are as ripe as ever for rebellion." A letter to 
 General Clinton, of the same date, states that if the French troops could 
 land "in the north of Ireland, they would be received with satisfaction, 
 and joined by a great number." Lord Grenville, in a letter to the 
 marquis of "Wellesley, of the 12th July, says : " I hope nothing will 
 prevent me from having the pleasure of seeing you next year, supposing 
 at that period that you have still a country to revisit.''' 1 Mr. Finers. writing 
 to General Lake, July 11th, says the invasion "will certainly take place." 
 Mr. Thomas Faulder, a director of the East India Company, writes, or. 
 the 3d August, to Mr. J. Ferguson Smith of Calcutta, that if the French 
 effect a landing, "they will be immediately joined by one hundred thou- 
 sand Irish." 
 
 Robert Emmet set out for Ireland early in October, 1802. He re- 
 mained in seclusion for some weeks. Gradually and cautiously, however, 
 he got into communication with the remaining leaders of the old " United 
 Irish" movement. He was full of enthusiasm and sanguine of success. 
 The day before he left Paris, Lord Cloncurry dined with him and Surgeon 
 Lawless. That patriotic nobleman, who himself suffered severe imprison- 
 
314 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CXDXNELL. 
 
 ment and made great sacrifices for Ireland, tells us : " Emmet spoke of 
 his plans with extreme enthusiasm ; his features glowed with excite- 
 ment, the perspiration burst through the pores and ran down his fore- 
 head." He was encouraged, moreover, by the knowledge that a secret 
 revolutionary society was at this time working in England. This, how- 
 ever, shortly after his return to Ireland, was broken up in London. 
 Colonel Despard and thirty other persons were arrested. The colonel 
 was convicted and hung. The government had been coanizant of his 
 proceedings six months previous to his arrest. Indeed, there can be 
 little doubt that they were cognizant of Emmet's conspiracy, too, long 
 before it exploded. In 1802 he dined at Mount Jerome, then the resi- 
 dence of Mr. John Keogh (O'Connell's predecessor in the leadership of 
 the Catholic body), along with John Philpot Curran. Emmet spoke 
 vehemently of the probability of success if another insurrection were 
 attempted. Keogh asked, How many counties would rise in such an 
 event? Emmet answered that nineteen could be relied on. Keogh 
 encouraged him to go on. Next day a magistrate called on Keogh and 
 carried off his papers. Mr. Plowden tells us that government, on this 
 occasion, " made the full experiment of their favorite tactic of not urging 
 the rebels to postpone their attempts by any appearance of too much pre- 
 caution and preparation, of inviting rebellion in order to ascertain its ex- 
 tent, and of forcing premature explosion for the purpose of radical cure.''' 
 The state of affairs in Ireland increased the hopes of Emmet. All 
 the promises of immediate prosperity to follow in the wake of the union 
 had remained unfulfilled. The crops of 1801 had failed. Want of food 
 and suffering produced discontent among the masses, and, in some locali- 
 ties, disturbances. Trade and commerce were decaying. According to a 
 statement of ex-Speaker Foster in the Imperial Parliament, the decrease 
 of exported linen in 1801 was five million yards. Ireland's debt, and 
 consequently her taxes, were increasing. The great bulk of the nation 
 was exasperated by the union. The Catholics were especially indignant 
 with the government for having broken faith on the question of emanci- 
 pation. Besides, they had to endure grosser insults and injuries than 
 ever from the Orange Society, which, greatly augmented in numbers, 
 was now directly encouraged by the government and by one of the king's 
 sons. At the Orange celebration of the 12th of July, 1802, the auni- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 '615 
 
 versary of the battle of Anghrim, the people were irritated beyond all 
 patience by the insolent conduct of the yeomanry. Some of the latter 
 were beaten to the ground. Major Swan was knocked down and seri- 
 ously wounded. The populace were not dispersed without considerable 
 trouble. Several Avere taken and severely punished by the authorities. 
 Tn short, all through the island it was plain that a strong spirit of dis- 
 affection still held possession of the people's hearts. 
 
 Emmet's plan was suddenly to seize the Castle of Dublin and the 
 British authorities, and then give the signal for a general insurrection. 
 Chef de BattaiUon Miles Byrne, who was engaged with Emmet in the 
 affair, approves of Emmet's plans. He says: "They were only frus- 
 trated by accident and the explosion of a depot, and, as 1 have always 
 said, whenever Irishmen think of obtaining freedom, Robert Emmet's 
 plans will be their best guide. First to take the capital, and then the 
 provinces will burst out and raise the same standard immediately." 
 Many men of mark, and some even of high position, are said to have 
 favored Emmet's plans. Be this as it may, he pushed on his prepara- 
 tions actively. He collected arms and established depots of them in 
 various parts of Dublin. Pistols and blunderbusses were manufactured, 
 pikes were forged and mounted, and ammunition laid in. The pikes 
 were placed in hollow logs and drawn through the streets to the depots 
 like ordinary lumber. Emmet himself invented an ingenious kind of 
 explosive machine, filled with powder and small stones, intended to be 
 exploded in the face of advancing columns of soldiers. At this time Em- 
 met's excellent father died. The necessity of trying to keep his pres- 
 ence in Dublin a secret prevented him from attending the funeral. 
 
 One Saturday night, a little more than a week before the evening 
 appointed for the attempt, an explosion of combustibles took place in the 
 Patrick street depot, which alarmed the neighborhood. Sirr examined 
 the house next day. Previous to his coming everything likely to awake 
 suspicion was removed or concealed. He made no discovery. The ex- 
 plosion was judged to be the accidental result of some chemical process. 
 It is not easy to determine exactly how much or how little knowledge 
 of the conspiracy the government was at this time in possession .of.* ]\ T o 
 doubt their spies were every day filling their ears with alarming stories: 
 
 * Emmet did not organize his followers as an oath-bound society. 
 
316 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 
 
 but these generally proving false, it is possible that they became at last 
 as incredulous as those in the old fable, who refused to attend to the 
 boy that was always crying, "Wolf, wolf!" when the wolf really came to 
 devour him. 
 
 After this explosion Emmet took up his abode in the Marshalsea 
 lane depot. His position was every day becoming more and more dan- 
 gerous. His life was at the mercy of more than forty persons. Yet he 
 was full of confidence ; his enthusiasm made light of all the difficulties 
 that stood in his path. The wrongs of his country kindled a sacred 
 wrath in his soul. If treachery, as Miles Byrne alleges, were really 
 "tracking his footsteps, dogging him from place to place," his noble 
 heart seems not to have suspected it. " It never occurred to him," says 
 Dr. Madden, " that he was betrayed — that every design of his was frus- 
 trated, every project neutralized, as effectually as if an enemy had stolen 
 into the camp." 
 
 At last the appointed day, the 23d of July, arrives. There is 
 division in his councils. Some call for postponement. Others are in 
 favor of an immediate rising. Emmet himself declares for the bolder 
 course. Miles Byrne tells us: "Now the final plan to be executed con- 
 sisted principally in taking the Castle, whilst the Pigeon House, Island 
 Bridge, the Royal Barracks and the Old Custom House Barracks were 
 to be attacked, and if not surprised and taken, they were to be blockaded 
 and intrenchments thrown up before them. Obstacles of every kind to 
 be created through the streets to prevent the English cavalry from 
 charging. The Castle once taken, undaunted men, materials, imple- 
 ments of every description would be easily found in all the streets in the 
 city, not only to impede the cavalry, but to prevent infantry from passing 
 through them." But everything went wrong. The Wicklow men, who 
 were expected in, failed to arrive ; for the man who was to bear the 
 order to their leader, the valiant outlaw, Michael Dwyer, neglected his 
 duty and went no farther than Rathfarnham. The Kildare men arrived 
 indeed, but a traitor told them that Emmet had postponed his enter- 
 prise ; so they all went back at five o'clock in the afternoon. At least 
 two hundred picked Wexford men came into Dublin and remained under 
 the orders of Miles Byrne, in a house on Coal Quay, during the early part 
 of the night, with a view to co-operate with Emmet in his attack on the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. 317 
 
 Castle. No order, however, reached them; the attack was never made. 
 At the Broadstone a large body waited anxiously for the rochet which 
 was to be their signal of action. The rocket never ascended. Emmet 
 to the last thought he had large bodies of men at his disposal; in this 
 he was deceived. 
 
 At eight o'clock in the evening he found himself at the head of eighty 
 men in the depot in Marshalsea lane. Some one rushed in with the 
 false intelligence that the troops were in full inarch on them. Emmet 
 thought the tidings true, and, abandoning his original plan, sallied. forth 
 at once into Thomas street with his handful of men, some of whom were 
 drunk and nearly all insubordinate. Assisted by a faithful adherent 
 named Stafford, he vainly tried to preserve order. The stragglers in the 
 rear speedily commenced acts of [tillage and assassination. Their first 
 victim was a Mr. Leech of the custom-house ; him they dragged out of 
 a hackney-coach, and, in spite of his prayers for mercy, piked him in 
 the groin, leaving him half dead; he subsequently recovered, however. 
 But now the coach of Lord Kilwarden, the chief-justice, is seen ap- 
 proaching. He was an excellent and humane judge. He had saved 
 many an innocent prisoner from death. We have already seen how he 
 once protected Tone, and how, in the final crisis of his fate, he did his 
 best to save him. Unfortunately, the frantic mob were now beyond 
 control and athirst for blood. They stopped Kilwarden's coach. He 
 called out, " It is I, Kilwarden, chief-justice of the King's Bench." 
 One Shannon, it is said, cried out, "You are the man 1 want." This 
 man rushed forward and plunged his juke into the humane judge. 
 Already mortally wounded, Kilwarden was dragged out of the carriage 
 and received several additional pike-thrusts. His daughter and his 
 nephew, the Reverend Richard Wolfe, were with him. The latter, trying 
 to escape, was put to death. The mob offered no insult to the young 
 lady. She remained unmolested in the carriage till one of the leaders, 
 Emmet himself it is said, led her to a neighboring house. She finally 
 made her way on foot, in a state of distraction, to the Castle, and was 
 the first bearer of the mournful intelligence of her unfortunate father's 
 murder. He was found lying on the pavement mortally wounded. He 
 was carried in a dying state to the watch-house in Vicar street. Some 
 account for his murder by saying that his assassins mistook him for 
 
318 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Lord Carleton, the judge who had sentenced the Sheareses. Others state 
 that his first assailant had had a relative sentenced by him. Be this as 
 it may, the deed was a dreadful and wanton crime. 
 
 Emmet had halted his party at the market-house with the view of 
 restoring order. But they had become a mere insubordinate mob. It 
 was at this moment that he heard of the murder. He then retraced his 
 steps. Finally, seeing that all was irretrievably lost, he and some of 
 the leaders around him gave up their project. A detachment of troops 
 appear at the corner of Cut-purse row. They fire on the insurgents, 
 who scatter at once. The whole affair is over in less than an hour from 
 its commencement. On the street called the Combe, indeed, some resist- 
 ance is made. Colonel Brown and two members of the Liberty Rangers 
 are killed. The guard-house on the Combe had been resolutely attacked. 
 Numerous dead bodies lie around it. Next day the depots are searched ; 
 quantities of arms and uniforms and eight thousand copies of two procla- 
 mations are seized. 
 
 O'Connell was in the yeomanry at this time. In one of his speeches 
 he states, if I remember rightly, that he was in arms dining the whole 
 of this night of the 23d of July, 1803. Passing through James's street 
 one day, during his last repeal agitation, with Mi 1 . O'Neill Daunt, he 
 pointed out to his companion "a dusky-red brick house, with stone cor- 
 nices and architraves, on the south side of the street." This house, I 
 may as well observe, has since been pulled down, the ground it occupied 
 having, it seems, been required by the Great South-western Railway 
 Company. 
 
 " That," said O'Connell to Mr. Daunt, " was the Grand Canal Hotel. 
 One night in 1803 I searched every room in that house." 
 
 "For what did you search?" inquires Mr. Daunt. 
 
 " For Croppies," quoth Dan. " I was then a member of the Law- 
 yers' Corps*, and constantly on duty. After I had stood sentry for three 
 successive nights, Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman's turn came." [Nicholas 
 Purcett 0' Gorman ivas a barrister of considerable distinction, a contempo- 
 rary of 'Council' 's, also uncle to Richard 0' Gorman, now of New York, 
 in '48 one of the Young Ireland leaders.) " He had recently been ill, and 
 told me the exposure to night air would probably kill him. ' I shall be 
 in a sad predicament,' said he, 'unless you take my turn of duty for me. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 310 
 
 If I refuse, they'll accuse me of cowardice or croppyism ; if I mount 
 guard, it will be the death of me.' So I took his place, and thus stood 
 guard for six consecutive nights. One night a poor boy was taken up 
 in Dame street after midnight; he said, in his defence, that he was 
 going on a message from his master, a notary public, to give notice for 
 protest of a bill. The hour seemed a very unlikely one for such a pur- 
 pose, and we searched his person for treasonable documents. We found 
 in his waistcoat pocket a sheet of paper, on which were rudely scrawled 
 several drawings of pikes. He turned pale with fright and trembled 
 all over, but persisted in the account he had given us of himself. It 
 was easily tested, and a party immediately went to his master's house 
 to make inquiry. His master confirmed his statement, but the visitors, 
 whose suspicions were excited by the drawing, rigidly searched the 
 whole house for pikes — prodded the beds to try if there were any con- 
 cealed in them — found all light, and returned to our guard-house about 
 three in the morning." 
 
 To return to the unfortunate Robert Emmet : he retired in the first 
 instance to Rathfarnham; subsequently he betook himself to the Wick- 
 low mountains. The Wicklow insurgents were still bent on continuing 
 the struggle. Emmet, however, deeming the cause lost for the time, 
 and naturally disliking all useless effusion of blood, withheld his sanc- 
 tion from an immediate attempt. His followers and friends were now 
 anxious that he should take steps, without further loss of time, to make 
 his escape out of the country. Would he had taken their friendly and 
 prudent advice ! But he was eager to have at least one parting inter- 
 view with his beloved Sarah Curran before leaving Ireland. She was 
 the youngest daughter of the illustrious advocate. In an evil hour he 
 returned to his former lodgings at Mrs. Palmer's, in Harold's Cross. 
 Here he hoped to be able to see Sarah, for the road from her father's 
 country-house, the Priory, near Dundrum, to Dublin, went through 
 Harold's Cross. It was at this time the poor servant, Anne Devlin, 
 proved her fidelity to him. For more than a month he remained safe. 
 But at last, on the 25th August, he was arrested in his lodgings, at 
 about seven o'clock in the evening, by Major Sin*. The major, it seems, 
 did not know his person. But when the prisoner was conveyed to the 
 Castle he was there identified by a gentleman of Trinity College. This 
 
 21 
 
320 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 genthmcm, according to Dr. Madden, was no less a person than the well- 
 known Dr. Ellington, who, before he died, was successively provost of 
 Trinity College and Protestant bishop of Ferns. 
 
 On the 19th September, Robert Emmet was tried, at a special com- 
 mission, before Lord Norbury (Toler), Mr. Baron George and Mr. Baron 
 Daly. Emmet was resolved on making no defence; so that it was little 
 matter when Curran (who, though he defended Kirwan, one of the insur- 
 gents, spoke scornfully of the attempt) refused to act as his counsel. 
 But, as Thomas Davis says, "his refusal to see him was framed too 
 harshly." Of this Emmet himself said, "A man with the coldness of 
 death on him need not be made to feel any other coldness." Some allow- 
 ance, however, is to be made for Curran, who was all through his life 
 one of our truest patriots, and who, according to the younger Tone, had 
 "expressed his anxiety for a separation from England." In the words 
 of Davis, "He was politically indignant at an explosion which wanted 
 the dignity of even partial success, and yet had done vast injury to the 
 country. Lord Kilwarden's death had irritated him, for he was his old 
 friend ; and, last of all, his own personal feelings had been severely tried 
 
 by it, 
 
 "Robert had Avon Sarah Curran's heart, and some of his letters 
 were found in Curran's house. The rash chieftain had breathed out 
 his Avhole soul to his love. Curran had to undergo the inquiries of the 
 Privy Council and accept the generosity of the attorney-general. 
 
 "What was still worse than any selfish suffering, he saw his daughter 
 smitten as with an edged sword by the fate of her betrothed." 
 
 Mr. Standish 0' Grady, the attorney-general, who was a humane man, 
 in prosecuting Emmet made a speech free from harshness; but the 
 conduct of Plunket, who assisted in the prosecution, has left a stain 
 upon his great name. He is not, indeed, to blame for accepting the 
 government brief. That, the celebrated Peter Burrowes, one of Emmet's 
 counsel, tells us, he could not have refused, "though he might have avoided 
 speaking to evidence." Assuredly, when Emmet made no defence, either 
 personally or by counsel, it was unnecessary for the Crown to claim a 
 second speech ; at all events, Plunket was not called on to utter furious 
 imprecations like the following, especially as Emmet had in reality only 
 tried to carry into effect the principles Plunket had so often and so elo- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 321 
 
 quently advocated in his anti-union orations. The great advocate should 
 have remembered, too, that Emmet's father was his old friend : 
 
 "They" (the insurgents) "imbrue their hands in the most sacred 
 blood of the country, and yet they call upon God to prosper their cause, 
 as it is just! But, as it is atrocious,- wicked and abominable, I must 
 devoutly invoke that God to confound and overwhelm it." 
 
 Emmet, of course, was found guilty. When asked, in the usual 
 form, "What he had to say why sentence of death should not be passed 
 upon him?" he replied in those noble words that will for ever live and 
 fructify in every true Irish heart, I make no apology for giving his 
 speech in full : 
 
 " My Lords : I am asked what have I to say why sentence of death 
 should not be pronounced on me according to law. I have nothing to 
 say that can alter your predetermination, nor that it will become me to 
 say with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which you are to 
 pronounce and I must abide by. But I have that to say which interests 
 me more than life, and which you have labored to destroy. I have much 
 to say why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accu- 
 sation and calumny which has been cast upon it, I do not imagine 
 that, seated where you are, your minds can be so free from prejudice as 
 to receive the least impression from what I am going to utter. I have 
 no hopes that I can anchor my character in the breast of a court consti- 
 tuted and trammelled as this is. I only wish — and that is the utmost that 
 I expect — that your lordships may suffer it to float down your memories 
 untainted by the foul breath of prejudice, until it finds some more hos- 
 pitable harbor to shelter it from the storms by which it is buffeted. 
 Was I only to suffer death, after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, 
 I should bow in silence, and meet the fate that awaits me without a 
 murmur; but the sentence of the law which delivers my body to the 
 executioner will, through the ministry of the law, labor in its own vindi- 
 cation to consign my character to obloquy; for there must be guilt some- 
 where — whether in the sentence of the court or in the catastrophe, time 
 must determine. A man in my station has not only to encounter the 
 difficulties of fortune and the force of power over minds which it has 
 corrupted or subjugated, but the difficulties of established prejudice. 
 The man dies, but his memory lives. That mine ma)' not perish, that 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 it may live in the respect of my countrymen, I seize upon this oppor- 
 tunity to vindicate myself from some of the charges alleged against me. 
 When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port — when my shade 
 shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes who have shed 
 their blood on the scaffold and in the field in defence of their country 
 and of virtue — this is my hope : I wish that my memory and name may 
 animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency on 
 the destruction of that perfidious government which upholds its domin- 
 ation by blasphemy of the Most High — which displays its power over 
 man as over the beasts of the forest — which sets man upon his brother 
 and lifts his hand, in the name of God, against the throat of his fellow 
 who believes or doubts a little more or a little less than the government 
 standard — a government which is steeled to barbarity by the cries of 
 the orphans and the tears of the widows it has made." 
 
 [Here Lord Norbury interrupted Mr. Emmet, saying: "That the 
 mean and wicked enthusiasts, who felt as he did, were not equal to the 
 accomplishment of their wild designs."] 
 
 " I appeal to the immaculate God — I swear by the throne of Heaven 
 before which I must shortly appear — by the blood of the murdered 
 patriots who have gone before me— that my conduct has been, through 
 all this peril and through all my purposes, governed only by the con- 
 viction which I have uttered, and by no other view than that of the 
 emancipation of my country from the superinhuman oppression unde v 
 which she has so long and too patiently travailed ; and I confidently 
 hope that, wild and chimerical as it may appear, there is still union and 
 strength in Ireland to accomplish this noblest of enterprises. Of this I 
 speak with the confidence of intimate knowledge, and with the consolation 
 that appertains to that confidence. Think not, my lords, I say this for 
 the petty gratification of giving you a transitory uneasiness. A man, 
 who never yet raised his voice to assert a lie, will not hazard his cha- 
 racter with posterity by asserting a falsehood on a subject so important 
 to his country, and on an occasion like this. Yes, my lords, a man, 
 who does not wish to have his epitaph written until his country is 
 liberated, will not leave a weapon in the power of envy, or a pretence to 
 impeach the probity which he means to preserve even in the grave to 
 which tyranny consigns him." 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 323 
 
 [Here he was again interrupted by the court.] 
 
 "Again I say, that what I have spoken was not intended for your 
 lordship, whose situation I commiserate rather than envy; my expres- 
 sions were for my countrymen. If there is a true Irishman present, let 
 my words cheer him in the hour of his affliction." 
 
 [Here he was again interrupted. Lord Norbury said he did not sit 
 there to hear treason.] 
 
 " I have always understood it to be the duty of a judge, when a pris- 
 oner has been convicted, to pronounce the sentence of the law. I have 
 also understood that judges sometimes think it their duty to hear with 
 patience and to speak with humanity; to exhort the victim of the laws, 
 and to offer with tender benignity their opinions of the motives by which 
 he was actuated in the crime of which he was adjudged guilty. That a 
 judge has thought it his duty so to have done, I have no doubt; but 
 where is the boasted freedom of your institutions, where is the vaunted 
 impartiality, clemency and mildness of your courts of justice, if an un- 
 fortunate prisoner, whom your policy, and not justice, is about to deliver 
 into the hands of the executioner, is not suffered to explain his motives 
 sincerely and truly, and to vindicate the principles by which he was 
 actuated? My lords, it may be a part of the system of angry justice to 
 bow a man's mind by humiliation to the purposed ignominy of the scaf- 
 fold; but worse to me than the purposed shame or the scaffold's terrors 
 would be the shame of such foul and unfounded imputations as have 
 been laid against me in this court. You, my lord, are a judge ; I am 
 the supposed culprit. I am a man ; you are a man also. By a revolu- 
 tion of power we might change places, though we never could change 
 characters. If I stand at the bar of this court and dare not vindicate 
 my character, what a farce is your justice ! If I stand at this bar and 
 dare not vindicate my character, how dare you calumniate it ? Does the 
 sentence of death, which your unhallowed policy inflicts on my body, 
 condemn my tongue to silence and my reputation to reproach ? Your 
 executioner may abridge the period of my existence, but while I exist I 
 shall not forbear to vindicate my character and motives from your asper- 
 sions; and, as a man to whom fame is dearer than life, I will make the 
 last use of that life in doing justice to that reputation which is to live 
 after me, and which is the only legacy I can leave to those I honor and 
 
324 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 love, and for whom I am proud to perish. As men, my lords, we must 
 appear on the great da)* at one common tribunal, and it will then remain 
 for the Searcher of all hearts to show a collective universe who was en- 
 gaged in the most virtuous actions or swayed by the purest motives — my 
 country's oppressors or — " 
 
 [Here he was interrupted and told to listen to the sentence of the 
 law.] 
 
 "My lords, will a dying man be denied the legal privilege of excul- 
 pating himself in the eyes of the community from an undeserved 
 reproach thrown upon him during his trial, by charging him with am- 
 bition, and attempting to cast away for a paltry consideration the liber- 
 ties of his country? Why did your lordships insult me? or rather, why 
 insult justice, in demanding of me why sentence of death should not be 
 pronounced against me ? I know, my lords, that form prescribes that 
 you should ask the question. The form also presents the right of an- 
 swering. This, no doubt, may be dispensed with, and so might the 
 whole ceremony of the trial, since sentence was already pronounced at 
 the Castle before the jury were empaneled. Your lordships are but the 
 priests of the oracle, and I insist on the whole of the forms." 
 
 [Here Mr. Emmet paused, and the court desired him to proceed.] 
 
 li I am charged with being an emissary of France. An emissary of 
 France ! And for what end ? It is alleged that I wished to sell the 
 independence of my country; and for what end? Was this the object 
 of my ambition? And is this the mode by which a tribunal of justice 
 reconciles contradiction? ]S T o; I am bo emissary, and my ambition 
 was to hold a place among the deliverers of my country- — not in power 
 nor in profit, but in the glory of the achievement. Sell my country's 
 independence to France ! And for what? Was it a change of masters ? 
 No, but for my ambition. my country! was it personal ambition 
 that could influence me ? Had it been the soul of my actions, could I 
 not, by my education and fortune, by the rank and consideration of my 
 family, have placed myself amongst the proudest of your oppressors? 
 My Country was my Idol. To it I sacrificed every selfish, every endear- 
 ing sentiment; and for it I now offer up myself, God ! No, my lords; 
 I acted as an Irishman, determined on delivering my country from the 
 yoke of a foreign and unrelenting tyranny, and the more galling yoke of 
 
THE LIFE OF DANTEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 a domestic faction which is its joint partner and perpetrator in the par- 
 ricide — from the ignominy existing with an exterior of splendor and a 
 conscious depravity. It was the wish of my heart to extricate my coun- 
 try from this doubly-riveted despotism. I wished to place her inde- 
 pendence beyond the reach of any power on earth. I wished to exalt 
 her to that proud station in the world. Connection with France was 
 indeed intended, but only as far as mutual interest would sanction or 
 require. Were the French to assume any authority inconsistent with 
 the purest independence, it would be the signal for their destruction. 
 We sought their aid — and we sought it as w T e had assurance we should 
 obtain it — as auxiliaries in war and allies in peace. Were the French 
 to come as invaders or enemies, uninvited by the wishes of the people, 
 I should oppose them to the utmost of my strength. Yes! my country- 
 men. I should advise you to meet them upon the beach with a sword in 
 one hand and a torch in the other. I would meet them with all the 
 destructive fury of war. I would animate my countrymen to immolate 
 them in their boats before they had contaminated the soil of my country. 
 If they succeeded in landing, and if forced to retire before superior dis- 
 cipline, I would dispute every inch of ground, burn every blade of grass 
 and the last intrenchment of liberty should be my grave. What I could 
 not do myself, if I should fall, I should leave as a last charge to my 
 countrymen to accomplish ; because I should feel conscious that life, any 
 more than death, is unprofitable when a foreign nation holds my country 
 in subjection. But it was not as an enemy that the succors of France 
 were to land. I looked, indeed, for the assistance of France, but I 
 wished to prove to France and to the world that Irishmen deserved to 
 be assisted, that they were indignant at slavery, and ready to assert the 
 independence and liberty of their country ; I wished to procure for my 
 country the guarantee which Washington procured for America — to pro- 
 cure an aid which, by its example, would be as important as its valor — 
 disciplined, gallant, pregnant with science and experience — that of a 
 people who would perceive the good and polish the .rough points of our 
 character. They would come to us as strangers and leave us as friends, 
 after sharing in our perils and elevating our destiny. These were my 
 objects; not to receive new taskmasters, but to expel old tyrants. It 
 was for these ends I sought aid from France; because France, even as 
 
526 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 an enemy, could not be more implacable than the enemy already in the 
 oosom of my country." 
 
 [Here he was interrupted by the court,] 
 
 " I have been charged with that importance in the emancipation of 
 my country as to be considered the keystone of the combination of 
 Irishmen, or, as your lordship expressed it, ' the life and blood of the 
 conspiracy.' You do me honor over much ; you have given to the sub- 
 altern all the credit of a superior. There are men engaged in this con- 
 spiracy who are not only superior to me, but even to your own concep- 
 tions of yourself, my lord — men before the splendor of whose genius and 
 virtues I should bow with respectful deference, and who would think 
 themselves disgraced by shaking your blood-stained hand." 
 
 [Here he was interrupted.] 
 
 " What, my lord, shall you tell me, on the passage to the scaffold 
 which that tyranny (of which you are only the intermediary executioner) 
 has erected for my murder, that I am accountable for all the blood that 
 has and will be shed in this struggle of the oppressed against the op- 
 pressor — shall you tell me this, and must I be so very a slave as not to 
 repel it ? I do not fear to approach the Omnipotent Judge to answer 
 for the conduct of my whole life ; and am I to be appalled and falsified 
 by a mere remnant of mortality here ? By you, too, although if it were 
 possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have shed in your un- 
 hallowed ministry in one great reservoir, your lordship might swim in it." 
 
 [Here the judge interfered.] 
 
 "Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor; let 
 no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in 
 any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence, or that I 
 could have become the pliant minion of power in the oppression and 
 misery of my country. The proclamation of the Provisional Government 
 speaks for our views ; no inference can be tortured from it to countenance 
 barbarity or debasement at home, or subjection, humiliation or treachery 
 from abroad. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the 
 same reason that I would resist the foreign and domestic oppressor. In 
 the dignity of freedom I would have fought upon the threshold of my 
 country, and its enemy should enter only by passing over my lifeless 
 corpse. And am I, who lived but for my country, and who have sub- 
 

 
 f 
 
 «w 
 
 » ?' 
 
 J - -~V' 
 
 I §T T® TOO I L&WTfEG&.'S M D QJL. 
 
 
IDEAS' SWIFTo 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 327 
 
 jccted myself to tlie dangers of the jealous and watchful oppressor, and 
 the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights, and 
 my country her independence, — am I to he loaded with calumny and not 
 suffered to resent it ? No; God forbid!" 
 
 [Here Xorbury indulged in a long tirade. He complained of the 
 "dreadful treasons" avowed by Emmet. He said the court wished to 
 give him the utmost latitude, hoping he would not abuse tins indulgence 
 by vindicating criminal principles "through the dangerous medium of 
 eloquent but perverted talents." He canted about the propriety of Em- 
 met's making "atonement to expiate his crimes." He raved about his 
 own right to control the prisoner's " desperate sentiments, promulgated 
 as the effusions of a disturbed and agitated mind." After saying, "You, 
 sir, had the honor to be a gentleman by birth," he referred to Emmet's 
 father and to his 1 uother, Temple Emmet, a brilliant young lawyer who had 
 died some years previously, and who, Xorbury insisted, would have given 
 the prisoner's talents " the same virtuous direction as his own." The 
 judicial buffoon next became scurrilous, talked of bands of midnight 
 assassins, and abused Emmet for conspiring, for the destruction of the 
 constitution, "with the most profligate and abandoned," and associating 
 himself " with hostlers, bakers, butchers, and such persons whom he had 
 invited to his councils." His lordship then indulged himself in a final 
 dose of cant or burlesque pathos, exclaiming that Emmet "had been 
 educated at a most virtuous and enlightened seminary of learning," and 
 that his conduct would cause "the ingenious youth of his country " to feel 
 " a throb of indignant sorrow, which would say, ' Had it been an open 
 enemy, I could have borne it; but that it should be my companion and 
 my friend!' " After this singular jeremiad, the Irish Jeffries ended his 
 jargon, and Emmet was allowed to conclude his address without further 
 interruption:] 
 
 " If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns and 
 cares of those who were dear to them in this transitory life, ever dear 
 and venerated shade of my departed father, look down with scrutiny upon 
 the conduct of your suffering son, and see if I have, even for a moment, 
 deviated from those principles of morality and patriotism which it was 
 your care to instil into my youthful mind, and for which I am now about 
 to offer up my life. My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice. The 
 
328 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors which sur- 
 round your victim : it circulates warmly and unruffled through the chan- 
 nels which God created for noble purposes, but which you are now bent 
 to destroy for purposes so grievous that they cry to Heaven — Be yet 
 patient ! I have but a few more words to say. I am going to my cold 
 and silent grave — my lamp of life is nearly extinguished — my race is run 
 — the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom. I have but 
 one request to ask at my departure from this world : it is the charity of 
 vrs silence. Let no man write my epitaph ; for as no man who knows 
 my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse 
 them. Let them and me rest in obscurity and peace, and my tomb re- 
 main uninscribed, and my memory in oblivion, until other times and 
 other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her 
 place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epi- 
 taph be written. 1 have done." 
 
 This noble address was Robert Emmet's last precious bequest to his 
 country. Few dying words of martyred patriots have been so prized by 
 their people as this testimony of Robert Emmet in behalf of Ireland's 
 nationhood has been treasured in the heart of hearts of his countrymen. 
 It is impossible to calculate, with even an approach to accuracy, what 
 its effect on the minds of the Irish people has been in the past, or its 
 possible effects in the future. In the poorest rooms in the towns and 
 cities, in the lowliest cabins in the rural districts, it is no unusual thing 
 to find cheap prints of Eobert Emmet and chenp copies of his speech. 
 There are in existence more likenesses of him than of any other Irish 
 patriot. There are more copies of his speech extant than of any other 
 specimen of Irish oratory. Even in America the American-born children 
 of Irish parents find extracts from it in some of the popular elocution- 
 books. From the grave, still anxiously appealing in a voice, that rings 
 in our ears with far more potency than the utterances of even the best 
 and bravest of our living patriots, Robert Emmet, it may be said, yet 
 continues to struggle against British rule, and never ceases to urge his 
 countrymen to strike, again and yet again, for freedom. 
 
 Dr. Madden tells us that Emmet delivered this speech "in so loud a 
 tone of voice as to be distinctly heard at the outer doors of the court- 
 house; and yet, though he spoke in a loud tone, there was nothing 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. o2 { J 
 
 boisterous in his manner ; liis accents and cadence of voice, on the con- 
 trary, were exquisitely modulated. His action was very remarkable; 
 its greater or lesser vehemence corresponded with the rise and fall of his 
 voice. He is described as moving about the dock, as he warmed in his 
 address, with rapid but not ungraceful motions — now in front of the 
 railing before the bench, then retiring, as if his body as well as his mind 
 were swelling beyond the measure of its chains. His action was not 
 confined to his hands; he seemed to have acquired a swaying motion of 
 the body when he spoke in public, which was peculiar to him, but there 
 was no affectation in it." 
 
 But few hours of life now remained for him. On the day of his trial, 
 at ten o'clock P. M., the barbarous sentence of the law was pronounced. 
 At midnight he was conveyed from Newgate to Kilmainham jail. He 
 passed through Thomas street, the scene of his abortive attempt. Im- 
 mediately after, on the same spot, workmen began to erect the gibbet 
 for his execution. At noon the following day, September 20th, having 
 a few hours previously heard of the death of his fond mother, he stood on 
 the scaffold with a serene countenance and air. Next his bosom he wore 
 a tress of a fair girl's hair. Soon his lifeless body was cut down, the 
 neck placed on the block, and then the head way severed from the trunk. 
 The executioner held up the bleeding head before the pale-faced, agonized 
 crowd, exclaiming, "This is the head of a traitor!" When the guards — 
 cavalry and infantry — were gone, and the body too removed, the people, 
 old and young, rushed forward to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood, 
 that they might have relics of the patriot martyr. It is said that Em- 
 met had been told of the existence of a design to rescue him at the very 
 moment appointed for his execution. rp his plan was defeated by the 
 precautions taken by the government. 
 
 Thus perished, in the twenty-sixth f year of his age, Robert Emmet, 
 one of the most pure-souled and disinterested patriots that ever appeared 
 on the tragic stage of human history. His noble enthusiasm nerved him 
 to sacrifice, at the call of his country and heroic duty, fair gifts of fortune, 
 still more brilliant prospects, the promise of fame in eloquence and poesy, 
 the delights of youth, love itself. The immortal melodies of his fellow- 
 student, Moore, have embalmed Tor all time the sad story of Emmet and 
 the ill-starred lady of his love, vvho, ere many years passed over, followed 
 
him to the grave. Thomas Davis says: "The cold hand soon seized 
 hini — the tender, the young, the beautiful, the brave. Greater men died 
 in the same struggle, but none so warmly loved, nor so passionately 
 lamented." At the Macmanus funeral in '61, I witnessed a stranee and 
 impressive proof of the tenacity with which his countrymen cling to his 
 memory. The multitudinous procession had to march through Thomas 
 street and past Catherine's Church, the scene of his final and noblest 
 sacrifice. Slowly the dense, black columns moved along. As they neared 
 the sacred spot, spontaneously the leading tiles uncovered. All followed 
 their example ; those in the ranks, those on the footpaths, the crowds in 
 the windows — tens of thousands were in a moment bareheaded in honor 
 of the glorious dead. Similar honors have been paid his memory since ; 
 and, in one of the latest insurrectionary attempts made in Ireland, a ban- 
 ner waved over the insurgents bearing on its folds the words, "Remembek 
 Emmet!" 
 
 Nor is it wonderful that to this hour, wherever over the spacious 
 earth, whether in their own sacred isle or in regions far away from home, 
 Irishmen and their children are gathered together, his name is honored 
 and his ideas have sway, for even his worst opponents have been obliged 
 to pay unwilling homage to his worth. Even Lord Castlereao;h, while 
 he described him as "a young man of a heated and enthusiastic imagin- 
 ation," had in the same breath to bear testimony to his disinterestedness. 
 We have his authority for the fact that Emmet devoted the whole of the 
 three thousand pounds which his father had bequeathed to him to his 
 country's cause. Death on the scaffold was Emmet's reward. Castle- 
 reagh, on the other hand, destroyed his country, and he was rewarded 
 with wealth, power and honors. • Even the harsh jailers who guarded 
 him almost loved Emmet's gentle nature, and were softened to tears 
 when he was led to execution. jTis courage, too, was of the noblest 
 kind. Indeed, his self-possession in the face of danger was singular. 
 His brother, Thomas Addis Emmet, '.showed the same trait of character 
 on the day when, defending persons charged with having taken the 
 '•United Irishmen's" oath, he coolly, in the presence of the whole court, 
 took that oath himself, by which act he so confounded t:;c Bench that 
 they not only abstained from calling him to account, but even passed 
 light sentences on such prisoners as were Convicted. Counsellor Sam})- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. ool 
 
 son, another leading "United Irishman," without knowing anything of 
 Thomas Emmet's act, resorted to similar tactics on another occasion. 
 Dr. Madden, speaking of Robert Emmet's presence of mind, relates 
 how, late one night, he took a dose of poison by mistake; how the con- 
 viction that he had done so suddenly flashed across him "while he was 
 trying to solve some mathematical problem; how, without giving the 
 slightest alarm, he quietly prepared and took the proper antidote, and 
 then went back to his studies as if nothing unusual had occurred. On 
 the day of his execution, an admirable pen-and-ink sketch of himself, 
 done by his own hand — the head represented as severed from the body, 
 with the scaffold, the axe and all the horrid accompaniments of death 
 by doom of law — was found on the table of his prison-cell. The night 
 before he had slept the calm, sound sleep of conscious innocence. On 
 the last fatal morning he knelt and prayed, called for some milk and 
 drank it, wrote two letters, one to Thomas Addis Emmet, then in 
 America, the other to the secretary of state, enclosing that to his 
 brother, and then sent word to the sheriffs that he was ready for the 
 end. He made two requests : the first that his arms might be left as 
 loose as possible; this was at once acceded to. The second request was 
 of coarse refused. "I make the other," said he, "not under any idea 
 that it can be granted, but that it may be held in remembrance that 1 
 have made it: it is that I may be permitted to die in my uniform." Of 
 Emmet's high honor our glorious advocate, John Philpot Curran, had 
 the most exalted idea; he once said, "I would have believed the word 
 of Robert Emmet as soon as the oath of any one I ever knew." 
 
 The tomb of Emmet still remains uninscribed. May we live to see 
 the longed-for and ever-glorious day when, consistently with observance 
 of his dying request, a fitting epitaph can be graven upon it ! 
 
 Just one month and a day after the death of Robert Emmet, his 
 friend, the gallant Thomas Russell, who had been also the bosom friend 
 of Wolfe Tone, gave up his life for Ireland on the scaffold. Born on the 
 21st November, 1767, in the county Cork, the son of an officer in the 
 English army, who had fought against the Irish brigade at Fontenov, 
 Russell had himself been in the British service. He had served 'or 
 some years in India. His last commission had been in the Glth Rcgi- 
 nent. This he had sold to meet a claim for two hundred pounds, incur- 
 
red by his having gone bail for a false friend, and which he had no other 
 means of liquidating. Subsequently to this he had been appointed a 
 justice of the peace for the county Tyrone. He had not held this 
 post long. His own words show ns the motives of his withdrawal from 
 the bench : " I cannot reconcile it to my conscience to sit on a bench 
 where the practice exists of inquiring what religion a person is before 
 investigating the charge against him." After this he had held a situa- 
 tion in the public library of Belfast, and had contributed to the Northern 
 Star, the organ of the Ulster patriots. He had joined the "United 
 Irishmen" even before selling out of the British army. Naturally 
 enough, he had been appointed to the supreme military command of 
 the county Down. His subsequent arrest, however, in September, 1796, 
 and his detention in British prisons (Newgate, Kilmainham, and finally 
 Fort George, Scotland) till 1802, had prevented him from taking the field 
 with the men of Downshire in '98. The government had kept him in 
 durance during all those years without trial, without even being able to 
 produce evidence against him, because his military abilities rendered him 
 specially formidable. 
 
 Throughout his long imprisonment he had remained unshaken in his 
 principles. From Fort George he had written thus : "Providence orders 
 all things for the best. lam sure the people loill never abandon the cause; 
 1 am equally sure it will succeed. I trust men will see that the only true 
 basis of liberty is morality, and the only stable basis of morality is 
 religion." 
 
 He had entered into Robert Emmet's views and plans with all the 
 earnestness of his nature — -had arrived in Dublin so well disguised that 
 even his family had failed to recognize him: later he had gone to Bel- 
 fast as " general-in-chief of the northern district." He had failed, how- 
 ever, to rouse the men of the North to action. Belfast had resolved on 
 waiting "to see what the South would do," the South meanwhile wait- 
 ing for the North to act. Foolery of this sort has more than once 
 dashed to the earth the hopes of Irish patriotism. After his failure in 
 Belfast, Russell had proceeded to Antrim, only to meet with similar dis- 
 appointment. In short, his northern prospects had, one by one, proved 
 illusory; his position had grown desperate; a reward of fifteen hundred 
 pounds had been offered for his apprehension. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 333 
 
 It was on the 9th September that Town-Major Sirr had pounced 
 upon Russell — who had come back to Dublin- — in his seclusion, and ar- 
 rested him. On this occasion the ruffian, Sirr, had presumed to seize the 
 patriot rudely by the neckcloth, whereupon the latter, a man of powerful 
 frame, hurling the major aside and presenting a pistol, had haughtily 
 exclaimed, "I will not be treated with indignity." Russell's friends had 
 next tried to bribe the jailers to set him free ; in vain, however. At the 
 time of his capture he had been engaged in plans for the rescue of Robert 
 Emmet. A letter, written by Russell to one of his friends during this his 
 second captivity, contains these noble words: "I mean to make my trial 
 and the last of my life, if it is to close now, as serviceable to the cause 
 of liberty as I can. / trust my countrymen ivill ever adhere to it; I 
 know it will soon prosper. When the country is free, I beg they may 
 lay my remains with my father in a private manner, and pay the few 
 debts I owe. I have only to beg of my countrymen to remember that 
 the cause of liberty is the cause of virtue, tchieh I trust they will never 
 abandon. May God bless and prosper them ! and when power comes into 
 their hands I entreat them to use it with moderation. May God and 
 the Saviour bless them all!" In his letter to Henry Joy McCracken's 
 sister Ave find these words: "Humanly speaking, I expect to be found 
 guilty and immediately executed. As this may be my last letter, I shall 
 only say that I did my best for my country and mankind. I have no 
 wish to die, but, far from regretting its loss in such a cause, had I a 
 thousand lives I would willingly risk or lose them in it. Be assured, 
 liberty will in the midst of those storms be established, and God will 
 wipe away the tears from all eyes." 
 
 At his trial in Downpatrick, whither he had been convej^ed after his 
 arrest, he had demeaned himself nobly. "I shall not trouble my lawyers," 
 he had said, "to make any statement in my case. There are but three 
 possible modes of defence — firstly, by calling witnesses to prove the in- 
 nocence of my conduct ; secondly, by calling them to impeach the credit 
 of opposite witnesses, or by proving an alibi. As I can resort to none 
 of those modes of defence without involving others, I consider myself 
 precluded from any." His final speech, before the passing of sentence, 
 breathes a spirit of mild and chivalrous heroism. After courteous words 
 of thanks to his counsel for their exertions, to " the gentlemen on the 
 
331 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 part of the Crown" for the indulgence received by him during hi* con- 
 finement, to the jury even for their patience, to the judges for their 
 politeness to him during his trial, we find the following elevated senti- 
 ments and language : "As to my political sentiments, I shall, in as brief 
 a manner as possible (for I do not wish to engross the time of the court), 
 say a few words. I look back to the last thirteen years of my life, the 
 period during which I have interfered with the transactions of Ireland, 
 with entire satisfaction, though, for my share in them, I am now about 
 to die. ... It (/lis death) may serve, on the other hand, as a memorial 
 to others, and on trying occasions it may inspire them with courage. 
 I can now say, as far as my judgment enabled me, I acted for the good 
 of my country and the world. . . . From the time I could observe and 
 reflect, I perceived that there were two kinds of laws — the laws of the 
 state and the laws of God — frequently clashing with each other; by the 
 latter kind I have always endeavored to regulate my conduct; but that 
 laws of the former kind do exist in Ireland I believe no one who hears 
 me can deny. That such laws have existed in former times many and 
 various examples clearly evince. The Saviour of the world suffered by 
 the Soman laws — by the same laws his apostles were put to the torture 
 and deprived of their lives in his cause. By my conduct I do not con- 
 sider that I have incurred any moral guilt. I have committed no moral 
 evil. I do not want the many and bright examples of those gone before 
 me; but did I want this encouragement, the recent example of a youthful 
 hero — a martyr in the cause of liberty— who has just died for his country, 
 would inspire me. / have descended into the vale of manhood. / have 
 learned to estimate the reality and delusions of this world ; he was sur- 
 rounded by everything which could endear this world to him — in the 
 bloom of youth, with fond attachments, and with all the fascinating 
 charms of health and innocence ; to his death I look back even in this 
 moment with rapture. I have travelled much, and seen various parts 
 of the world, and 1 think the Irish are the most virtuous nation on the 
 face of the earth : they are a good and brave people, and had I a thousand 
 lives I would yield them in their service. If it be the will of God that I 
 suffer for that with which I stand charged, I am perfectly resigned to His 
 holy will and dispensation. . . . 
 
 " Perhaps, as my voice may now be considered as a voice crying from 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 the grave, what I now say may have some weight." He then exhorts 
 the aristocracy of Ireland "to pay attention to the poor," meaning thereby 
 •(he laboring class of the community, their tenantry and dependants. 
 L advise them for their good to look into their grievances, to sympathize 
 in their distress, and to spread comfort and happiness around tli< h' 
 dwellings. . . . If they hold their power, they will thus have friends 
 around them ; if they will lose it, their fall will he gentle, and I am sure 
 unless they act thus they can never be happy. I shall now appeal to 
 the right honorable gentleman in whose hands the lives of the other 
 prisoners are, and entreat that he will rest satisfied with my death, and 
 let that atone for those errors into which I may have been supposed to 
 have deluded others. I trust the gentleman will restore them to their 
 families and friends. If he shall do so, I can assure him that the breeze, 
 which conveys to him the prayers and blessings of their wives and 
 children, will be more grateful than that which may be tainted with the 
 stench of putrid corpses, or carrying with it the cries of the widow and 
 the orphan. Standing as I do in the presence of God and of man, I entreat 
 him to let my life atone for the faults of all, and that my blood alone may 
 How. ... As there are those ties which even death cannot sever, and as 
 there arc those who may have some regard for what will remain of me 
 after death, I request that my remains, disfigured as they will be, may 
 be delivered after the execution of the sentence to those dear friends, 
 that they may be conveyed to the ground where my parents are laid, 
 and where those faithful few may have a consecrated spot over which 
 they may be permitted to grieve. I have now to declare, when about 
 to pass into the presence of Almighty God, that I feel no enmity in my 
 mind to any being — none to those who have borne testimony against 
 me, and none to the jury who have pronounced the verdict of my death." 
 I could not refrain from devoting to the memory of the brave but 
 modest, gentle and amiable Thomas Russell somewhat more space than 
 the limitations of this work might seem to justify. I have done so, 
 because it appears to me that the fire and brilliancy of Robert Emmet's 
 last speech, and the interest attached to his youth and the affecting 
 story of his love, have thrown the generous life and fate of Russell un- 
 duly into the shade ; and I feel that it is ungrateful and wrong in Irish- 
 men to let the name of one so devoted to Ireland become "to dumb 
 
336 ' THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNEI.L, 
 
 forgetfiilness a prey." The last tragic scene of his mortal career tools 
 place at noon on the 21st October, 1803. There was only time to im- 
 provise a temporary scaffold — some planks placed as a platform on a 
 few barrels under the principal gateway of the prison, with other planks 
 sloping up from the ground. A sack of sawdust, an axe, a block and a 
 knife were on the ground close by. Eleven regiments were in Down- 
 patrick to overawe the people, yet the authorities were in dread of a 
 rescue. Russell was brought pinioned to the scaffold. Steadily he 
 gazed through the archway on the horror-stricken, white-visaged people. 
 There, doomed to die in a few moments, stands a glorious Irish patriot- 
 soldier, endowed with rarest gifts of mind and body — a man of majestic 
 stature and noble, intellectual countenance, with as kind a heart as ever 
 beat in human breast and the unaffected, graceful manners of a polished 
 gentleman. All these gifts, of what avail are they? Once more he for- 
 gives his persecutors. With calm bravery he meets his fate; his death 
 is without a struggle. 
 
 The patriot sleeps in the Protestant churchyard of Downpatrick. 
 On the unadorned slab over his relics are the simple words, "The grave 
 of Thomas Russell!" 
 
 I shall now give some of Daniel O'Connell's strictures on the men of 
 '98 and the attempt of Robert Emmet. In the main, I differ from these 
 criticisms; 1 even think them somewhat narrow and partial — inaccurate 
 in statement, inconclusive; in short, altogether unworthy of the powerful 
 intellect of O'Connell. Nevertheless, as this book professes to give the 
 reader materials whereby to form a true idea of what O'Connell was, 
 in speculation as well as in action, I shall not for a moment hesitate to 
 introduce them here. To make my picture faithful and complete, it is 
 necessary that I should endeavor to portray what I deem the blemishes 
 of O'Connell's mind, along with what I consider the nobler and brighter 
 features of his character. 
 
 One day in the year 1841, at O'Connell's house in Dublin, Mr. Daunt 
 met two gentlemen from America, one of whom was a native American, 
 the other originally from Ulster. They had come to enjoy the honor of 
 an interview with "the Liberator." In the course of the conversation 
 that took place, the American visitors reproached Mr. O'Connell with 
 having condemned the insurgents of '98. He replied, "that the scheme 
 
of rebellion was in itself an ill-digested, foolish scheme, entered upon 
 without the means or the organization necessary to insure success. 
 And as to the leaders, no doubt there were among them some pure, well- 
 intentioned men; but the great mass of them were trafficking specula- 
 tors, win) eared not whom they victimized in the prosecution of their 
 schemes of self-aggrandizement." 
 
 I may remark here that the truth, purity, disinterestedness and 
 heroic devotion of a large proportion of the '98 leaders contrast marvel- 
 lously with the falseness, self-seeking, mean trickery, petty dodging and 
 political depravity of the sordid crew that so often hung on the skirts 
 of the O'Connellite agitations. 
 
 The American visitors, however, returned to the charge; they praised 
 the Northern Presbyterian insurgents; they had, at all events, a good 
 organization. 
 
 "Not they," said O'Conncll. "Not one regiment ever stood to arms 
 as such. All seemed very line on paper, but there was little reality. 
 Their officers used to meet at taverns, plotted together, made valiant 
 resolutions, and saw everything coulcur de rose" {rose-colored). "The 
 Presbyterians fought badly at Ballinahinch. They were commanded 
 there by one Dickie, an attorney; and as soon as the fellows were 
 checked they became furious Orangemen, and have continued so ever 
 since." 
 
 This is far from accurate, nor is the tone of it as liberal as it might be. 
 The Presbyterians did not fight badly at Ballinahinch. If their disci- 
 pline had borne any fair proportion to their valor, the victory would cer- 
 tainly .have remained in their hands. It was Henry Munroe who com- 
 manded the rebels at this combat. Many of the sons of Presbyterian 
 "United Irishmen" hold, at this very hour, the national sentiments and 
 opinions of their sires. 
 
 The Americans next said, interrogatively, " But the people had great 
 provocation to take up arms?" 
 
 "Oh, indeed they had! In Wexford they were actually driven into 
 insurrection by the insane cruelty of Lord Kingston, who since then has 
 died in a strait-waistcoat. There was a sergeant of the North Cork 
 militia, nicknamed Tom the Devil, from the unheard-of atrocities he 
 perpetrated on the peasantry. Oh, the cruelty of the administrators. 
 
338 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 groat and small, of English power in Ireland ! Why, since the world 
 began, there never was anything like it. I am compiling a book to 
 illustrate this fact. I'll have it out in November next, I'll read you 
 one or two passages, just to show you how the same horrible tyranny 
 has been exercised at widely different times, the circumstances different, 
 the actors different — the spirit always identical." 
 
 So saying, he took up the manuscript of his "Memoir on Ireland,'" and 
 read passages from the chapters on Henry the Second, Henry the Eighth, 
 and Elizabeth. 
 
 "And this system of tyranny was continued for centuries?" inquired 
 one of the visitors. 
 
 "Poh! it is continued to this hour,'' said O'Conncll. "If they do 
 not slaughter with the sword as they formerly did, they massacre by ex- 
 termination. The Tory landlords, who drive the peasantry in thousands 
 from their cabins, put an end to human life by the slow, wasting process 
 of hunger and destitution." 
 
 The Ulster gentleman demanded whether the character of Robert 
 Emmet should not be exempted from the sweeping censure passed by 
 O'Connell on the generality of the "United Irish" leaders. 
 
 "Poor man! he meant well," said O'Connell; "but I ask whether a 
 madder scheme was ever devised by a bedlamite? Here was Mr. Emmet, 
 having got together about twelve hundred pounds in money and seventy- 
 four men; whereupon he makes war upon King George the Third, with 
 one hundred and fifty thousand of the best troops in Europe and the 
 wealth of three kingdoms at his command ! Why, my good sir, poor 
 Emmet's scheme was as wild as anything in romance! No; I always 
 saw that, divided as Ireland is and has been, ph}*sical force could never 
 be made an available weapon to regenerate her. I saw that the best 
 and only effective combination must be that of moral force. I have 
 combined the peasantry in moral organization; and on them, with their 
 revered pastors to guide them, do I place my reliance. And I am proud 
 of them — they are the finest people in the whole world! They are so 
 moral! so intelligent! They have thing away drunkenness; they fre- 
 quent the coffee-shops, where they instruct and inform their minds with 
 a weekly newspaper. And then the good sense of the fellows ! "When- 
 ever I've asked them what part of the paper they read first, they've 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 
 
 339 
 
 always answered me, 'We read the prices first, sir. and then the 
 speeches J " 
 
 The facts and figures about Emmet's attempt, at the commencement 
 of the foregoing observations, are singularly inaccurate. Indeed, the 
 remarks are more a piece of ingenious burlesque than a just criticism. 
 Successful insurrections have over and over commenced with a dashing 
 attempt made by a small, half-armed band. "Never venture, never 
 win," is a maxim true in love and war. Mr. O'Connell was personally 
 a brave man even in the face of physical danger. He had also, in a 
 high degree, the sort of boldness necessary to a successful advocate, and 
 a fair share of the moral courage indispensable to a commanding politi- 
 cian. But we search in vain amongst his great intellectual abilities for 
 military qualities. He had none of that peculiar daring or spirit of 
 enterprise requisite to form a military leader. We have already seen 
 the grounds and expectations on which Robert Emmet based his project, 
 and that competent military authorities approved of his plans. Not to 
 repeat myself unnecessarily, I beg here to refer my readers to some 
 remarks I have already made in this chapter, in pages 239 and 240, on 
 the circumstances and conditions under which patriots should feel them- 
 selves justified in calling on their countrymen to revolt. With regard 
 to Mr. O'Conneirs method of regenerating Ireland by moral force, at the 
 beginning of "the Preliminary Sketch" prefixed to this work I have 
 endeavored to show both what the "moral-force" system can effect and 
 what it cannot effect — above all, what a useless weapon it is in any move- 
 ment aiming at national independence or even repeal of the union; in a 
 word, in any important international dispute. Upon the concluding 
 sentences of Mr. O'Connell's discourse to the American visitors I do not 
 deem it necessary to make any comment. With respect to them the 
 reader can form what judgment he pleases. 
 
 I may as well introduce here another observation regarding the 
 "United Irishmen" made by Mr. O'Connell to Mr. Daunt on a different 
 occasion: "I learned," he says, "from the example of the 'United Irish- 
 men' the lesson that, in order to succeed for Ireland, it was strictly 
 necessary to work within the limits of the law and constitution. I saw 
 that fraternities, banded illegally, never could be safe; that invariably 
 some person without principle would be sure to gain admission into 
 
340 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELU 
 
 such societies, and either for ordinary bribes, or else in times of danger 
 for their own preservation, would betray their associates. Yes, the 
 'United Irishmen' taught me that all work for Ireland must be done 
 openly and aboveboard." 
 
 In the present chapter I have already commented on some similar 
 remarks of O'ConnelFs, having reference to the danger of betrayal by 
 informers, incurred by those who belong to secret societies. I think I 
 have shown how little real force there is in O'ConnelFs observations on 
 this point. I have also called attention to the fact that, in spite of all 
 his ingenuity and prudence, his vaunted "moral-force" machinery was 
 finally inadequate to keep himself and his political associates out of the 
 meshes of the foreigner's law; that, on the arrival of a certain crisis, any 
 "moral-force" movement will be liable to the peril of informers just as 
 much as secret conspiracies; in short, that O'ConnelFs exaggerated 
 advocacy of his favorite "moral-force" theory is replete with fallacies. 
 But I need not go over the same ground a second time; the reader can 
 easily, if he should wish, refer to the passage in question. 
 
 The severest measures of repression followed the failure of Emmet's 
 insurrection. Besides Emmet, eighteen persons were hung in Dublin. 
 A number were arrested and thrown into prison, there to be treated with 
 the grossest barbarity. A spy-system prevailed. Rewards on an exten- 
 sive scale were offered for rebels. The Irish yeomanry were put on per- 
 manent duty at the vast expense of £100,000 a month. In Cork every 
 one quitting the country was obliged to have a passport, and householders 
 were compelled to affix to their doors a list of the inmates of their houses. 
 Among other strict regulations, the sovereign of Belfast ordered the in- 
 habitants of that town to remain within their houses after eight in the 
 evening. The magistrates of Dublin, prompted by the government, de- 
 cided that Dublin should be divided into forty-eight sections, each section 
 to be separated from the neighboring ones by a chevaux-de-frise, which 
 would suffice to prevent pikemen from effecting a surprise. After the 
 passing of martial law the prisons became crowded with hundreds of 
 prisoners! As usual, terror and vengeance and coercion reigned in Ire- 
 land. Suspicion, suggested by some personal foe, was enough to consign 
 a man to imprisonment, Speaking of these dungeon horrors, which years 
 afterwards were disclosed in the course of a parliamentary inquiry, Mr. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXJfELL. o41 
 
 Plowden, in his History of Ireland Since the Union, says: "Sensible that 
 general charge and invective come not within the province of the historian, 
 the author felt it his duty to inform the reader that at this time com- 
 menced a new system of gradual inquisitorial torture in prison. Suffice 
 it here to observe that there are many surviving victims of these inhuman 
 and unwarrantable confinements, who, without having been charged with 
 any crime or tried for any offence, have from this period undergone years 
 of confinement and incredible afflictions and sufferings, under the full 
 conviction that they were inflicted from motives of personal resentment, 
 and for the purpose of depriving them of life." Such was the spirit of 
 administration in Ireland during Lord Hardwicke's viceroyalty. In these 
 latter days somewhat similar scenes of cruelty and wrong and outrage 
 and contempt of all justice have been witnessed in Ireland during the 
 prevalence of the so-called " Fenian scare." 
 
 Meanwhile, the results of the union, after three years' experience, 
 were declining trade and commerce ; absenteeism of landlords, who would 
 leave behind them an oppressive agent to grind the peasantry; vanishing 
 wealth; deserted country-seats; Dublin, so recently a fine and flourishing 
 capital, sinking from its proud metropolitan position to the humble state 
 of a mere large provincial town; the palaces of the nobles, like the 
 senate-house,, turned to meaner uses ; Irish imports and exports, while 
 profitless to Ireland, helping to enrich England; debts and taxes increas- 
 ing every day. In short the truth was becoming manifest that the union 
 was forced upon Ireland "through intolerance of Irish prosperity." The 
 Presbyterian clergy, who had been bribed not to oppose the union by a 
 promise of an increase in the regiuni donum (royal gift), a stipend first 
 granted to them (on a small scale) by Charles the Second, now got their 
 bribe. The regiuni donitm was increased fivefold. In 1852 it amounted 
 to £38,5()1. The chief instrument in accomplishing this bribery trans- 
 action was the Reverend Dr. Black of Londonderry — a renegade "volun- 
 teer" and patriot delegate to the Dungannon convention. He feathered 
 his own nest, being made agent in distributing the "gift." But event- 
 ually he was his country's avenger on himself, for he flung himself 
 from the bridge of Deny into the river Foyle, and there he miserably 
 perished. 
 
 It is little wonder that it was O'Connell's greatest ambition, all 
 
3i2 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 through life, to be able to succeed in repealing this "accursed act of 
 union," as he always rightly termed it. 
 
 The "United Irishmen" in France still negotiated with Bonaparte 
 in the hope of obtaining French assistance. For a while Bonaparte 
 seemed to enter into their views. It was stipulated that a French army 
 should be sent to help the Irish to throw off the English yoke. Augereau, 
 who for some reason or other was a favorite with the Irish people, was 
 appointed commander-in-chief. Arthur O'Connor, created general of 
 division, was placed on his staff. An official paper, still in existence, 
 proves that the French army were to land in Ireland simply as auxilia- 
 ries — in fact, on terms precisely similar to those on which Bochambcau's 
 army landed in America. This was Bobcrt Emmet's view of the rela- 
 tions that should subsist between the French and Irish. He had said 
 to Miles Byrne (who, having effected his escape, was now in France in 
 communication with Thomas Addis Emmet) that he was convinced that 
 Bonaparte " would find it his interest to deal fairly by the Irish nation 
 as the best and surest way to obtain his ends with England." A new 
 Irish leaion was also organized in the French service at Morlaix in 
 Bretagne. At the coronation of the emperor JS T apoleon (May, 1804) the 
 legion was represented by two of its officers, Captain Tennant and Cap- 
 tain William Corbet, The emperor presented to it, as well as to the 
 French regiments, colors and an eagle. On one side of the colors was 
 inscribed "Napoleon I.. Empereurdes Frangais, a la Legion Irlandaise" 
 ["Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, to t/ie Irish Lee/ion'''); on the 
 reverse was a crownless harp: the inscription was " L'indepcndance 
 dTrlande" (" The independence of Ireland"). It is said that this Irish 
 legion was the only foreign corps in the French army to which the great 
 emperor ever entrusted an eagle. 
 
 But neither Marshal Augereau nor his army, including the " Irish 
 Legion," ever sailed for Ireland. Unfortunately for Ireland and for him- 
 self, the emperor was induced to give up the project of invading that 
 island. The " Legion," however, served France bravely in the wars of 
 the empire. Many of the officers won considerable distinction. 
 
 Indeed, the completeness of the failure of Emmet's insurrection for a 
 long time discouraged and tended to prevent any fresh attempts in Ire- 
 land at patriotic movements of a military nature. The faith of the Irish 
 
THE LTFE OF DANIEL OCONXEI.L. 343 
 
 people in the efficacy of insurrection as a means of deliverance was tem- 
 porarily shaken. The) 7 did not sufficiently analyze the causes of the 
 failure or draw requisite distinctions. Thus, in all probability, Emmet's 
 failure prepared the way for the ready and general adoption of O'Con- 
 uell's "moral-force" system. If this conjecture be right, Emmet's out- 
 break had an important bearing on O'Connell's subsequent career, and 
 consequently must be regarded as an incident that claims a conspicuous 
 place in the biography of O'Connell. I may add, before concluding this 
 long chapter, that, after this unfortunate insurrection, we also find the 
 Catholic aristocracy once more coming forward with eager professions of 
 loyalty. Indeed, the wanton murder of the good Kilwarden did terrible 
 injury to the cause of the insurgents; many talked of the attempt as a 
 mere lawless riot for purposes of robbery and murder. Such is the evil 
 that must ever result even to the noblest cause, if its partisans consent 
 to crime.* 
 
 * The principal books to which the foregoing chapter is indebted arc Mitehel's "Continuation ;" 
 Musjrrave's 'History of the Rebellion of '98 ;" Madden 's "United Irishmen;" "Wolfe Tone's 
 Journals;" " Grattan's Life," by his son; " Grattan's Life," by D. O. Madden ; "Curran's Life," 
 l>v his son; "Curran's Life," by Davis; "Curran's Speeches;" "Grattan's Speeches;" "Shiel's 
 Speeches;" "Moore's Melodies;" "Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald," by Moore; " Life of Lord 
 Edward," published at the "Irishman" office, Lublin ; "The Histories {before and after the union) 
 of Plowden ;" Plowden's "Historical Collections;" " Lord Cloncurry's Memoirs;" "View of the 
 Present State of Ireland ;" Thierry's "Norman Conquest;" Alison's "Europe;" Davis's " Essays;" 
 Barry's " Songs of Ireland ;" " Sham Squire and Informers of '98," by Fitzpatriek ; Gordon's " His- 
 tory of the Rebellion;" "Edinburgh Review," article by Sir William Napier; Lord Holland's 
 " Memoirs of the Union ;" Edward Hayes's " Rebellion in Wexford ;" Barrington's " Memoirs of the. 
 I rish Union " and " Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation ;" Murphy's " Narrative of the Arrest of Lord 
 Edward Fitzgerald ;" Ryan and Sirr's "Accounts;" Cornwallis's "Correspondence and Memoirs;" 
 "Secret Service Papsrs;" Goldwin Smith ; Literary columns of "New York Citizen ;" Sullivan's 
 " Speeches from the Dock ;" O'Neill Daunt's " Financial Grievances of Ireland ;" O'Neill Daurit's 
 " Personal Recollections of O'Connell ;" " Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P.," edited, with 
 historical notices, by his son, John O'Connell, Esq. ; "Lord Plunket's Speeches," edited, with me- 
 moirs and historical notices, by John Cashel Eoey ; " Memoirs of Miles Byrne ;" " Grattan's Answer 
 to Lord Clare," etc., etc., etc. 
 
 i 
 
 ! u 
 

 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Daniel O'Connell's recollections and anecdotes of the Rebellion of "JS and the 
 Union — A model trimmer: changing sides four times in one day — Noble conduct 
 of Tim Driscoll— O'Connell's account of Taafe in 'OS— O'Connell's anecdote of 
 O'Connor, the rebel schoolmaster — "The Liberator" relates several other in- 
 teresting anecdotes of ! 9S — Lord Clare on the point of being assassinated in '98 
 by Baron Power; double suicide — Bush and Cesar Colci.ough — Rewards for pro- 
 Union votes — O'Connell's reminiscences of Union Judges; Judge Daly — Dan's 
 strange and amusing anecdotes of Lord Norbury — A whimsical charge from the 
 Bench ; the celebrated case of Guthrie versus Sterne — Norbury's epigram on 
 "two strange" and "Little Alice" — -Norbury's racket court — Dan's queer story 
 of Norbury's funeral — Time and eternity — Hung beef — Firing at a wig — O'Con- 
 nell's boldness in Court — "Hope from the past." 
 
 ■^tf SHALL devote the following chapter to O'Connell's rcminis- 
 ]«) cenccs and anecdotes of the characters who "lived and moved 
 <&Jk and had their being " during the stirring, hut disastrous, davs 
 ( : ;'| of '98 and the union. The first anecdote, however, which I am 
 ^ about to give, though it was told to Mr. Daunt, while he was stop- 
 ping for a few days in Waterford in company with "the Liberator," 
 during the course of one of their repeal tours, did not come from (he 
 lips of the latter. It was related by no less a person than the rebel 
 General Cloney, who had held a command in the rebel army in '98. 
 There was, it appears, a certain gentleman, who stationed himself near 
 Ross on the day of the well-disputed battle that took place there. 
 "Although he did not take the field," said Cloney. "yet he was not 
 quite unoccupied, for he changed his uniform four or five times while 
 the battle lasted. He kept scouts to let him know, from time to time, 
 how the fortunes of the day went. Whenever he heard that the rebels 
 were getting the bettor of it, on with his green regimentals ! The next 
 scout, perhaps, would announce that the king's troops were making 
 head: on with my prudent friend's yeomanry suit! And so on, from 
 red to green, and green to red, according to each shadow of veering in 
 the fortunes of the fight." 
 
 31 i 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 345 
 
 The anecdote of this diverting rascal puts one in mind of the -old 
 fable of our days of boyhood (yEsop's, I believe), where, during the battle 
 between the beasts and the birds, the bat sometimes appears on wing 
 with the birds, sometimes goes with the beasts, according as the scales 
 of victory seem to incline to the brutes or the winded denizens of air. 
 Ihe bat, however, if I remember rightlv, was finallv disgraced en ac- 
 count of his frequent changes of sides, and was obliged for ever after to 
 skulk in dark and solitary places. We are not told whether the Wex- 
 ford trimmer received the reward due to his slippery conduct. 
 
 Dr. R. R. Madden tells another anecdote of this battle of Ross, not in 
 the least like General Cloney's, indeed, but, I regret to say, characteristic 
 of too many of our countrymen even at the present day. Some small 
 farmers, who had joined the rebel army, managed to conceal, not far 
 from the scene of conflict, a cask of liquor of some sort. Every now 
 and then one of those in the secret would retire from the fight and stim- 
 ulate himself with what the late Thomas Devin Reilly humorously called 
 "an unfathomable drink." Immediately the votary of Mars and Bac- 
 chus would hasten back to the strife with redoubled ardor. Another 
 combatant would then relieve him at the cask, and he, too, after recruit- 
 ing his courage, would hurry again to the fight. "Another and another 
 and another" repeated this convivial and military manoeuvre. In short, 
 during the entire of the long and fiercely- con tested fight each individual 
 of this jolly band of martial Wexford farmers was alternately imbibing 
 deep draughts and dealing hard knocks to "the Saxon." 
 
 The reader, however, is impatient to hear one of O'Connell's reminis- 
 cences. Without further delay or preface, I shall give an anecdote, told 
 by him of a certain Tim Driscoll, for many years known upon the Mini- 
 ster circuit as a barrister of considerable practice. 
 
 " I remember an occasion," said Mr. O'Connell to Mr. Daunt, in the 
 course of a journey from Dungarvan during his last repeal agitation 
 (like most old men, he had at this time, in all probability, begun to take 
 even more than his usual pleasure in relating anecdotes of old times; — 
 "I remember an occasion," quoth he, "when Tim behaved nobly, llis 
 brother, who was a blacksmith, was to be tried for his life for the part 
 he had taken in the rebellion of 1798, and Tim's unfriends among the 
 barristers predicted that Tim would shirk his brother, and contrive to 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 be engaged in the other court when the trial should come on, in order to 
 avoid the public recognition of so humble a connection as the black- 
 smith. Bets were offered upon the course Tim would take. He nobly 
 disappointed the predictions of his enemies. He waited till his brother 
 was brought to the bar, sprang into the dock and embraced him, re- 
 mained at his side during the whole trial, and cross-examined the wit- 
 nesses for the prosecution, invariably styling the prisoner 'my brother.' 
 He carried the sympathies of the jury entirely with him, got a verdict 
 for his brother, and earned glory for himself. Tim had a good deal of 
 minor cleverness, but promotion to a silk gown spoiled him. He was 
 one of those — ■ 
 
 " 'Qui brillcnt au second rang, 
 Mais qui l'eclipsent au premier.' " 
 
 {•'Who shine in the second rank, but who eclipse themselves in the first.") 
 
 O'Connell gives the following account of an eccentric '98 man, called 
 Faaffc, who, originally an ecclesiastical student, lost his vocation and 
 went throudi various strange adventures. In '98 he distinguished him- 
 self among the insurgents, especially at the combat of Ballyellis. In- 
 deed, he lays claim to the credit of the manoeuvre that caused the 
 destruction of the "Ancient Britons." Subsequently Taaffe wrote an 
 odd "History of Ireland." 
 
 "Taaffe was a strange genius," said O'Connell. " He was confined in 
 the prison of Kilinainhani after 1798, and felt himself affronted because 
 he was placed at the prisoners' second dinner-table, instead of the first 
 If the first table was more honorable, it was also more dangerous, being- 
 set apart for those who had been ringleaders in the rebellion, and 
 who knew not, from hour to hour, at what moment they might be 
 ordered out for execution. But Taaffe' s vanity so far got the better of 
 his fears that he actually memorialed the lord-lieutenant against the 
 indignity of being obliged to sit at the second table, pleading, as his 
 claim to the first, that he had fought as often in the rebel ianlis as any 
 of the chiefs who sat there, and, moreover, had helped to defeat the 
 king's troops in two pitched battles. His claim was admitted; but he 
 escaped the gallows, which, as times then went, would have seemed an 
 inevitable part of the coveted distinction. His 'History of Ireland' 
 is a curious production. Jack Lawless's 'History of Ireland' is also a 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCOXXELL. VA~, 
 
 unique specimen of historical writing. Jack takes it for granted that 
 his leader knows everything; accordingly, Jack tells him nothing. But 
 lie gives copious dissertations on the facts which lie does not detail, 
 assuming that his reader knows them all beforehand." 
 
 Of Jack Lawless wc shall hear again in the course of this biography. 
 Taaflfe played one very funny trick on the Muse of History and his 
 readers in writing his "History of Ireland." He coolly shifted the mas- 
 sacre of Mullaghmast from the reign of Queen Elizabeth to that of her 
 eldest sister and predecessor, Queen Mary. His object in taking this 
 extraordinary liberty with the facts of history was to furnish his readers 
 with overwhelming evidence that Ireland was as much tortured and 
 oppressed by the English government, and as much a victim to " Saxon 
 periiclie," in the reigns of Catholic as in those of Protestant sovereigns. 
 
 Passing through iS T aas, on one occasion, with Mr. Daunt, O'Connell 
 observed that the head of O'Connor, a rebel schoolmaster who was hanged 
 in 1797, had ceased for some years to ornament the jail. 
 
 "He made," said O'Connell, "a wicked speech in the dock. He 
 complained of taxes and oppressions of various descriptions, and then 
 said, 'Before the flesh decays from my bones — nay, before my body is 
 laid in the earth — the avenger of tyranny will come. The French are on 
 the sea while I utter these words — they will soon effect their short and 
 easy voyage, and strike terror and dismay into the cruel oppressors of 
 the Irish people.' When the prisoner concluded, Judge Finucane com- 
 menced his charge, in the course of which he thus attacked the politics, 
 predictions and arguments of the unhappy prisoner : ' O'Connor, you're 
 a great blockhead for your pains. What you say of the French is all 
 nonsense. Don't you know, you fool, that Lord Howe knocked theii 
 ships to smithereens last year? And therefore, O'Connor, you shall re- 
 turn to the place from whence you came, and you shall be delivered into 
 the hands of the common executioner, and you shall be hanged by the 
 
 oh ! I must not forget ; there was another point of nonsense in your 
 
 - speech. You talked about the tax on leather, and said it would make 
 us all go barefoot. Now, O'Connor, I've the pleasure to inform you that 
 I have got a large estate in Clare, and there is not a tenant upon it that 
 hasn't got as good boots and shoes as myself. And therefore, O'Connor, 
 you shall return to the place from whence you. came, and you shall be 
 
,148 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 delivered into the hands of the common executioner, and you shall he 
 hanged by the head until you are dead, and 3-0111' body shall be divided 
 into quarters; and may the Lord have mercy on your soul!' The only 
 reply O'Connor made was, 'If you arc kind to your tenants, my lord, 
 may God bless you!"' 
 
 Here are some other anecdotes of '98, which Mr. Daunt heard "the 
 liberator" relate one evening that they dined at the cottage of his son, 
 John O'Connell, at Blackrock, near Dublin. After referring to the atro- 
 cities of the English in Ireland in the past centuries, he went on in this 
 style: "Many of the Orange scoundrels, in 1797, rivalled the atrocities 
 of Coote" (a merciless leader on the English side in the 1641 wars) "and 
 his bloodthirsty gang. In that year Orange Sneyd committed a murder 
 of the character of Coote's. Coote made his guide, a boy, blow into his 
 muzzle, and while the youth's mouth was at the muzzle, shot him dead. 
 In '97, Sneyd was standing at the door of Mrs. L'Estrange's public-house 
 in Fleet street, and wantonly shot a boy dead who had brought him a 
 
 message." 
 
 If I be not greatly mistaken, this is the same Sneyd, the wine- 
 merchant, who, many a long year later, was himself shot dead by an 
 assassin on the steps of the Bank of Ireland. As for Coote, to whose 
 murderous deed O'Connell compares this Sneyd's, no greater monster has 
 disfigured, by atrocious acts, the pages of Irish history. Fire, slaugh- 
 ter, the massacre not merely of men. but even of helpless women and 
 children, — in such atrocities he took delight. His usual order to his 
 followers was, " Spare not a child, if only a span in length." 
 
 On the day following that on which they dined with John O'Connell, 
 "the liberator" resumed his conversation with Mr. Daunt on the state 
 of Ireland in 1798. 
 
 " In that year," said O'Connell, " my friend and his two brothers 
 
 were taken prisoners by a magistrate who owed their mother two thousand 
 pounds. The worthy justice went to that lady and said, ' If you don't 
 release my bond, I'll have your sons flogged and hanged.' 'Sir,' answered 
 she, 'if you were to treat me in that manner, you could not extort the 
 bond from me, and I am much mistaken if my sons have not, at least, 
 as much firmness as their mother.' Fortunately, Judge Day, who was 
 a very humane man, went the circuit; and as no witnesses appeared 
 
TIIK LIFE OF DANIEL 0X0XXELL. H4U 
 
 against the s, he discharged them by proclamation. In pronouncing 
 
 their discharge, Day gave the young men a sort of moral and political 
 lecture, in which he congratulated them on their escape and advised loyal 
 conduct for the future. The youngest brother, who was then but nineteen 
 years of age, indignantly interrupted the judge: 'You have no business 
 to lecture us, my lord.' said he, 'as if we were guilty of disloyalty. "VVe 
 are perfectly innocent, and are quite as loyal as your lordship. Had our 
 enemies been able to establish any sort of case against us, they would 
 not have failed to produce their witnesses. It is too bad, then, my lord, 
 to lecture us as if our conduct had in any respect been censurable.' 
 Day, who was a thorough gentleman, bowed and said, ' You arc quite 
 
 right, Mr. , and I was wrong. I beg your pardon.' 
 
 "Next morning the eldest brother was again seized and thrown into 
 jail by the machinations of the worthy magistrate who owed his mother 
 money. The jailer was a savage brute, and took every opportunity of 
 tormenting him. One day he came to his cell and said, with a diabolical 
 grin, ' I've news that is bitter to you and pleasant to mc — your two 
 brothers have been hanged, and you are to be strung up to-morrow.' 
 
 Mr. was well enough aware of the frightful character of the times 
 
 to know that this was at least possible. ' Is what you have told me 
 really true?' he asked the jailer. 'Upon my oath it is!' answered the 
 
 latter. 'Then, my man,' cried Mr. , 'before I leave this world I 
 
 will have the satisfaction of giving you as good a licking as ever man 
 got!' So saying, he pounced upon the jailer and walloped him awfully. 
 The jailer screamed, and his screams attracted persons without, who 
 
 would have fired at Mr. through the grating in the door, only that 
 
 he constantly kept the jailer between himself and the door. con- 
 tinued to thrash the jailer until he was unable, from exhaustion, to 
 thrash him any longer. The jailer then went ofi', and soon returned 
 with sixty-eight pounds weight of irons, with which he and his assistants 
 
 loaded poor . When ironed, was laid on the bed, and the 
 
 jailer beat him with a knotted blackthorn stick as long as he was able 
 to stand over him. He then kept him forty-eight hours without food ; 
 and when the commanding officer who inspected the prison arrived, he 
 
 was utterly astonished how survive:! the treatment he had received. 
 
 Finding that there was not the shadow of any accusation against him, 
 
 J i 
 
that officer set him free upon his own responsibility. What times!'- 
 exclaimed O'Connell, after he had narrated this incident: "What a 
 
 scene! thrashing the jailer, and the jailer thrashing ! What 
 
 a country, in which such scenes could be enacted ! " 
 
 O'Connell then added, that when travelling, some 3'ears subsequent 
 to these occurrences, with a friend named Franks, they were posting 
 along at a very early hour of the morning, when they espied the hero of 
 the thrashing-encounter waiting on the roadside for the mail-coach. 
 There he was, with his carpet-bag and a cage containing a brace of 
 lighting-cocks, and equipped with a pair of horse-pistols and a huge 
 sabre which he held in his hand. Franks caused the postboys to stop. 
 
 "Hollo! my dear fellow," cried he from the carriage-window, "what 
 are you waiting on the road for?" 
 
 " I'm waiting to take the mail," replied . 
 
 " Take the mail!" retorted Franks; "egad, you arc fully equipped to 
 take a citadel !" 
 
 Mr. Daunt, to whose "Personal Recollections" I am indebted for 
 these anecdotes, tells us that he was acquainted with the younger of 
 these brothers — the one who "pulled up" Judge Day — but that he sup- 
 pressed his name, believing its publication would be distasteful to him. 
 
 One day in March, '43 (Mr. Daunt tells us), O'Connell was very 
 communicative of old stories and personal recollections. 
 
 "Lord Clare's enmity to Ireland," O'Connell began, "was once very 
 nearly ended by the hand of the assassin. In 1794 he was carrying a 
 bill through the Irish Parliament for compelling the accountant of the 
 Court of Exchequer to return his accounts whenever called on by the 
 court. These summary accounts would have been very inconvenient to 
 Baron Power, who, as junior baron, tilled the office of accountant. He 
 lived extravagantly, making use of the money that came into his hands, 
 and looking to future good luck to enable him to reckon with the owners. 
 The bill would have been his ruin, and after many ineffectual efforts 
 to dissuade Fitzgibbon from pressing it, he at last resolved, in a lit of 
 desperation, to assassinate him. So he drove to Ely Place with a brace 
 of loaded pistols in his pockets, and asked to see Fitzgibbon, who, provi- 
 dentially, was from home. Baron Power then resolved on suicide, and 
 ordered his coachman to drive along the north wall. When he had got 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 351 
 
 a considerable distance out of town, he quitted the carriage, desired the 
 coachman to await his return, and walked on alone toward the Pigeon 
 House. He tied his hands together in order to deprive himself .of the 
 power of swimming, and jumped into the sea from the pier. It was 
 afterward remarked as curious that he walked off to drown himself, 
 using an umbrella, as the day was wet! One would think the sprink- 
 ling of a shower could not much incommode a fellow who was resolved 
 on a watery death. Think of a man going to drown himself, with an 
 umbrella to keep out the wet ! 
 
 "In a few days after, Crosbie Morgan, one of the oddest of odd attor- 
 neys, also drowned himself. The balladmongers shouted their accounts 
 of these events through the town, crying out, 'Great times for Ireland! 
 A great day for Ireland ! One judge drowned ! One attorney drowned !' 
 They had also, 'Last speech and dying words of Crosbie Morgan!' which, 
 instead of ending with the approved finish of the penitent declarations 
 of Catholic criminals, namely, 'I die an unworthy member of the Church 
 of Rome,' ended thus: 'I die an unworthy mongrel, of neither Church!' 
 
 "Had Baron Power murdered Fitzgibbon, Pitt would have found 
 much more difficulty in carrying the union. Castlereagh, although as 
 vile, shameless, and indefatigable a tool as ever corruption had, yet 
 could not, unaided by the commanding energy of Clare, have succeeded 
 so well in the dirty work. Clare had great intellectual powers. He 
 lived at a period fertile in monsters. Clare was a monster ! He was a 
 kind of petticoat Robespierre ! His father was a barrister of consider- 
 able eminence. Old Fitzgibbon and his brother were the first persons 
 who introduced the system of reporting the proceedings of the English 
 law-courts in the public newspapers, without the authority of the pre- 
 siding judge. They were students in the Temple at the time, and Lord 
 Mansfield tried to put a stop to the practice, but the Fitzgibbons perse- 
 vered and succeeded. 
 
 "Clare was atrociously bigoted against the Catholics. A Protestant 
 friend of mine, who often met him at the whist parties of an old dow- 
 ager, told me nothing could possibly exceed the contemptuous acerbity 
 with which, on these occasions, he spoke of the Catholics. ' The scum 
 of the earth!' and such like phrases, were the epithets he habitually 
 applied to them." 
 
 23 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'GOXN'ELL. 
 
 Speaking of the polished, witty and eloquent Charles Kendal Bush, 
 who attained the dignity of chief-justice of the Court of Common Pleas 
 in Ireland, O'Connell repeated a clever impromptu which that judge threw 
 off on the occasion of Csesar Colclough crossing the ford of Baliinlaw, in 
 the -county Wexford, in the midst of a storm. It is an amusing parody 
 or burlesque on the famous words of Julius Caesar to the sailors in sim- 
 ilar perilous circumstances — "Courage! you bear Caesar and his for- 
 tunes!" Bush's lines ran thus: 
 
 " While meaner souls the tempest strikes with awe, 
 Intrepid Colclough crosses Baliinlaw, 
 And cries to boatmen, shiv'ring in their rags, 
 ' You carry Caesar and his saddlebags !' " 
 
 O'Connell remarked. "That Colclough was made chief-justice ol 
 Prince Edward's Island as a reward for supporting the union." Mr. 
 Daunt, however, thinks O'Connell may have erred in this statement, 
 because Colclough's. name does not appear in the original black-list of 
 1800. 
 
 On the same occasion "the liberator" spoke of the judges whose 
 seats on the bench were the reward of votes given for the act of union, 
 either by themselves or their relations. 
 
 "Daly was one of them," said O'Connell. "He went into Parliament 
 to \ote for the union, and to fight a duel, if requisite, with any one who 
 opposed it. Xorbury was one of Castlereagh's unprincipled janissaries. 
 Daly was no better. Daly was made prime-serjeant for his services at 
 the union, although he had never held a dozen briefs in all his life. He 
 was on the bench, I remember, when some case was tried involving the 
 value of a certain tract of land. A witness deposed that the land was 
 worth so much per acre. 'Are you a, judge of the value of land? 1 asked 
 Daly. 'I think I am, my lord,' replied the witness. 'Have you ex- 
 perience in it?' inquired Daly. 'Oh, my lord,' cried Counsellor Powel, 
 with a most meaning emphasis, ' did you ever know such a thing as a 
 fudge without experience?' " 
 
 Thus men were in those days elevated to the Irish bench not because 
 they were distinguished for great legal abilities and knowledge, not for 
 the possession of a judicial mind, but simply because a seat on the bench 
 was the price for which they had sold country and conscience. The lives I 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 353 
 
 mid fortunes of the Irish people were liable to be adjudicated upon by 
 the very knaves who had already betrayed their most vital interests. 
 Mr. Daunt remarks that "no less than nine individuals can be named* 
 who received that elevation as the price of their political iniquity.'' Nor 
 is there any improvement in this respect to-day in Ireland. While 
 lawyers, wholly unconnected with politics, are frequently made judges in 
 England on account of their purely professional claims to the judicial 
 office, the bench in Ireland is reached almost exclusively by obedient 
 partisans of the government. The legal patronage of Ireland is used 
 almost solely as a means of rewarding the enemies or corrupting the 
 friends of the people. 
 
 While O'Connell was speaking of the union-judges, the name of "that 
 unique expositor of law," as Mr. Daunt calls him, Lord Nbrbury, turned 
 up naturally enough. 
 
 " He was, indeed, a curious judge,'' said O'Connell. " He had a con- 
 siderable parrot-sort of knowledge of law — he had upon his memory an 
 enormous number of cases; but he did not understand, nor was he 
 capable of understanding, a single principle of law. To be sure, his 
 charges were the strangest effusions ! I was once engaged before him 
 upon an executory devise involving a point of the most abstract and 
 difficult nature. I made a speech of an hour and a half upon the point, 
 and was ably sustained, and as ably opposed, by brother counsel. We 
 all quoted largely from the work of Fearne (pro7iounced 'Fen/') On Re- 
 maindtrs, in which many authorities and cases in point are collected. 
 The cause was adjourned until next day, when Lord Nbrbury charged 
 the jury in the following terms. 
 
 "'Gentlemen of the jury. My learned brethren of the bench have 
 carefully considered this subject, and have requested me to announce 
 their decision. It is a subject of the most difficult nature, and it is as 
 important as it is difficult. I have the highest pleasure in bearing wit- 
 ness lo the delight — yes, the delight! — and, 1 will acid, the assistance, 
 the able assistance, we have received from the masterly views which the 
 counsel on both sides have taken of the matter. Gentlemen, the abilities 
 and erudition of the counsel are above all praise. Where all displayed 
 such eloquence and legal skill, it would be as difficult as invidious to say 
 who was best. In fact, gentlemen of the jury, they were all best! Gen- 
 
354 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 tlemen, the authorities and precedents they have advanced in this most 
 knotty and important case are like a hare in Tq/perary — to be found in 
 Fearne! {fern).' 1 
 
 "Now," continued O'Connell, as he related this precious specimen 
 of judicial buffoonery, "in some years to come, if these things should be 
 preserved, people won't believe them. But Lord Norbury has delivered 
 stranger charges still. When charging the jury in the action brought 
 by Guthrie versus Sterne to recover damages for criminal conversation 
 with the plaintiff's wife, his lordship said : 
 
 " 'Gentlemen of the jury: The defendant in this case is Henry Wil- 
 liam Godfrey Baker Sterne — and there, gentlemen of the jury, you have 
 him from stem to stern ! I am free to observe, gentlemen, that if this 
 Mr. Henry William Godfrey Baker Sterne had as many Christian virtues 
 as he has Christian names, we never should see the honest gentleman 
 figuring here as a defendant in an action for crim. con.' 
 
 " The usual style of quoting law authorities, some years ago, was not 
 as at present, 'second volume of Strange, page ten,' but briefly, 'two 
 Strange, ten.' A barrister, known by the sobriquet of ' Little Alick,' 
 was opposed to Blackburne in some case, in which he relied on the pre- 
 cedents contained in 'two Strange.' Blackburne, conceiving the authori- 
 ties thus quoted against him were conclusive, threw up the cause, leaving 
 the victory to little Alick. But the court, not deeming the precedent con- 
 tained in 'two Strange' so conclusive for Alick as Blackburne considered 
 it, gave judgment against Alick' s client, and of course in favor of Black- 
 burne's. In announcing this decision, Lord Norbury threw off, on the 
 bench, the following impromptu : 
 
 ' Two strange was little Alick's case 
 To run alone, yet win the race ; 
 But Blackburne's case was stranger still, 
 To win the race against his will !' 
 
 "The seemly gravity of the Bench was in the hands of a bad keeper 
 when committed to the care of Lord Nbrbmy. All who remember him, 
 as he presided in court, can bear witness that nothing appeared to delight 
 him so much as the uproar of merriment created by his volleys of puns. 
 'What is your calling and occupation, my honest man?' he once asked 
 a witness. 'Please, your lordship, I keep a racket-court.' 'So do /,' 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 rejoined Lord Norbury, in gratified allusion to the racket which his wit- 
 ticisms constantly excited in court. It was an appropriate joke at the 
 burial of a joking, hanging judge — that jest of a butcher's apprentice 
 that Brophy the dentist told me. When they were burying Norbury the 
 grave was so deep that the ropes by which they were letting down the 
 coitin did not reach the bottom of it. The coffin remained hanging at 
 mid-depth, while somebody was sent for more rope. 'Ay,' cried a 
 butcher's 'prentice, ' give him rope enough ; don't stint him ! He was 
 the boy that never grudged rope to a poor body!'" 
 
 One of the stories told of Nbrbury is that, when passing sentence of 
 death on a prisoner found guilty of stealing a watch, he remarked to the 
 unfortunate wretch, " My good fellow, you made a grasp at Time, but, 
 egad ! you caught Eternity.''' 
 
 He was asked at a bar-dinner one day, Would he try some beef? 
 "Is it hung?" asked he. "Oh," quoth Curran, "you have only to try 
 it, and it's sure to be ImngV 
 
 Numberless are the stories told of his queer jokes. For some trifling 
 offence he was sentencing a prisoner in Dublin. "The sentence of the 
 court is, that you be flogged from the bank to the quay — " The prisoner 
 interrupted him, saying, "Thank you, my lord; you have done your 
 worst." "And back again," retorted Nbrbury, finishing his sentence. 
 Another stock anecdote is that which gives his reply to the sporting 
 gentleman on circuit, who boasted that he had recently shot thirty-three 
 hares before breakfast. "Thirty-three hares!" exclaimed Norbury. 
 "Zounds, sir! you must have been tiring at a wig." 
 
 In truth, idlers used to frequent Norbury's court, the Common Pleas, 
 just as they would go to a comic performance at the theatre. Every- 
 thing in the shape of solemnity and decorum was banished when he was 
 present. The lawyers entered into the spirit of the scene. Harry Deane 
 Grady, Keller and others co-operated with the judge in turning the court 
 into a bear-garden. Every day during the sittings, as soon as the gro- 
 tesque old man had waddled into court (this was at about eleven in the 
 forenoon) and the jurymen had been sworn in, to most of whom he would 
 nod familiarly, exclaiming at the same time, "A most respectable man," 
 the strange proceedings commenced. The junior counsel on the plain- 
 tiff's side would open the pleadings in the ordinary commonplace style 
 
! r 
 
 3o8 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 The hoary, but by no means venerable, chief-justice would then gen- 
 erally cry out, "A very promising young man! Jackson" (Mr. Peter 
 Jackson was Ms lordship's registrar), " what is that young gentleman's 
 name?" "Mr. So-and-so, my lord." "What! of the county Cork? I 
 knew -it by his air. Sir, you are a gentleman of very high pretensions, 
 and I protest I have never heard the many counts stated in a more dig- 
 nified manner in all my life. I hope I shall find you, like the paper 
 before me, a daily freeman in my court." Supposing the grounds of the 
 action were altogether trifling, still his eccentric lordship, puffing and 
 blowing and swelling with bustle and importance, would exclaim, "A 
 very important action, indeed ! If you make out your facts in evidence, 
 Mr. Grady, there will be serious matter for the jury.'* Then the case 
 would proceed. Perhaps some witness would be brought up arrayed in 
 new "toggery'" provided by the party on whose side he appeared, the 
 plaintiff, for instance. Underneath the novel finery, however, might lurk 
 linen innocent of soap and water. The humorous and able cross-exam- 
 iner, Harry Deane Grady, of whose skill in extracting what he wanted 
 from unwilling witnesses we have already had a specimen, would force 
 the poor tormented devil of a witness to unbutton and unveil the soiled 
 shirt. In fact, the witness, when turned inside out, would have to join 
 in the merriment and laugh at his own expense. Norbury, who always 
 had a leaning to the plaintiff's side, would then come to the rescue in 
 person, and would help the discomfited vagabond. This would put the 
 defendant's counsel on his metal. A battle royal would ensue between 
 the counsel employed on both sides. A chaos of noisy sophistries, and 
 dogmatic assertions, and contradictions, and points of law, and universal 
 wrangling would swell to a roar, the bellowings of Norbury, puffing and 
 blowing, and with an apoplectic hue empurpling his distended visage, 
 being heard over the whole Babel din. By this time the satisfactory 
 result attained would be confusion of ideas worse confounded in the 
 minds of every one present, especially those of the intelligent jury and 
 Norbury himself. Nor would his extraordinary charge to the jury tend 
 to make the turbid stream run any clearer. He would begin by extrav- 
 agant praises of the party against whom he wished the jury to find their 
 verdict. The defendant was one of the most honorable and estimable 
 of living men; he knew his father and loved him; but — at this expected 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 357 
 
 monosyllable, from all present an explosion of inextinguishable ninth 
 would burst forth. The judicial zany would next profess to enter more 
 deeply into the case. He would now throw open his robes, perhaps fling 
 off his wig- and stand up, and pour forth an outlandish, unconnected 
 jumble of anecdotes of his early life — jokes partly original, partly bor- 
 rowed from Joe Miller or other jest-books, quotations not always appo- 
 site, but well recited, from Milton or Shakespeare, sarcasms against the 
 defendant's counsel, and possibly a few allusions to some leading incident 
 that turned up in the course of the trial. 
 
 Whenever the chief-justice presided in full court, the graver judges as- 
 sociated with him — the honest, strong-minded, but severe and atrabilious 
 Fletcher, the solemn Mayne, who never condescended to smile, or, later, 
 the choleric Johnson — would sit beside him indignant at his buffoonery, 
 their unruffled gravity or anger forming a ludicrous contrast with his 
 outrageous antics. Fletcher would show his wrath by rocking himself 
 oddly and growling; Johnson would groan in angry disgust and turn 
 aside abruptly. Sometimes Nbrbury, hurrying on regardless of their 
 displeasure with his usual grotesque vehemence, would come in collision 
 with one or both, and then suddenly pull up, puffing and blowing, 
 amidst the laughter of the bar. 
 
 O'Connell. however, was able, at times, to bring this preposterous 
 chief-justice to something like reason. Though his manner to the bench 
 was respectful and courteous, yet no man was ever more independent in 
 his bearing towards the judges than our hero. He could even, when 
 occasion demanded, show a stern and defiant front in a style almost 
 without precedent. To his brother barristers he was friendly and genial, 
 and, when more timid spirits would shrink from encountering the frown 
 of a judge, O'Connell would boldly stand forth to champion the privileges 
 of the bar against any undue encroachments or insolence on the part of 
 the bench. Above all, he was ever ready to take the part of a diffident 
 young man, repelled and discouraged by judicial arrogance. Thus, when 
 Mr. J. Mart ley rose to make his first motion, and was laboring under the 
 embarrassment natural to a young lawyer making his first attempt to 
 speak in court, Judge Johnson rudely and impatiently interrupted him 
 several times. The young man hesitated, and, at each repetition of the 
 judge's insult, was becoming more and more confused. His embarrass- 
 
358 THE LIFE OK DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 ment was increased by the malicious sportiveness of Norbury. While 
 this scene was passing, O'Connell entered the court. Full of sympathy 
 for Martley, and indignant at his cruel treatment, he tried to induce the 
 senior lawyers to take his part ; but they were too much in awe of the 
 bench to interfere. Then O'Connell, without further hesitation, resolved 
 to interpose himself in Hartley's behalf. 
 
 "My lords," said he, "I respectfully submit that Mr. Martley has a 
 perfect title to a full hearing. He has a duty to discharge to his client, 
 and should not, I submit, be impeded in the discharge of that duty. Mr. 
 Martley is not personalty known to me, but I cannot sit here in silence 
 while a brother barrister is treated so discourteously." 
 
 u 0h! Mr. O'Connell, we have heard Mr. Martley," said Lord JSTorbury, 
 "and we cannot allow the time of the court to be further wasted." 
 
 " Pardon me, my lord," rejoined O'Connell, "you have not heard him. 
 The young gentleman has not been allowed to explain his case — an ex- 
 planation which, I am quite sure, he is capable of giving if your lordships 
 afford him the opportunity." 
 
 "Mr. O'Connell," said Judge Johnson pompously, "are you engnged 
 in this case, that you thus presume to interfere?" 
 
 " My lord, I am not; I merely rise to defend the privileges of the bar, 
 and I will not permit them to be violated, either in my own or the person 
 of any other member of the profession." 
 
 "Well, well; well. well," interposed old Norbury, "we'll hear Mr. 
 Martley. Sit down, Mr. O'Connell — sit down." 
 
 O'Connell, victorious, obeyed the chief-justice and sat down. Martley, 
 sustained by the generous boldness of O'Connell, felt his spirits revive. 
 He rose, stated his case convincingly, gained his motion; and ever after 
 retained a grateful recollection of O'Connell's courageous help. 
 
 We shall see other signal instances of O'Connell's daring defiance of 
 judicial tyranny ere this biography terminates. To understand the extent 
 of moral courage exhibited by O'Connell in his antagonism to arbitrary 
 proceedings on the part of judges during the earlier portion of his career, 
 we must call to memory the fact that the Catholics were then not half 
 emancipated ; that they had been treated as slaves for more than a cen- 
 tury ; that they were only beginning to recover and assert the spirit of 
 manhood; that the faction of the Protestant Ascendencv was still un- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 scrupulous and powerful, and its insolence overbearing and almost 
 incredible. 
 
 One of O'CJonnell's anecdotes of Lord Norbiiry, just given, refers to 
 Hie case of "Guthrie versus Sterne." This case is famous on account 
 of the splendid speech of Charles Phillips for the plaintiff. He succeeded 
 in winning a verdict, carrying heavy damages for Mr. Guthrie. The 
 unfortunate defendant, General Sterne (he had won the rank, I think, in 
 the South American war of independence), was unable to pay the dam- 
 ages (his property was tied up), and consequently he had to spend the 
 last thirty or forty years of his life as a prisoner in the Marshalsea, 
 Dublin. He only ended his sad, or at all events strange, existence a 
 few vears ago. 
 
 "That ruin," said O'Connell, on one occasion, looking at the roofless 
 remains of the old court-house of Kilmainham, "was a busy place after 
 the rebellion. Its unpopular celebrity was commemorated in a ballad 
 that began, I think, thus : 
 
 'Hark forward, Kilmainham ! hark forward, Kilmainham! 
 We'll hang 'em, we'll hang 'cm, before we arraign 'em. 
 Old Toler* leads the bloody hunt: 
 This day some wretch must die.' " 
 
 After this odd snatch from an odd ditty, he began to talk to Mr. 
 Daunt of his recollections of '98 and the union, against which he had 
 made his maiden speech ; in the preceding chapter I presented that 
 speech in full to the reader. O'Connell often boasted that his first ap- 
 pearance in public life was made in opposition to the union. " It is a 
 curious thing enough," said he on another occasion to the same gentle- 
 man, "that all the principles of my subsequent political life are con- 
 tained in my very first speech. We met at the Royal Exchange to 
 denounce the union as Catholics. We had previously held private meet- 
 ings at the house of Sir James Strong, who was active enough at first, 
 but refused to be our chairman. So we made Ambrose Moore our chair- 
 man — a very worthy citizen. It was Curran who drew up our resolu- 
 tions. They were very fiery and spirited in their original shape, but 
 were modified into comparative tameness to suit the timidity of some 
 of our friends in those days of terror and brute force. Major Sirr came 
 
 * Norbury. 
 
360 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 into the meeting at the head of a party of the armed yeomanry. They 
 grounded their arms with a heavy clash on the stone pavement, but did 
 not molest us. Sirr asked to be shown the resolutions, and when lie had 
 read them he threw them back on the table, saying, ' There is no harm 
 in them.' He then walked off with his yeomanry, and left us undis- 
 turbed." 
 
 In one of O'Connell's anecdotes, given in the present chapter, he 
 spoke of the suicide of Crosbie Morgan. In another conversation he 
 spoke of certain oddities in the legal profession, "amongst whom," he 
 asserted, "Crosbie Morgan, the attorney, was the most eccentric. He, 
 probably, made more money and spent more money than any other 
 attorney of his time. He had eleven clerks in his office, and every 
 clerk was an attorney ! Great as were his gains, his expenditure was 
 greater. Whenever he travelled to Dublin, he used to engage all the 
 post-chaises at every inn where he slept along the road, and if he found 
 any gentlemen of his acquaintance going to Dublin, he invariably gave 
 them seats gratis! His own personal suite always filled two or three 
 of the carriages." 
 
 " What a general reputation for dishonesty the attorney profession 
 has got!" remarked a lady who had been listening to O'Connell's 
 anecdote. 
 
 "A very unjust one," the liberator observed in reply. "Attorneys 
 are neither better nor worse than other men. If a man who is a rogue 
 happens to be also an attorney, it is true that the nature of his pro- 
 fession affords him facilities for committing injustice, just because it 
 mixes him up in the affairs of other people. Attorneys arc often obliged 
 to do harsh things, too, in pursuit of the undeniable rights of their 
 clients, and the profession has become involved in the odium of the 
 harshness." 
 
 As I have now finished the story of '98 and the union, and given the 
 reader some of O'Connell's reminiscences of those events and of persons 
 concerned therein, I do not think it would be out of place to introduce 
 here an article of mine, which appeared in the (Dublin) "Irish People," 
 November 5, 1864, containing some reflections on the gloomiest fea- 
 tures of our past history, viewed, however, from a hopeful point of view. 
 The article is called »■ 
 
"HOPE FROM THE PAST! 
 
 " Superficial observers can see little that is not in the highest degree 
 disheartening in the past history of our country. In fact, there are 
 many who can only find in it a lesson of utter despair. And, in 
 truth, the annals of. no other country present to the imagination such 
 vast pictures of desolation and woe. What can be more terrible than a 
 history of seven centuries of invasion, war, spoliation, massacre, penal 
 laws, famine, pestilence, and wholesale evictions — a story, in short, of 
 never-ending horrors? Yet, in spite of all this, we think the past his- 
 tory of Ireland should be a source of hope, not of despair, to Irishmen! 
 
 " If we turn to the history of some of the greatest nations the world 
 has seen, we shall find the seeds of prosperity and glory often sown in 
 disaster and shame. National suffering often prepares the way for 
 aational happiness. It has been justly remarked, ' that periods of ad- 
 versity are in the end seldom lost to nations any more than individuals.' 
 Evil is sometimes more apparent than real. Temporary evil may be the 
 root of permanent good. If we were to analyze our country's history. 
 «ve think we should find clear and strong illustrations of these princi- 
 ples. We have neither space nor time to attempt this task, but, that 
 our notion may be intelligible, we shall make a few remarks on some of 
 the gloomiest passages of our history. 
 
 " Every one can see the dark side of the British conquest. Yet even 
 in this there may be something redeeming. In many ways it may have 
 prepared the way for the greatness that may follow the achievement of 
 Inland's independence. While Ireland was divided into so many petty 
 principalities, waging constant war one with the other, she could hardly 
 hope to become great or even civilized. Unlike the small states of 
 ancient Greece or mediaeval Italy, the patriarchal clans had no towns 
 where the nascent arts could rind shelter and fosterage. The system, 
 too, was antagonistic to the growth of commerce. The land-tenures 
 were compatible only with a pastoral state of society. Then no one of 
 the principalities was likely ever to become sufficiently powerful to 
 absorb the rest and create Irish unity. The English conquest at least 
 [rut an end to the rule of the petty chieftains, and made Ireland one 
 and indivisible. 
 
 "The conquest and the confiscations that ensued were, indeed, in most 
 
 i 
 
3G2 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 respects disastrous, but they produced a healthy mixture of races in our 
 island. Let us bear in mind that mixed blood is one of the chief sources 
 of national greatness. 
 
 "The ferocious wars were incessant for centuries. Up to this they 
 have only riveted the chains on the neck of Ireland; but they have also 
 made the Irish one of the most martial races on the face of the earth. 
 It was the constant wars, often disastrous, which Rome waged against 
 the other Italian states during the earlier centuries of her existence, that 
 made her sons the first soldiers of the ancient world. 
 
 "Even the memory of the dissensions which form so conspicuous a 
 blot in Irish history may yet serve our own age and posterity as a warn- 
 ing against discord. Thank Heaven! the increase of intelligence, know- 
 ledge, experience, is likely ere long to bury Irish dissension in the grave 
 with all its brood of angry passions. 
 
 "The penal laws crushed the most Irish part of the population under 
 the feet of a faction friendly to British rule. On the other hand, by the 
 operation of a law well known to those who have studied the theory of 
 population, they tended to make the oppressed people increase and mul- 
 tiply, and to make those to whom they gave exclusive privileges rela- 
 tively weaker in point of numbers day by day. 
 
 "Even the disastrous act of union has at least taught us the misery 
 and degradation of depending on a foreign legislature. The bitter ex- 
 perience of the present century will make Ireland doubly tenacious of 
 her independence, should she be so fortunate as to win it back. 
 
 " In short, a nation should never despair. Even if the past were 
 entirely dark, we should hope and pray for a happier future. Still less 
 should Ave yield to craven despair, when we see reason to believe that 
 the seeds of future prosperity may have been sown in the most dismal 
 days of the past. Possibly, this dreadful ordeal of seven centuries may 
 have been but the state of discipline preparatory to our greatness. 
 Perhaps the expected day of our fitness for independence may at length 
 be slowly but surely drawing near. We may yet reach that holiest 
 shrine where the consecrated altar of freedom stands! Never let us 
 cease to believe in our destiny !" 
 
 Thus examining the gloomy results of the past, we find some ele- 
 ments of goods in those very results. There is yet another way to draw 
 
forth hope from the chirk abysses of the past. Let us see how those 
 gloomy results came to happen. He who examines carefully the history 
 of our different rebellions, which ended in defeats and disasters, and 
 inquires into the causes of those defeats and disasters, — he who has time 
 to do this properly must clearly perceive that, in all cases, but fractions, 
 more or less numerous, of our people strove for freedom; yet invariably 
 these fractions of our race gave immense trouble to the English enemy; 
 and this though that enemy was on all occasions (miserable fact for an 
 Irishman to be obliged to confess!) strenuously aided by other sections 
 of the Irish people. What, then, if the whole Irish nation had strug- 
 gled and struck together for independence? Is it too much to say 
 that, in any one of our great rebellions of the past — in any one of the 
 wars of Elizabeth's reign, in the wars that followed 1641, in the Wil- 
 liamite wars, or in the insurrections of '98 — if our people had been 
 unanimous for their country's freedom (seeing what they were able to 
 do, cut up, as they were, into miserable fragments), they would have 
 swept in a brief space of time the whole hosts and power of their op- 
 pressors into the sea ? Surely it is not too much to assert that they 
 would. In the preceding portion of this work, in various passages, I 
 have endeavored to place in the strongest light and vindicate this truth ; 
 for a certain truth I believe it to be. 
 
 I hold, then, that our past Irish history should be looked on by all 
 true Irishmen as a source of hope, not of despair. I maintain this, 
 looking exclusively at the gloomiest passages in our story. I do not 
 deem it necessary, or even judicious, on the present occasion, in seeking 
 to draw encouragement from our annals, to dwell on the positive advan- 
 tages we have, from time to time, wrung from the British government in 
 the course of the present century.* 
 
 * The books I have chiefly consulted in writing the above chapter are O'Neill Daunt's "Per- 
 sonal Recollections of O'Connell ;" Fajran's "Life of O'Connell ;" "Life and Times of Daniel 
 O'Coimell," etc., Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Parliament street; "Irish People" for 18G4, etc. 
 
 J 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Pictures, anecdotes awd incidents of O'Conneli.s career at tiie Bar — O'Connei.i 
 travelling on circuit — o'connell in his study — o'connell in tiie courts — hl9 
 Reminiscences of Chief-Baron O'Grady, Lord Guii.lamore — An amusing reproof- 
 Baron Foster's resemblance to a stuffed owl — O'Grady and the cow-steai.er's 
 witness — O'Grady in the theatre in Limerick — "Ciieckley be d — d!" — Jerry 
 Keller and Judge Mayne — O'Conneli.'s anecdotes of Jerry Keller, Norcott and 
 Parsons the attorney-hater — Strange career of Norcott ; he becomes a Mussul- 
 man — Judge Foster and Denis Halligan — The Liberator's story of one of his 
 clients, who wished to show his gratitude in an odd fashion — a place in gl.as- 
 kevin — a pious and grateful highwayman; o'connei.i.'s life valuable to his 
 clients — Curious instance of O'Connell's professional penetration and quickness; 
 
 A TALE OF A FLY — ILLUSTRATIONS OF 0'CoNNEI.l's RAPIDITY OF CONCEPTION AND PROMPTI- 
 TUDE OF ACTION. 
 
 ';M-iM'BE have seen that O'Connell made his political debut at a public 
 f-Ww4 inee ti u g ne M m the year 1800, to protest against the thrice- 
 ■:.'.' ■"'.'- ik accursed, as he would himself style it, act of union. This 
 *.<& "" patriotic commencement of his public career was creditable 
 i^g to his generous nature. His speech on the occasion was manly and 
 effective. In short, bearing in mind that it was his first appearance on 
 the stage of public life, his success may be deemed even brilliant. 
 Nevertheless, he took little further part or action in the political affairs 
 of his country for a long time after. During the years immediately fol- 
 lowing the union, he confined himself almost exclusively to a diligent 
 and laborious pursuit of professional reputation. He had far greater 
 difficulties to contend with than those which Protestants of equal abil- 
 ities had at that time to encounter. Not to speak of the semi-contempt- 
 uous manner in which Catholics were still regarded by the potent taction 
 of the Ascendency, and their necessarily inferior influence with those 
 attorneys who had most briefs to give, it is to be remembered that, till 
 the year 1829, a Catholic was not eligible for the position of king's 
 counsel. Confined, then, for such a number of years to the outer or 
 junior bar, O'Connell lost many an opportunity of displaying his elo- 
 quence as a leading advocate that would, as a matter of course, have 
 
 SGI 
 
fallen to liim had he belonged to the sect favored by the state. But, 
 then, as invariably happens in the history of superior natures, diffi- 
 culties in his path to success and fame only caused him to labor the 
 harder to counteract them. Hence, too, he -would be the more inclined 
 to confine himself almost wholly to his professional pursuits during 
 the earlier years of his practice. I think, then, that, before I enter 
 fully on the political life of O'Connell, it may be as well to devote a 
 chapter or two to a series of anecdotes and sketches giving a picture 
 of his life as a lawyer. In these chapters I am about to give, relating 
 to his bar-life, I do not think it necessary to be very particular in arrang- 
 ing the stories and incidents in their exact order of time, nor do I intend 
 to confine myself rigidly to the earlier years of his career. 
 
 I shall commence by giving the celebrated Richard Lalor Sliiel's 
 most interesting and vivid sketch of O'Connell as he used to appear 
 when travelling on circuit : 
 
 '• I had sat down at the inn of the little village, and had placed my- 
 self in the window. The market was over; the people had gradually 
 passed to their homes; the busy hum of the day was fast dying away. 
 The sun was sinking, and threw his lingering beams into the neat but 
 ill-furnished apartment where I was sitting. To avoid the glare of his 
 beams, I changed my position, and this gave me a more uninterrupted 
 view of the long street, which threw its termination into the green fields 
 of the country. Casting my eyes in this direction, I beheld a chariot-' 
 and-four coming toward me, enveloped in a complete cloud of dust, and 
 the panting horses of which were urged on with tremendous rapidity. 
 Struck with the unexpected arrival of such a vehicle in that place, I 
 leaned out of the window to observe its destination, and beheld it still 
 rolling hurriedly along, and sweeping around the angle of the street 
 toward the inn with increased violence. If my reader has been much 
 used to travelling, he will be aware that the moment a postilion comes 
 in sight of an inn he is sure to call forth the mettle of his horses — per- 
 haps to show off" the blood of his cattle. This was the case at present, 
 and a quick gallop brought the vehicle in thundering noise to the door, 
 where Shenstone says is to be found 'the warmest welcome.' The ani- 
 mals were sharply checked, the door was flung open, and the occupier 
 hurriedly threw himself out. 
 
 J. 
 
3G6 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 " Bring out four horses instantly!' was the command, he uttered in 
 the loud voice of haste and authority. 
 
 "The inmate of the carriage was about five feet eleven and a half 
 inches high, and wore a portly, stout, hale and agreeable appearance. 
 His shoulders were broad and his legs stoutly buiit; and as he at that 
 moment stood, one arm in his side pocket, the other thrust into a waist- 
 coat, which was almost completely unbuttoned from the heat of the day, 
 he would have made a good figure for the rapid but tine finishing touch 
 of Harlowe. His head was covered with a light fur cap, which, partly 
 thrown back, displayed that breadth of forehead which I have never yet 
 seen absent from real talent. His eyes appeared to me, at that instant, 
 to be between a light blue and a gray color. His face was pale and 
 sallow, as if the turmoil of business, the shade of care or the study of 
 midnight had chased away the glow of health and youth. Around his 
 mouth played a cast of sarcasm, which, to a quick eye, at once betrayed 
 satire; and it appeared as if the lips could be easily resolved into risus 
 sardonicus (sardonic laugh). His head was somewhat larger than that 
 which a modern doctrine denominates the 'medium size;' and it was 
 well supported by a stout and well-foundationcd pedestal, which was 
 based on a breast full, round, prominent and capacious. The eye Avas 
 shaded by a brow which I thought would be more congenial to sunshine 
 than storm, and the nose was neither Grecian nor Roman, but was large 
 enough to readily admit him into the chosen band of that ' immortal 
 rebel'* who chose his body-guard with capacious lungs and noses, as 
 affording greater capability of undergoing toil and hardship. Altogether, 
 he appeared to possess strong physical powers. 
 
 " He was dressed in an olive-brown surtout, black trowsers and 
 black waistcoat. His cravat was carelessly tied — the knot almost un- 
 done from the heat of the day ; and as he stood with his hand across 
 his bosom, and his eyes bent on the ground, he was the very picture of 
 a public character hurrying away on some important matter, which 
 required all of personal exertion and mental energy. Often as I have 
 seen him since, I have never beheld him in so striking or pictorial an 
 attitude. 
 
 " 'Quick with the horses!' was his hurried ejaculation, as he recov- 
 
 * Cromwell — thus called by Lord Byron. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 367 
 
 ered himself from his reverie and flung himself into his carriage. The 
 whip was cracked, and away went the chariot with the same cloud of 
 dust and the same tremendous pace. 
 
 " [ did not see him pay any money. He did not enter the inn. He 
 called for no refreshment, nor did he utter a word to any person around 
 him ; he seemed to be obeyed by instinct. And while I marked the 
 chariot thundering along the street, which had all its then spectators 
 turned on the cloud-enveloped vehicle, my curiosity was intensely ex- 
 cited, and I instantly descended to learn the name of this extraordinary 
 stranger. 
 
 "Most mal apropos, however, were my inquiries. Unfortunately, the 
 landlord was out, the waiter could not tell his name, and the hostler 
 ' knew nothing whatsomdever of him, only he was in the most oncom- 
 moncst hurry.' A short time, however, satisfied m}' curiosity. The next 
 day brought me to the capital of the county. It was the assize-time. 
 Very fond of oratory, I went to the court-house to hear the forensic elo- 
 quence of the 'home circuits I had scarcely seated myself when the 
 ^aiiie grayish eye, broad forehead, portly figure and strong tone of voice 
 arrested my attention. He was just on the moment of addressing the 
 jury, and I anxiously waited to hear the speech of a man who had 
 already so strongly interested me. After looking at the judge steadily 
 for a moment, he began his speech exactly in the following pronuncia- 
 tion: 'My Lurrd — gentlemen of the jury — ' 
 
 " 'Who speaks?' instantly whispered I. 
 
 " 'Counsellor O'Connell,' was the reply." 
 
 I have introduced the above extract merely to furnish the reader 
 with a striking picture of O'Connell as he appeared when travelling on 
 circuit. I shall now turn to other pictures from Shiel's sketches, equally 
 lifelike and entertaining — pictures of O'Connell in his study and in the 
 courts. 
 
 "If any of you, my English readers, being a stranger in Dublin, 
 should chance, in your return on a winter's morning from one of the 
 ' small and early ' parties of that raking metropolis — that is to say, be- 
 tween the hours of five and six o'clock — to pass along the south side of 
 Merrion Square, you will not fail to observe that, among those splendid 
 mansions, there is one evidently tenanted by a person whose habits 
 
 2i 
 
THE LIFE OF DAX1EL O'COXXELL. 
 
 differ materially from those of his fashionable neighbors. The half- 
 opened parlor shutter, and the light within, announce that some :ne 
 dwells there whose time is too precious to permit him to regulate his 
 rising with the sun's. Should your curiosity tempt you to ascend the 
 steps and, under cover of the dark, to reconnoitre the interior, you will 
 see a tall, able-bodied man standing at a desk, and immersed in solitary 
 occupation. Upon the wall in front of him there hangs a crucifix. 
 From this, and from the calm attitude of the person within, and from a 
 certain monastic rotundity about his neck and shoulders, your first im- 
 pression will be that he must be some pious dignitary of the Church of 
 Rome absorbed in his matin devotions. But this conjecture will be 
 rejected almost as soon as formed. ±\ T o sooner can the eye take in the 
 other furniture of the apartment — the bookcases clogged with tomes in 
 plain calfskin binding and blue-covered octavos that lie about on the 
 (ioor, the reams of manuscript in oblong folds and begirt Avith crimson 
 tape — than it becomes evident that the party meditating amidst such 
 objects must be thinking far more of the law than of the prophets. 
 
 " He is, unequivocally, a barrister, but apparently of that homely, 
 chamber-keeping, plodding caste who labor hard to make up by assiduity 
 what they want in wit — who are up and stirring before the bird of the 
 morning has sounded the retreat to the wandering spectre, and are 
 already brain-deep in the dizzying vortex of mortgages, and cross- 
 remainders, and mergers, and remitters, while his clients, still lapped 
 in sweet oblivion of the law's delay, are fondly dreaming that their 
 cause is peremptorily set down for a final hearing. Having come to this 
 conclusion, you push on for home, blessing your stars on the way that 
 you are not a lawyer, and sincerely compassionating the sedentary 
 drudge whom you have just detected in the performance of his cheer- 
 less toil. But, should you happen, in the course of the same day, to 
 stroll down to the Four Courts, you will be not a little surprised to find 
 the object of your pity miraculously transformed from the severe recluse 
 of the morning into one of the most bustling, important and joyous 
 personages in that busy scene. There you will be sure to see him, his 
 countenance braced up and glistening with health and spirits, with a 
 huge plethoric bag, which his robust arms can scarcely contain, clasped | 
 with paternal fondness to his breast and environed by a living palisade 1 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL OTOXXELL. 3G9 
 
 of clients and attorneys, with outstretched necks and mouths and ears 
 agape to catch up any chance opinion that may be coaxed out of him 
 in ;i colloquial way, or listening to what the client relishes still better — ■ 
 for in no event can they be slided to a bill of costs — the counsellor's 
 bursts of jovial and familiar humor; or, when he touches on a sadder 
 strain, his prophetic assurances that the hour of Ireland's redemption 
 is at hand. You perceive at once that you have lighted upon a great 
 popular advocate; and. if you take the trouble to follow his movements 
 lor a couple of hours through the several courts, you will not fail to dis- 
 cover the qualities that have made him so — his legal competency, his 
 business-like habits, his sanguine temperament, which renders him not 
 merely the advocate, but the partisan, of his client — his acuteness, his 
 fluency of thought and language, his unconquerable good-humor, and, 
 above all, his versatility. By the hour of three, when the judges usually 
 rise, you will have seen him go through a quantity of business, the 
 preparation for and performance of which would be sufficient to wear 
 down an ordinary constitution; and you naturally suppose that the re- 
 maining portion of the day must, of necessity, be devoted to recreation 
 or repose. But here again you will be mistaken; for should you feel 
 disposed, as you return from the courts, to drop into any of the public 
 meetings that are almost daily held — for some purpose or to no purpose 
 — in Dublin, to a certainty you will find the counsellor there before you, 
 the presiding spirit of the scene, riding on the whirlwind and directing 
 the storm of popular debate with a strength of lungs and a redundancy 
 of animation, as if he had that moment started fresh for the labors of 
 (lie day. There lie remains until, by dint of strength or dexterity, lie 
 has carried every point; and from thence, if you would see him to the 
 close of the day's eventful history, you will, in all likelihood, have to 
 follow him to a public dinner, from which, after having acted a conspic- 
 uous part in the turbulent festivity of the evening, and thrown off half 
 a dozen speeches in praise of Ireland, he retires at a late hour, to repair 
 the wear and tear of the day by a short interval of repose, and is sure 
 io be? found before dawn-break next morning at his solitary post, recom- 
 mencing the routine of his restless existence. Now, any one who has 
 once seen in the preceding situation the able-bodied, able-minded, act- 
 ing, talking, multifarious person I have been just describing, has no 
 
370 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 occasion to inquire his name — lie may be assured that he is and can be 
 no other than 'Kerry's pride and Minister's glory,' the far-famed and 
 indefatigable Daniel O'Connell. His frame is tall, expanded and mus- 
 cular — precisely such as befits a man of the people; for the physical 
 classes ever look with double confidence and affection upon a leader who 
 represents in his own person the qualities upon which they rely. In 
 his face he has been equally fortunate — it is extremely comely. The 
 features are at once soft and manly; the florid glow of health and a 
 sanguine temperament are diffused over the whole countenance, which 
 is national in the outline, and beaming with national emotion; the ex- 
 pression is open and confiding, and inviting confidence ; there is not a 
 trace of malignity or wile— if there were, the bright and sweet blue 
 eyes, the most kindly and honest-looking that can be conceived, would 
 repel the imputation. These popular gifts of nature O'Connell has not 
 neglected to set off by his external carriage and deportment — or, per- 
 haps, I should rather say. that the same hand which has moulded the 
 exterior has supersaturated the inner man with a fund of restless pro- 
 pensity, which it is quite beyond his power, as it is certainly beside his 
 inclination, to control. A large portion of this is necessarily expended 
 upon his legal avocations; but the labors of the most laborious of pro- 
 fessions cannot tame him to repose; after deducting the daily drains of 
 the study and the courts, there remains tin ample residuum of animal 
 spirits and ardor for occupation, which go to form a distinct and, I might 
 say, a predominant character — the political chieftain. The existence of 
 this overweening vivacity is conspicuous in O'Connell's manners and 
 movements; and being a popular, and more particularly a national 
 qualit} T , greatly recommends him to the Irish people — mobilitate viget {he 
 flourishes by activity of movement)] body and soul are in a state of per- 
 manent insurrection. See him in the streets, and you perceive at once 
 that he is a man who has sworn that his country's wrongs shall be 
 avenged. A Dublin jury (if judiciously selected) would find his very 
 gait and gestures to be high treason by construction, so explicitly do 
 they enforce the national sentiment of ' Ireland her own — or the world 
 in a blaze!' As he marches to court he shoulders his umbrella as if it 
 were a pike. He flings out one factious foot before the other as if he 
 had already burst his bonds, and was kicking the Protestant Ascend- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 371 
 
 ency before him; while ever and anon a democratic, broad-shouldered 
 roll of the upper man is manifestly an indignant effort to shuffle off the 
 oppression of seven hundred years. This intensely national sensibility 
 is the prevailing peculiarity in O'Connell's character; for it is not only 
 when abroad and in the popular gaze that Irish affairs seem to press 
 upon his heart — the same Erin-go-bragh feeling follows him into the 
 most technical details of his forensic occupations. Give him the most 
 dry and abstract position of law to support, the most remote that imagi- 
 nation can conceive from the violation of the Irish Parliament, and ten 
 to one but he will contrive to interweave a patriotic episode upon those 
 examples of British domination. The people are never absent from his 
 thoughts. He tosses up a bill of exceptions to a judge's charge in the 
 name of Ireland, and pockets a special retainer with the air of a man 
 that doats upon his country. There is, perhaps, some share of exag- 
 geration in all this, but much less, I do believe, than is generally sus- 
 pected; and I apprehend that he would scarcely pass for a patriot without 
 it, for, in fact, he has been so successful and looks so contented, and his 
 elastic, unbroken spirits are so disposed to bound and frisk for very joy 
 — in a word, he has naturally so bad a face for a grievance, that his 
 political sincerity might appear equivocal were there not some clouds of 
 patriotic grief or indignation to temper the sunshine that is for ever 
 bursting through them." 
 
 Travelling with Mr. Daunt in the county Limerick, O'Connell came 
 in sight of the seat of the first Lord Guillamore, better known as Chief- 
 Baron O'Grady. It was he who, as attorney-general in 1803, had pros- 
 ecutpd Emmet. His speech, however, on that occasion was by no means 
 intemperate. The sight of Cahir-Guillamore (so his place was named) 
 called forth some of O'Connell's reminiscences of the old chief-baron. 
 He told Mr. Daunt how, in 1813, some person having remarked to 
 O'Grady that Lord Castlereagh, by his ministerial management, "had 
 made a great character for himself,'' "Has he?" said O'Grady. "Faith, 
 if he has, he's just the boy to spend it like a gentleman!" 
 
 "O'Grady," continued "the liberator," "was on one occasion annoyed 
 at the disorderly noise in the court-house at Tralee. He bore it quietly 
 for some time, expecting that Denny (the high-sheriff) would interfere 
 to restore order. Finding, however, that Denny, who was reading in his 
 
I '- 
 
 372 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 box, took no notice of the riot, O'Grady rose from the bench, and called 
 out to the studious high-sheriff, ' Mr. Denny, I just got up to hint tlifyr 
 I'm afraid the noise in the court will prevent you from reading your 
 novel in quiet !' 
 
 "After O'Grady had retired from the bench, some person placed a 
 hriie stuffed owl on the sofa beside him. The bird was of enormous 
 size, and had been brought as a great curiosity from the tropics. 
 O'Grady looked at the owl for a moment, and then said, with a gesture 
 of • peevish impatience, 'Take away that owl! take away that owl! If 
 you don't, I shall fancy I am seated again on the Exchequer bench 
 beside Baron Foster.' 
 
 "Those who have seen Baron Foster on the bench can best appre- 
 ciate the felicitous resemblance traced by his venerable brother-judge 
 between his lordship and an old stuffed owl. 
 
 "I remember," said O'Connell, continuing his anecdotes, "a witness 
 who was called on to give evidence to the excellent character borne by 
 ;s man whom O'Grady was trying on a charge of cow-stealing. The 
 witness got on the table with the confident air of a fellow who had a 
 right good opinion of himself. He played a small trick, too, that amused 
 me: he had but one glove, which he used sometimes to put on his right 
 hand, keeping the left in his pocket; and again, when he thought he 
 was not watched, he would put it on his left hand, slipping the right 
 into his pocket. 'Well,' said O'Grady to this genius, 'do you know the 
 prisoner at the bar?' 
 
 " ' I do, right well, my lord.' 
 
 " 'And what is his general character?' 
 
 " 'As honest, dacent, well-conducted a man. my lord, as any in Ire- 
 land, which all the neighbors know, only — only — there was something 
 about stealing a cow.' 
 
 " 'The very thing the prisoner is accused of!' cried O'Grady, inter- 
 rupting the ' witness to character.' 
 
 "O'Grady," added O'Connell, "had no propensity for hanging people. 
 He gave fair play to men on trial for their lives, and was, upon the whole, 
 a very safe judge." 
 
 The following incident is characteristic of the over-convivial and 
 occasionally uproarious manners, that prevailed among the Irish country 
 
gentlemen timing the earlier portion of the present century. We have al- 
 ready seen "Cousin Kane's" addiction to the bottle, and, farther on, 1 shall 
 have to give other illustrations of the rollicking habits of our forefathers. 
 
 This Standish O'Grady asked O'Connell to go to the theatre with 
 him one evening, during the Limerick assizes, in 1812. O'Connell 
 excused himself from going, observing that the Limerick grand-jurors 
 were not the most agreeable people in the world to meet after dinner. 
 O'Grady went, but very soon came back again. 
 
 " Dan," said he, "you were quite right. I had not been five minutes 
 in the box when some ten or a dozen noisy gentlemen came into it. It 
 was small and crowded, and, as I observed that one of the party had 
 his head quite close to a peg on which I had hung my hat, I said, very 
 politely, 
 
 " ' I hope, sir, my hat does not incommode you; if it does, pray allow 
 me to remove it.' 
 
 "'Faith,' said he, 'you may be sure it doesn't incommode me! for 
 if it did, d — n me, but I'd have kicked it out of the box, and yourself 
 after it !' 
 
 "So, lest the worthy juror should change his mind as to the neces- 
 sity of such a vigorous measure, I quietly put my hat on, and took 
 myself off." 
 
 One of O'Connell's conversations with Mr. Daunt turned upon "legal 
 practice in general, and the ingenious dexterities of roguish attorne}*s in 
 particular." 
 
 O'Connell said: "The cleverest rogue in the profession, that ever I 
 heard of, was one Checkley, familiarly known by the name of ' Checkley - 
 be-d — d.' Checkley was agent once at the Cork assizes for a fellow 
 accused of burglary and aggravated assault committed at Bantry. The 
 noted Jerry Keller was counsel for the prisoner, against whom the charge 
 was made out by the clearest circumstantial evidence — so clearly that it 
 seemed quite impossible to doubt his guilt. When the case for the pros- 
 ecution closed, the judge asked if there were any witnesses for the 
 defence. 
 
 " 'Yes, my lord,' said Jerry Keller, 'I have three briefed to me.' 
 
 "'Call them,' said the judge. 
 
 " Checkley immediately bustled out of court, and returned at once, 
 
374 THE LIFE OF DAXLEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 leading in a very respectable-looking, fanner-like man, with a blue coat 
 and gilt buttons, scratch wig, corduroy tights and gaiters. 
 
 " 'This is a witness to character, my lord,' said Checkley. 
 
 "Jerry Keller (the counsel) forthwith began to examine the witness. 
 After asking him his name and residence, ' You know the prisoner in 
 the dock?' said Keller. 
 
 " ' Yes, your honor, ever since he was a gorsoon !' 
 
 " ' And what is his general character?' said Keller. 'Och, the devil 
 a worse !' 
 
 " 'Why, what sort of a witness is this you've brought?' cried Keller 
 passionately, Hinging down his brief and looking furiously at Checkley; 
 'he has ruined us!' 
 
 "'He may prove an alibi, however,' returned Checkley; 'examine 
 him to alibi, as instructed in your brief.' 
 
 " Keller accordingly resumed his examination : 'Where was the pris- 
 oner on the 10th instant?' said he. 
 
 " 'He was near Castlemartyr,' answered the witness. 
 
 "'Are you sure of that?' 'Quite sure, counsellor.' 'How do you 
 know with such certainty?' 
 
 " ' Because upon that very night I was returning from the fair, and 
 when I got near my own house I saw the prisoner a little way on before 
 me — I'd swear to him anywhere. He was dodging about, and I knew 
 it could be for no good end ; so I slipped into the field, and turned off 
 my horse to grass; and, while I was watching the lad from behind the 
 ditch, I saw him pop across the wall into my garden and steal a lot of 
 parsnips and carrots; and, what I thought a great dale Avorse of, he 
 stole a brand-new English spade I had got from my landlord, Lord Shan- 
 non. So, faix, I cut away after him ; but as I was tired from the day's 
 labor, and he being fresh and nimble, I wasn't able to ketch him. But 
 next day my spade was seen surely in his house, and that's the same 
 rofrae in the dock ! I wish I had a hoult of him.' 
 
 " ' It is quite evident,' said the judge, 'that we must acquit the pris- 
 oner. The witness has clearly established an alibi for him; Castlemartyi' 
 is nearly sixty miles from Ban try ; and he certainly is any thing but a 
 partisan of his. Pray, friend,' addressing the witness, 'will you swear 
 informations against the prisoner for his robbery of your property?' 
 

g 
 
 •ttw© 
 
 EGSEg ©IF MFE., 
 
 MS M 6 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 375 
 
 " ' Troth I will, my lord ! with all the pleasure in life, if your lordship 
 thinks I can get any satisfaction out of him. I'm tould I can for the 
 spade, but not for the carrots and parsnips.' ' Go to the Crown office 
 And swear informations,' said the judge. 
 
 " The prisoner was of course discharged, the alibi having clearly been 
 established. In an hour's time some inquiry was made as to whether 
 Checkley's rural witness had sworn informations in the Crown office. 
 That gentleman was not to be heard of: the prisoner also had vanished 
 immediately on being discharged, and of course resumed his malprac- 
 tices forthwith. It needs hardly be told that Lord Shannon's soi-disant 
 (self-sti/lcd) tenant dealt a little in fiction, and that the whole story of 
 his farm from that nobleman, and of the prisoner's thefts of the spade 
 and the vegetables, was a pleasant device of Mr. Checkley's. I told this 
 story," added O'Connell, "to a coterie of English barristers with whom 
 I dined, and it was most diverting to witness their astonishment at Mr. 
 Checkley's unprincipled ingenuity. Stephen Rice, the assistant bar- 
 rister, had so high an admiration of this clever rogue that he declared 
 he would readily walk fifty miles to see Checkley." 
 
 This Jerry Keller, the barrister who cross-examined Checkley's wit- 
 ness, was an extraordinary character in his day. He had been a member 
 of that jovial and witty fraternity called "The Monks of the Screw," 01 
 which Curran, Yelverton and so many other clever lawyers and politi- 
 cians of the brilliant pre-union days had been " shining lights." When 
 Yelverton became chief-baron and Lord Avonmore, it was "a good time" 
 for his old boon-companion Jerry, who gained complete possession of his 
 ear. The brief-bag was plethoric with briefs. But Avonmore died, and 
 then came a dismal change in his affairs. The lawyer's bag suddenly 
 collapsed. He compensated himself, however, for his pecuniary reverses 
 by an increased indulgence of his talent for satire. He was constantly 
 to be seen standing in the hall of the Four Courts, with his hands oddly 
 thrust into the sleeves of his coat (something like Dickens's Merdle 
 taking himself into custody), surrounded by a crowd of laughers at his 
 sarcastic pleasantry. His acute features, especially his cold, piercing 
 eyes, gleamed with malicious delight at the success with which his 
 shafts of irony went straight home to the mark. His dry cachinnations, 
 when some peculiarly envenomed sneer received its meed of applause. 
 
376 - THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 were in themselves a highly comical treat to the loungers around him 
 Jerry was the father of the Munster bar, and his poignant wit made 
 him a most enlivening president of the bar-mess. Referring to his own 
 decayed fortunes, he made a very amusing, albeit caustic, speech to the 
 ponderous, solemn, but stolid Judge Mayne, on the day when that out- 
 wardly-seeming oracle of legal wisdom first took his seat on the bench. 
 Stretching over toward the newly-elevated functionary, he said: "Well, 
 Mayne, there you are ! You have been floated into port by your gravity, 
 and I have been sunk and shipwrecked by my levity!" 
 
 It was a delightfully ludicrous piece of burlesque when this pompous 
 judge, on one occasion, rose with his usual mock majesty, and, in tones 
 intended to inspire awe, cried out to some absent-minded individual, 
 who had forgotten to take off his hat on entering the court, "I see you 
 standing there like a wild beast, with your hat on." At a later period, 
 it was jocularly said, when Judge Mayne, residing in Paris for the benefit 
 of his health, used to walk in the gardens of the Tuileries, that he was 
 constantly taken by the Parisians for the spectre of Trois Echelles, the 
 ghastly, gravc-visaged executioner in Sir Walter Scott's "Quentin Dur- 
 ward." 
 
 When Jerry Keller's friend Telverton got his peerage, he read his 
 patent of viscount to Jerry, Curran and Bully Egan, professing to desire 
 their opinions as to whether it iverc all right The patent began in the 
 usual form — "George, etc., etc., king of the United Kingdom, etc." 
 AVhen the newly-made lord had read to the end, he paused for the 
 opinions of his three friends. 
 
 " It is faulty," cried Keller, without a moment's hesitation. 
 
 Telverton, who was passionate, at once exclaimed, in angiy tones, 
 "Where is the fault? I can see none." Finding himself, however, sus- 
 tained by the opinions of Curran and Egan, he forgot his wrath in an 
 instant, and said, in a highly-elated tone, "There, Keller! what say you 
 now?" 
 
 Bidding him read the patent a second time, Keller stopped him as 
 soon as he had read the words, "George, etc., king of the United — " 
 "Hold!" says Keller, slyly hitting at the fact that the title of Avonmore 
 was the price of Yelverton's pro-union vote; "does not the consideration 
 come too soon?" The whole four laughed heartily, and Jerry's satire 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 377 
 
 did not prevent them from dining and drinking jovially together that 
 evening. 
 
 In Mr. Daunt's "Personal Kecollections " we find O'Connell relating 
 the following additional anecdotes of the redoubtable Jeremiah. 
 
 "Jerry," said O'Connell, "was an instance of great waste of talent. 
 He was the son of a poor farmer near Kanturk, named Keleher, which 
 name Jerry anglicized into Keller, when he went to the bar. He was 
 an excellent classical scholar, and had very considerable natural capa- 
 city ; but, although he had a good deal of business at the bar, his suc- 
 cess was far from being what he might have attained, had he given his 
 whole soul to his profession. His readiness of retort was great. At a 
 Cork county election, at which Colonel Tonson (the fruit of an adulterous 
 intercourse) was candidate, Jerry was trying to break down one of the 
 colonel's voters by a long cross-examination. In those days voters were 
 liable to cross-examinations, like witnesses at Nisi Prius. Colonel Tonson 
 saw matters were going hard with his voter, and thinking to check, and at 
 the same time to mortify, Jerry, he called out to him : ' I say, Mr. Keller, 
 or Keleher, or whatever the devil they call you, let that voter alone !' 
 
 " • Call me anything you please, colonel,' retorted Jerry, looking 
 meekly up, 'provided you dorit call me the son of a w /' 
 
 " Baron Smith once tried to annoy him on his change of name at a 
 bar-dinner. They were talking of the Irish language. 
 
 "'Your Irish name, Mr. Keller,' said the baron, 'is Diarmuidh-na- 
 Ceallcachair (Dermid or Jeremiah 0'' Keleher).' 1 
 
 "'It is,' answered Jerry, nothing daunted; "and yours is Lliamh 
 [hand) goto (or yab/ta, meaning smith).' There was a great laugh at the 
 baron's expense— a sort of thing that nobody liked less." (The ba?*on , s 
 Christian name was William. Keller seems to have punned in Irish on his 
 name.) 
 
 "Another time," continued O'Connell, "when the bar were dining 
 together on a Friday, a blustering young barrister, named Norcott, of 
 great pretension, with but slender materials to support it, observed that 
 Jerry was eating fish instead of meat. Norcott, by way of jeering 
 Keller (who had originally been a Catholic), said to him, ' So you won't 
 eat ni3at? Why, I did not think, Jerry, you had so much of the Pope 
 in your belly !' 
 
378 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 " ' I wouldn't have as ranch of the Pretender in my head as you have,' 
 answered Jerry, ' for all the meat in the market.' 
 
 " There was a barrister of the name of Parsons at the bar in my 
 earlier practice," continues O'Connell, "who had a good deal of Jerry 
 Keller's humor. Parsons hated the whole tribe of attorneys — perhaps 
 they had not treated him very well — but his prejudice against them was 
 eternally exhibiting itself. One day, in the hall of the Four Courts, an 
 attorney came up to him to beg his subscription towards burying a 
 brother-attorney, who had died in distressed circumstances. Parsons 
 took out a pound note. 
 
 "'Oh, Mr. Parsons,' said the applicant, 'I do not want so* much; 1 
 only ask a shilling from each contributor.' 
 
 "'Oh, take it, take it,' replied Parsons; 'I would most willingly 
 subscribe money any day to put an attorney under ground !' 
 
 " 'But, really, Mr. Parsons, I have limited myself to a shilling from 
 each person.' 
 
 " ' For pity's sake, my good sir, take the pound, and bury tivcnty of 
 (hem r 
 
 " One of the most curious things I remember in my bar experience 
 is Judge Foster's charging for the acquittal of a homicide named Denis 
 Halligan, who was tried with four others at the Limerick assizes, many 
 years ago. Foster totally mistook the evidence of the principal witness 
 for the prosecution. The offence charged was aggravated manslaughter, 
 committed on some poor wretch whose name I forget. The first four 
 prisoners were shown to have been criminally abetting, but the fifth, 
 Denis Halligan, was proved to have inflicted the fatal blow. The evi- 
 dence of the principal witness against him was given in these words : 
 ' I saw Denis Halligan, my lord — (he that's in the dock there) — take a 
 vacancy 1 (i.e., 'take a shy at him') at the poor sowl that's kilt, and give 
 him a wipe with a cleh alpeen (a bludgeon), and lay him down as quiet as 
 a child.' The judge charged against the first four prisoners, and sentenced 
 them to seven years' imprisonment each; then proceeding to the fifth 
 prisoner — the rascal who really committed the homicide — he addressed 
 him thus : .' Denis Halligan, I have purposely reserved the consideration 
 of your case for the last. Your crime, as being a participator in the 
 affray, is doubtless of a very grievous nature ; yet I cannot avoid taking 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 379 
 
 into consideration the mitigating circumstances that attend it. By the 
 evidence of the witness it clearly appears that you were the only man 
 of the party who showed any mercy to the unfortunate deceased ; yon 
 took him to a vacant seat, and you wiped him with a clean napkin, and 
 (to use the affecting and poetical language of the witness) you laid him 
 down with the gentleness one shows to a little child. In consideration 
 of these circumstances, which considerably mitigate your offence, the 
 only punishment I shall inflict upon you is an imprisonment of three 
 weeks' duration.' So Denis Halligan got off, from Foster's mistaking a 
 vacancy and a cleh alpeen for a vacant scat and a clean napkin." 
 
 The subsequent fortunes and fate of the counsellor Norcott, alluded 
 to by "the liberator" in the foregoing bar-recollections, were more sin- 
 gular and calamitous than any chapter of individual disaster to be found 
 in the most sensational of "sensational romances." Indeed, the catas- 
 trophe of his life-romance out-Herods the most startling things in the 
 writings of Wilkie Collins or his fair rival, Miss Braddon. In his earlier 
 career, being sufficiently polished and gay, Norcott was long a favorite 
 in the highest circles of Dublin society — at the Castle no less than in 
 private houses. At length he began to lose large sums at play. Still, 
 he appeared as healthy, as lively, as much at his ease as ever. A time 
 came, however, when rumor hinted that his affairs were involved in 
 inextricable confusion, and finally the fatal crash took place. 
 
 He had to fly his country to escape from his creditors ; but his friend 
 and fellow-countryman, the celebrated John Wilson Croker, promised to 
 provide what seemed to offer him a secure retreat, or even the means of 
 restoring his exhausted fortunes, in the shape of a lucrative post in 
 the island of Malta. For some time his friends looked forward to the 
 day when they should welcome him back to Dublin society, with his 
 finances thoroughly recruited, and in possession of all his old social gifts 
 and attractions. 
 
 But soon the extraordinary news came that he had left Malta, that 
 he had gone to Constantinople — in a word, that he had become a 
 renegade. 
 
 And, in point of fact, there he was in the imperial city of the Mos- 
 lem, a full-blown " turban' d Turk." For a while he flourished gaudily, 
 having had some money when leaving Malta. People even thought he 
 
380 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 was or the road to high favor with the divan. But he ceased "to cut a 
 figure" as soon as his purse grew empty. Gradually he sank to the 
 lowest state of want and misery. Woeful letters reached Dublin, giving 
 piteous details of his wretched condition. It was at this lowest stage 
 of his downward fortunes that a traveller from Ireland, wandering amid 
 the cypress groves of a cemetery on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, 
 found him one evening leaning, with a hopeless, dejected air, his back 
 against a marble sepulchre. The appearance of the woe-begone wretch, 
 clad in ragged white, with a tattered turban on his head, attracted the 
 traveller from the first, for the poor outcast had still something of the 
 Frank in his appearance. He now drew near the traveller and uttered 
 some words in English. 
 
 "Gracious God! can it be?" exclaimed the astonished traveller. 
 "Alas !" said the hope-abandoned outcast, hiding his face with his hands, 
 "it is too true— -I am Mr. Norcott of the Irish bar." 
 
 The termination of this lost, unhappy man's history was tragical in 
 the extreme. After roaming for some time longer about the streets of 
 Constantinople, in his nakedness and utter destitution, seeking in every 
 corner a sorry relief, he resolved on returning within the Christian fold. 
 He dreamed of again making a livelihood in some of the countries of 
 Christendom. He planned an escape from the city of the sultan, some 
 friends supplying him with the necessary funds. Being pursued, how- 
 ever, he had not gone far from Constantinople when he was captured 
 and decapitated. His body was flung into the sea. Such were the 
 strange life-vicissitudes and terrible end of the once fashionable and 
 courted Counsellor Norcott ! 
 
 I have already given an instance of the odd gratitude of a client for 
 whom O'Connell had contrived by great ingenuity to win an acquittal. 
 It will be remembered how, in the ecstasy of his delight at his lucky 
 escape from the clutches of the law, the fellow wished to see O'Connell 
 " knocked down in Ms oivn parish" that he might bring a faction to 
 rescue him ! Among the recollections that I am now about to give, the 
 reader will hear how other instances of our hero's ingenuity drew forth 
 ebullitions of gratitude still more whimsical. 
 
 A ragged stroller recognized "the liberator" at some place where he 
 and Mr. Daunt stopped for a few moments on one of their repeal tours. 
 
He begged O'Connell to give him a little money, backing his petition 
 with a plea of personal acquaintance. 
 
 "I don't know you at all, my good man," said O'Connell; "I never 
 saw you before." 
 
 "That's not what your honor's son would say to me," returned the 
 man "out at elbows," "for he got me a good place at Glasnevin cemetery, 
 only I hadn't the luck to keep it," 
 
 "Then, indeed, you were strangely unlucky,'' rejoined Dan; "for 
 those who have places in cemeteries generally keep them." 
 
 Pagan, in his life of O'Connell, tells a very humorous story of a 
 pious and grateful highwayman, to whom O'Connell's was a very valu- 
 able life indeed. The substance of the story is as follows : O'Connell 
 was engaged to defend this worthy for a robbery committed on the public 
 road not very far from the city of Cork. By his clever cross-examination 
 of the witnesses and twisting of the evidence, our hero compelled Dame 
 Justice to loose her grasp and let slip his client. The thief at once 
 resumed his former ••industrial occupation," to borrow a phrase from 
 old Captain Gambier — that verv wooden-headed director of English 
 convict-prisons, whose acquaintance I have to thank her Britannic 
 Majesty's government for having been enabled to make. Accordingly, 
 the following year, on entering the court-house in Cork, O'Connell meets 
 once more the unabashed gaze of the same determined delinquent. 
 This time the charge is burglary, complicated with an aggravated 
 assault that didn't stop very far short of murder. The ruffian again 
 had Dan for his counsel; and again witnesses, adverse counsel, judge 
 and jury were puzzled and confounded, law was hopelessly entangled, 
 and the scoundrel sent back to seek excitement and pocket-money at 
 the expense of his countrymen. His energies did not remain long idle. 
 He stole a collier-brig, sold off the cargo, bought arms and cruised along 
 the coast, " seeking whom " (or rather what booty; "he might devour." 
 A third time he stands in the dock of the Cork court-house — on this occa- 
 sion for piracy— no less. A third time our wile-famed advocate defends 
 the freebooter. O'Connell contents himself with simply showing that the 
 crime did not come under the cognizance of the court. It had been 
 committed on the high seas ; it could only come under the cognizance 
 of the admiralty court. Is it any wonder that the rescued rascal became 
 
382 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 this time devotionally enthusiastic in the utterance of his gratitude? 
 "Oh!" exclaimed the lucky thief, piously lifting hands and eyes tc 
 Heaven, "oh! may the Lord, in his mercy, spare your honor to one! 
 What would become of me if anything happened to you?" 
 
 I shall now give the reader a singular instance of O'Connell's almost 
 intuitive penetration and quickness in getting at the bottom of a wit- 
 ness's mind. He was retained on the plaintiff's side in a will-case. 
 His clients alleged that the document in question was a forgery. The 
 witnesses to the will, on the other hand, swore that it had been signed 
 by the hand of the testator, now deceased, while "life was in him." 
 This, it appears, is a form of phraseology imported from the Irish into 
 the English language, and common among the Irish peasantry, even in 
 those districts where the ancient language has died out. The evidence 
 had gone almost entirely in favor of the validity of the will and the suc- 
 cess of the defendants, when O'Connell stood up to cross-examine one 
 of their witnesses. He was soon struck with the odd persistency with 
 which this witness, in answering his questions, unvaryingly clung to the 
 phrase, "the life was in him." The truth flashed across O'Connell's 
 mind. 
 
 "On the virtue of your oath, was the man alive?" 
 
 "By the virtue of my oath, the life ivas in him," replied the witness, 
 resorting to his favorite phrase once more. 
 
 " Now I call on you in the presence of your Maker, who will one day 
 pass sentence on you for this evidence : I solemnly ask — and answer me 
 at your peril — was there not a live fly in the dead man's mouth when 
 his hand was placed on the will ?" 
 
 The terror-struck perjurer in an instant grew pale and trembled; he 
 looked like one suddenly smitten with palsy. Completely cowed, in 
 stammering accents he confessed that O'Connell had hit upon the truth. 
 A live fly had been placed in the dead man's mouth, that the witnesses 
 might be able to swear that " life was in him." (See Fagan's " Life of 
 O'Connell.") 
 
 This was one of those sudden flashes of intuition which are seldom 
 witnessed save in the lives of men of the highest order of intellect. 
 Analogous inspirations of talent or genius ever and anon occur to the 
 minds of the topmost men in all the practical professions. Thus, Du- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 383 
 
 puytren darts his lance into the brain of the man despaired of by less 
 daring surgeons, and relieves the abscess. Thus the great Napoleon, 
 acting on a sudden impulse, orders the Sommo-Sierra pass to be cleared 
 by a charge of Polish lancers, and lo ! in the twinkling of an eye it is 
 done. Such quick and decisive results can never be achieved by your 
 mere plodding men of humdrum routine. 
 
 I shall here borrow a long passage from Fagan's " Life of O'Connell," 
 as affording further illustrations, of the most striking kind, of the ra- 
 pidity of conception and promptitude of action so frequently displayed 
 by O'Connell during his conflicts in the forensic arena : 
 
 "We may here," says Fagan, "be permitted to give an anecdote to 
 exemplify O'Connell's rapidity of conception, his knowledge of law, and 
 the tact with which he made even his broad humor tell for his client's 
 advantage. In a case at a Cork assizes, in which he was counsel on the 
 same side with many of the most eminent men who attended circuit, he 
 was absent in one court while some points of great importance were 
 undergoing discussion in the other. His fellow-barristers were able law- 
 yers, but they were severely pressed by the opposing counsel, and an 
 unfavorable issue was threatened. The judge was about to declare a 
 verdict ; counsel were in the last extremity, and their only hope rested 
 on O'Connell. He had been sent for once or twice, but he was then 
 addressing a jury in behalf of a prisoner on trial for his life. He was 
 disengaged in the nick of time ; his learned and able friends were in the 
 
 DO 7 
 
 last stage of despair, when he entered the record court in an apparently 
 indifferent and inattentive manner, gayly jesting as he passed in with 
 individuals he knew. He could not, we believe, have previously known 
 much, if anything, of the case he was hastily called to argue ; but he 
 caught, as he proceeded to his seat, the upshot of what counsel was 
 driving at. Drawing the cord of his ample bag, he extracted quickly 
 from its depths the particular brief he wanted, and, glancing through 
 a sheet or two in the most superficial manner, he rose to address the 
 court. In a few brief sentences he cleared away the difficulties by which 
 his fellow-counsel were embarrassed. In a few more he turned the tables 
 on the opposite party, and in one of the shortest speeches he, or any other 
 lawyer, was ever known to make in a case of similar importance, he 
 banished all idea of a nonsuit from the judge's mind, and succeeded in 
 
 25 
 
384 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 winning him over decisively in favor of his client. He disposed sum- 
 marily of the main difficulty. He extricated his learned brethren from 
 the slough, and, informing the court that the remainder of the argument 
 would be carried on by one or other of the junior barristers, he con- 
 signed his brief to its former place, closed his bag and returned to the 
 court whence he was summoned. The case was won. ' He found,' said 
 our informant, 'the able men with whom he acted sprawling like a parcel 
 of children; and it was he only who set them on their legs.' The inci- 
 dent is but another illustration of his commanding powers as a lawyer, 
 and the facility and readiness with which he could apply the acquisitions 
 of a practical, sagacious and extraordinary intellect. 
 
 " It is stated in an article in the Edinburgh Review that Lord 
 Brougham was intended to lead a libel case, but immediately before the 
 trial it was discovered that the other counsel, a mere special pleader, 
 was his senior, and the mistake proved irremediable. It was thus, I 
 may remark, that the supercession of Sir Arthur Wellesley, after the 
 battle of Vimiera, in 1808, by two senior, but far less competent, officers, 
 arrested the course and blighted the fruits of that victory. On an occur- 
 rence, however, in this city, not dissimilar to that of Lord Brougham, 
 Mr. O'Connell, with instant happiness of thought, applied the remedy 
 which had evaded the learned peer's sagacity. Engaged in a case, the 
 success of which mainly depended on his examination of the most ma- 
 terial witness — a department of the profession in which he had no supe- 
 rior — he found to his surprise, on entering the court, that his destined 
 station and consequent task were occupied by another — the client having 
 without communication, and wholly unconscious of the etiquette of the 
 bar or its consequences in this instance to himself, privately retained an 
 old friend of more moral than intellectual merit, but Mr. O'Connell's 
 senior. The law-agent, Mr. Denham Franklin of Cork, my informant 
 of all the particulars, naturally dissatisfied with this act of his em- 
 ployer, and fearful of the issue in such hands, was about to abandon the 
 cause, when Mr. O'Connell, chiding him for his despondency, directed 
 him to ascertain the name of a gaping clown whom his searching eye 
 had espied in the crowd. The individual was immediately called up, 
 and, to his astonishment, presented as first evidence, by the instructed 
 attorney for examination to the intrusive counsel, but was dismissed as 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 385 
 
 totally incapable of a pertinent answer. Thus, however, the desired 
 end was attained, and the leader, his part being accomplished, stood no 
 longer in the way of Mr. O'Connell, who succeeded him, and failed not 
 to achieve the expected result." * 
 
 * The books to which I am indebted for the materials of the foregoing chapter are Shiel'a 
 "Sketches of the Irish Bar ;" Barrington's " Personal Sketches ;" O'Neill Daunt's " Personal Recol- 
 lections of O'Connell;" Fagan's "Life of Daniel O'Connell;" "Life and Times of O'Connell," 
 Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Parliament street, etc. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Lady Morgan's sketch of O'Connell — More of O'Connell's bar-anecdotes and othee 
 reminiscences — value of an ugly nose — a lesson in cow-stealing — unpremeditated 
 oratory — o'connell on the scotch and english jury-systems and capital punish- 
 MENT, etc. — Queer anecdote of Sir Jonah Barrington; the pawnbroker outwitted 
 — Escape of a robber — An Orangeman who always liked to have O'Connell as his 
 counsel — Odd story of a physician — Anecdotes of Judges Boyd and Lefroy; O'Con- 
 nell saves the life of a client — He defies Baron McCleland — A judge sternly 
 reproved — Anecdotes about Judge Day and Bully Egan — O'Connell humbugs 
 Judge Day — His opinion on the subject of judges' wigs — Dan overhauls a client's 
 accounts to the great advantage of the latter — He receives a challenge from 
 an angry litigant — A high-sheriff's providential thickness of skull — O'Connell 
 sitting for his portrait — Kerry dexterity; a smart newsboy — Blake's duel — 
 Breach-of-promise case; Miss Fitzgerald versus Parson Hawkeswortii — Grose 
 
 THE ANTIQUARY — DuKE O'Neill's WILL — A WITTY EPIGRAM OF HuSSEY BuRGn ON THE 
 LADIES OF THE STRATFORD FAMILY' ; ARISTOCRATIC FEMALE SHOPLIFTERS — FURTHER IN- 
 STANCES of O'Connell's legal acuteness — Cases of Mr. Justice Johnson and Mr. 
 Justice Fox — Manners and customs in Ireland at the end of the eighteenth and 
 commencement of the nineteenth century — The Irish character— " King " Bage- 
 nal— Election duels — "Tiger" Roche — Wild conviviality — Catholic lords — Offi- 
 cers of the "Irish Brigade" — Prodigality and corruption — Titled tricksters — 
 One coffin for a company — Military patronage — A true gentleman — De Beau- 
 mont on our aristocracy — Dan and Biddy' Moriarty' — A combative attorney. 
 
 S I began the last chapter with a sketch of O'Connell from the 
 graphic pen of that distinguished Irish orator and colleague of 
 his in the Catholic Association, Richard Lalor Shiel, so I shall 
 commence the present one with a sketch from another Irish 
 Sis' writer, perhaps equally lively, the once popular and celebrated 
 Lady Morgan. 
 
 "Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton — all who have enlightened and bene- 
 fited the world — have been no less remarkable for their labor than for 
 their genius. Physical activity may exist without mind, but the man 
 of talent cannot be idle even though he desire it : he is mastered by his 
 moral energy, and pushed into activity whether he will or not. Vitality 
 or all-aliveness, energy, activity, are the great elements of what we call 
 talents. . . . There is O'Connell — the head and front of all agitation, 
 
 386 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 387 
 
 moral, political, social and legal. When we read in the papers those 
 eloquent and powerful speeches in which the spectres of Ireland's op- 
 pression are called up from the depths of history, with a perfect know- 
 ledge of all that has concerned the country from its earliest records, and 
 in which unnumbered modern instances of. misrule, in all its shades of 
 ignorance and venality, are collected from the storehouse of his capacious 
 memory — those speeches in which, amidst the fiery explosions of long- 
 nurtured indignation (the petulant outpourings of constitutional impa- 
 tience), arguments of logical conviction and facts of curious detail come 
 forth as from an exhaustless fountain — who but would suppose that 
 the life of the patriot, demagogue and agitator was occupied exclusively 
 in one great and absorbing cause ? It is, however, on his way home from 
 the courts, and after legal labors that have occupied him from the dawn 
 of light, that he turns into the Catholic Committee ; it is after having 
 set a jury-box in a roar by his humor, made butchers weep by his 
 pathos, driven a witness to the last shift of Irish evasion, and puzzled 
 a j udge by some point of law not dreamed of in his philosophy, that, all 
 weary and exhausted as he must be, he mounts the rostrum of the 
 committee, the Jupiter tonans {thundering Jove) of the Catholic senate, 
 and by those thunderbolts of eloquence, so much more effective to hear 
 than to read, kindles the lambent light of patriotism to its fiercest glow, 
 and ' with fear of change ' perplexes Orange lodges. Again, this boldest 
 of demagogues, this mildest of men 'from Dan to Beersheba,' appears 
 in the patriarchal light of a happy father of a happy family, practising 
 all the social duties and nourishing all the social affections. It is re- 
 markable that Mr. O'Connell is not only governed by the same sense of 
 the value of time as influenced Sir Edward Coke, but literally obeys his 
 injunctions for its partition which form the creed, more than the practice, 
 of rising young lawyers. It is this intense and laborious diligence in 
 his profession that has won him the public confidence. Where his abil- 
 ities as a lawyer may be serviceable, party yields to self-interest; and 
 many an inveterate Ascendency man leaves his friends, the Orange bar- 
 risters, to hawk their empty bags through the courts, while he assigns 
 to Catholic talent the cause which Catholic eloquence can best defend." 
 Before this chapter conies to an end we shall see an instance 
 strikingly confirmatory of this last statement of Lady Morgan's. I am 
 
388 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 now about to present the reader with a few more of O'Connell's bar- 
 anecdotes and other reminiscences. 
 
 Here is one of his comical stories. The heroine of it is a Miss 
 Hussey, to whom her father bequeathed an income of one hundred and 
 fifty- pounds per annum, in consideration of her having an ugly nose. 
 
 "He had made a will," quoth O'Connell, "disposing of the bulk of 
 his fortune to public charities. When he was upon his death-bed his 
 housekeeper asked him how much he had left Miss Mary. He replied 
 that he had left her one thousand pounds, which would do for her very 
 well, if she made off any sort of a good husband. ' Heaven bless your 
 honor!' cried the housekeeper; 'and what decent man would ever take 
 her with the nose she has got?' 'Why, that is really very true,' replied 
 the dying father; ' I never thought of her nose;' and he lost no time in 
 adding a codicil that gave Miss Mary an addition of one hundred and 
 fifty pounds a year as a set-off against her ugliness." 
 
 On another occasion O'Connell told the following anecdote about a 
 cow-stealer : " I was once counsel for a cow-stealer, who was clearly con- 
 victed — the sentence was transportation for fourteen years. At the end 
 of that time he returned, and happening to meet me, he began to talk 
 about the trial. I asked him how he always had managed to steal the 
 fat cows ; to which he gravely answered : ' Why, then, I'll tell your 
 honor the whole secret of that, sir. Whenever your honor goes to steal a 
 coiv, always go on the worst night you can, for if the weather is very bad 
 the chances are that nobody will be up to see your honor. The way 
 you'll always know the fat cattle in the dark is by this token — that the 
 fat cows always stand out in the more exposed places, but the lean ones 
 always go into the ditch for shelter.' So I got," added O'Connell, "that 
 lesson in cow-stealing gratis from my worthy client." 
 
 Mr. Daunt happening to observe to our hero "that when a speaker 
 averred with much earnestness that his speech was unpremeditated, he 
 never felt inclined to believe him," O'Connell laughed and said, in reply: 
 
 " I remember a young barrister, named B , once came to consult me 
 
 on a case in which he was retained, and begged my permission to read 
 for me the draft of a speech he intended to deliver at the trial, which 
 was to come on in about a fortnight. I assented , whereupon he began 
 to read, 'Gentlemen of the jury, I pledge you my honor as a gentleman 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 389 
 
 that I did not know until this moment I should have to address you in this 
 cause.' 'Oh! that's enough!' cried I; 'consult somebody else — that 
 specimen is quite enough for me !' " 
 
 At Maryborough, in the Queen's county, before they retired to bed 
 one night, Mr. Daunt and "the liberator" had a conversation on the 
 subject of trial by jury. Mr. Daunt asked him "if he didn't think it 
 absurd to require unanimity in a jury? if the plan of the old Scotch 
 criminal juries — namely, that of deciding by the majority — "was not the 
 more rational mode?" 
 
 "In theory it is," said O'Connell in reply; "but there are great 
 practical advantages in the plan that requires unanimity. To be sure, 
 there is this disadvantage, that one obstinate fellow may knock up a 
 good verdict in spite of eleven clear-headed jurors, but that does not 
 happen once in a hundred cases. And the necessity for a unanimous 
 verdict may be a vast protection for a person unjustly charged with an 
 offence. I remember a case in which eleven jurors found a man guilty 
 of murder, while the twelfth — a gawky fellow, who had never before 
 been on a jury — said he thought the deceased died by a fall from his 
 horse. The dissident juror persisted; the case was accordingly held 
 over till the next assizes, and in the mean time evidence came out that 
 most clearly confirmed the surmise of the gawky juror. Here, then, if 
 the majority of jurors had been able to return a verdict, an innocent man 
 had suffered death." 
 
 O'Connell held strong convictions against capital punishment. He 
 fancied that his own professional experience furnished him with many 
 valid reasons for its abolition. I do not think it necessary here to 
 express any opinion, one way or the other, on the vexed questions bear- 
 ing on the lawfulness or advisability of inflicting the punishment of death 
 on criminals guilty of certain black and enormous crimes. O'Connell " told 
 me," says Daunt, "of an instance where an innocent life was all but 
 lost — the prosecutrix (a woman whose house had been attacked) having 
 erroneously sworn to the identity of a prisoner who was totally guiltless 
 of the offence. The man was found guilty and sentenced to death on her 
 evidence. He bore a considerable personal resemblance to the real crim- 
 inal. The latter having been arrested and confronted with the prosecu- 
 trix, she fainted with horror at her mistake, which had been so nearlv fatal 
 
390 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 in its consequences. By the prompt interference of Judge Burton (then 
 at the bar) and O'Connell, the government were induced to discharge the 
 unoffending individual, who had the narrowest possible escape of a rope." 
 
 Here is a more terrible case in O'Connell's own words, extracted from 
 a speech made by him at a meeting held in London : 
 
 " I myself defended three brothers of the name of Cremin. They 
 were indicted for murder. The evidence was most unsatisfactory. The 
 judge had u leaning in favor of the Crown prosecution, and he almost 
 compelled the jury to convict them. I sat at my window as they passed 
 by after sentence of death had been pronounced ; there was a large mil- 
 itary guard taking them back to jail, positively forbidden to allow any 
 communication with the three unfortunate youths. But their mother 
 was there ; and she, armed in the strength of her affection, broke through 
 the guard. I saw her clasp her eldest son, who was but twenty-two 
 years of age ; I saw her hang on the second, who was not twenty ; I saw 
 her faint when she clung to the neck of the youngest boy, who was but 
 eighteen; and I ask, What recompense could be made for such agony? 
 They were executed, and — they were innocent!" 
 
 The conduct of the judge in this case bears some resemblance to that 
 of Juds:e Keosdi in the case of those two unfortunate brothers, the Cor- 
 macks, tried at Nenagh some years subsequently to the death of O'Connell. 
 
 The liberator, one evening at Darrynane, defended that principle 
 of law which protects the individual who has once been acquitted of a 
 capital charge from being arraigned a second time for the same offence. 
 Some one tried to show "that this principle might sanction injustice; 
 as in a case where a murderer had been acquitted through defect of evi- 
 dence, and where a competent witness volunteered to tender direct testi- 
 mony against the accused in the event of a new trial." 
 
 "My good sir," said O'Connell, "if the principle of repeating the 
 trial were once admitted, the injustice on the other side would be infi- 
 nitely greater. If the accused could be tried over again on the appear- 
 ance of a fresh witness, pray where could you limit the danger to inno- 
 cent persons unjustly arraigned? At the expiration of months or years, 
 they would again be liable to trial for their lives, if any unprincipled wit- 
 nesses should offer themselves as being competent to give fresh evidence." 
 
 Once, when they were travelling together from Eoscrea to Dublin. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 391 
 
 O'Connell told his friend Mr. Daunt an anecdote of the humorous and 
 eccentric historian of the union. Sir Jonah Barrington, "which, if true, 
 is rather more creditable to his ingenuity than to his integrity." This 
 is the very just remark of O'Neill Daunt. 
 
 "Sir Jonah," said O'Connell, "had pledged his family plate for a 
 large sum of money to one Stevenson, a Dublin pawnbroker, and feeling 
 desirous to recover the plate without paying back the money, he hit upon 
 the following device to accomplish his purpose. He invited the viceroy 
 and several noblemen to dinner, and then went to Stevenson, be<re;in2; 
 he might let him have the plate for the occasion. '.You see how I am 
 circumstanced, Stevenson,' said Sir Jonah. ' I have asked all these fine 
 folk to dine, and I must borrow back my plate for this one day. I assure 
 you, my dear fellow, you shall have it again ; and in order to secure its 
 restoration to your hands, you shall come and make one of our party. I 
 can ask one private friend ; and you, as a member of the Common 
 Council, are perfectly admissible. Come — there's a good fellow! and 
 you know you need not leave my house until you carry off the plate 
 along with you.' Stevenson, delighted at the honor of dining at the 
 table with the viceroy, lords and judges, fell into the trap, and went to 
 dinner. Sir Jonah plied him well with champagne, and soon made him 
 potently drunk. At a late hour he was sent home in a job-coach ; his 
 wife put him to bed, and he never awoke till two o'clock next day. 
 An hour then elapsed before his misty, muddled recollection cleared 
 itself. He then bethought him of the plate — he started up and drove to 
 Barrington's. But, alas! Sir Jonah was gone, and, what was much worse, 
 the plate ivas gone too ! Poor Stevenson recorded a bitter vow against 
 dining in aristocratic company for the rest of his natural life." 
 
 As O'Connell and Daunt, at the close of their journey, drove along 
 Skinner's Bow, the former pointed out the ruins of the old Four Courts 
 to his friend, and showed him where the old jail had stood. " Father 
 Lube," said O'Connell, "informed me of a curious escape of a robber 
 from that jail. The rogue was rich, and gave the jailer one hundred and 
 twenty pounds to let him out. The jailer then prepared for his pris- 
 oner's escape in the following manner: he announced that the fellow 
 had a spotted fever, and the rogue shammed sick so successfully that no 
 one suspected any cheat. Meanwhile the jailer procured a fresh corpse, 
 
392 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 and smuggled it into the prisoner's bed, while the pseudo-invalid was 
 let out one fine dark night. The corpse, which passed for that of the 
 robber, was decently interred, and the trick remained undiscovered till 
 revealed by the jailer's daughter, long after his death. Father Lube 
 told me," added O'Connell, "that the face of the corpse was dappled 
 with paint, to imitate the discolorment of a spotted fever." 
 
 Hedges Eyre, a well-known Orangeman in his day, always took care 
 to have our hero as his counsel when he had any law-business on hand. 
 An Orange friend of Eyre's, with more bigotry in his heart than com- 
 mon sense in his brains, once reproached him bitterly for retaining as 
 his counsel the great arch-Papist advocate. 
 
 "You've got seven counsel without him," quoth this bigoted block- 
 head, "and why should you give your money to that Papist rascal?" 
 
 Hedges kept silent ; but the two stayed in court, watching the pro- 
 gress of the trial. The counsel opposed to Eyre pressed a point for non- 
 suit; the judge (Johnson) seemed to incline to their view. O'Connell pro- 
 tested against the nonsuit as a great injustice. The judge was stubborn. 
 
 "Well, hear me at all events," cried O'Connell. 
 
 "No, I won't," replies the judge; "I've already heard the leading 
 counsel." 
 
 "But I am conducting counsel," rejoined O'Connell, "and more inti- 
 mately aware of the details of the case than my brethren. I entreat, 
 therefore, you will hear me." 
 
 The judge consented with a bad grace - but five minutes had hardly 
 elapsed when O'Connell had succeeded in convincing him of the injustice 
 of the nonsuit. 
 
 "Now" said Hedges Eyre, triumphing over his brother Orangeman, 
 u now do you see why I gave my money to that Papist rascal?" 
 
 O'Connell amused his guests with a story of a medical doctor, who was 
 detained for a number of days at the Limerick assizes, to which he had 
 been subpoenaed as a witness. He pressed the judge to order him his ex- 
 penses. " On what plea do you claim your expenses ?" demanded the judge. 
 
 " On the plea of my heavy personal loss and inconvenience, my lord," 
 replied the applicant, rather innocently; "I have been kept away from 
 my patients these five days, and, if I am kept here much longer, how do 
 I know but they'll get well?" 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 393 
 
 On the same occasion O'Connell told his friends how, year after year, 
 his efforts to get a post-office established at the little town of Cahir- 
 civcen, near which the reader, no doubt, remembers he was born, were 
 all in vain, until, by good luck, in 1809, he gained a lawsuit for Edward 
 Lees (afterwards Sir Edward), the secretary to the General Post-Ofhce 
 and brother to that eccentric parson, Sir Harcourt Lees. After the suc- 
 cessful lawsuit, Lees proved the warmth of his gratitude by procuring 
 the establishment of a post-office at Cahirciveen. 
 
 It is perfectly clear that our hero had all the qualifications requisite 
 to enable him to play to perfection the part of an agreeable host or a 
 pleasant travelling-companion ; above all, that he was a most amusing 
 and even admirable story-teller. "O'Connell," says his friend, the ob- 
 servant Mr. Daunt, "never appeared to greater advantage than when 
 presiding at his own table. Of him it may be said, as Lockhart has 
 observed of Scott, that his notions of hospitality included the necessity 
 of making his intellectual stores available to the amusement of his 
 guests. His conversation was replete with anecdote; and the narra- 
 tives which possessed for me by far the greatest interest were those in 
 which the narrator was personally concerned. His memory was pro- 
 digious; and not the smallest trait of character or manner in the num- 
 berless persons with whom, in the course of his bustling career, he had 
 come in contact escaped the grasp of his retentive recollection." 
 
 Conversing once on the subject of temperance versus intemperance, 
 he was led to speak of Judge Boyd. This judge, he said, "was so fond 
 of brandy that he always kept a supply of it in court upon the desk 
 before him, in an inkstand of peculiar make. His lordship used to lean 
 his arm upon the desk, bob down his head, and steal a hurried sip Irom 
 time to time, through a quill that lay among the pens, which manoeuvre 
 he flattered himself escaped observation. 
 
 "One day it was sought by counsel to convict a witness of having 
 been intoxicated at the period to which his evidence referred ; Mr. Harry 
 Deane Grady labored hard, upon the other hand, to show that the man 
 had been sober. 
 
 " 'Come now, my good man,' said Judge Boyd, 'it is a very important 
 consideration — tell the court truly, were you drunk or were you sober 
 upon that occasion ?' 
 
394 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 " ' Oh ! quite sober, my lord !' broke in Grady, with a very significant 
 look at the inkstand; 'as sober — as a judge P " 
 
 On one occasion O'Connell had been retained to defend a prisoner, 
 whose case (one of life and death) was considered hopeless by his attor- 
 ney, and, indeed, by all who knew anything about the matter. In fact, 
 the evidence against the prisoner seemed overwhelming. When the trial 
 came on, O'Connell plainly saw that, to give his client the smallest 
 chance of getting off, it was necessary to leave the beaten track and 
 defend him in a style altogether unique. The judge was Sergeant 
 Lefroy, then comparatively } r oung. He was acting in place of the reg- 
 ular judge, who was prevented by illness from presiding. O'Connell 
 commenced by putting a number of utterly illegal questions to the chief 
 witness for the prosecution. The counsel for the Crown at once objected 
 to O'Connell's questions, and Sergeant Lefroy quickly cut him short, de- 
 ciding in the most positive manner that he could not suffer him to proceed 
 with such an illegal line of cross-examination. This was just what O'Con- 
 nell wanted; his opponents and the judge had alike fallen into his trap. 
 With every appearance of uncontrollable indignation, he exclaimed, 
 "As you refuse me permission to defend my client, I leave his fate in 
 your hands; his blood will be on your head, if he be condemned." 
 O'Connell then rushed impetuously out of court, and commenced walk- 
 ing up and down outside. 
 
 About half an hour goes by; O'Connell is still promenading with 
 hurried steps, when, all of a sudden, he sees his client's attorney rush- 
 ing out of the court-house hatless and excited 'He's acquitted! he's 
 acquitted!" cries the limb of law, full of delight and gasping for breath. 
 O'Connell gives a comical grin. All his calculations had proved correct. 
 He had shrewdly guessed that an unhackneyed judge, like Lefroy, would 
 shrink back, if it were at all possible, from being in any way instru- 
 mental in causing a capital conviction. "My only chance," said O'Con- 
 nell, "was to throw the responsibility on the judge, who had a natural 
 timidity of incurring a responsibility so serious." In short, Lefroy had 
 insensibly acted as the prisoner's advocate, had cross-examined the wit- 
 nesses brought against him, and had ended by charging the jury in his 
 favor. 
 
 We have already seen how boldly O'Connell defied the judicial insc- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. . 395 
 
 lence of Norbury. He was never afraid to beard the haughtiest and most 
 overbearing occupants of the bench. His vehement self-assertion was 
 more than a match for their arrogance and pride. His bitter sarcasm 
 could cut keener than their envenomed and prejudiced malignancy. One 
 day a discussion took place in court on a motion for a new trial. A 
 young attorney was called on by the adverse counsel either to admit a 
 certain statement as evidence or hand in a document he could legally 
 withhold. O'Connell is present in the court. He rises promptly and 
 tells the attorney "to make no admission." 
 
 " Have you a brief in this case, Mr. O'Connell ?" demands Baron 
 McCleland, in a tone of marked insolence. 
 
 " I have not, my lord, but I shall have one when the case goes down 
 to the assizes." 
 
 " When / was at the bar," retorts the judge, " it was not my habit to 
 anticipate briefs." 
 
 " When you were at the bar I never chose you for a model, and now 
 'that you are on the bench, I shall not submit to your dictation." 
 
 Having given the baron this bitter pill to swallow, O'Connell marches 
 out of court along with the young solicitor. 
 
 During a trial at the assizes of Cork, a question arose as to the 
 admissibility of certain evidence. O'Connell, with great ability, urged 
 that it was manifestly admissible. The court, however, ruled against 
 him, and thus he was deprived of the benefit of the testimony in dispute. 
 Next morning, before resuming the hearing of the case, which was a 
 protracted one, the judge addressed our hero in the following terms : 
 
 "I have reconsidered my decision of yesterday, and my present 
 opinion is, that the evidence tendered by you should not have been 
 rejected. You can therefore reproduce that evidence now." 
 
 Did O'Connell then and there respond to the judge's recantation by 
 an elaborate display of deferential gratitude ? Not a bit of it. Most 
 barristers, indeed, would have done so, but our sturdy Dan burst out 
 impatiently — 
 
 "Had your lordship known as much law yesterday morning as you 
 do to-day, you would have spared me a vast amount of time and trouble, 
 and my client a considerable amount of injury. Crier, call up the wit- 
 nesses." 
 
396 . THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 The judge, thoroughly abashed by this somewhat stern rebuke, 
 preserved a complete silence. 
 
 One evening toward the end of November or in the beginning of 
 December, 1840, at Darrynane, Mr. O'Connell amused his guests with 
 some of his forensic recollections. He talked of ex-Judge Day, who 
 then, well stricken in years, was living in retirement, having resigned 
 his seat on the bench quite a number of years previously. 
 
 "He must now," observed O'Connell, "be at least ninety-eight, and 
 he writes as firm a hand as ever, and preserves his intellect (such as it 
 is) unimpaired. To be sure, he never had much to preserve in this 
 respect; but all he ever had he has kept, He had excellent qualities of 
 the heart ; no man would take more pains to serve a friend ; but as a 
 judge, they could scarcely have placed a less efficient man upon the 
 bench. Curran used to say, that Day's efforts to understand a point of 
 law reminded him of nothing so much as the attempt to open an oyster 
 with a rolling-pin. 
 
 " He once said to me at the Cork assizes, ' Mr. O'Connell, I must not 
 allow you to make a speech ; the fact is, I am always of opinion with 
 the last speaker, and therefore I will not let you say one word.' 
 
 " 'My lord,' said I, 'that is precisely the reason why I'll let nobody 
 have the last word but myself, if I can help it.' 
 
 " I had the last word, and Day charged in favor of my client. Day 
 was made a judge in 1798. He had been chairman of Kilmainham, 
 with a salary of twelve hundred pounds a year. When he got on the 
 bench, Bully Egan got the chairmanship." 
 
 Somebody in the company asked O'Connell, "Was Bully Egan a good 
 lawyer ?" 
 
 " He was a successful one. His bullying helped him through. He 
 was a desperate duellist. One of his duels was fought with a Mr. Eeilly, 
 who fired before the word was given. The shot did not take effect. 
 
 " 'Well, at any rate, my honor's safe!' cried Eeilly. 
 
 "'Is it so?' said Egan. 'Egad, I'll take a slap at your honor, for 
 all that.' 
 
 "And Egan deliberately held his pistol pointed for full five minutes 
 at Reilly, whom he kept for that period in the agonies of mortal 
 suspense." 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 397 
 
 Mr. Daunt asked O'Connell, "Did he kill him?" 
 
 "Not he!" responded O'Connell; "he couldn't hit a haystack. If 
 courage appertained to duelling, he certainly possessed it. But in every- 
 thing; else he was the most timid man alive. Once I stated in the Court 
 of Exchequer that I had, three days before, been in the room with a 
 man in a fever, one hundred and twenty miles off. The instant I said 
 so, Egan shuffled away to the opposite side of the court, through pure 
 fear of infection. Egan used to make a vast deal of money as counsel 
 at elections." 
 
 Doubtless this was on account of his predilection for the arbitrament 
 of the pistol. A taste for duelling was an indispensable qualification 
 for success as an Irish clectioneerino; counsel in those days — 
 
 *» 
 
 " For those were the days when the angry blow 
 Supplanted the word that chides — 
 When hearts could glow — long ago, 
 
 (Not) in the days of the Barmecides" — 
 
 but in the days of Bully Egan, Tiger Roche, Fighting Fitzgerald, Brian 
 Maguire, "et hoc genus omne" — the storied heroes of many a neat 
 exchange of shots in the Fifteen Acres and elsewhere. 
 
 I may as well mention, in passing, that old Judge Day died a few 
 months after the date of the above conversation. It was probably after 
 his death that (some further reference being made to the old wiseacre) 
 O'Connell called up the following forensic reminiscence : 
 
 "Ay, poor Day!" said O'Connell; "most innocent of law Avas my 
 poor friend Day ! I remember once I was counsel before him for a man 
 who had stolen some goats. The fact was proved, whereupon I produced 
 to old Day an old act of Parliament, empowering the owners of cornfields, 
 gardens or plantations to kill and destroy all goats trespassing thereon. 
 I contended that this legal power of destruction clearly demonstrated 
 that goats were not projjertg ; and I thence inferred that the stealer of 
 goats was not legally a thief, nor punishable as such. Poor Day charged 
 the jury accordingly, and the prisoner was acquitted." Dogberry could 
 havdly surpass this. 
 
 As we are on the subject of judges, I shall add here a curious, or 
 rather comical, instance of the absurdity of some of the attacks made 
 by the Tory papers on O'Connell during the palmy days of his agita- 
 
398 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 tions. One of these oracles of political sagacity (Mr. Daunt, who is my 
 authority for the statement, could not call to memory the name of this 
 paragon of newspapers), in grave and sober earnestness, arraigned the 
 great agitator for having sought to bring the judicial character into dis- 
 repute, because one of his harangues at Leeds, in Yorkshire (horrible to 
 relate !), contained the following profane comments upon the judicial wig : 
 
 "The judges of the land, who come down to preside in your courts 
 with all their solemn gravity and harlequinade, astonish the people with 
 their profusion of horse-hair and chalk ! For must not every one think 
 what a formidable, terrible fellow he is, that has got twenty-nine pounds' 
 weight of an enormous powdered wig upon his head ? This is all hum- 
 bug of the old times, and I long to see it kicked away along with many 
 other antiquated absurdities and abuses." 
 
 Surely, it would have been in nowise wonderful if the disciples of old 
 Mother Goose, who, under that venerable dame's inspiration, contributed 
 so many of the lucubrations of the Tory press of those days, and the 
 innumerable wooden-pated Deadlocks of the tribe of Tory squires, who 
 derived their few and obsolete notions from that antiquated fountain, 
 had become wild with alarm lest O'Connell's reckless impiety in thus 
 blaspheming judicial horse-hair should at once loosen "the entire cohe- 
 sion of things," and bring back the anarchy "of primeval night and 
 chaos." 
 
 Returning to O'Connell's bar-reminiscences, here is a specimen of 
 the minute and painstaking way in which, when a rising young lawyer, 
 he looked after his client's interests. It is easy to perceive that his suc- 
 cess at the bar was inevitable from the first. Such a man could not do 
 otherwise than achieve success in almost any practical walk of life. 
 But to our illustration : 
 
 During the year in which "the liberator" was lord-mayor, Mr. John 
 O'Neill (a survivor of the volunteers of 1782) on one occasion solicited 
 his good offices in behalf of the children of an unfortunate man, who 
 had a short time before died in embarrassed circumstances. 
 
 " Poor fellow!" said O'Neill, "he was a slobbering sort of manager. 
 The Dutch say, ' that when a man becomes distressed, it is a sure sign 
 that he has not kept his accounts with regularity.' " 
 
 "The Dutch are not far from the truth," observed O'Connell. "I 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 399 
 
 have often seen preposterously slobbering mismanagement among men 
 for whom I have been professionally concerned. I recollect I once had 
 a client, an unlucky fellow, against whom a verdict had been given for 
 a balance of eleven hundred pounds. We were trying to set aside that 
 verdict. I was young at the bar at that time ; my senior counsel con- 
 tented themselves with abusing the adverse witnesses, detecting flaws 
 in their evidence and making sparkling points — in short, they made 
 very flourishing and eloquent, but rather ineffective, speeches. Whilst 
 they flourished away, I got our client's books, and, taking my place im- 
 mediately under the judge's bench, I opened the accounts, and went 
 through them all from beginning to end. I got the whole drawn out by 
 double entry, and got numbers for every voucher. The result plainly 
 was, that so far from their being a just balance of eleven hundred pounds 
 against our poor devil, there actually was a balance of seven hundred 
 pounds in his favor, although the poor slovenly blockhead did not know 
 it himself ! When my turn came, I made the facts as clear as possible 
 to judge and jury, and the jury inquired 'if they couldn't find a verdict 
 of seven hundred pounds for Mr. ?' I just tell you the circum- 
 stance," continued O'Connell, "to show you that I kept an eye on that 
 important branch of my profession." 
 
 Another time O'Connell told the followins; odd storv : 
 
 " I remember being counsel at a special commission in Kerry, against 
 
 a Mr. S , and having occasion to press him somewhat hard in my 
 
 speech, he jumped up in the court, and called me 'a purse-proud block- 
 head.' I said to him: 'In the first place, I have got no purse to be 
 proud of; and, secondly, if I be a blockhead, it is the better for you, as 
 I'm counsel against you. However, just to save you the trouble of say- 
 ing so again, I'll administer a slight rebuke;' whereupon I whacked 
 him soundly on the back with the president's cane. Next day he sent 
 me a challenge by William Ponsonby, of Crottoe; but very shortly after 
 he wrote to me to state, that since he had challenged me he had discov- 
 ered that my life was inserted in a valuable lease of his. ' Under these 
 circumstances,' he continued, ' I cannot afford to shoot you, unless, as a 
 precautionary measure, you first insure your life for my benefit, If you 
 do, then hey for powder and ball! I'm your man.' Now this seems 
 so ludicrously absurd, that it is almost incredible ; yet it is literally true. 
 
 26 
 
4()0 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 S was a very timid man — yet lie fought six duels ; in fact, he fought 
 
 them all out of pure fear." 
 
 The foregoing anecdote is certainly a very singular one. I have taken 
 it from Mr. Daunt's "Personal Recollections." If that gentleman were 
 under no misconception in reporting the particulars of this occurrence, 
 it would appear that not merely was 0' Council on this occasion grossly 
 insulted in open court, but that, moreover, he inflicted personal chas- 
 tisement on the offending party in open court. Making every allowance 
 for the manners of the days of our grandfathers, anything like this 
 seems to border on the incredible. Yet even so, in all probability, Mr. 
 Daunt's version of O'Connell's story is a perfectly accurate narrative of 
 what actually occurred. "Truth is often stranger than fiction," as the 
 hackneyed proverb runs. Assuming, then, that the account which I 
 have given of this adventure of Dan's be strictly true, it suggests the 
 strangest idea of what the state of society in Ireland must, in certain 
 respects, have been during the earlier portion of our hero's public life. 
 
 Mr. Primrose of Hilgrove (it was at this gentleman's place that the 
 anecdote about the squabble in the court-house was related) adverted 
 to Judge Jackson's calumny against O'Connell (this was vented much 
 later than the period of our hero's life with which we are dealing in this 
 chapter), promulgated on the authority of Mr. Robert Twiss. 
 
 "Ay, Bob — poor Bob!" said O'Connell. "I remember a good hit 
 the late Archdeacon Day made at Bob. While Bob was high-sheriff of 
 Kerry, I dined in his company one day, in Tralee. There was a riot in 
 the street, and Bob was desirous to interpose his authority. ' Oh, let 
 them light it out!' exclaimed the archdeacon. 'No, no; I'll pacify 
 them,' answered Bob; and he accordingly rushed out into the street, 
 and set about pacifying the people by knocking down one man on the 
 right and another on the left, crying out all the while, ' I'm the high- 
 sheriff! I'm the high-sheriff!' A fellow who did not care for dignitaries 
 soon made a loiv sheriff of him, by bestowing a blow on his head that 
 stunned him. Poor Bob was brought back into the house insensible ; 
 but his head, when examined, was found not to have sustained the least 
 fracture. When he revived, Archdeacon Day congratulated him, saying, 
 'How providential, Bob, that your skull was so thick V " 
 
 For the sake of a little variety, I shall turn aside, for a brief space 
 
THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 401 
 
 longer, from O'Connell's exclusively forensic recollections and give one or 
 two additional sketches of a somewhat different complexion. I shall 
 proceed to give a sketch of "the liberator" sitting for his portrait. I 
 must confess, that in introducing this sketch at this part of my biogra- 
 phy I am anticipating events considerably ; for the sitting, which I am 
 about to bring before the reader's notice, took place many a long year 
 later than the period of O'Connell's history at which we have arrived. 
 Nevertheless, I think it may be more convenient to bring it in here than 
 at a later stage of the work, where the continuous and absorbing interest 
 of his political career will leave room for few digressions to topics of 
 lighter importance. 
 
 "One morning in February" (1841), Mr. Daunt tells us, "I was 
 
 present when H , the portrait-painter, called to take O'Connell's 
 
 likeness, for a picture which was destined to commemorate some Reform 
 meeting. Portrait-painters generally keep their sitters in conversation 
 for the purpose of bringing out the expression of the face. I was 
 
 amused with H 's exuberant flippancy. Mr. O'Connell was.narrating 
 
 an instance of his own forensic and political success at some provincial 
 assizes, and the patchwork effect produced in his narrative by his 
 auditor's incessant exclamations was ludicrous enough. 
 
 " ' I made,' said he, 'a long speech on the occasion.' 
 
 " 'Yes, yes; a long speech — excellent!' 
 
 " ' And I was listened to at first with silence, but, by and by, the 
 jury began to cheer, and the crowd in the court-house cheered.' 
 
 " 'To be sure, to be sure — capital!' 
 
 " 'And I thought the judge looked as if he was going to eheer too.' 
 
 " 'Cheer too? No doubt, no doubt ! Very good. Please turn a little 
 to the left, sir — that's just it.' 
 
 " ' But on the following day I had a still stronger proof of my 
 success.' 
 
 " 'Ay, ay; so I should suppose.' 
 
 " ' A sturdy Presbyterian farmer, a fellow who had been a great leader 
 anions: the Orangemen of the neighborhood, and a bitter hater of the 
 Catholics, came up to the parish priest, whom he met upon the road — ' 
 
 '"To the parish priest ? Ha !' 
 
 " ' And offered to shake hands with him.' 
 
402 THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 " ' Shake hands with the priest? Bless my soul !' 
 
 " ' And the priest, astonished at this familiarity from such a quarter — ' 
 " ' No doubt ! He must have been amazingly surprised !' " ' Expressed 
 his amazement good-humoredly, and asked the man, in the course of 
 conversation, if he had been in courton the preceding day — ' 
 
 "'In court? Yes, yes. Very good. May I ask you to hold up 
 that sheet of white paper to the left of your face ; it reflects the light 
 upon it. There — precisely so.' 
 
 " 'I ivas in court,' replied the man, 'and a greater change has been 
 produced upon my mind than I could have thought possible.' 
 
 "'Ha!' '"I heard Counsellor O'Connell, and till then I always 
 thought he was a rough, blustering fellow, who wanted to carry all his 
 ends by bullying and threats — ' " 'Ha!' 
 
 " ' But, instead of that, he appealed to our reason, and not to our 
 fears, and did so with all possible courtesy and gentleness.' 
 
 " 'Precisely so,' cried H . 'With all possible courtesy and gen- 
 tleness. Admirable! Excellent! A most intelligent fellow. Please 
 to hold the paper somewhat higher up. I flatter myself this will be a 
 likeness. Since you last sat to me, I have been honored with a sitting 
 by his grace the duke of Wellington. His grace is exceedingly agree- 
 able — has much more humor than one would suppose — kept telliug 
 anecdotes the whole time he sat, and told them right well.' 
 
 "'Yes,' said O'Connell, 'he has seen so much of life that he must 
 have gained materials for being entertaining. He must, I suppose, 
 abound in guard-room sort of stories. We cannot but admit he is a 
 first-rate corporal.' " 
 
 Mr. Daunt remarks "that it was scarcely possible to speak on any 
 subject which did not elicit an anecdote from the stores of O'Connell's 
 recollection." Here is a story of native Kerry dexterity, which "the 
 liberator" told that gentleman with infinite glee: 
 
 "One day during the war James Connor and I dined at Mr. Ma- 
 hony's, in Dublin, and after dinner Ave heard the newsvenders, as usual, 
 calling out, ' The Post! The Dublin Evening Post! Three packets in 
 to-night's post!' The arrival of the packets was at that time irregular, 
 and eagerly looked for. We all were impatient for the paper, and Ma- 
 hony gave a five-penny piece to his servant, a Kerry lad, and told him 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 403 
 
 to go down and buy the Post. The boy returned in a minute with a 
 Dublin Evening Post, which, on opening, we found, to our infinite cha- 
 grin, was a fortnight old. The roguish newsvender had pawned off an 
 old paper on the unsuspecting Kerry tiger. Mr. Mahony stormed, Con- 
 nor and I laughed, and Connor said, 
 
 "'I wonder, gossoon, how you let the fellow cheat you? Has not 
 your master a hundred times told you that the dry papers are always 
 old and good for nothing, and that the new papers are always w T et from 
 the printing-office? Here's another five-penny. Be off, now, and take 
 care to bring us in a wet PosV 
 
 "'Oh, never mind the five-penny, sir,' said the boy; 'I'll get the 
 paper without it;' and he darted out of the room, while Mahony cried 
 out, ' Hang that young blockhead, he'll blunder the business again.' 
 
 "But in less than five minutes the lad re-entered with a fresh wet 
 newspaper. We were all surprised, and asked him how he had managed 
 to get it without money. 
 
 " ' Oh, the asiest way in life,' said the urchin. ' I just took the dry 
 ould Post, and cried it down the street a bit — "Dublin Evening Post! 
 Dublin Evening Post!" and a fool of a gentleman meets me at the corner 
 and buys my ould dry paper. So I whips across to a newsman I sees 
 over the way and buys this fine, fresh, wet, new Post for your honor, with 
 the money I got for the ould one.' " 
 
 I shall next present to the reader O'Connell's story of a Connaught 
 duellist, named Blake. This gentleman had been called out to take his 
 chance of "shivering on a daisy." All the parties concerned met at the 
 appointed time and place, except Blake's second. Like the knights and 
 nobles in "Lara" waiting for the appearance of Sir Ezzelin, they de- 
 layed the proceedings some minutes, but all in vain; Blake's second 
 failed to put in an appearance. 
 
 " It is a pity," quoth Blake, " to keep you waiting any longer, gen- 
 tlemen ;" and opening his pistol-case (which had been placed in his car- 
 riage by the absent second), he deliberately snapped one of the pistols 
 at his opponent. 
 
 On finding that it did not go off, he began very coolly to hammer 
 away at the flint, saying, "Fire away, sir! I'll be ready for you in no 
 time!" 
 
404 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 While be spoke, his second came galloping up, with many apologies 
 for his absence; but on seeing that the parties had already commenced 
 hostilities, he not unnaturally expressed great astonishment. 
 
 "Egad, I snapped my pistol," said Blake, upbraidingly, "and it 
 missed fire." 
 
 "Of course it did," replied the second; "you know it was not 
 charged." 
 
 "Not charged?" cried Blake; "and pray of what use is a case of 
 pistols if they are not charged?" 
 
 O'Connell used to tell of a case in which he was engaged profession- 
 ally. It was an action instituted by a Miss Fitzgerald against a Parson 
 Hawkes worth for a breach of promise of marriage. 
 
 " Hawkesworth," said O'Connell, speaking of this affair to his agi- 
 tating staff one day they were returning from a repeal meeting held at 
 Drogheda, " had certainly engaged the lady's affections very much. He 
 had acquired fame enough to engage her ambition. He was a crack 
 preacher — had been selected to preach before the lord-lieutenant — his 
 name occasionally got into the newspapers, which then was not often 
 the case with private persons; and no doubt this notoriety had its 
 weight in the lady's calculations. Things are changed in this respect, 
 my dear Tom," continued O'Connell, turning to his "Head Pacificator," 
 the well-known and very eccentric Tom Steele, who was one of his trav- 
 elling companions on this occasion ; " noiv the difficulty is for some 
 people to keep out of the newspapers!" [What would O'Connell have 
 said had he lived to glance his eye over some of the New York and other 
 American journals published in this actual year of grace 1872 ? How he 
 ivoidd stare at their columns of " intcrvieivings' n and other sensational per- 
 sonalities, before which European journcdistic gossip and sensationalism 
 must hide their diminished heads!) "If I, for example," proceeded "the 
 liberator," "go to see the Belleisle frigate, next morning it's all in print! 
 and who were along with me. and how we were received on board, just 
 as if we were princes! But to return to Hawkesworth. The corre- 
 spondence read upon the trial was comical enough. The lady, it ap- 
 peared, had at one period doubted his fidelity ; whereupon the parson 
 writes to reassure her in these words : ' Don't believe any one who says 
 I'll jilt you. They lie who say so; and I pray that all such liars may 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 405 
 
 be condemned to an eternity of itching without the benefit of scratching.' 
 Three thousand pounds damages were given against him. He was un- 
 able to pay, and decamped to America upon a preaching speculation, 
 which proved unsuccessful. He came back to Ireland, and married the 
 prosecutrix !" 
 
 During this same journey, when approaching from the village of Ash- 
 bourne to Dublin, some objects of antiquity which Grose had illustrated 
 recalled that antiquary to "the liberator's" mind. 
 
 "Grose," said he, "came to Ireland full of strong prejudices against 
 the people ; but they gave way beneath the influence of Irish drollery. 
 He was very much teased, while walking through the Dublin markets, 
 by the butchers besetting him for his custom. At last he got angry, and 
 told them all to go about their business ; when a sly, waggish butcher, 
 deliberately surveying Grose's fat, ruddy face and corpulent person, said 
 to him, ' Well, please your honor, I won't ax you to buy, since it puts 
 your honor in a passion ; but I'll tell you how you'll sarve me — -just tell 
 all your friends that it's I that supply you tvith your mate, and, never fear. 
 I'll have custom enough." 
 
 Among the professional reminiscences of O'Connell may be men- 
 tioned the story of " Duke O'Neill's will." This will was a singular and, 
 in spite of its downright rascality, somewhat laughable fraud, which for 
 a time inspired a lot of gullible mortals with visionary hopes of becom- 
 ing rich by the division of a colossal fortune. The cheat originated in 
 this wise : A smart, unscrupulous attorney's clerk, desirous of treating 
 himself to a pleasant summer excursion at other people's expense, 
 forged a document, which purported to be the last will and testament 
 of a certain grandee of Spain, the Duke O'Neill, who had died without 
 leaving offspring in that land of romance, after having amassed the vast 
 sum of one million two hundred thousand pounds. This noble fortune, 
 according to the provisions of the duke's will, was to be divided, share 
 and share alike, between all his Hibernian cousins bearing the illustrious 
 name of O'Neill, and within the fortieth degree of kindred ! The con- 
 coctor of this precious imposition lost no time in directing his footsteps 
 to the province of Ulster, where, with sublime effrontery, he introduced 
 himself at many houses with the story of the Hiberno-Spanish grandee's 
 magnificent bequest. The plausibility of the knave's statements every- 
 
406 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 where secured him a hospitable reception. In addition to getting into 
 snug quarters, he made a pretty tidy sum by selling copies of the forged 
 document to every O'Neill who was green enough to present him with 
 the moderate amount of half a crown for a neatly-engrossed duplicate. 
 In short, the trick was, for a time, quite a success ; and presently sev- 
 eral sturdy northern farmers, and even a Liverpool merchant, all bearing 
 the royal name of their imaginary princely relative, made application to 
 O'Connell for his professional advice and assistance in recovering their 
 shares of the splendid windfall which awaited the lucky O'Neills within 
 the fortieth degree of cousinship to the duke. 
 
 I had better let O'Connell himself describe the awakening of the poor 
 humbugged O'Neills from their idle dreams of bags of doubloons and 
 chateaux en Espagne (castles in Spain or in the air). 
 
 "Nothing," said he, "could exceed their astonishment when I assured 
 them the whole thing was a delusion. 
 
 " ' Do you really tell us so, counsellor?' 
 
 " ' Indeed I do,' said I. 
 
 " ' And now wc hope you wouldn't lay it on your conscience to deceive 
 us. Do you really tell us, after all, that there's nothing at all to be got?' 
 
 " 'Indeed, I can assure you with a very safe conscience,' said I, 'that 
 it is all a fabrication, and if an oath was required to confirm the fact, I 
 could very safely give one.' 
 
 " So away they went, indignant at the fraud, and lamenting that 
 they had ever put faith in the tale of the 'ould duke.' " 
 
 On one occasion, as O'Connell was passing Belan, the deserted abode 
 of the earls of Aldborough, he repeated Hussey Burgh's epigram on the 
 hand which in former days adorned an old finger-post near the gate. 
 To understand the point of the epigram, it should be borne in mind 
 that, in O'Connell's earlier days, the noble daughters of the Stratford 
 family (Stratford is or was the family name of the Aldboroughs) were 
 notorious for what is now euphemistically styled kleptomania : 
 
 " Great Jupiter ! could I command 
 Promethean fire to warm that hand, 
 
 Give it tenacity and feeling, 
 Then fix, thus vivified, the fist 
 Upon my sympathetic wrist, 
 
 Oh! what a hand 'twould be for stealing 1" 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 407 
 
 If it were not out of place, some odd tales of the Stratford ladies 
 might be told here. 
 
 "Some ladies of quality," O'Connell continued, after reciting the 
 epigram, "have a curious propensity for theft. There were the Honor- 
 able Misses II . In Bath the shopkeepers regularly traded on their 
 
 thievish disposition. Articles of value were designedly left upon the 
 counters ; the baits of course took ; and the honorable thieves were pur- 
 sued by shopboys, who would say, ' You have taken such or such arti- 
 cles, ladies, but you have forgotten to pay for them.' An exorbitant 
 price was then always demanded, which the ladies were glad to pay in 
 order to escape the worse alternative of public exposure." 
 
 I shall give one or two additional instances of O'Connell's legal acu- 
 men, and of his rapid power of seizing hold of trifles the most minute 
 to save his client. A farmer was caught in the act of killing game on 
 the estate of a landlord. Three of the gentleman's servants, who had 
 secured the poacher, were prepared to swear to his guilt. O'Connell 
 thought the chance of a successful defence so slight that at first he 
 declined taking a fee. 
 
 "I can render your client no service; his guilt is undeniable," said 
 O'Connell to the prisoner's attorney. " I confess the defence looks des- 
 perate," replied the solicitor, "but you will greatly oblige me by under- 
 taking it." 
 
 It required a considerable amount of pressing to overcome O'Connell's 
 reluctance to accept the fee and undertake the defence. However, he finally 
 yielded, and prepared to cross-examine the first witness for the prosecution. 
 
 "We shall remove the other two witnesses," the attorney whispered 
 in his ear. "By no means," hastily responded O'Connell; "my only 
 hope of success is in their presence ; let them remain." 
 
 O'Connell seemed to guess intuitively that each of the three witnesses 
 desired to have the entire credit of capturing the poacher, and felt indig- 
 nant that either of the other two should claim any share of whatever 
 merit was in the exploit. He assumed that irritated vanity would make 
 each of the three, if skilfully managed in cross-examination (a branch 
 of legal warfare in which our hero felt himself a master), disparage and 
 contradict the other two. 
 
 Acting on this supposition, he cross-examined the three servants 
 
408 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 with his accustomed ingenuity and effect. Before closing the cross- 
 examination of the third witness, he said to him — 
 
 " Now will you answer me one additional question? and then per- 
 haps I'll have done with you." 
 
 " If you promise to ask me no more questions, I'll answer you any 
 way you like." 
 
 " Very Avell ! Kem ember you said so. Now, by the virtue of your 
 oath, is not the prisoner innocent?" 
 
 " By the virtue of my oath, he is innocent !" 
 
 Such was the strange response of the witness. The miserable sinner, 
 seeing that he couldn't carry off the whole credit of the capture himself, 
 was determined, if he could at any cost, to deprive his two fellow-ser- 
 vants of their due share of praise. The upshot of the trial was that the 
 poacher was acquitted. 
 
 Another time, O'Connell was on the point of despairing of being able 
 to save a client accused of murder, in the face of the evidence brought 
 against him, which seemed absolutely conclusive. The chief witness, 
 however, against the prisoner was a brisk, petulant boy. The rapid eye 
 of O'Connell saw at a glance that he was not unlikely to prove hurtful 
 to his own side by being too eager and willing a witness. He might be 
 tripped up and made to contradict himself, if entangled in the meshes 
 of a skilful cross-examination. 
 
 " How do you know the prisoner is the man who committed the 
 murder?" demanded our hero. 
 
 " I know him by the mark on his cheek." JSTow the prisoner had a 
 mark on the left cheek. 
 
 " On which cheek was the mark?" asked Dan. 
 
 " On his right cheek," replied the boy, hastily. 
 
 What he really meant, in his unthinking hurry and confusion of ideas, 
 was the cheek opposed to his right hand — in other words, the left cheek. 
 But O'Connell took advantage of his verbal blunder and contrived to 
 save the prisoner. The real criminal, it appears, who Avas afterward 
 brought to light, was marked on the right cheek. 
 
 Conspicuous among O'Connell's forensic recollections was the mem- 
 orable case of Judge Johnson, who was tried in 1805 for a libel signed 
 " Juverna," printed in Cobbett's Political Register. On a strained con- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 409 
 
 struction of law, he was arrested and brought over to England to be 
 tried. The libellous letter was a singular production for a judge. It 
 was written in a bold and bitter spirit and style. Several high officials 
 are assailed severely. Secretary Marsden is styled by "Juverna" "a 
 corrupt, unprincipled, rapacious plunderer, preying upon the property 
 of the state;" and Justice Osborne is held up to public detestation 
 and scorn, as "the most corrupt instrument of a debased and degraded 
 government, lending himself as a screen to conceal them from the dis- 
 grace their actions would naturally bring upon them." O'Conndl 
 speaks about "Ju verna's" letter and the proceedings against Judge 
 Johnson in the following words : 
 
 "It (the libel) called Lord Hardwicke 'a very eminent breeder of 
 sheep in Cambridgeshire,' and Lord-Chancellor Redesdale 'a very able 
 and stout-built special pleader from Lincoln's Inn.' Johnson's great 
 object was to gain time. He sued out his habeas corpus in every one of 
 the courts. The last was the Common Pleas. One of his counsel was 
 Scriven, whose instructions were to be as lengthy as possible. He ac- 
 cordingly opened by stating that he had eighteen distinct propositions 
 to enunciate. Lord Norbury soon got tired, and tried to cut the matter 
 short by occasionally saying, 'That will do, Mr. Scriven; the court is 
 with you on that point, so you need not occupy your time by demonstra- 
 tion.' ' That won't do, my lord,' said Scriven ; ' I must assist your lord- 
 ship with some additional reasons. I well know the great ability of my 
 learned friends who will follow on the other side, so I cannot possibly 
 accept your lordship's concession.' The first day was wholly occupied 
 by stating the eighteen propositions ; the succeeding days were devoted 
 to proving them. The opposite counsel, whose game was brevity, let 
 Scriven run on uninterrupted. When he came out of court the first day, 
 he said, ' D — n those fellows ! I could not get one of them to interrupt 
 me.' But he and his brethren succeeded in wearing out the term. 
 Meanwhile the administration changed ; the new government (of 1806) 
 let Johnson off easily. He was'not turned off the bench, but induced 
 to retire on a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year." 
 
 It was in the month of November, 1803, immediately after the exe- 
 cution of Robert Emmet, that Robert Johnson published this libel. The 
 government of the viceroy, Lord Hardwicke, had corrupted the press of 
 
410 THE LIFE OF JJAMIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Ireland as no former government had evat succeeded in doing. The first 
 of the letters signed " Juverna" was sent to Cobbett avowedly because 
 all the Dublin papers and printers had refused to publish it. The Eng- 
 lish attorney-general, unable in the first instance to find out the write?, 
 prosecuted Cobbett for publishing the libels. An action was also taken 
 against him by Plunket, at this time solicitor-general of Ireland, for 
 libels in the letter reflecting on Plunket' s conduct at Emmet's trial. In 
 one bitter passage "Juverna" represents Emmet as describing Plunket 
 thus: "That viper, whom my father nourished. He it was from whose 
 lips I first imbibed those principles and doctrines which now by their 
 effects drag me to my grave, and he it is who is now brought forward as 
 my prosecutor, and who, by an unheard-of exercise of the prerogative, 
 has wantonly lashed with a speech to evidence the dying son of his 
 former friend, when that son had produced no evidence, had made no 
 defence, but, on the contrary, had acknowledged the charge and submit- 
 ted to his fate." Davis called this "a false and cruel charge." At all 
 events, it appears certain that no such passage as this, calling Plunket 
 "that viper, etc.," was ever uttered by Emmet. Burrowcs, Robert 
 Emmet's counsel, stated as much. 
 
 On the first trial Cobbett was found guilty by the jury, after ten 
 minutes' deliberation. In Plunket' s civil suit, after twenty minutes, 
 they found a verdict for the plaintiff and £500 damages. In this action 
 the famous Erskine opened for Plunket. Adam defended Cobbett with 
 great ability, quoting the memorable words uttered by Plunket on the 
 nullity of the union. These trials occurred in May, 1804. 
 
 In the second trial the manuscript of Johnson's letter was produced. 
 It appears Cobbett gave it up, acknowledging that Johnson was the 
 author. Witnesses swore that the handwriting was his. The English 
 government now resolved to prosecute Johnson and to bring him over to 
 London for trial. As, however, there existed no law at that time em- 
 powering the authorities to remove offenders from Ireland to England, 
 or vice versa, for trial, a bill was hurried through Parliament, entitled 
 "An act to render more easy the apprehending and bringing to trial 
 offenders escaping from one part of the United Kingdom to the other, 
 and also from one county to another," by which, among other things, it 
 was enacted that a warrant from a court in Great Britain might be 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 411 
 
 transmitted to Ireland, endorsed and executed there by a justice of the 
 peace, and the individual accused handed over for trial to the court 
 whence the warrant issued. This act was in point of fact passed by the 
 Tory majority for the express purpose of persecuting Judge Johnson. 
 Thomas Davis says : " That all the persons concerned in pushing this 
 act knew its object, it would be wrong to say; but it was brought in by 
 Perceval, Lord Pedesdale's brother-in-law, and by Charles Yorke, the 
 brother of Lord Hardwicke, and was mainly and speedily used against 
 Johnson." Surely, then, there is room for something more than mere 
 suspicion against the government. 
 
 Bills were now found against Johnson by the Middlesex grand-jury, 
 and on the 2Tth of November a warrant was issued against him from 
 the King's Bench at Westminster. Accordingly, he was arrested at his 
 house, near Dublin ; but as the arrest was manifestly under an ex post 
 facto act, which his counsel contended could not have a retrospective 
 effect, the whole matter was discussed at great length in the Dublin 
 courts. First it was discussed for six days in the Court of King's Bench, 
 in January, 1805. Meantime he procured a writ of habeas corpus from 
 the Court of Exchequer, and in this court also the case was argued, 
 February 4th and 7th. Subsequently, it was argued in the Court of 
 Common Pleas. In all these courts the legality of the warrant was con- 
 firmed, and the arrest held good. Finally, he was brought over to Lon- 
 don, tried and found guilty of the libel. Respectable witnesses were 
 produced to prove that the letter was not in the handwriting of Justice 
 Johnson. (Indeed, we know, on the authority of Lord Cloncurry, that 
 the libel was in the handwriting of the judge's daughter.) But Lord 
 Ellenborough, the English chief-justice, unjustly threw discredit on these 
 witnesses and misdirected the jury. In short, though Johnson was really 
 the writer of the letter signed "Juverna," his conviction was on bad 
 evidence. 
 
 Satisfied with disgracing the worthy judge by a criminal conviction, 
 injuring his fortune by obliging him to incur the heavy expenses of 
 these vexatious proceedings, and, above all, teaching him and others the 
 lesson that neither a judge nor any one else should dare to hold up to 
 merited reprobation the evil doings of viceroys, chancellors or secretaries, 
 the government did not enforce the verdicts either against him or Cob- 
 
412 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 bett. Later, indeed, when Mr. Pitt died of Napoleon's great victory of 
 Austerlitz, and Charles James Fox and the Whigs came into office, the 
 attorney-general even entered a nolle prosequi on the record, as of Trinity 
 term, 1806. These proceedings against the judge, owing to their unusual 
 features, had created great scandal. The Whigs were anxious to wind 
 them up quietly. O'Connell has already told us that he was not deprived 
 of his seat on the bench, but induced to retire on a pension. In his 
 retirement in France, the good old judge wrote a praiseworthy treatise 
 (though Davis, if I remember rightly, considers it somewhat defective) 
 on the Military Defence of Ireland, under the name of Colonel or Captain 
 Philip Roche Fermoy. "This work," in the words of Mr. Mitchel, "has 
 specially in view a defence of the country by the inhabitants of it against 
 the English, and has been much studied since that time." Mr. Daunt 
 says, "this Johnson was made a judge for supporting the union." He 
 was certainly elevated to the bench in 1800. His conduct then con- 
 trasts singularly with the course he pursued subsequently. 
 
 The story of the persecution of another excellent judge, Mr. Justice 
 Fox, much about the same time, for his righteous and fearless vindica- 
 tion of law and justice, grievously outraged by the oppressive and law- 
 less doings of certain members of the tyrant-aristocracy of Ireland, 
 forms an episode in Irish history still more interesting than the case of 
 Judge Johnson, and presents a highly-curious and instructive illustration 
 of what the British system in Ireland was in the years immediately fol- 
 lowing the union. But, unfortunately, the space remaining at my dis- 
 posal is not sufficient to justify me in entering into the details of this 
 case. The reader will find a concise and interesting sketch of the whole 
 transaction in Mr. Mitchel's "Continuation" — how the judge righteously 
 fined Lord Enniskillen two hundred pounds for non-appearance in court 
 to answer for most iniquitous proceedings ; how he also fined, in various 
 sums not exceeding fifty pounds, Messrs. Stewart, Pallas and Webster — 
 the first-named gentleman for committing a man illegally, the other, two 
 for releasing a man charged with a capital offence without bail ; how he 
 censured the marquis of Abercorn (and this was his great offence ; for 
 was not the marquis the patron of the Orange brigands?) for a neglect 
 of duty, which occasioned a shameful fraud on the public; how the 
 marquis, in a malignant speech, brought the conduct of the just and 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 413 
 
 courageous judge before the House of Lords; how that House mon- 
 strously turned "itself into a court to try the judge on a criminal 
 charge;" how Judge Fox was persecuted for three years, at an expense 
 to the public of thirty thousand pounds, to himself of health and for- 
 tune ; and how, finally, when Charles James Fox and the Whigs came 
 into power, the Lords opened their eyes to the foulness of the whole 
 business, got ashamed (better late than never), and quashed the vexa- 
 tious proceedings. The lesson, read by the Tory government in Fox's 
 case to Irish judges, taught them that, if they cared for number one, they 
 would never dream of trying to bring to justice Orange offenders, if 
 those offenders sat in the high places. 
 
 O'Connell's personal recollections and sketches, of which we have 
 given the reader so many specimens in the present and in former chap- 
 ters, throw a valuable light both on the manners and customs and on 
 the character of the Irish nation in the days of his youth and manhood. 
 The manners and customs of almost every country vary in every age ; 
 so that society in Ireland to-day is in many respects very different from 
 what it was sixty or seventy years ago. Duelling has died out. Our 
 last remarkable abduction was that of Miss Arbuthnot by the late noto- 
 rious John Carden of Barnane. We no longer see Irish fortune-hunters 
 at Bath and other resorts of fashion satirized as a class in comedies and 
 novels. Our carousals, especially among the more cultured classes, are 
 not so fierce as those of yore. Yet still Irish " mirth and fun grow fast 
 and furious." Upon the whole, our outward manners and customs are 
 considerably modified. But the inner character of the Irish people, on 
 the other hand, remains to this day unaltered, if not unalterable. I do 
 not think it at all out of place here to introduce a long passage from 
 Mr. Mitchel's "Continuation of the Abbe McGeoghegan," in which he 
 gives a masterly sketch of that "composite Irish character," as he styles 
 it, that was developed in the latter half of the last century. After speak- 
 ing of the character of the marquis of Buckingham, who succeeded the 
 duke of Rutland as viceroy at the close of 1787, Mr. Mitchel goes on 
 thus: 
 
 "In short, he was in every way unsuited to the Irish temperament; 
 for there had lately been formed gradually a marked Irish character, 
 even amongst the Protestant colonists before the era of independence, 
 
414 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 and still more notably since that time. Gentlemen born in this country 
 (Ireland), and all whose interests and associations were here, no longer 
 called themselves Englishmen born in Ireland, as Swift had done. The 
 same powerful assimilating influence which had formerly made the Nor- 
 man settlers, Geraldines and De Burghs, 'more Irish than the Irish' 
 after two or three generations, had now also acted more or less upon the 
 very Cromwellians and Williamites ; and there was recognizable in the 
 whole character and bearing even of the Protestants a certain dash of 
 that generosity, levity, impetuosity and recklessness which have marked 
 the Celtic race since the beginning. They were capable of the most 
 outrageous depravity and of the highest honor and rectitude ; of the 
 most insolent, ostentatious venality and corruption, as well as of the 
 noblest, proudest independence. The formation of this modern com- 
 posite Irish character is of course attributable to the gradual amalga- 
 mation of the privileged Protestant colonists with the converted Irish, 
 who had from time to time conformed to the Established Church, to save 
 their estates or to possess themselves of the property of non-conforming 
 neighbors. This was a large and increasing element in the Protestant 
 colony ever since the time of Elizabeth ; and of such families came the 
 Currans, Dalys, Doyles, Connollys, as well as the higher names, O'Neill, 
 O'Brien, Burke, Roche, Fitzpatrick. The ancestors of these families, in 
 abandoning their Catholic faith, could not let out all their Celtic blood, 
 and that blood permeated the whole mass of the population, and often 
 broke out and showed its origin, even in men partly of English descent, 
 or at least of English names. Grattan, for example" (but is " Grattan" 
 certainly a name of English origin?), "in the character of his intellect 
 and temperament, was as purely Celtic as Curran himself. In truth, it 
 had become very difficult to determine the ethnological distinction be- 
 tween the inhabitants of the island; and surnames had long ceased to 
 be a safe guide, because ever since the statutes of Kilkenny, in the 
 fifteenth century, thousands of Irish families, especially of those residing 
 near or in the English pale, had changed their names in obedience to 
 those statutes, that they might have the benefit of the English law in 
 their dealings with the people of the pale. They had assumed surnames, 
 as prescribed by the statute, either from some trade or calling, as Miller, 
 Taylor, Smith, or from some place, as Trim, Slane, Galway, or from 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 415 
 
 some color, as Gray, Green, White, Brown. Gradually their original 
 clan-names were lost ; and it soon became their interest to keep up no 
 tradition even of their Irish descent. Of one of the families in this cat- 
 egory undoubtedly came Oliver Goldsmith, whose intensely Irish nature 
 is a much surer guide to his origin than the trade-surname of Goldsmith 
 adopted under the statute. 
 
 " It has been said that surnames are no sure guide to origin; but in 
 one direction surnames were, and are, nearly infallible : a Celtic surname 
 is a sure indication of Celtic blood, because nobody ever had any interest 
 in assuming or retaining such a patronymic, all the interests and tempt- 
 ations being the other way. But an English surname is no indication 
 at all of English descent, because for several centuries — first under the 
 statutes of Kilkenny, afterwards under the more grievous pressure of the 
 penal code — all possible worldly inducements were held out to Irishmen 
 to take English names, and forget their own. 
 
 " From so large a mingling of the Celtic element, even in the exclu- 
 sive* Protestant colony, had resulted the very marked Irish character 
 which was noticed, though not with complacency, by English writers of 
 that period ; and to this character the cold, dry, and narrow marquis of 
 Buckingham was altogether abhorrent." In truth, the English in general 
 are abhorrent to the Irish character, and vice versd. 
 
 And, speaking of the growth of the Protestant colony, Mr. Mitchel 
 says, elsewhere : " Their numbers had been largely increased, partly by 
 English settlers coming to enjoy the plunder of the forfeited estates, and 
 very much by conversions, or pretended conversions, of Catholics who 
 had recanted their faith to save their property or their position in society, 
 and who generally altered or disguised their family names when these 
 had too Celtic a sound." In fact, by the end of the eighteenth century, 
 throughout the whole population of Ireland the characteristics of the 
 Celt predominated. Even the most thorough partisans of English 
 supremacy, even the most bigoted and inveterate foes of Catholic eman- 
 
 * Mr. Mitchel has the following note to the above passage : " It would be a curious study to 
 trace the history of Irish family names. For the first three centuries after the Norman invasion 
 under Henry the Second, the movement was quite in an opposite direction, and De Burghs became 
 Mac Williams ; De Berminghams, MacFeorais ; the Fitzurses, MacMahons ; and Norman barons 
 became chiefs of clans, forgot both French and English, rode without stirrups, and kept the upper 
 lip unshaven." 
 27 
 
■ 416 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 cipation, showed features of national character very different, indeed, 
 from those of the English type. 
 
 Thus, then, there existed in those days a strongly-marked national 
 character common to the universal Irish people, sprung though they were 
 from various stocks. In spite of gradual changes of habits, this national 
 character still survives. But as, in speaking of the external aspect of the 
 island, I maintained that, along with the general characteristics of Irish 
 scenery "to be found, in a greater or less degree, in most parts of the 
 island, each province, or even each county, has peculiar features of its 
 own; and even within these smaller tracts the variety of scenery is 
 sometimes endless and marvellous beyond all expectation," so, in addi- 
 tion to the general characteristics of our people, the Irishman of each 
 district or locality has more or less peculiar features of his own, both 
 physical and moral. In some parts the original Celtic blood is very 
 little modified by that of the subsequent races of invaders. In some 
 districts the Danish blood strongly asserts its presence, in some the 
 Norman, in some the Saxon. As the degrees of admixture vary, so do 
 the qualities of the people; and even counties almost purely Celtic 
 differ more or less in the characteristics of their inhabitants. Remark- 
 able indeed are the varieties to be found in the Irish character as it 
 displays itself in the different localities of the isle. The stalwart, Roman- 
 featured, stern to strangers, reserved but, at bottom, warm-hearted Tip 
 perary-man; the lithe-formed, subtle and fiery Celt of Cork and Kerry; 
 the hardy, much-enduring, naturally courteous and hospitable Celt of 
 Connaught, ever clinging tenaciously to the customs and traditions and 
 language of his forefathers ; the man of Leinster with an admixture in his 
 veins of almost equal proportions of Danish and Norman and Saxon 
 blood, the old Celtic blood, however, still preponderating; the sturdy, 
 independent "Black Northern," with a large element of the "canny 
 Scot" in his character, — all these varieties of the Irish race, while they 
 have a certain broad family resemblance to each other, at the same time 
 boast, each of them, strongly-marked individualisms. 
 
 Of the changes that have gradually taken place in our manners and 
 customs since the days Avhen O'Connell was winning his forensic laurels, 
 one of the most striking is the passing away of the race of "fire-eaters," 
 as the Irish duellists were called. No doubt a similar change has taken 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 417 
 
 place in all other civilized countries, but as duels were probably of more 
 frequent occurrence, and certainly more extraordinary, in Ireland than 
 in any other country, the change in our national habits seems more 
 remarkable than the similar changes elsewhere. I shall here give the 
 reader one or tAvo sketches of the whimsical duels and duellists charac- 
 teristic of our country in those times. 
 
 There lived then in the county Carlow a magnificent old gentleman 
 of high birth and splendid fortune, styled "King Bagenal." He reigned 
 despotically enough at his place called Dunleckny, but at the same time 
 dispensed his hospitalities with the most generous profusion. His cellar 
 was stocked with the richest and rarest wines, his dogs were good, his 
 horses thoroughbred. Visitors fond of hunting, but unprovided with 
 hunters of their own, could always reckon on being mounted superbly 
 at Dunleckny. It is said that Mr. Bagenal, when making the grand 
 tour in his days of early manhood, received from the grand-duke of 
 Mccklenburg-Strelitz, who was dazzled by his wealth and splendor, an 
 offer of the hand of his daughter, the Princess Charlotte. Strange to 
 say, "King Bagenal" of Dunleckny, refused to ally himself with the sove- 
 reign house of Mecklenburg. Luckily for the lady, all kings were not 
 so hard to be pleased, for subsequently King George the Third of Eng- 
 land consoled the slighted fair one by making her queen of Great Britain 
 and Ireland. 
 
 In his old days, if high-lineaged damsels no longer smiled upon Mr. 
 Bagenal, 3 r oung men of rank bowed to his authority on all subjects con- 
 nected with drinking, hunting and duelling. He delighted in holding 
 forth, at his own table, on these congenial topics to the uprising genera- 
 tion. Nothing could be more paternal and benignant than his voice and 
 manner when pouring forth the lessons of his sage experience to his 
 admiring young disciples, somewhat in the following style : 
 
 " In truth, my young friends, it behooves a youth entering the world 
 to make a character for himself. Respect will only be accorded to cha- 
 racter. A young man must show his proofs. I am not a quarrelsome 
 person — I never was. I hate your mere duellist ; but experience of the 
 world tells me that there are knotty points 'in life, of which the only 
 solution is the saw-handle.' '' (By the way, he was fond of having saw- 
 handles beside him on the dinner-table; after dinner he would tap a 
 
418 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 claret-cask with a bullet ; of a truth, at one of the drinking-bouts of 
 Dunleckny it wasn't quite safe for a guest "to shirk his drink.") " Rest 
 upon your pistols, my boys. Occasions will arise in which the use of 
 them is absolutely indispensable to character. A man, I repeat, must 
 show, his proofs — in this world courage will never be taken upon trust. 
 I protest to Heaven, my dear young friends, that I advise you exactly as 
 I should advise my own son." 
 
 Such were the moral precepts of the patriarch of Dunleckny to the 
 ingenuous youths who, as it were, sat at his feet for instruction. His 
 suavity of manner on these occasions was perfection itself. The mild- 
 ness of Lambro, who, as Lord Byron tells us, 
 
 " Was the mildest-manner'd mau 
 That e% r er scuttled ship or cut a throat," 
 
 was as nothing to ''King Bagenal's." 
 
 But the master of Dunleckny was not one of those shams who preacli 
 one thing and practice another. His action corresponded to a nicety 
 with his theory of life, as the following incident will demonstrate: 
 
 A stranger, apparently very wealthy, purchased a property and set- 
 tled in the neighborhood of Dunleckny. Some doubt arose in the minds 
 of the gentry around as to whether they should call on the new-comer. 
 " King Bagenal" was consulted as an authority infallible on such points. 
 He advised that, before deciding what course they should adopt, it was 
 in the first place necessary to find out whether the stranger were a true 
 gentleman. To guide those who sought him as their oracle, he took it 
 on himself to settle this important question. An opportunity of testing 
 the stranger's title to call himself "gentleman" soon presented itself. 
 Some of his pigs invaded the territory of the old despot of Dunleckny 
 and rooted up a bed of flowers. His Majesty, filled with fury, ordered 
 his obedient henchmen to crop their ears and amputate their tails. He 
 next sent both ears and tails to the owner of the intrusive swine, with 
 a delicate hint that his own ears were in jeopardy, and that it was, upon 
 the whole, as well for him that nature hadn't supplied him with a tail. 
 "Now," quoth the sagacious old "king," "if he be really a gentleman, 
 he must burn powder after such a message as that!" 
 
 And lo! just as "King Bagenal" had anticipated, the gentleman, 
 being a gentleman, sent him a hostile message on the instant, fully 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 410 
 
 resolved to wreak vengeance for the lost tails of his dishonored pigs. 
 Bagenal eagerly accepted the challenge, stipulating that, on account of 
 his advanced age (he was then almost seventy-nine years old) and gouty 
 limbs, he should be permitted to fight sitting in his arm-chair, and that, 
 as he was no longer able to rise early in the morning, the duel should 
 take place later than noon. "Time was," sighed the veteran, "that I 
 would have risen before daybreak to tight at sunrise, but we can't do 
 these things at seventy-eight. Well, well, Heaven's will be done!" 
 
 At the appointed time the lord of Dunleckny and the lord of the 
 outraged pigs met and fought, like "good men and true." The arm of 
 Bagenal's chair was shattered by his antagonist's ball, which nevei 
 touched the old "king." On the other hand, Bagenal wounded his an- 
 tagonist. That night, at Dunleckny, the carousal and the jollity "grew 
 fast and furious." When, after dinner, the unbroached claret-cask was 
 brought into the dining-room, be sure the stout old host performed his 
 customary feat of tapping it with a pistol-bullet. 
 
 As soon as his wounded antagonist and neighbor became convales- 
 cent — as the ordeal of battle had established his claims to be considered 
 a gentleman beyond all further dispute or cavil — -the old "king" ordered 
 •his carriage and called on him. The county families lost no time in 
 following his example. 
 
 In truth, duelling had come to be a nuisance in Ireland. All public 
 men— politicians and lawyers alike — had to tight, on the shortest notice, 
 for any or no reason at all. We have seen Grattan engaged in a duel. 
 That was not his only encounter of the kind. Curran fought several. 
 Flood " killed his man." Before long we shall see O'Connell himself 
 " killing his man." Before he made his final resolve to abstain from 
 duelling altogether, he had other "affairs of honor" on his hands. 
 Elections, however, which then sometimes lasted for weeks, were the 
 great scenes where the skill and courage of "fighting counsel" were 
 displayed. The candidates, too, would occasionally meet to exchange 
 shots; but it was absolutely necessary that their counsel, whatever their 
 knowledge of the law of elections might be, should at least be gentle- 
 men of "fire-eating" proclivities. Bully Egan, who did a great election- 
 eering business, is said by some to have fought no less than fourteen 
 duels. This sort of thing lasted far into the present century. At a 
 
420 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Clare election, long after the union, one of these usually belligerent bar- 
 risters, Mr. Tom O'M , astonished a friend by his pacific demeanor. 
 
 '•Why, Tom," said the friend, "you are wonclrously quiet. How does it 
 happen that you haven't kicked up some shindy ?" 
 
 " Because my client hasn't paid me my fighting price," coolly replied 
 this Swiss of the bar. 
 
 Probably the last Irish election duel between opposing counsel was 
 that between Casserly and Baker, at one of the Mayo elections, where 
 Eobert Dillon Browne and Patrick Somers, two of Dan's "tail,"* as his 
 parliamentary followers were nicknamed, stood for that county on the 
 liberal side. In the early period of the election things were all going 
 against Browne and Somers. When they met in counsel over a bottle at 
 night, Browne, who was a clever wag, determined to play on the maudlin- 
 patriotic feelings of his counsel, Casserly. "It's enough to make a man 
 sick," said he with well-acted weariness and disgust; "there is no such 
 thing as real patriotism remaining in Ireland any longer." 
 
 "What do you mean, Mr. Browne?" said Casserly, in bewilderment- 
 he was, as sailors say, "three sheets to the windward" by this time — 
 " Tm a real patriot, Mr. Browne." And then he brought his fist down 
 heavily on the table. 
 
 " Where's the use," said Browne, " of talking that sort of bombastic 
 stuff? If you were a patriot, you wouldn't let Baker have it all his own 
 way, and humbug you to your face the way he's doing." 
 
 "What's that you say Baker's doing? humbugging me to my face?" 
 
 " I say he's putting his finger in your eye," cries Browne, with a ges- 
 ture of vehement emphasis. 
 
 "Mr. Browne," says Casserly, rising excitedly and stretching forth his 
 hand, "give me your hand. You'll see to-morrow morning Avhether 
 Baker — and be d — d to him ! — can put his finger in my eye!" 
 
 They separated, Casserly in a high fever of pot-valor. But it wasn't 
 all pot-valor. When the fumes of Bacchus had evaporated, there re- 
 mained a residuum of genuine combativeness and unreasoning wrath ; 
 for at the hustings the next morning, the moment the election proceed- 
 ings were about to recommence, without preface, explanation or apology, 
 
 * Probably this nickname was applied on account of Dan's claims to Celtic chieftainship. 
 The immediate followers or suite of a Highland Scotch chief were called his " tail." 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 421 
 
 Casserly started to liis feet, shook his fist at Baker and roared out, 
 "Baker, you're a scoundrel, and the counsel of a scoundrel!" Immedi- 
 ately Baker's blood was up ; he intimated to Casserly in plain terms 
 (hat he'd make him smell powder for his wanton insult. 
 
 The sequel may easily be guessed — how, in the course of the day, 
 Baker sent a hostile message ; how Casserly was only too glad to give 
 him gentlemanly satisfaction ; how they fought, Casserly hitting Baker 
 in the hip, giving the surgeons a neat job, and Baker, to the best of my 
 recollection, a permanent limp. The moment he hit his antagonist, Cas- 
 serly turned to Browne, who (I am almost sure) was his second, and said, 
 with a peculiar leer, "Didn't I do that pretty well, Mr. Browne?" 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add, that after this exploit the affairs of 
 Browne and Somers went on swimmingly. The interests of their oppo- 
 nents fell into confusion and collapsed — no tallies ready at the proper 
 time. Voters weren't brought up to the scratch ; no one to keep up the 
 legal quibblings and wranglings. Henceforward the conservatives were 
 nowhere at the poll. It was all but a walk over the course. In fine, 
 Messrs. Browne and Somers were declared duly elected. 
 
 At the county Wexford election, in 1810, the rival candidates, Alcock 
 and Colclough, fought a duel which ended tragically. Alcock had threat- 
 ened Colclough with vengeance if he should dare to accept the votes of 
 one of his friend's tenants. "Receive them at your peril!" said he. 
 Colclough replied with spirit, that "he wouldn't be bullied into refusing 
 them." In the duel which followed, and at which a crowd (including 
 many magistrates) was present, Colclough was shot through the heart. 
 Of course, Alcock was returned for the county. At the next assizes, 
 however, he was tried for the murder of Colclough; but the judge, Baron 
 Smith, charged warmly in his favor, and the jury acquitted him. 
 
 This outrageous state of society was the result of many causes. The 
 partisans of the Ascendency were unrestrained and irresponsible — more 
 like a lawless garrison than peaceful citizens ; they had come into the 
 country by violence, they might be driven out by violence ; their position 
 was insecure, consequently they were chronically restless and turbulent. 
 The lax principles and dissolute morals of the viceregal court fostered 
 this riotous and diseased state of society. The Catholics, on the other 
 hand, down-trodden and especially liable to insult, were compelled to 
 
422 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 resort to the pistol as their readiest means of self-assertion and of main- 
 taining some share of self-respect. Indeed, it was often their sole pro- 
 tection against the insolence of the Ascendency bigots. Besides, a brave 
 people, having no legitimate career open to their valor, are sure to become 
 nervously sensitive about the point of honor, and in all cases where their 
 bravery may be called in question they will seek to prove themselves 
 brave by engaging in any and every eccentric and irregular adventure 
 that may chance to turn up. Gradually they will feel themselves at 
 home even in tavern riot and street rowdyism — in disorders of all sorts. 
 I have seen it stated somewhere that Irish duels began to be more fre- 
 quent after the disbanding of the portion of James the Second's army, 
 that remained at home when the treaty of Limerick terminated the 
 Williamite Avars. Numbers of the ex-officers of the Irish army had high 
 pretensions, with poor means to support them. In their fallen fortunes 
 they were probably inclined sometimes to exaggerate their claims to 
 consideration. Unreasonably sensitive to anything approaching a slight, 
 naturally they would gradually become quarrelsome and prone to insist 
 on the arbitrament of the pistol. All these causes, acting in combina- 
 tion with the admitted excitability of the Irish race, are perhaps enough 
 to account for the terrible frequency of duels in Ireland up to a recent 
 period. 
 
 If space permitted, in addition to the foregoing sketches, I would 
 here give the reader many other curious and grotesque incidents (also 
 some tragic ones) in the history of the famous duels and duellists of the 
 past century and the early part of the present. I would relate how 
 ingeniously "Fighting Fitzgerald" (he was finally hung for his share in 
 a rescue) forced the members of Brookes's club in London to elect him 
 unanimously, much against their grain ; how Brian Maguire, self-styled 
 descendant of kings, used to entertain himself and friends with the ex- 
 citing pastime of snuffing with a pistol-bullet a candle held in his wife's 
 hand ; how at other times he used to lean out of a window and spit on 
 the heads of the passers-by; how another of his kingly enjoyments was 
 to stand at a street-crossing, where the scavengers had collected a dirt- 
 heap, and tumble into this pile of mud any crosser who would be unrea- 
 sonable and foolhardy enough not to step aside and plunge knee-deep in 
 it quietly; how, in Carrick-on-Suir, another hero of the same stamp used 
 

 I 
 
■■■■■■ 
 
 - L]ifLUi IK)EE)(SE §©K!©®L. 
 
 . .. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 423 
 
 to parade the streets, sho#(ing defiantly to all comers," " Who dare say 
 boo?" I would also fain relate the varying fortunes of the showy and 
 audacious "Tiger" Roche, Sir Boyle Roche's younger brother; how he 
 fought a number of duels; how he distinguished himself l>v his dei i e- 
 rate valor as a volunteer in a storming-party ; how he was ignominious!}' 
 driven out of the regiment, with which he had so gallantly served, on a 
 fttls3 accusation of theft ; how he sought redress in vain, and was for- 
 saken and scorned by all his acquaintances; how publicly, on the parade- 
 ground, he horsewhipped the colonel of his regiment; how on his death- 
 bed, seized with terror and remorse, the miscreant, who had clandestinely 
 placed stolen property in Roche's trunk or portmanteau, confessed his 
 perfidy and vindicated "Tiger" Roche's innocence; how a reaction in 
 Roche's favor set in and he was everywhere feted as the lion of the day; 
 how he earned the gratitude of the citizens of Dublin by suppressing the 
 "pinkindindies," a class of young riotous scamps, who were generally 
 sons of persons of good social position, and who used to scour the streets 
 of Dublin late o' nights, to the terror of sober citizens, for, having chop- 
 ped off the extremities of their scabbards, so that the points of their 
 rapiers should protrude, they would prick those whom they met in the 
 streets on their way home till their blood flowed ; (these midnight sons of 
 riot were not unlike the courtiers of Nero in the days of old imperial Home; 
 Prince Henri/ of England and his boon companions in London of the fif- 
 teenth century; the Roaring Boys, Bonavcntors, Breivadors, Quarterors, etc., 
 of London in the days of the Scottish Solomon, James the First ; the Mo- 
 hawks, bloods, etc., of the same capital and of later generations ; and many 
 more hordes of night-roisterers in various countries and ages. Perhaps 
 the Hoodlums of California, and other American rowdies of the present day 
 are more or less analogous;) how he ran into debt and became for a long 
 time the inmate of a debtors' prison; how, in that dismal abode, his 
 nature apparently changed so utterly that he lost all heart and coinage, 
 nay, became so abject and cowed as to let some one kick him — where- 
 upon, instead of resenting the insult, he sat down and cried piteolifely; 
 how, when he recovered his freedom, his old swaggering nature and bear- 
 ing came back, and he fought and bullied as of old ; how, playing bil- 
 liards one day, he insulted the whole company present, saying contempt- 
 uously, "There aren't above two gentlemen in the room except myself," 
 
and, when some .friend asked him "how he had dared insult a whole 
 roomful/' replied, with humorous shrewdness, "Oh! don't you see that 
 every man in the room thought himself one of the two excepted?" how, 
 after all this, he had to undergo fresh trials and disappointments of heart 
 and fortune, and, finally, died in a miserable enough condition. So "ends 
 this strange eventful historv." 
 
 All these and more particulars I would fain relate; but want of space 
 forbids me. Those who desire to read of the adventures of the Irish 
 duellists in detail, must have recourse to other works. In none will they 
 find more amusingly-related incidents of this kind than in the inimitable 
 "Personal Sketches" of the humorous Sir Jonah Barring-ton. This Irish 
 duelling, however, as I have already said, is now a thing of the past, a 
 custom utterly done away with. The extent, to which it was carried in 
 the days of our progenitors, is admitted by all to have been an intolerable 
 evil; but a few leading men — some of whom, as Wellington and Thomas 
 Moore, were of widely-dissimilar ways of thinking on most subjects — 
 have apparently coincided in the opinion that, on the other hand, the 
 total abolition of duelling was not without its own peculiar disadvan- 
 tages ; that, by it, the tpne of society was lowered ; that, at the least, a 
 salutary check on discourtesy was removed. 
 
 Another feature of the old times, now happily passed away, was the 
 habit of wild, exaggerated conviviality which prevailed all over Ireland. 
 The days that closed the last century were the days of "Hell-Fire clubs" 
 and outrageous orgies. Some of these inordinate drinking-bouts also are 
 described, with infinite humor and relish, in the mirth-provoking pages 
 of Barrington. But it must not be hastily concluded that the baccha- 
 nalianism of those times was all gross and unintellectual. At the festal 
 gatherings of the "Monks of the Screw," for example, the choicest deli- 
 cacies of the mind — wit, humor, fancy, racy anecdote and eloquence — 
 sparkled around that table, surrounded by one of tho most talented 
 assemblages of men ever seen on earth. The fact that much of the 
 good-fellowship of the times resembled the " Noctes Ambrosianaj" of 
 "Blackwood" comes out exquisitely in that charming apostrophe in 
 Curran's speech for Judge Johnson, where he turns for a moment aside 
 from his main argument and, with gracefulest eloquence and pathos, 
 appeals to the old friendship that had subsisted between the judge, Lord 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 425 
 
 Avonmore and himself, which, however, had recently been slightly 
 interrupted. I cannot refrain from quoting the entire delicious 
 passage : 
 
 "But I cherish, too, the consolatory hope that I shall he able to tell 
 them that I had an old and learned friend, whom I would put above all 
 the sweepings of their hail, * who was of a different opinion; who had 
 derived his ideas of civil liberty from the purest fountains of Athens 
 and of Home; who had fed the youthful vigor of his studious mind with 
 the theoretic knowledge of their wisest philosophers and statesmen; 
 and who had refined that theory into the quick and exquisite sensibil- 
 ity of moral instinct by contemplating the practice of their most illus- 
 trious examples — by dwelling on the sweet-souled piety of Cimon, on 
 the anticipated Christianity of Socrates, on the gallant and pathetic 
 patriotism of Epaminondas, on that pure austerity of Fabricius, whom 
 to move from his integrity would have been more difficult than to have 
 pushed the sun from his course. 
 
 "I would add, that if he had seemed to hesitate, it was but for a 
 moment; that his hesitation was like the passing cloud that floats across 
 the morning sun and hides it from the view, and does so for a moment 
 hide it, by involving the spectator without even approaching the face 
 of the luminary. And this soothing hope I draw from the dearest and 
 tenderest recollections of my life ; from the remembrance of those Attic 
 nights and those refections of the gods which Ave have partaken with 
 those admired and respected and beloved companions who have gone 
 before trs, over whose ashes the most precious tears of Ireland have been 
 shed." 
 
 [Here Lord Avonmore could not refrain from bursting into tears.) 
 
 '•Yes, my good lord, I see you do not forget them; 1 sec their sacred 
 forms passing in sad review before your memory ; I see your pained and 
 softened fancy recalling those happy meetings, where the innocent enjoy- 
 ment of social mirth became expanded into the nobler warmth of social 
 virtue, and the horizon of the board became enlarged into the horizon 
 of man ; where the swelling heart conceived and communicated the pure 
 and generous purpose, where my slenderer and younger taper imbibed 
 its borrowed light from the more matured and redundant fountain of 
 
 * Westminster Hall. 
 
yours. Yes, my lord, we can remember those nights, without any otbei 
 regret than that they can never more return; for 
 
 " ' We spent them not in toys, or lust, or wine, 
 But search of deep philosophy, 
 Wit, eloquence, and poesy — 
 Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine.'" 
 
 We learn from a note in the Life of Ciirran, by his son, that "Lord 
 Avonmore, in whose breast political resentment was easily subdued, by 
 the same noble tenderness of feeling which distinguished the late Mr. 
 Fox, upon a more celebrated occasion, could not withstand this appeal 
 to his heart. At this period there was a suspension of intercourse 
 between him and Mr. Curran; but the moment the court rose, his lord- 
 ship sent for his friend, and threw himself into his arms, declaring that 
 unworthy artifices had been used to separate them, and that they should 
 never succeed in future." 
 
 Doubtless, at the jovial carousals of the Irish wits of those days the 
 story-telling faculty, for which the Irish have always been remaikablc, 
 shone conspicuously. We see how admirably O'Connell himself was 
 endowed with this gift. The "Personal Sketches" of Sir Jonah Bar- 
 rington give us ample assurance that that humorous knight must have 
 been a delightful after-dinner companion. In the novels of Lever and 
 Maxwell we have an image more or less vivid of the old jolly, convivial 
 circles, in which ludicrous and graphic sketches Hew around in rapid 
 succession. Sir William Temple, who lived in Ireland for some time 
 during the days of the Commonwealth, in the seventeenth century, thus 
 refers in his essays to the fondness of the old race, at all times, for story- 
 telling: "The great men of their septs, among the many offices of their 
 establishment which continued always in the same family, had not only 
 a physician and a poet, but a tale-teller." 
 
 I shall take from the long and able "Life of O'Connell" published 
 by Mullany, of Parliament street, Dublin, and written, I believe, i y 
 Christopher Manns O'Keefe, the following picture of the sort of beings- 
 tl e Irish Catholic aristocracy were during the latter part of the eight- 
 e nth century and the earlier portion of the present. It will help us 
 the better to understand some of the difficulties O'Connell I: ad to ecu- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 42/ 
 
 tend against in the oaiiior years of Lis political career, of which I am 
 about to give a rapid review in the next chapter: 
 
 "The cause" (of their being a drag on the struggle of the Catholics foi 
 civil and religious freedom) "is to be found in the gross ignorance which 
 incapacitated them for political exertion. The son of a peer, trained in 
 the wooded solitudes of his remote estate to pursue game, was less en- 
 lightened, less intellectually developed, than the son of the citizen, 
 trained to pursue trade in the busy thoroughfares of a crowded town. 
 The young citizen was qualified for 'freedom's battle' by the intelli- 
 gence which was, in his collision with men, necessarily struck out, while 
 the young peer who vegetated in a dozing, dreaming, Lethean state of 
 half-consciousness in the country, was qualified for the fetters of the 
 government. When the two came together they could not harmonize. 
 Perhaps the Catholic peer, at the time when the Catholic cause was in 
 its infancy, was the veriest slave under the British crown. The Catholic 
 farmer could vote for a parliamentary candidate when the Catholic peer 
 was destitute of the elective franchise. ... He (the peer) was eligible 
 neither as candidate nor constituent, elector nor elected. This was the 
 state of the Catholic peer when the iirst links were struck off Catholic 
 chains — when, in 177-7, 'the privilege was granted to Catholics of taking 
 long leases of land. At that time two men entirely destitute of aristo- 
 cratic dignity, but gifted with great courage and high intelligence, Dr. 
 O'Connor of Ballinagare — 'the man who never told a lie' — and Dr. 
 Currie, the author of the 'History of the Civil Wars in Ireland,' were 
 the champions and agitators of the Catholic cause. At that time, too, 
 the influence of Lord Trimleston and some of his brethren in the peerage 
 was industriously exerted to thwart and paralyze the beneficent exertions 
 of Drs. Currie and O'Connor. The Catholic aristocracy then, as ever, 
 were found obstinately opposed to those bold proceedings which contrib- 
 uted to lighten or break the chains of the Catholics. This was not 
 attributable exclusively to the prejudice of class; it was attributable to 
 isolation from human converse, the solitude in which the peer was en- 
 tombed; it originated in the penal laws, which shut him up "n his castle 
 and shut him out from the world. Generally educated abroad, the soli- 
 tary peer, of course, spoke French, or Spanish, or German, without hav- 
 ing an opportunity of thoroughly mastering English ; and from these 
 
two languages, blended with some Irish, he formed a conglomerate 
 tongue — a piebald medley of three dialects. It is no exaggeration to 
 say that a Catholic peer and an officer of the Irish Brigade spoke a jargon 
 unintelligible to the rest of mankind — more bilinfjuis Canvsini" (after 
 the manner of the double-tongued native of Ckuiusuim) ; "and this extraor- 
 dinary language was one of the extraordinary productions of the penal 
 code. The Catholic peer was too proud to mingle with the peasantry, 
 and the Protestant aristocracy were too prejudiced to associate with him. 
 His brother-peer of the Established Church passed him silently on the 
 road with a high protective bow. The Catholic lord and the parish 
 priest were sometimes asked to dinner, especially before Lady Day, that 
 the tenants might be in good humor when the rent was collecting; or 
 when the brother of the Catholic peer happened to be on a visit from 
 the Continent, and the young Protestant ladies were solicitous to see the 
 tall cap or the hussar uniform, the long sword or the brilliant cross of 
 St. Louis or Maria Theresa, sparkling on the breast of the Catholic count 
 in the military service of some despotic power." 
 
 In the amusing "Reminiscences of Michael Kelly," the opera-singer 
 and composer, which, if I remember rightly, were arranged by Theodore 
 Hook, there is a very graphic sketch of an officer of the Irish Brigade, 
 that illustrates the "diversified mosaic" of languages referred to in the 
 preceding extract: "Walking," says Kelly, "on the Parade the second 
 morning of my arrival in Cork, Mr. Townsend of the Correspondent 
 newspaper pointed out a Very line-looking elderly gentleman standing 
 at the club-house door, and told me that he was one of the most eccen- 
 tric men in the world. His name was O'Reilly; he had served many 
 years in the Irish Brigade in Germany and Prussia, where he had 
 been distinguished as an excellent officer. Mr. Townsend added: 'We 
 reckon him here a great epicure, and he piques himself on being a great 
 judge of the culinary art as well as of wines. His good nature and 
 pleasantry have introduced him to the best society, iiarticularly among 
 the Roman Catholics, where he is always a welcome guest. He speaks 
 French, German and Italian, and constantly, while speaking Efiglisli 
 with a determined Irish brogue, mixes all those languages in every sen- 
 tence. It is immaterial to him whether the person he is talking to 
 understands him or not — on lie goes, stop him who can.' 
 
"I was presented to him." continues Kelly, "and no sooner had the 
 noble captain shaken me by the hand than he exclaimed: ' Bon jour, 
 nnj cher Mirk! Je suis bicn aise de vous voir (Good-day, my dear Mick! 
 I am very glad to see you), as we say in France. An bhfhuil tu go month,* 
 J' do is f ache (I was vexed) that I missed meeting you when I was last in 
 Dublin ; but I was obliged to go to the county Galway to see a brother- 
 ofticer who formerly served with me in Germany — as herlieh cin Kerl, as 
 we say in Germany, as ever smelt gunpowder. Dair mo laimh — II est 
 brave cemme son epee (as fearless as his sword), Now tell me how go on 
 your brother Joe and your brother Mark ; your brother Pat, poor fellow ! 
 lost his life, I know, in the East Indies — but e'est la fortune de la guerre 
 (it is the fortune of tear), and he died avee Vhonneur (with honor). Your 
 sister Mary, too— how is she? Dair a marreann; by my word, she is as 
 good a hearted, kind creature as ever lived ; but, cntre nous, soit dit 
 (between us let it be said), she is rather plain, ma 11011 e bella, quel cti e 
 bella, e bella quel che piace, as we say in Italian — ' 
 
 " ' Now, captain,' said I, ' after the flattering encomiums you have 
 bestowed on my sister's beauty, may I ask how you became so well 
 acquainted with my family concerns?' 
 
 " ' Parbleu !\ my dear Mick,' said the captain; ' well I may be, for sure 
 your mother and my mother were sisters.' 
 
 "On comparing notes, I found that such was the fact. When I was 
 a boy, and before I left Dublin for Italy, 1 remember my mother often 
 mentioning a nephew of hers of the name of O'Keilly, who had been 
 sent to Germany when quite a lad, many years before, to a relative of 
 his father, who was in the Irish Brigade at Prague. Young O'Peilly 
 entered the regiment as a cadet ; he afterward went into the Prussian 
 service, but my mother heard no more of him. The captain told me, 
 furthermore, that he had been cheated, some years before, out of a small 
 property which his father left him in the county Meath, by a man whom 
 he thought his best friend. 'However,' said the captain, 'I had my 
 .-satisfaction, by calling him out and putting a bullet through his hat; 
 'but, nevertheless, all the little property that was left me is gone. But. 
 ijrace cm del (thanks to Heaven)\ I have never sullied my reputation 
 
 * I hope the reader can translate Captain O'Reilly's Irish and German. I regret to say, I can't, 
 "f An exclamation equivalent to " Zounds 1" in English. 
 
430 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELl,. 
 
 nor injured mortal; and for that "the gods will take care of Cato.'' In 
 all my misfortunes, cousin, I have never parted with the family sword, 
 which was never drawn in a dirty cause; and there it hangs now in a 
 little cabin which I have got in the county Meath. Should ever Freddy 
 Jones discard me, I will end my days in risposc e pace [in repose and 
 peace) with the whole universal world.' " 
 
 Freddy Jones, nicknamed "Buck Jones," was the proprietor of the 
 Theatre Royal in Crow street, Dublin. Ifc took such a fancy to Captain 
 O'Reilly that he made him his conlidant and deputy-manager lor life. 
 The captain's finding consolation for all his misfortunes in the fact that 
 he has "never parted with the family sword," reminds one of what Sir 
 Lucius 0'Trio;Q;er savs to Bob Acres, in Sheridan's comedv of "The 
 Rivals:" "For though the mansion-house and dirty acres have slipped 
 through my fingers, I thank Heaven our honor and the family pictures 
 are as fresh as ever." 
 
 It would appear that it was this Captain O'Reilly who uttered the 
 ban mot that makes the point of the following oft-repeated anecdote. 
 The captain happened to bo in the streets of Clonmel once when the 
 gallant Tipperary militia were marching out of the town in all the 
 "pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war," with their colonel 
 (Bagwell, if I remember rightly, was his name) — whose father, originally 
 a miller, had amassed a large fortune — at their head, in all the glory of 
 gold lace and feathers and novel authority and self-importance. The 
 veteran of the "far foreign iields" sharply scanned the raw, undecded 
 militia and their chief, and then, with a grim, ironical smile, exclaimed, 
 '•By the god of war! here comes Marshal Sacks (Saxc), and the flow of 
 Tipperary at his back." 
 
 The glory acquired by the Irish military adventurers of the eighteenth 
 century in the various continental services had a large share in rousing 
 and elevating afresh the spirit of the old Irish race, so long and terribly 
 depressed by the debasing influences of the penal code. Those gallant 
 and renowned exiles preserved the evidences of their Irish origin wilh 
 pride, and even ostentatiously displayed them. Their generous remem- 
 brance of the land of their fathers reacted favorably on the Irish at 
 home. We have seen how the fame of his uncle, General Count O'Con- 
 nell, roused the latent spark of ambition in the soul of our hero. Many 
 
TIIS LIFE OF DAXIEI, O'COXXF.LL. 
 
 431 
 
 old families, feeling themselves re-ennobled by the glorious deeds of their 
 kinsmen abroad, prefixed once more to their names the O's and Macs 
 which the}* had long dropped, and began again to claim descent from 
 the ancient warriors and chiefs of Innisfail. 
 
 There cannot be the slightest doubt that our military adventurers 
 were held in the highest estimation in all the courts and camps of Chris- 
 tendom. Even what I have already related of O'ConneH's uncle, and 
 the passages quoted from Lord Macaulay in the chapter on the penal 
 laws, arc conclusive on this point. But a hundred facts demonstrate 
 the truth of my assertion. It is even stated that Henry O'Donnell of 
 Murresk in Mayo received in marriage, in 1754, a near relative of the 
 empress Maria Theresa, descended from an emperor of Greece, John 
 Cantacuzenc, who wore the imperial purple from 1347 to 1355. 
 
 " Great as were unquestionably "—I am again quoting from O'Keofe's 
 biography — "the merits of such men as soldiers abroad, they invariably 
 proved blundering politicians at home. Their politics were as eccentric 
 as their dialect. The manner in which Wolfe Tone speaks of the officers 
 of the Irish Brigade — who still lingered in France whilst he was nego- 
 tiating with the French government to relieve his country from oppres- 
 sion — shows the irreconcilable difference which grew up between the 
 mind of the exile who battled for despotism abroad and the patriot who 
 struggled for liberty at home. Chevalier McCarthy was a specimen of 
 this class. The Catholic cause was not advanced by these men, nor by 
 their kinsmen or brothers, the Catholic peers. The talent and courage, 
 the manliness and wisdom of O'Connor and dime produced the long 
 leases, which was the first step on the road to liberty. Dr. O'Connor 
 prevailed on Brooke, the Protestant author of 'Gustavus Vasa,' to write 
 the celebrated letters which contributed to procure that relaxation. 
 Brooke supplied the letters; Lord, the printer, published them. The 
 Catholic aristocracy would not muster money enough to compensate 
 Lord. Where was the patriotism of the Catholic aristocracy then? 
 Charles O'Connor succored Brooke; the merchants of Dublin contrib- 
 uted money to pay him ; the Catholic aristocracy actually refused to 
 subscribe. The services of this printer, named Lord, and of John 
 Keogh, a Dublin mercer, outweighed the public services of all the an- 
 cestry of the Catholic nobility from the time of StrongboAv to the days 
 
 2S 
 
432 THK LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 of Daniel O'Connell — that Catholic nobility, we mean, who, because 
 they could not prevail on the people to accept the vetoistical relief bill 
 of 1813, abandoned the Catholic Board." 
 
 The above remarks are, I think, in the main just. There may, 
 indeed, be here and there a slight shade of exaggeration. Of the veto 
 I shall have to speak before long. While the character of the Catholic 
 aristocracy was thus deficient in the elements of true nobility, that of 
 the Protestant aristocracy, with certain shining exceptions, was in its 
 way equally ignoble. It was licentious and corrupt. We have seen 
 ample proof of this already in the course of the present narrative. In 
 truth, the whole body of the nobles and gentry, both Catholic and Prot- 
 estant, was selfish, unpatriotic and mean, without a true regard for law 
 or justice. While the reckless prodigality of some, who kept open house, 
 and allowed idle, good-for-nothing younger brothers and troops of poor 
 cousins to the remotest degree to eat, drink and hunt all the year 
 round — in short, to live entirely at their expense ; while all this, for a 
 time, won them the praise of being possessors of both " liberal hand and 
 open heart," in the long run it often compelled them to beggar their 
 families, defraud their creditors, "rack-rent" their tenants, hopelessly 
 encumber their estates and betray and sell the most vital interests of 
 their country. In such an unscrupulous, "devil-may-carish," profuse, 
 embarrassed, drinking, fighting, lawless state of society, it is not won- 
 derful that even a class of smuggling gentry arose. If the spendthrifts, 
 who were losing their fortunes, sometimes contrived to stock their cellars 
 with wines duty free, so some thrifty men, who were bent on adding to 
 their lands and accumulating money, occasionally knew how to make 
 their profit by contraband traffic. Some of the shrewd, rising Catholics, 
 who had turned all their energies to the acquisition of property, suc- 
 ceeded in doing so. I may again briefly refer to this subject of gentle- 
 manly smuggling, when I come to notice the death of O'Connell's 
 venerable uncle, Maurice, alias "Old Hunting-cap." 
 
 I shall now give two or three anecdotes to illustrate the corruptness 
 and absence of all principle, combined with a sort of jovial cynicism, 
 that characterized so many members of the aristocracy in the days of 
 which I am speaking. Doubtless one might find similar traits in mem- 
 bers of the Irish aristocracy even to-day; but they were much more 
 
i r 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 433 
 
 frequently to be found in the years preceding and immediately following 
 the close of the last century. 
 
 Lord M y ( Muskerry t) was a singular specimen of the Irish 
 
 nobility. His title had been acquired by the judicious sale of some 
 parliamentary votes. He was always fond of repeating, that a gentle- 
 man could never live upon his rents — "A man who depended upon his 
 rents had money upon only two days in the year, the 25th of March and 
 
 the 29th of September." Lord M y, then, made it the supreme 
 
 object and effort of his life to "put money in his purse" every day of 
 the year. 
 
 When Lord Kerry's house in Stephen's Green, Dublin, was adver- 
 tised for sale, it so happened that a lady, of the name of Keating, was 
 anxious to purchase a, pew in St. Anne's church belonging to it. Owing 
 to some misconception or other, Mrs. Keating got the notion fixed in her 
 
 head that this pew belonged to Lord M y. In consequence of this 
 
 belief, she thought proper to call on Lord M y and to offer to become 
 
 the purchaser of the pew. 
 
 "My dear madam," quoth his lordship, looking somewhat surprised, 
 " I have not got any pew, as far as I am aware, in St. Anne's church." 
 
 "Oh, my lord, I know very well that you have ; and, if you have got 
 no objection, I am most anxious to purchase it." 
 
 This model nobleman made no further difficulty. A large sum was 
 forthwith agreed on as the price of the pew, and, that she might render 
 her bargain as binding as possible, Mrs. Keating got the agreement of 
 sale drawn out in the most stringent form by an attorney. She paid 
 
 Lord M y the money down, and, on the ensuing Sunday, she repaired 
 
 to St. Anne's and marched statelily to the pew, magnificently arrayed in 
 rustling silks and brocades. To her utter amazement and indignation, 
 the beadle refused to let her into the pew. 
 
 "My good man," quoth the lady in an excited manner, "this pew is 
 mine." "Yours, madam?" > 
 
 "Yes; I have bought it from Lord M y." 
 
 "Madam," replied the beadle, "this is the Kerry pew; I do assure 
 you, Lord M y never had a pew in this church." 
 
 Here was a precious discovery! Mrs. Keating saw plainly, at once, 
 that she had been shamefully and abominably cheated. Next day she 
 
 I ^ 
 
hastened to Lord M 's house to try whether she could get him to 
 
 refund her money. 
 
 "My lord," she began, "I have come to you to say that the pew m 
 St. Anne's—" 
 
 "My dear madam," said this admirable and considerate nobleman, 
 interrupting her, "I'll sell you twenty more pews if you've a fancy for 
 them!" 
 
 "Oh! my lord, you are facetious. I have come to acquaint you it 
 was all a mistake; you never had a pew in that church." 
 
 "Hah! so I think I told you at first," said his lordship, with a win- 
 ning smile. 
 
 "And I trust, my lord," resumed Mrs. Keating, "you will refund me 
 the money I paid you for it." 
 
 " The money!" said the peer, with a courtly smile. " Really, my dear 
 madam, I am very sorry to be obliged to say that's quite impossible; 
 the money is gone long ago." 
 
 "But, my lord," said the lady, rather innocently, "your lordship's 
 character!" 
 
 "Oh! that's gone too, long ago," cries Lord M y, laughing 
 
 heartily, with a sort of good-natured carelessness. Poor Mrs. Keating 
 had no remedy; she was fain content herself with her loss and lesson 
 as best she might. 
 
 I must tell one more anecdote of this exemplary nobleman's financial 
 operations. He never let slip an opportunity that promised him the 
 smallest chance of feathering his nest, per fas aid nefus [rightfully or 
 wrongfully). He was colonel of a militia regiment, and, in the teeth of all 
 right and precedent, made a practice of selling the commissions and put- 
 ting the money in his own pocket. The viceroy was determined to bring 
 him to account for this monstrous abuse of his position, and, to do so with 
 greater effect, invited his lordship to meet all the other colonels of militia 
 regiments then quartered in Dublin. When the cloth was removed and 
 they were all snustfy seated over their wine, the lord-lieutenant opened lire 
 by saying that a statement, involving a serious charge against (he colonel 
 of one of the militia regiments, had recently been made to him. This 
 statement had given him the utmost pain — indeed, it seemed wellnigh 
 incredible; but still it had been confidently asserted that the colonel in 
 
THE L!FK OF DAXIKL O'COXXELL. A?,b 
 
 question had actually sold the commissions of las regiment. The whole 
 company seemed stunned by this extraordinary announcement. All 
 those conscious of having hands free from any such stains at once 
 indignantly asserted their innocence. 
 
 " I have never done anything of this sort," cries one. 
 
 "I certainly never sold commissions," cries another. 
 
 "Nor I;" "Nor I;" "Nor 1;" resounded from all sides. 
 
 In short, every guest, save one, vehemently disclaimed the imputa- 
 tion of being guilty of so corrupt a traffic. The exception "was Lord 
 
 M v. llesolving to brazen the matter out, when all were once more 
 
 silent, he said, with the most imperturbable coolness and the most tho- 
 rough air of self-approval, " / always sell the commissions in my regi- 
 ment," Naturally, all seemed thunderstruck at the cynical frankness 
 of the old sinner's confession before the congregation of his brother- 
 colonels and the viceroy. 
 
 " How can you defend such a practice?" demanded the lord-lieutenant. 
 
 " Oh ! quite easily, my lord. Has not your excellency constantly de- 
 sired us to assimilate our regiments as much as possible to the troops 
 of the line?" 
 
 " Why yes, undoubtedly I said so." 
 
 "Well," responded Lord M y, his face sheathed in sevenfold 
 
 brassiness, "well, they sell the commissions in the line, and I thought 
 that the best point at which to begin the assimilation !" 
 
 After the story of the union it is superfluous to say that the method 
 by which some of these nobles acquired their titles was in the highest 
 degree disreputable. O'Connell, when some of these living libels on 
 true nobility would insolently Haunt abroad their pompous and lying 
 pretensions and stand in the people's path, was always sure to wreak 
 vengeance on them, by raking up the memories of their mean and cor- 
 rupt origins and placing them in grotesque and ludicrous contrast with 
 their present parade of grandeur. One of these pretenders had origin- 
 ally been a wealthy merchant. As he amassed more and more money 
 each day, he began to aspire after a place in the ranks of the aristoc- 
 racy. At length he contrived to strike a bargain with the Iiish minister 
 that he should receive a title for the "consideration" of twenty thousand 
 pounds. The patent was made out in due form, and the grub forthwith 
 
became a butterfly. The government, on their part, felt the most blissful 
 confidence that the new nobleman would scrupulously fulfil his share of 
 the bargain. In their unsuspecting trustfulness they had never dreamed 
 of asking payment beforehand. When, however, six months had flown, 
 and hjs lordship had apparently forgotten all about the price of his 
 brand-new coronet, the Castle folks began to feel uneasy, and Mr. Secre- 
 tary thought he might as Avell drop him a few confidential lines, just to 
 remind him of their little bargain. 
 
 If his lordship was somewhat slow in his payment, he made up for 
 it by the promptness of his reply to the secretary's letter. His lordship 
 was utterly astonished ; he didn't know what the secretary meant ; he 
 to be a party to anything so corrupt as the sale or purchase of a peerage! 
 He could not help feeling indignant with the secretary for entertaining 
 such an injurious idea for one moment. In short, his indignation was 
 such that he threatened, should the audacious and unconstitutional 
 claim be repeated, to rise in his place in the House of Peers and move 
 for the impeachment of the minister. "The knowing ones" were jock- 
 eyed. It was simply a neat "trick in trade" of the ex-merchant. 
 Nothing was left for "the Castle" but "to grin and bear it." 
 
 The Bruens of Carlow were high and mighty county grandees in 
 O'Connell's days. For all I know to the contrary, they are so at this 
 very minute. However, to borrow the words of that prince of witty 
 satirists, Alexander Pope — 
 
 " Mark by what wretched steps their glory grows, 
 From dirt and seaweed, as proud Venice rose," 
 
 or, descending from poetic diction to plain prose, let us listen to O'Con- 
 nell's matter-of-fact anecdote of the rise of old Bruen, the father of his 
 contemporary and bitter political opponent, that great county magnate, 
 Colonel Bruen. 
 
 "Old Bruen," quoth O'Connell, at the dinner-table of the parish- 
 priest of St. Mullins, in the county Carlow — " Old Bruen started in life 
 with extremely limited finances, and derived his wealth chiefly from 
 successful and lucrative commissariat contracts in America. He also 
 got a contract for supplying coffins for the soldiers, who died very fast 
 from too free a use of new rum. The coffin contract he turned to excel- 
 lent account, by the novel device of making one coftin serve the defunct 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 437 
 
 of a whole company. He had a sliding bottom to the coffin, which was 
 withdrawn when over the grave, into which the deceased occupant then 
 dropped, and was instantly earthed up, leaving the coffin quite available 
 for future interments. As the worthy contractor checked his own ac- 
 counts, he is said to have availed himself of all his contracts to an 
 extent which, in the present day, would be impossible, and which is 
 almost incredible." 
 
 O'Connell used also to tell the following anecdote of the sort of mili- 
 tary patronage wielded formerly by some of the great lords of Ireland. 
 There was a Wexford elector, who had been promised patronage by a 
 member of the Loftus family (the head of the Loftuses is the marquis 
 of Ely) in return for his vote. Now, this Wexford elector had a son, 
 whom he was most ambitious to see a sergeant of artillery. Lord Loftus, 
 on demanding this post for the young lad, was told that it was quite 
 impossible to comply with his request, inasmuch as a previous service 
 of six years was necessary to qualify a candidate for the post of ser- 
 geant in the artillery. "Does it require six years' service to qualify him 
 for a lieutenancy?" demanded Lord Loftus. 
 
 " Certainly not," was the answer. 
 
 •'Well, can't you make him a lieutenant, then?" rejoined my lord. 
 
 "Whereupon," O'Connell used to add, laughing heartily as he would 
 finish the story, "the fellow was made a lieutenant, for no better reason 
 than just because he wasn't fit to be a sergeant!" 
 
 However, it would not be fair or honest to describe all the gentry of 
 those days as ignoble and corrupt. I have already quoted Mi-. Mitchel's 
 remark about the union, in which he justly points out that, if there were 
 unheard-of venality and baseness in the ranks of those lords and gen- 
 tlemen who sat in the chairs of the House of Lords and on the benches 
 of the House of Commons, there were likewise in the same ranks the 
 loftiest examples of spotless- and incorruptible integrity and honor. 
 One of these true gentlemen — an aristocrat not merely from his social 
 position, but by God Almighty's patent of nobility — was Mr. Shap- 
 land Carew, the member for the county Wexford. Lord Castlereagh 
 dared to call on this high-souled gentleman to offer him a peerage and 
 other more solid advantages as the price for his vote in favor of the 
 union. Of course Mr. Carew spurned the bribe and the traitor to his 
 
4oo THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXF.LL. 
 
 country, avIio presumed to offer it. And, in doing so, he indignantly 
 exclaimed — 
 
 " I will expose your insolent oner in the House of Commons to-night! 
 I will get up in my place and charge you with the barefaced attempt to 
 corrupt a legislator." 
 
 "Do so, if you will," Castlereagh coolly replied; "hut if you do, J 
 will immediately get up and contradict you in the presence of the House 
 — I will declare, upon my honor, that you have uttered a falsehood; and 
 I shall follow up that declaration by demanding satisfaction as soon as 
 Ave are beyond the reach of the sergeant-at-arms!" 
 
 Carew ordered the noble secretary to get out of his house as quickly 
 as possible, if he wished to escape being kicked down the door-steps by 
 Ids footman. Castlereagh retired at once. However, Mr. Carew did not 
 think it advisable to denounce him that night in the House of Commons. 
 
 The following profound and enlightened remarks by a famous French 
 writer, Gustavo de Beaumont, on O'Connell and the aristocracy, and the 
 hostile relations in which they stood towards each other during 1 he greater 
 portion of O'Connell's public career, find their proper place here, for they 
 assist us to comprehend soma of the difficulties with which O'Connell 
 had all through to struggle, but especially, perhaps, in the earlier part 
 of his political life; and it is with the opening stages of his career as 
 an agitator that we shall have to deal in the next chapter. 
 
 Gustavo dc Beaumont says : " Whether O'Connell be considered as 
 a revolutionist, a politician, an enthusiast, or the great leader of a parly, 
 in every case we arc obliged to recognize his extraordinary power; and 
 what is especially remarkable in this power is, that it is essentially 
 democratic. O'Connell was naturally, and by the mere fact of his polit- 
 ical position in Ireland, the enemy of the aristocracy. This was a neces- 
 sity. He could not be the man of the Irish and the Catholic people 
 without being the adversary of the English oligarchy. Perhaps in no 
 country is the representation of popular interests and passions so neces- 
 sarily the fierce enemy of the upper classes as in Ireland, because there 
 is not, almost, a country in the world where the separation between the 
 aristocracy and the people is so open and complete as in Ireland. We 
 must not then be astonished that O'Connell waged an eternal war against 
 the aristocracy of Ireland. Nothing could restrain him in those attacks, 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCOXNELL. 400 
 
 which his passions suggested and his interests did not forbid. Nor must 
 we be astonished if O'Connell, the idol of the people, provoked the bitter 
 hostility of the upper ranks of society. There was not on earth another 
 man so much loved and so much hated. The resentment of the Irish 
 aristocracy was vcrv natural." 
 
 O'Connell used constantly to say of himself, "that he was the best- 
 abused man in the world." Fortunately he was able to bear up against 
 any amount of hostility, and return bitter word for latter word. TVith 
 respect to his antagonism to the Irish aristocracy, it was forced on him, 
 just as it is forced on his countrymen, by the nature of things. Whether 
 they like it or not, the adherents of the popular or national party in Ire- 
 land are bound to be hostile to the nobles and landed gentry. The Irish 
 people, indeed, naturally would rather lean to aristocracy. If they had 
 an aristocracy of their own race, thoroughly sympathizing with their 
 feelings and ideas and aspirations, in all probability they would look up 
 to and cling to it devotedly. O'Connell himself was probably, both by 
 natural and acquired taste, an aristocrat. But, then, neither he nor his 
 people had any choice, for the existing aristocracy of Ireland is, in 
 reality, not Irish, but alien. It is for the most part alien in blood, and, 
 still worse, it is almost entirely alien in education, in thought and in 
 feeling. Even the few old Irish families are now 7 Anglicized by con- 
 tinual intermarriages with the English and by their thorough English 
 training. Hence, then, the bitter hatred between O'Connell and his 
 people on the one side and these anti-Irish Irishmen of the upper classes 
 on the other. 
 
 As this chapter has been, in a great degree, one of light, humorous 
 sketches and anecdotes, and as we are about to commence the more 
 serious, if not drier, details of our hero's political career in the next, I 
 may as well terminate this one by another specimen of O'Connell's 
 humorous vein. Indeed, I shall on this occasion exhibit him in his 
 broadest and most farcical mood ; I shall show- him giving way to an 
 utter abandonment to fun and frolic. The incident I am about to give 
 has often been told before, and some of my readers may deem it too 
 outrageous a piece of burlesque — some even may deem it too coarse a 
 passage to be introduced into the biography of a great politician. At 
 all such fastidious readers and their criticisms, I fear I shall be discour- 
 
440 THE LIFE OF DAXTEL O'COjS'XELI* 
 
 teous enough to laugh heartily. I cannot sacrifice a scene that I deem 
 characteristic (I have little doubt of its authenticity) to soothe their 
 delicacy. Let them leave untasted whatever seems likely to offend their 
 literary palates. I entirely agree with Lord Macaulay in deriding all 
 such conventional notions of the dignity of biography, or even of his- 
 tory, as would compel a writer to sacrifice to an effeminate or " stuck- 
 up" sort of fastidiousness of taste incidents or conversations strikingly 
 illustrative of character, because they may have certain elements of 
 coarseness or even vulgarity. Without further preface, then, I shall 
 proceed to give the reader O'Connell's famous encounter with Biddy 
 Moriarty. 
 
 This most whimsical and droll adventure took place in the earlier part 
 of our hero's life. As I have, I trust, sufficiently demonstrated ere this, 
 his great abilities were rapidly recognized after he was called to the bar. 
 His friends and acquaintances in particular had great faith in his 
 powers, above all in his powers of vituperation. Even in those early 
 days of his career his familiars believed him to be '-a devil of a dust," 
 
 But at this period there dwelt in Dublin a dame who was fairly 
 entitled to enter the lists with him as a scold. Her name was Biddy 
 Moriarty, and she kept, a huckster's stall on the quays, nearly op- 
 posite the Four Courts. This interesting specimen of " the fairer and 
 better sex," to borrow an oft-repeated expression of our hero's, belonged 
 to the highest order of viragos. "When she gave you a salutation with 
 her fist, you didn't at all like it, but you found a rasping with the rough 
 side of her tongue still less agreeable. In Dublin the fame of her abu- 
 sive volubility had attained the highest pitch. Her celebrity had even 
 extended to the provinces. It was generally believed that she had done 
 more to enrich the Dublin slang vocabulary than all preceding masters 
 and mistresses of the art of Billingsgate ; her expressions were everywhere 
 quoted ; her brazen impudence, in short, had become proverbial all over 
 the island. Notwithstanding all this, some of Dan's friends, in their 
 boundless confidence in his tongue-prowess, believed implicitly that, if 
 he "tackled" her, he would prove more than a match for the redoubt- 
 able Biddy at her own weapons. Dan himself, indeed, having already 
 had the advantage of hearing her give a slight "taste of her quality" 
 on one or two occasions, was modest enough to entertain some misgiv- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 441 
 
 ings on this score. One day, however, some individuals in a company, 
 where our hero was present, expressed more than doubts ; they even 
 ridiculed the notion of his being able to stand before Biddy for a mo- 
 ment. This at once put Dan on his mettle; for he hated to confess 
 inferiority in anything or the possibility of his being defeated; he de- 
 clared himself equally ready to meet the Amazon and to bet that he 
 would Moor her. Bets were at once made, and it was decided that the 
 strife of tongues should "come off" without delay. 
 
 The whole company sallied forth and hurried to the huckster's stall. 
 There was the notorious Biddy presiding over the sale of her small mer- 
 chandise. A few staring idlers, some of them innocent of soap and 
 water, and tattered of garb, lounged around. Biddy, as a renowned 
 "character" and one of the "sights" of the Irish metropolis, was of 
 course the object of their curiosity or interest. The audience, including 
 O'Connell's companions, was now quite numerous enough to excite the 
 heroine, once provoked to the conflict, to give a full display of her richest 
 flowers of rhetoric. O'Connell was now eager for the combat and con- 
 fident of triumph. He had already hit upon an ingenious plan for the 
 terrible Biddy's overthrow. Resolving to take the initiative, our hero 
 thus began his attack : 
 
 "What's the price of this walking-stick, Mrs. What's-your-name?" 
 
 " Moriarty, sir, is my name, and a good one it is ; and what have 
 you to say agen it? and one-and-sixpence's the price of the stick. 
 Troth, it's chape as dirt — so it is." 
 
 "Onc-and-sixpence! whew! Why, you are no better than an im- 
 postor, to ask eighteen pence for what cost you two pence." 
 
 "Two pence! your grandmother!" replied Biddy, at one waxing 
 irascible. "Do you mane to say that it's cheating the people I am? 
 Impostor, indeed!" 
 
 "Ay, impostor; and it's that I call you to your teeth," rejoined 
 O'Connell. 
 
 "Come, cut your stick, you cantankerous jackanapes!" quoth Biddy, 
 her face growing redder every moment. 
 
 "Keep a civil tongue in your head, you old diagonal!" returned 
 O'Connell, in the calmest possible tone. The effect of this calmness on the 
 excitable nerves of the fair lady was even more irritating than his abuse. 
 
442 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 "Stop your jaw, you pug-nosed badger!'' exclaimed Mrs. Moriarty. 
 "or by this and that, I'll make you go quicker nor you came." 
 
 "Don't be in a passion, my old radius!" said our hero, still preserv- 
 ing the most provoking coolness in his voice and demeanor; " anger -will 
 only wrinkle your beauty.*' 
 
 "By the hokey, if you say another word of impudence, I'll tan your 
 dirty hide, you bastely common scrub ! and sorry I'd be to soil my lists 
 upon your carcase." 
 
 "Whew! boys, what a passion old Biddy is in! I protest, as I'm a 
 gentleman — " 
 
 "Jintleman! jintleman! the likes of you a jintleman! "Wisha, by 
 gorry, that bangs Banagher! Why, you potato- faced pippin-sneezer! 
 where did a Madagascar monkey like you pick up enough of common 
 Christian dacency to hide your Kerry brogue?" 
 
 "Easy, now; easy now," said Dan, with the same look and tone of 
 easy, imperturbable good-humor ; "don't choke yourself with line lan- 
 guage, you old whisky-drinking parallelogram !" 
 
 "What's that you call me. you murderin' villain?" shouted Mrs. 
 Moriarty, by this time goaded into perfect fury. 
 
 "I call you," answered O'Connell, "a -parallelogram,; and a Dublin 
 judge and jury will say that it's no libel to call you so." 
 
 "Oh, tare-an-ouns ! oh, holy Biddy!" screamed Mrs. Moriarty, her 
 eyes flaming like those of a tigress robbed of her whelps; "that an 
 honest woman, like me, should be called a parrybellygrum to her lace ' 
 I'm none of your parrybellygrum s, you rascally gallows-bird ' you cow- 
 ardly, sneaking, plate-lickin' blaguard!" 
 
 " Oh ! not you, indeed !" retorted O'Connell. " Why, I suppose you'll 
 deny that you keep a hypotheneuse in your house." 
 
 "It's a lie for you, you bloody robber!" roared the raging virago ; 
 "I never had such a thing in my house, you swindling thief!" 
 
 "Why, sure your neighbors all know very well that you keep not 
 only a Itypoihencuse, but that you have two diameters locked up in your 
 garret, and that you go out to walk with them every Sunday, you heart- 
 less old heptagon /" 
 
 "Oil. hear that, ye saints in glory! Oh! there's bad language from 
 a fellow that wants to pass for a jintleman ! May the divil lly away 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O' COX X ELL. 443 
 
 with you, you micher from Minister, and make celeiy-saucc of your 
 rotten limbs, you mealy-mouthed tub of guts!" 
 
 "Ah," persisted her arch-tormentor, "you can't deny the charge, you 
 miserable submultiplc of a duplicate ratio!" 
 
 "Go," vociferated the half-frantic scold, "go rinse your mouth in the 
 Liffey, you nasty tickle-pitcher! After all the bad words you spake, it 
 ought to be filthier than your face, you dirty chicken of Beelzebub!" 
 
 "Rinse your own mouth, you wicked-minded old polygon! To the 
 deuce I pitch you, you blustering intersection of a stinking superficies!" 
 
 '• You saucy tinker's apprentice ! if you don't cease your jaw, I'll — " 
 But here Biddy, utterly confounded by Dan's vollcy'd abuse, fairly gasped 
 for breath. For the first time in her life, her foul-tongued volubility 
 completely failed her. Unable to heave up another word, she stood, 
 purple-visaged and foaming at the mouth, like a baffled fury. 
 
 At the risk of giving her an immediate lit of apoplexy, our hero now 
 relentlessly pursued his triumph. Without letting her have a moment's 
 breathing-time, he poured in on the devoted Biddy broadside after broad- 
 side of double-shotted scurrility : 
 
 " While I have a tongue I'll abuse you, you most inimitable periph- 
 ery! Look at her, boys! There she stands, a convicted perpendicular 
 in petticoats ! There's contamination in her circumference, and she trem- 
 bles with guilt down to the extremities of her corollaries. Ah ! you're 
 found out, you rectilineal antecedent and equiangular old hag! 'Tis with 
 you the devil will fly away, you porter-swiping similitude of the bisection 
 of a vertex!' 1 
 
 Astounded and overwhelmed with this cataract of vituperation, 
 which, in being utterly incomprehensible to her, only "bothers" her 
 the more, Biddy stands speechless, as though she were struck dumb by 
 palsy. Still, albeit worsted, she is game to the last. Suddenly snatch- 
 ing up a saucepan, she aims it at the head of our hero. But, ere it flies 
 from her hand, he very wisely contrives to beat a hasty retreat. 
 
 There can be little doubt that on this occasion, at all events, "dis- 
 cretion was the better part of valor." 
 
 "You've won the wager, O'Connell; here's your bet," said the gen- 
 tleman who had proposed the contrast. 
 
 O'Connell displayed the same vivacious humor, the same ingenuity, 
 
444 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 quickness and fertility of resources in this grotesque adventure that sc 
 often stood him in good stead in his more serious encounters through 
 life. A man of mere ordinary smartness would have endeavored to meet 
 Biddy with an exact imitation of her own customary style of Billings- 
 gate, and his tirades would, as a necessary consequence, have been over- 
 whelmed, in a few moments, by the furious ebullitions of the foul-mouthed 
 virago. But O'Connell knew better than to be guilty of so stupid a 
 blunder. He rightly calculated that the surest way to disconcert and 
 confound her was to pour forth an unceasing torrent of loud-sounding 
 S3squipedalian jargon, which to Dame Biddy's ears would necessarily be 
 as unintelligible as "the unknown tongues" of the celebrated Edward 
 Irving' s disciples. In her ignorance, she would be sure to fancy the 
 uncouth mathematical terminology some dark and unheard-of words of 
 opprobriousness. In short, the collapse of Biddy's Billingsgate under 
 the weight of Dan's jawbreakers somewhat resembled the fate of sol- 
 diery, who, having long fought with good fortune on ground of a certain 
 contour, with foes using arms and tactics like their own, are, at last, 
 suddenly assailed on ground of a different configuration by antagonists 
 employing novel arms and unusual manoeuvres. Lo! completely taken 
 by surprise, in the twinkling of an eye they lose all presence of mind, 
 and, wanting resources to grapple with the unfamiliar difficulties, aban- 
 don the field a panic-stricken rout ! 
 
 It was my intention to close this chapter with the scene of Biddy 
 Moriarty's overthrow. However, I may as well, before commencing an- 
 other, add one more anecdote illustrative of our hero's incomparable power 
 of putting down instantaneously a troublesome opponent by giving out, in 
 one short nervous sentence, a good round volley of abusive epithets. A 
 few words of his derisive drollery often outweighed another less popular 
 advocate's elaborate speech of an hour. At nisi prius this turn for 
 comical satire aided him immensely. He would often so cover with 
 mockery and ridicule both witnesses and the cause in behalf of which 
 they were called up to testify, that real substantial grounds of complaint 
 would be wholly lost sight of or appear simply absurd. The anecdote 
 which I am about to give will make an excellent pendant to that of 
 Biddy Moriarty. As the story of Biddy's discomfiture seems to me 
 authentic, so 1 think is this. But even if I had doubts of their, an then- 
 
TilF. LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXFLL. 44."> 
 
 ticity, I would still 1)3 inclined to give these anecdotes, for in any case 
 they have a biographical value, as impressing on our minds a vivid 
 picture of the Irish popular conception of Dan and his comical humors. 
 But enough of this — to our story : 
 
 O'Connell was once engaged in a case at the assizes of one of the towns 
 on the Minister circuit. The attorney, on the side opposed to O'Conncll's, 
 was the most combative of mortals. Nothing delighted him so much 
 as having a good fight; this taste he always took care to gratify by being 
 foremost in whatever scenes of political excitement occurred in his native 
 town. His external appearance was significant of his moral and intel- 
 lectual qualities. His face generally wore an audacious, threatening, 
 contemptuous expression. He looked like some dogged pugilist. His 
 hair was as contrarious as his disposition ; no amount of blushing could 
 smooth it. Two eccentric locks, one on each temple, stood erect like 
 horns, and were far from tending to mollify the fighting expression of 
 his face. This fiery, spunky, wrangling limb of the law, whenever he 
 addressed an audience, jerked out his short sentences, not. destitute of a 
 certain sort of ability, in a hissing tone of voice. 
 
 Being an Orangeman, this odd character was anything but friendly 
 to our hero. On the occasion in question he kept annoying O'Connell 
 by every means in his power — one moment by improper interruptions, 
 at another time by addressing the witnesses — in short, by all sorts of 
 unwarrantable interference. Vainly did the barristers, associated with 
 O'Connell in the cause, take him to task roughly; vainly did the judge 
 repeatedly order him to keep quiet; up he would jump every other 
 moment, interrupting the proceedings, hissing out the promptings of his 
 bile, sometimes even vociferating uproariously. Nobody seemed able to 
 keep this choleric Orange attorney at rest for five consecutive minutes. 
 Finally, even while O'Connell was in the very act of urging a most im- 
 portant question, he leaped up once more, quite unabashed, for the mere 
 purpose of repeating for the hundredth time his outrageous interruption. 
 But this overfilled the measure of our hero's wrath ; he suddenly lost 
 all patience. Turning around, with the rapidity of lightning and with 
 his fiercest scowl, on the disturber of the peace, he roared in tones of 
 thunder, " Sit down, you audacious, snarling, pugnacious ram-cat." 
 Quick as the few words, that hit off, with such happy humor, the cha- 
 
446 THE LIFE OF D.'VXIEL OX'OXXKl.T. 
 
 meter of the -'cantankerous" attorney, flew from bis lips, shouts of 
 laughter rang through the court. Roai' followed roar. Judge, barris- 
 ters and all were convulsed till the tears ran down their cheeks. In 
 short, the laughter was inextinguishable as the mirth of the Homeric 
 deities, that filled the halls of Olympus, when Vulcan got up to restore 
 good-humor and harmony to the ruffled celestials by his limping efforts 
 to hand round the nectar. 
 
 Meanwhile the ''pugnacious" limb of the law stood before O'Connell, 
 like one transfixed — pale, tongue-tied, gasping with unutterable fury. 
 All through the remainder of his life the nickname of "rain-cat" stuck 
 to him.* 
 
 * The books and authors to which I am indebted for the materials of the foregoing chapter are: 
 O'Neill Dannt's "Personal Recollections of O'Connell ;" Pagan's "Life of O'Connell;" " Life and 
 Times of O'Connell," etc., Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Parliament street ; "Curran's Speeches, edited, 
 with Memoir and Historical Notices," by Thomas Davis, Esq., M. R. I. A., Bsrrister-at-Law ; 
 Cash el Hoey's "Memoir of Plunket;" "The History of Ireland from its Union with Great 
 Britain, in January, 1801, to January, 1810," by Francis Plowden, Esq. ; Mitchel's "History of 
 Ireland;" O'Neill Daunt's " Ireland and her Agitators ;" " Ireland Sixty Years Since ;" Barring- 
 Ion's "Personal Sketches," "Reminiscences of Michael Kelly;" Writings of Lady Morgan; Do 
 Beaumont's "Irluude." 
 
 - ^ ..--^-^j — .~^. . . -- --•— -->^~ -^flwmwrr 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 State of the Catholic cause a» the commencement of O'Connell's political career— 
 Pitt's return to office — His tower weakened — His falseness to Ireland and the 
 Catholics — The Castle uses its influence with Lord Fingal to keep back the 
 Catholic petition — Coronation of Napoleon — The Pope's allocution — The Cath- 
 olics calumniated — Continued suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act — Duplicity of 
 the viceroy, Lord Hardwicke — Pitt's perfidy; he refuses to present the Cath- 
 olic petition — It is presented by Mr. Fox and Lord Grenville — First appearance 
 of Henry Grattan in the English House of Commons — His splendid speech for 
 Catholic emancipation — Triumph of bigotry; the petition rejected by both 
 Houses — Castlereagh defeated at the Downshire election — Decline of Pitt's 
 power; his death — "The ministry of all the talents" — Great hopes of the 
 Catholics— Fox's condemnation of the union — Bar address to Curran — Release of 
 Irish state-prisoners — Address of the Catholics to the new viceroy, the duke of 
 Bedford — His viceroyalty disappoints their enpectations — Jealousies and di- 
 visions in the Catholic councils; the case of Mr. Ryan — O'Connell's amusing 
 story of Peter Bodkin Hussey and the Catholic banker — Generous eloquence of 
 Daniel O'Connell in the Catholic Committee — Death of Charles James Fox — 
 Continuance of Orange license — The case of Mr. Wilson — Extortions of the 
 tithe-system — "The Threshers" — Imsn ecclesiastical students invited to France; 
 consequent increase of the Maynootii grant by the British government — "Cath- 
 olic officers' eii.l" — The king arbitrarily dismisses the ministry — The "No-Po- 
 rERY" administration comes into office — Irish members on the effects of the 
 union and the pledges of British ministers — The Catholic petition withheld on 
 
 THE MOTION OF JOHN KeOGH — O'CONNELL SUPPORTS HIM IN A WARM AND EVEN FILIAL 
 
 speech — Departure, of TnE duke of Bedford from Ireland — Folly of the Dublin 
 populace. 
 
 Tc§?| EFOKE commencing the political -life of O'Connell, it is neces- 
 teHl SUI T to take a hurried glance at the state of the Catholic cause 
 jp^ when O'Connell first began to be one of its most prominent 
 "CIS. advocates. We have seen how, previous to the considerable 
 <j§^ concessions of 1793, the abilities and enemy of Theobald Wolfe 
 Tone and John Keogh had infused new life into the Catholic Committee. 
 Two delegates from each county and great city had been associated with 
 the original members, who were all residents of Dublin. These delegates 
 were only to be summoned upon extraordinary occasions. Wolfe Tone, 
 indeed, gives the credit of having planned this new arrangement to 
 
 29 447 
 
448 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 Miles Keon, of Keonbrook, county Leitrim. After 1793, no farther con- 
 cessions had been made to the Catholic body. During the troubled 
 years that passed, from the recall of Earl Fitzwilliam, in March, 179o, 
 to 1804, the action of the committee was paralyzed. "When the Catholic 
 movement began to revive, only small meetings in private houses were 
 held, owing to the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, which continued 
 till 1806. The first meeting of any great importance was held on the 
 16th of February, 1805. At this, a deputation of noblemen and gentle- 
 men were appointed to request Mr. Pitt to present the Catholic petition 
 to the House of Commons. 
 
 This minister had returned to office on May the 14th, 1804. It was 
 only to serve a temporary purpose that he had suffered the imbecile 
 Addington to hold the roins of power since his resignation in 1801. As 
 soon as Addington presumed to appear independent of him, Pitt rallied 
 his forces and drove him from office. The great minister's power, how- 
 ever, was not now the same as of old. Addington resented the insult of 
 being cashiered, so to speak, for incapacity. He used all his influence 
 to raise up opposition to Pitt. The king, too, had been unfavorable to 
 Pitt's restoration to the helm of state. 
 
 Although Pitt had pretended that his resignation, in 1801, was in 
 consequence of the king's refusal to consent to Catholic emancipation, 
 yet, on returning to power, he made no condition in favor of that meas- 
 ure. This clearly proves his falseness and treachery to the Catholics. 
 The government prints kept up alarms about the French party in Ire- 
 land and French invasions during the whole summer. All this was 
 meant to justify the measures of defence and coercion which the min- 
 isters resorted to in Ireland. There was an encampment of fifteen 
 thousand men on the Curragh. Martello towers and other defensive 
 works were pushed forward. Besides the prisoners already held, without 
 visible cause, under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the rigor 
 of whose treatment was now sharpened, many additional persons were 
 arrested. 
 
 As the Catholics had been foolish enough, on his return to office, to 
 rejoice publicly " in the benefit of having so many characters of emi- 
 nence pledged not to embark in the service of government except on 
 the terms of Catholic privileges being obtained." Pitt had reason to fear 
 
THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 449 
 
 that the sincerity of his pledges would soon be tested. To prevent this, 
 Sri* Evan Nepean was instructed to endeavor to persuade the earl of 
 Fingal, the highest in rank of the Irish Catholics, to iniluence his co-relig- 
 ionists to bold back their petition. The aristocratic section of the com- 
 mittee was generally in favor of postponing the time of petitioning. 
 Lord Fingal was now frequently closeted at the Castle, invited to dine 
 there — in short, sedulously courted. But it was all in vain. Pitt fore- 
 saw that, even if he would, Lord Fingal could not very long keep back 
 the petition of the Catholics. The crafty minister now tried to excite 
 prejudice against their claims. For this purpose he took advantage of 
 the circumstance of Napoleon's coronation as emperor by the Pope on 
 the 28th of October, 1804. The ministerial papers set to work. Here 
 was an ominous reconciliation of the emperor with the Church of Pome. 
 Pitt's journals took care not to say a word about the emperor's having 
 restored the Protestant as well as the Catholic Church in France, or that 
 Protestants were emancipated in that country. Napoleon would hence- 
 forth have vast influence in Ireland. Was there not a memorial, written 
 by MacNeven at Paris, addressed to the Irish officers in foreign services, 
 especially the Austrian, and calling on them to join in the intended 
 attempts to free Ireland ? Did not the Holy Father, too, in the allocu- 
 tion addressed to a secret consistory before his departure for Paris, speak 
 of his gratitude to Napoleon and add " that a personal interview with 
 the emperor would be for the good of the Catholic Church, which is the 
 only ark of salvation V 
 
 Was it any wonder that this last assertion almost frightened the life 
 out of all the bigoted old women of both sexes? Everything seemed to 
 portend the arrival of Napoleon in Ireland to overthrow the venerable 
 institutions of "Church and State." The dungeons of the Inquisition 
 were about to yawn for all heretics. 
 
 Parliament met on the loth of January, 1805. Sir Evan Nepean 
 succeeded in procuring the renewal of the suspension of the Habeas Cor- 
 pus Act. He was warmly opposed on this occasion by Charles James 
 Fox. But now the fate of the Catholic petition was to be determined. 
 In spite of the manoeuvres of the Castle, it was decided at the meeting 
 of the 16th of January, to which I have referred in the opening paragraph 
 of this chapter, that Lord Fingal and others should take the petition to 
 
450 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 London. The viceroy, Lord Hardwicke. now changed his tactics, lie 
 had no intention, indeed, of seriously recommending the petition. "He 
 had been selected," says Mr. Plowden, "from the mass of the peerage as 
 the best qualified to resist the emancipation of Ireland under the insid- 
 ious mission of reconciling her to thraldom." But having the minister's 
 assurance of a decided majority against the petition, he affected to favor 
 the Catholics by discountenancing counter-petitions. To prove his sin- 
 cerity, he even dismissed the notorious Jack Giffard for having carried 
 in the Dublin corporation some violent resolutions against emancipation. 
 Such was Lord Hardwicke's duplicity. 
 
 The Catholic deputies had their conference with Pitt on the 12th of 
 March, 1805. He said "that the confidence of so very respectable a 
 body as the Catholics of Ireland was highly gratifying to him," but at 
 the same time civilly refused to present the petition; the time hadn't 
 come, there were obstacles. He didn't, however, tell them what was the 
 lact, that on his return to office he had voluntarily engaged that he icould 
 never again bring the subject under the consideration of His Majesty. 
 Finally, the delegates besought him merely to lay their petition on the 
 table of the House of Commons; they would even authorize him to state 
 " that they did not 2)ress for the immediate adoption of the measure prayed 
 for." Their self-prostration was all in vain. Mr. Plowden, who had the 
 best means of knowing all about the conference, tells us that Mr. Pitt 
 "drily repeated his negative;" he said plainly that he should feel it his 
 duty to resist the petition, and advised them to withdraw it, 
 
 This was the reward the "leading Catholics" received from Pitt for 
 consenting to the accursed union. He simply broke faith with them. 
 They deserved little pity. They were not ashamed to merit one com- 
 pliment, which on this occasion he deigned to pay them when he said 
 " that he had read with satisfaction a copy of their petition, in ivhich they 
 very judiciously refrained from insisting upon the object of it as a matter 
 of right and justice." Clearly, neither the hour nor the man for the achieve- 
 ment of Catholic deliverance had yet come forth ; the true leader, however, 
 who was destined to demand in thunder-tones the emancipation of his 
 countrymen, not as a matter of expediency, but "as a matter of right and 
 justice" was even then on his way ; no other than our hero, Daniel : Con- 
 nell, then the most rising young lawyer at the Irish bar! 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL 451 
 
 Repulsed by Pitt, the Catholic delegates applied to Mr. Fox and Lord 
 Grenville with better success. It was presented in both Houses; by 
 Lord Grenville in the Lords and Mr. Fox in the Commons, on the 2oth 
 of March. Debates on the petition subsequently took place in both 
 Houses; that in the House of Lords commenced on the 10th of May, 
 that in the House of Commons on the 13th of the same month. In tne 
 first of these debates, the duke of Cumberland, Lord Redesdale, Lord 
 Carleton, Lord Aukland, and others displayed an almost incredible amount 
 of violence and rabid bigotry. Lord Carleton raved about the prepar- 
 ation "of maps of the forfeited estates to guide the proceedings of 
 resumption." Lord Redesdale, however, bore oft' the palm for bigotry 
 of the narrowest stamp. His wretched illiberality brought down on 
 him a severe castigation from two Irish lords, Hutchinson and Ormond. 
 The former said that "he had been bred, educated and had spent the 
 greater part of his life in Ireland, and never had witnessed, or even 
 heard of, such fooleries and horrors as had been detailed by the learned 
 lord, whom he challenged to verify his assertions by facts." The carl of 
 Ormond denied the truth of Eedesdale's statements. He said "he could 
 not sit silent and hear the country to which he had the honor to belong 
 so foully traduced, without rising to contradict such unfounded asper- 
 sions upon the national character of Ireland." He spoke contemptu- 
 ously of Redesdale's "old women's stories, which not the most preju- 
 diced Protestant in Ireland would accredit," and hoped that, when he 
 should return to the bench, he would learn to divest himself of his antipa- 
 thies and partialities. Some English noblemen also spoke liberally. The 
 earl of Albemarle, referring to Kedesdale, said, "that the grave charac- 
 ter of a judge, and the advantages of local experience and official duties, 
 should not give weight to the vulgar prejudices and idle tales which 
 had been retailed to the House by a noble and learned lord with heat 
 and animosity little becoming the gravity of his situation." Earl 
 Spencer, Lord Holland, the earl of Suffolk, the duke of Norfolk, Earl 
 Moira, supported the petition. The most amusing feature of the debate 
 Avas that all the bigots disavowed bigotry and intolerance, and praised 
 themselves highly for "their disposition to liberality and conciliation." 
 On the division 49 voted for going into committee, 178 against it, leav- 
 ing a majority of 129 against the motion. 
 
452 THE LIKE OF DANIEL OCOXXELL. 
 
 The peculiar incident of the debate in the House of Commons was 
 that, on this occasion, the illustrious Grattan made his first appearance 
 in the English Parliament. Since the disastrous nights of the union 
 debates, his splendid eloquence had been unheard. He had not sought 
 election from any constituency. It had recently occurred to Earl Fitz- 
 williain to secure the brilliant talents of Grattan for the coming debate. 
 Lord Fitzwilliam was still friendly to the Catholics and mindful of the 
 way in which he, as well as they, had been deluded by Pitt in 1795. 
 He induced the Hon. C. L. Dundas to vacate his seat for the borough 
 of Malton, in England, and Grattan was returned for it. The utmost 
 anxiety to hear the great orator and stainless patriot pervaded the 
 House. Charles James Fox had opened the debate in a long speech, 
 which was also powerful, generous and enlightened. The notorious Dr. 
 Paddy Duigenan, though he saw Grattan menacing him with his eye, 
 had presumed to reply to Fox, in a speech of more than three hours' 
 duration, full of rabid bigotry and coarse vituperation. As soon as he 
 had sat down, Grattan arose. The house was breathless with expect- 
 ancy. In Moore's "Life of Lord Byron" the latter gives an account of 
 this scene, which he had no doubt heard from eye-witnesses. The 
 noble poet tells us, that, for the first few minutes after Grattan had 
 commenced speaking, the audience were in doubt whether to give or 
 withhold their applause, so singular were his style and gestures, so 
 unlike was he to any speaker they had previously listened to. All eyes 
 were turned to Pitt to sec the effect produced on him. At last, when 
 they saw his stately head nodding in approval, they broke forth into 
 rapturous cheers, and, when Grattan sat down, the triumph and enthu- 
 siasm were unbounded. I think the reader will carry off a better idea 
 of Grattan' s eloquence on this occasion, if I give a few passages in his 
 own words, than if I attempt to give a meagre dry-bones of an outline 
 oi" analysis of the entire argument. This is the speech in which Grattan 
 says pathetically of independent Ireland, "I sat by her cradle, and fol- 
 lowed her hearse :" 
 
 "I rise" — thus Mr. Grattan commences — "to avoid the example of 
 the member who has just sat down, and instead of calumniating either 
 party, to defend both. . . . Thus has he pronounced against his country 
 three curses: eternal war with one another, eternal war with England, 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 453 
 
 and eternal peace with France. So strongly does lie inculcate this that 
 if a Catholic printer were, in the time of invasion, to publish his speech, 
 that printer might be indicted for treason, as the publisher of a compo- 
 sition administering to the Catholics a stimulative to rise, and advancing 
 the authority of their religion for rebellion. His speech consists of four 
 parts: 1st, an invective uttered against the religion of the Catholics; 
 2d, an invective uttered against the present generation ; 3d, an invective 
 against the past ; and 4th, an invective against the future. Here the 
 limits of creation interposed, and stopped the member. It is to defend 
 those different generations, and their religion, I rise; to rescue the Cath- 
 olic from his attack and the Protestant from his defence. . . . Thus 
 when he thinks lie is establishing Ids errors, unconsciously and uninten- 
 tionally he promulgates truth; or rather, in the very tempest of his 
 speech, Providence seems to govern his lips, so that they shall prove 
 false to his purposes, and bear witness to his refutations. Interpret the 
 gentleman literally — what blasphemy has he uttered ! He has said that 
 the Catholic religion, abstracted as it is at present in Ireland from 
 Popery, and reduced as it is to mere Catholicism, is so inconsistent with 
 the duties of morality and allegiance as to be a very great evil. Now, 
 that religion is the Christianity of two-thirds of all Christendom ; it fol- 
 lows then, according to the learned doctor, that the Christian religion is 
 in general a curse. He has added that his own countrymen are not only 
 depraved by religion, but rendered perverse by nativity; that is to say, 
 according to him, blasted by their Creator and damned by their Re- 
 deemer. In order, therefore, to restore the member to the character of a 
 Christian, we must renounce him as an advocate, and acknowledge that 
 he has acquitted the Catholics whom he meant to condemn, and con- 
 victed the laws which he meant to defend." 
 
 After speaking of the past rebellions of Ireland, which, he asserts, 
 were caused by proscription, confiscation, extermination, not by religion, 
 Mr. Grattan proceeds: "If all the blood shed on those occasions, if the 
 many fights in the first and the signal battles in the second period, and 
 the consequences of those battles to the defeated and the triumphant- — 
 to the slave that tied and to the slave that followed — shall teach our 
 country the Avisdom of conciliation, I congratulate her on those deluges 
 of blood; if not, I submit, and lament her fate, and deplore her under- 
 
454 TIIE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 standing, which would render not only the blessings of Providence, but 
 its visitations, fruitless, and transmit what was the curse of our fathers 
 as the inheritance of our children. 
 
 "The learned gentleman proceeds to misstate a pcricd of enc hun- 
 dred years. . . . 
 
 " J leave the member, and proceed to discuss the differences now 
 remaining that discriminate His Majesty's subjects of the Protestant 
 and Catholic persuasion. Before we consider how far we differ, it is 
 necessary to examine how far we agree. We acknowledge the same 
 God, the same Redeemer, the same consequences of redemption, the 
 same Bible, the same Testament. Agreeing in this, we cannot, as far 
 as respects religion, quarrel about the remainder; because their merits 
 as Christians must, in our opinion, outweigh their demerits as Catholics, 
 and reduce our religious distinction to a difference about the cucharist, 
 the mass and the Virgin Mary — matters which may form a difference of 
 opinion, but not a division of interest. The infidel, under" these circum- 
 stances, would consider us as the same religionists. ... I am to add 
 the mischief done to the morals of the country by setting up a false 
 standard of merit, by which men, without religion, morals or integrity, 
 shall obtain, by an abhorrence of their fellow-subjects, credit and conse- 
 quence, and acquire an impunity for selling the whole community, be- 
 cause they detest a part of it. You see it is impossible for any one part 
 of society to afflict the other, without paying the penalty, and feeling 
 the consequences of its own bad policy in the reaction of its own bad 
 passions. I am to add the mischief done to the peace of the country 
 among the lower orders, when the spirit of religious discord descends, 
 and the holiday becomes a riot, and the petty magistrate turns chapman 
 and dealer in politics, theologian and robber, makes for himself a situa- 
 tion in the country by monstrous lies, fabricates false panics of insurrec- 
 tions and invasion, then walks forth the little man of blood; his cred- 
 itors tremble ; the French do not ; and atrocities, which, he durst not 
 commit in his own name, he perpetrates for the honor of his king and 
 in the name of his Maker. 
 
 "I have heard of the uncivilization of Ireland; too much has been 
 said on that subject: I deny the fact; . . . but if anything, however, 
 delays the perfect and extensive civilization of Ireland, it is principally 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 4o5 
 
 hor religious animosity. Examine all the causes of human misery, the 
 tragic machinery of the globe, and the instruments of civil rage and 
 domestic murder, and you slip.ll find no demon like it, because it privi- 
 leges every other vice, and amalgamates with infidelity as well as with 
 murder; and conscience, which restrains every other vice, becomes a 
 prompter here. . . . 
 
 "The Parliament of Ireland— of that assembly I have a parental 
 recollection. I sate by her cradle, I followed her hearse. . . . That the 
 Parliament of Ireland should have entertained prejudices, I am not 
 astonished ; but that you, that you, who have, as individuals and as 
 conquerors, visited a great part of the globe, and have seen men in all 
 their modifications, and Providence in all its ways; that you, now at 
 this time of day. should throw up dikes against the pope and barriers 
 against the Catholic, instead of uniting with that Catholic to throw up 
 barriers against the French, this surprises; and, in addition to this, that 
 you should have set up the pope in Italy to tremble at him in Ireland ; 
 and further, that you should have professed to have placed yourself at 
 the head of a Christian, not a Protestant, league, to defend the civil and 
 religious liberty of Europe, and should deprive of their civil liberty one- 
 lifth of yourselves, on account of their religion, this surprises me; and 
 also that you should prefer to buy allies by subsidies, rather than fellow- 
 subjects by privileges; and that you should now stand, drawn out, as it 
 were, in battalion, sixteen millions against thirty-six millions, and should 
 at the same time paralyze a fifth of your own numbers, by excluding 
 them from some of the principal benefits of your constitution, at the 
 very time you say all your numbers are inadequate unless inspired by 
 those very privileges. ... 
 
 "Turn to the opposite principle, proscription and discord. It has 
 made in Ireland not only war, but even peace, calamitous. . . . You 
 have seen in 1798 rebellion break out again, the enemy masking her 
 expeditions in consequence of the state of Ireland, twenty millions lost, 
 one farthing of which did not tell in empire, and blood barbarously, 
 boyishly and most ingloriously expended. . . . Half Europe is in bat- 
 talion against us, and we are damning one another on account of mys- 
 teries, when we should form against the enemy and march." 
 
 The saintly, or rather sanctimonious, Spencer Perceval, while he 
 
450 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 spoke in complimentary terms of "the blaze of Mr. Grattan's elo- 
 quence," endeavored, as might be expected, to refute him in a narrow, 
 bigoted speech. Mr. Alexander, "though not insensible to the powers 
 of Mr. Grattan's eloquence " thought proper to attack him in such a 
 ruffianly style as drew forth a general burst of indignation even in that 
 House. Mr. Alexander then tried to explain away or wriggle out of his 
 charges. His unseemly, bigoted harangue was interrupted by frequent 
 importunate cries of "Question, question!" 
 
 On the 14th the debate was renewed. Mr. William Smith, Mr. Lee, 
 and Dr. Lawrence uttered liberal sentiments. Mr. George Ponsonby 
 warmly defended the Catholics. He said that there never was a race 
 of men in Europe who had preserved so much of what was good under 
 so much oppression. "I know them well; and I know that whatever 
 is good in them they owe to themselves ; whatever is bad in them they 
 owe to you. Yes, sir, to your bad government." He added that Eng- 
 lish rulers looked on Ireland "in the light of what is called a bore" and 
 "as a cast-off" Mr. Windham supported the motion, as did also Sir 
 John Newport, who refuted the ignorant and mendacious statements 
 contained in the petition of the Dublin corporation, to the effect that 
 the Catholics of Ireland were placed on a footing of political power not 
 enjoyed by dissenters from the established religion in any other state of 
 Europe. Sir John showed that the inhabitants of Hungary, like those 
 of Ireland, were divided in religion, but that the Diet of 1791 had given 
 the Hungarians full freedom of religious faith, worship and education. 
 All Hungarians were made eligible to public offices and honors " with- 
 out aiii/ respect to their religion." Mr. Maurice Fitzgerald supported the 
 motion ; and solemnly declared that when he voted for the union it was 
 in view of emancipation. The Hon. H. Augustus Dillon and Mr. John 
 Latouchc spoke warmly for the Catholics. Sir John Cox Hippesley, to 
 meet the objections of those who hesitated to admit the Catholics to 
 positions of power in the state, through apprehensions of the influence 
 of papal supremacy over their minds, proposed that some state control 
 over the bishops should be arranged. This gentleman was afterwards 
 one of the most prominent champions of the proposal to give the king 
 a veto on the appointment of Catholic bishops. Mr. C. H. Hutchinson 
 supported the motion and vindicated the character of his traduced coun- 
 
TITE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 457 
 
 trymen. Mr. Ilawtliornc also said lie would vote on the Catholic side. 
 Sir William Scott, Mr. Foster, who uttered some sentiments rather sin- 
 gular as coming from the mouth of so inveterate an anti-unionist, Colonel 
 Archdall, Mr. Hiley Addington, Lord Sidmouth's brother, and Lord l)c 
 Blaquiere were the advocates of intolerance. Mr. Shaw deprecated any 
 idea hostile to his Catholic countrymen. He wished, indeed, that all 
 civil distinctions should be done away with in his country. But, how- 
 ever painful it might be to do so, he must oppose the motion, in obedience 
 to the instructions of his constituents (the citizens of Dublin). One of 
 the most remarkable speeches in the debate was that of Mr. Pitt: "He 
 was favorably disposed to the general principle of the question; but he 
 had never considered it as involving any claim of right. Eight was 
 totally independent of circumstances; expediency included the consid- 
 eration of circumstances, and was wholly dependent upon them. Before 
 the union those privileges could not have been granted to the Catholics 
 with safety to the existing Protestant establishment in church and state. 
 After that measure, he saw the matter in a different light; though cer- 
 tainly no pledge was ever given to the Catholics that their claims should 
 be granted. [But Pitt had pledged himself to make emancipation a min- 
 isterial question.) In any case there should, however, be new checks and 
 guards; checks against the evil influence which the bigotry of the priests 
 might prompt them to exercise over the lower orders. Such were his 
 general views. But he stated them not as the result of any pledge ; 
 though he admitted they were the consequences of the general reasoning 
 in favor of the union, and that a very natural expectation was enter- 
 tained that emancipation would have been immediately brought forward 
 after the union. At present he could not be a party to the agitation of 
 a measure, to the success of which there was an irresistible obstacle. The 
 only effect of agitating it would be to excite hopes and expectations that 
 were sure to terminate in disappointment." Taking up a new line of 
 argument, he said: "They were anxious to conciliate the Catholics, but 
 let them not, in so doing, irritate a much larger portion of their fellow- 
 subjects, whose loyalty was undoubted. The prevailing opinion against 
 the petition was strong and undoubted. He appealed to Mr. Grattan, 
 the splendor of whose eloquence he extolled, to answer what would be 
 the result of agitating the question. The anticipation of such conse- 
 
qucnces as followed the disappointment of those hopes, which Lord Fitz- 
 william had encouraged in 1795. made him lament the agitation of the 
 question at that moment. He should therefore act contrary to all sense 
 of duty, if he countenanced that petition in any shape." 
 
 Mr. Fox closed the debate with a vigorous reply. In his opening 
 speech he had said, "It was surely too much to expect that the Cath- 
 olics would always fight for a constitution in the benefits of which, they 
 were assured, they never should participate equally with their fellow- 
 subjects." He now replied triumphantly to the arguments of the bigots. 
 He pointed out that the advocates of the Catholics might retort on the 
 Church-of-England party. " Did not, 7 ' asked Mr. Fox, " the book of 
 Homilies absolutely condemn whatever took place at the time of the 
 revolution of 1G88? Did not Sacheverell, upon the authority of those 
 Homilies, attack and stigmatize that great proceeding as impious, and 
 utterly destructive of the Church of England? Did not the University 
 of Oxford pass a decree, in 1683, against limiting the government, de- 
 scribing it as one of those things which lead to atheism ? To use a homely 
 phrase, I would warn those not to throw stones whose eyes arc made of 
 
 glass." 
 
 At half-past four in the morning, the House divided. Its intellect 
 and principle were on the side of Fox and emancipation. But bigotry 
 carried the day. The ayes were 124, the noe^s, 336; majority, 212. And 
 so, for a time, vanished the hopes of the Catholics ! 
 
 In the year 1806 the power of Pitt declined. His friend Dundas, 
 Lord Melville, was disgraced in spite of all his efforts. Lord Sidmouth 
 deserted him on this occasion, and intrigued, not unsuccessfully, to turn 
 the royal mind against him. Mr. Foster tendered his resignation. Lord 
 Hardwicke was resolved to tender his. A defeat, which Castlereagh suf- 
 fered at this time in Downshire, was another mortification to the min- 
 ister in his sinking fortunes. In the cabinet changes, Castlereagh had 
 accepted the office of secretary of state for the colonies and war depart- 
 ment. He had consequently to seek re-election. It will be remembered 
 that he had dismissed the marquis of Downshire from his command in 
 the union days. This had produced a strong feeling against him in the 
 county where he now sought to be re-elected. Accord in e;lv, the interest 
 of the marquis of Downshire prevailed against the interest of the family 
 
TITE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. 450 
 
 of Stewart, But the failure of all his grand coalitions against Napoleon 
 was the severest blow to the minister. The imperial star triumphed. 
 England was loudly crying out for peace. On the 20th of January, 1800, 
 three days after the meeting of Parliament, William Pitt {the younger) 
 died, it might he said, of the battle of Austerlitz, which tremendous vic- 
 tory had struck down the might of Austria and Russia on the 2d of the 
 previous December. His dying words were, "Oh, my country!" He 
 had before said, "We may close the map of Europe for half a century." 
 He loved England to his last breath ; to Ireland he had always been a 
 bitter foe. 
 
 Lord Hawkesbury was named first lord of the treasury. He only 
 held office long enough to give himself the lucrative place of lord warden 
 of the Cinque Ports. After some days, the old pig-headed king, much 
 against his grain, consented to the formation of the Grenville-Fox 
 administration. It was a sort of coalition ministry. It has been nick- 
 named "the ministry of all the talents." Lord Grenville was first lord 
 of the treasury; Mr. Fox, secretary for foreign affairs; the celebrated 
 forensic orator, Erskine, a Scot of the noble house of Buchan, English 
 chancellor; the duke of Bedford, viceroy of Ireland, with William Elliott 
 as chief secretary, George Ponsonby as chancellor, Plunket as attorney- 
 general and Bushe as solicitor-general. The Whig element seemed to 
 preponderate. Although neither Grattan nor Curran received office (the 
 latter, indeed, in about five months, was made master of the rolls, an 
 office for which — his practice having been more in law than equity — he 
 was unfitted, which he disliked, and which relegated him from the polit- 
 ical sphere), the Irish people were credulous enough, at first, to indulge 
 in hopes not merely of emancipation, but of speedy repeal of the union. 
 Soon, however, the scales fell from their eyes. 
 
 Yet the just and generous-hearted Fox. in all probability, meant well 
 to Ireland, and, if he could have seen things as they existed there with 
 his own eyes, would doubtless have striven hard to redress her wrongs. 
 But his health was rapidly breaking down; he was engaged, during the 
 few remaining months of his life, in anxious and difficult negotiations 
 for peace, which finally failed. Besides, the majority of his colleagues 
 were far less inclined to make concessions to Ireland than he was. It 
 is hardly necessary to remind the reader of the obstinate old king's 
 
4G0 TITE LIFE OF DANIEL OCOXXELL. 
 
 bigoted hostility to Catholic claims. Still, amongst the earliest parlia- 
 mentary proceedings, an incident occurred that seemed of favorable omen 
 to Ireland. Mr. O'Hara, with patriotic spirit, objected to Lord Castle- 
 reagh's vote for monumental honors to Marquis Cornwallis, on the ground 
 of that viceroy's instrumentality in carrying the union, -which measure 
 he, Mr. O'Hara, hoped would now be, if not utterly rescinded, at least 
 greatly modified and ameliorated. Though Fox concurred with the 
 motion, he agreed with Mr. O'Hara in characterizing the union "as one 
 of the most disgraceful transactions in which the government of any 
 country had been involved." When called to account by Mr. Alexander, 
 a few days later, for these words, "he adhered to every syllable he had 
 uttered relative to the union. But when he had reprobated a thing 
 done, he said nothing prospectively. However bad the measure, an 
 attempt to repeal it, without the most urgent solicitation from the 
 parties interested, should not be made." His reprobation of the ac- 
 cursed act had already encouraged several of the Dublin corporations to 
 prepare petitions for repeal. This was the first whisper of the demand 
 for repeal. However, some of them resolved not just then to embarrass 
 ministers with Irish national claims. Indeed, most of the ministers 
 would have proved determined opponents to any proposal for repeal. 
 The premier, Grenville, had been an active agent in carrying it, and was 
 in no wise friendly to Ireland. Sidmouth was the decided enemy of the 
 Catholics. Though to his own no small mortification, but to the great 
 joy of the people, the bigoted Bedesdale had been at once, even before 
 the arrival of his successor, removed from the chancellorship, some of his 
 friends and tools remained. Alexander Marsden, one of the worst crea- 
 tures of British rule, remained in office. Major Sirr remained in the 
 Castle yard. The Orange magistracy was not displaced. When Curran 
 at length reluctantly became master of the rolls, all the efforts of the 
 party malignity of the Ascendency faction, instigated by Saurin, and 
 even Bushe, Bedford's solicitor-general, were directed to prevent the bar 
 from presenting an address to his honor on his promotion. The wretched 
 bigots hated him, perhaps, for his unrivalled abilities — certainly for his 
 generous patriotism. Happily, on this occasion, the independence of the 
 Irish bar triumphed. One hundred and forty-six barristers to thirty- 
 four voted for the address to the most splendid ornament of the profes- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 4G1 
 
 sion. Curran was never reconciled to his office ; lie had expected to be 
 made chief-justice, if possible, and, if not, attorney-general. In his 
 letter to Grattan on his appointment, he says: "When the party, with 
 which I had acted so fairly, had, after so long a proscription, come at 
 last to their natural place, I did not expect to have been stuck up into 
 a window, a spectator of the procession." 
 
 The expiration of the act for the suspension of the habeas corpus 
 about this time, without any attempt having been made to renew it, 
 gave universal satisfaction to all true Irishmen. All state-prisoners who 
 could bear the expenses of habeas corpus, or who had been in jail for two 
 or three years, were set free. The restoration to society of these suf- 
 ferers called forth great feelings of sympathy. The efforts to procure the 
 customary farewell addresses to the departing viceroy, Hardwicke, after 
 his live years' rule, naturally failed. Out of universal Ireland, addresses 
 came only from Dublin, the county Mayo and the loyal Crosmolina Cav- 
 alry. On the 31st of March, 1806, he sailed from the Pigeon House 
 fort, Dublin, pursued by execrations. 
 
 The duke of Bedford, his successor, was well received; but while 
 his replies to the loyal, milk-and-water addresses of the Catholics were 
 courteous, they were also ambiguous. An address from the Catholics of 
 Dublin, signed by Lords Fingal, Southwell, Kenmare, Gormanstown, etc., 
 was presented at the Castle on the 29th of April, 1806. It abjectly talks 
 of the Catholics being "bound to the fortunes of the empire, by a re- 
 membrance of ivhat is past and the hope of future benefits," and adds 
 that they would, if emancipated, feel pride in " remunerating their bene- 
 factors with the sacrifice of their lives." These, it says also, are " sen- 
 timents in which all Irish Catholics can have but one voice." To this 
 precious Irish servility he replies, in still more precious English cant, 
 "In the high situation in which His Majesty has been graciously pleased 
 to place me, it is my first wish, as it is my first duty, to secure to all 
 classes and descriptions of His Majesty's subjects in this part of the 
 United Kingdom the advantages of a mild and beneficent administration of 
 the law." He winds up with an expression of confidence that the Roman 
 Catholics of Dublin will, by their loyalty and other good qualities, afford 
 the strongest recommendation to a favorable consideration of their in- 
 terests. It was not long before the papers of this liberal viceroy warned 
 
402 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 Hie rival Catholic leaders that their meetings "were in danger of bring- 
 ing them within the sweep of the Convention Act. It must be admitted, 
 however, that the liberal portion of the ministry, even if they possessed 
 I he best inclinations in the world (a thing more or less doubtful), were 
 deprived of the power of immediately redressing the Catholic grievances 
 by their bigoted colleagues and the still more bigoted and obstinate king. 
 Meanwhile, wretched jealousies prevailed in the Catholic councils. 
 Mr. Ryan, a young merchant, a connection of Mr. Randal McDonnell, 
 another influential Catholic, had frequently given the rise of his large 
 house in Marlborough street, Dublin, to the Catholic meetings. He had 
 opened up a correspondence with Mr. Fox. in which he had represented 
 himself as the accredited agent of the Catholics, and had thereby tried 
 to promote his own personal interest. It seemed as though he desired 
 to- arrogate to himself the leadership of the Catholic body. These un- 
 warranted proceedings, when they came to light, and also some unau- 
 thorized acts of his friend, Mr. McDonnell, excited no inconsiderable 
 amount of discontent and bad blood, and helped to increase the dissen- 
 sions and weakness of the ill-managed Catholic movement. It was no 
 wonder, then, that the hopes excited in the minds of Catholics by the 
 accession of the "Whigs to office proved illusory. At this time they had 
 not strength or organization to conquer. The true leader had not climbed 
 into the saddle. Jealousies continued even long after O'Connell began 
 to take a prominent part in their affairs. Fagan, speaking of this early 
 period of the struggle, says : " There was an enormous amount of jeal- 
 ousy existing among the leaders, and they were not willing to allow the 
 genius of one man to outstep the limits suited to their tamer and less 
 expanded intellects. There was an aristocratic feeling about them little 
 in unison with the liberalizing tendency of O'Connell's mind." O'Con- 
 nell himself gives the following description of the position in which the 
 Catholic cause stood at this time: ''The 'natural leaders,' 1 as they were 
 called, of the Catholics, the Catholic aristocracy, were jealous at seeing 
 the leadership, which they were incapable of managing, taken out of 
 their hands by lawyers and merchants. Efforts were occasionally made 
 to control what th-ey were pleased to deem the vulgar violence of our 
 exertions. In 1807 a certain aristocratic banker [Lord Ffrench?) vis- 
 ited the Catholic Board one day, and delivered himself of some advice 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 403 
 
 that savored suspiciously of Castle influence. I remember that he 
 accused the Catholic barristers of clamoring for emancipation merely in 
 order to qualify themselves for office. I opposed him of course, and 1 
 had a stout ally in Peter Bodkin Husscy, who discarded all ceremony 
 from his attack on the invader. Peter's speech was extremely charac- 
 teristic of his sagacity, his coarseness and his impudence. ' I under- 
 stand this gentleman,' said Peter, 'just as well as if I was inside his 
 head. He has talked about Catholic barristers having personal objects 
 to gain. I tell him there are Catholic bankers who have personal objects 
 to gain. I won't mince the matter, and I boldly declare my conviction 
 that his advice is dishonest. I tell him, moreover, that although I only 
 chastise him verbally now in the hope that he may take himself quietly 
 off and give us no further trouble, yet I ivould hesitate just as tittle to chas- 
 tise him 2)ersonaUy if he should come here again on a similar errand.'' The 
 intruder took the hint and decamped. Peter Bodkin Hussey," continued 
 O'Connell, " was in general as rough-tongued a fellow as ever I met, saying 
 ill-natured things of everybody and good-natured things of nobody. He 
 piqued himself on his impertinence. It was not, however, a bad reply 
 he made to another impertinent fellow who hailed him one day in the Four 
 Courts, saying, ' Peter, I'll bet you a guinea that you are a more imper- 
 tinent rascal than I am.' 'You'd win your guinea,' answered Peter. 'I 
 am certainly the more impertinent. You are only impertinent to those 
 who, you know, won't knock you down for it — but /am impertinent to 
 everybody.' " 
 
 At a meeting of the Catholics, held on the 17th of February, 1812, 
 Lord Fingal being in the chair, Lord Ffrench endeavored to delay the 
 Catholic petition — he implied that to forward the petition then would 
 injure the empire. 
 
 "What!" exclaimed O'Connell in reply, "is it an injury to the empire 
 to tender it the service of five millions of subjects? Can the total de- 
 votion of their talents and their property, their persons and their blood, 
 be termed an injury to the empire? . . . Expediency as well as right, 
 present policy and eternal justice, require our emancipation. ... I tell 
 them (the English nation) that our emancipation was delayed by our 
 union with their legislature. Our Protestant countrymen, in our do- 
 mestic parliament, would have long since conceded what remained to be 
 
 ; J .n 
 
464 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 granted. The union, with rude violence, and amid the wreck of the 
 country, swept away every opportunity of kindness and liberality on 
 one hand — every occasion of gratitude and affection on the other. It 
 was a small but wretched consolation that no Catholic sat in the parlia- 
 ment that voted away the country. The union was a measure in its 
 every consequence deeply deplorable. The devastation it had produced 
 had been frequently foretold ; 
 
 " ' Ne'er were prophetic sounds so full of woe !' " 
 
 Lord Finrjal "begged to suggest that the union had no connection 
 with the subject before the meeting." 
 
 Mr. 0' Council "would submit to the chair, but it was impossible for 
 him to stand over the grave of his country without shedding a tear. 
 However, the union had some connection with the subject. The English 
 were aware that emancipation was promised if the union were carried ; 
 but that was an argument he would not use. He never would consent 
 to the sale of his country ; he despised the man who would accept any 
 boon as its price." After alluding to the king's opposition, he said ■ 
 "Away, then, with all the objections to the presenting a petition ; there 
 should be no delay. The man does not merit freedom who would hug 
 his chains for a day." 
 
 The generous and large-hearted Charles James Fox died on the 13th 
 of September, 1806. Perhaps his death was hastened by the failure of 
 his negotiations for peace with France. His ministry was not destined 
 to survive him long. This was of little consequence to Ireland. Even 
 during Fox's life it had done little for Ireland ; and now that he was 
 gone, the hopes of the Catholics, if they survived, had no reasonable 
 foundation. Chancellor Ponsonby had dissatisfied his friends by his 
 exercise of patronage. Under his rule, also, the Orange magistracy 
 were still suffered to have sway. Catholics were not yet protected from 
 Orange outrages; their grievances were not redressed. The persons 
 sent to investigate the alleged crimes of Orangemen seem, in some 
 instances, to have had recourse to the accused parties themselves for 
 evidence. So, if we are to credit Mr. Plowden, Sergeant Moore acted in 
 the case of the two sons of Mr. Verner, an Orange magistrate, who were 
 accused of heading an Orange mob at the burning of the house of one 
 
O'Neill. Mr. Wilson of Owna Lodge, a Protestant magistrate of the 
 county Tyrone and a neighbor of O'Neill's, sought hard to procure justice 
 in this affair. But he failed in all his efforts to have the case fairly 
 investigated. The conduct of Sergeant Moore was even warmly praised 
 by Mr. Ponsonby. Mi 1 . Wilson also applied to have his commission of 
 the peace for Tyrone extended to Armagh (he dwelt near the boundary 
 separating the two counties), that he might protect the defenceless 
 Catholics in his neighborhood; but this application was refused. His 
 Quixotic desire to redress Catholic grievances at length brought outrages 
 to his own door. One fine night his range of offices, filled with hay, was 
 burned down ; and, finally, his persistent championing of oppressed 
 Catholics caused the government, who no doubt regarded him as a 
 "bore" to deprive him of his commission of the peace for Tyrone. 
 
 No measure was adopted by the Bedford administration to check the 
 grinding extortions of the tithe-system. As far as the liberal government 
 cared to interfere, the rectors and tithe-proctors could enjoy full swing. 
 One rarely-cunning "dodge" of the pious and conscientious rectors may 
 be read in Plowden or in a note of Mr. Mitchel's history. At this time 
 a secret society, called " The Threshers''' (i.e., of tithe-proctor's corn), 
 arose in the formerly peaceful counties of Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim and parts 
 of Roscommon. They confined their outrages to the collectors of tithes 
 and their underlings. They frankly alleged, as a reason for their con- 
 duct, that nearly all the profits of their crops went into the pockets 
 of the tithe-proctors. They sent letters, signed "Captain Thresher" to 
 the growers of flax and oats, telling them, at their peril, not to pay any 
 moneyed composition to their rectors and vicars, or their lessees and 
 proctors. They might, indeed, leave their tithes in kind on the fields. 
 In spite of the suggestions of some of the old task-drivers of the people, 
 still retained in office, the government did not proclaim the troubled 
 counties. The ordinary law, with the help of jury-packing, sufficed to 
 deal with the poor threshers. Twelve were hung in Mayo alone. Others 
 in Galway, Roscommon and Longford. This society had no political 
 object whatever. 
 
 This administration increased the Maynooth grant from eight thou- 
 sand to thirteen thousand pounds. They did so with a view to connect 
 the Catholic Church with the state. Besides the Rev. Dr. Walsh, who 
 
46G THE LrFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 was at the head of the recently-united English, Irish and Scotch eccle- 
 siastical establishments in France, was now inviting the students of St. 
 Patrick's College, Lisbon, to France. The British government, having 
 a sharp eye to British interests, had no desire that Irish ecclesiastical 
 students should be induced to go to that country. They might there 
 learn to make many invidious comparisons between the state of society 
 in England and France, especially having regard to the question of tol- 
 eration. The Koman Catholic prelates, trustees of Maynooth, expressed 
 their disapprobation of this invitation in a letter to the Rev. Dr. Crotty, 
 rector of the Irish college at Lisbon. 
 
 But the official career of "all the talents" was rapidly drawing to a 
 close. The ministry brought in a bill, entitled the "Catholic Officers' 
 Bill." to enable Catholics to hold commissions in the army. An anom- 
 alous state of things then existed with respect to Catholic officers. 
 By the Irish relief bill of 1793, Catholics could hold commissions in 
 Ireland. At that time it was said that a similar bill would be speedily 
 passed by the English legislature; but this had never been done, so that 
 in 1807, and long after, a Catholic might lawfully hold a commission in 
 the British army as long as his regiment was quartered in Ireland, but. 
 the moment it was ordered to England, he became liable to severe pen- 
 alties. The ministers, by this paltry concession, hoped to stop agitation 
 for a time. Besides, Irish Catholics might be induced to enlist in num- 
 bers if they saw a few Catholic officers over them. Hence, Lord 
 Howick, who introduced the bill, argued that it "would afford a salu- 
 tary c/icck to the increasing superabundant population in Ireland." The 
 bigots, however, thought it horrible that men, who believed in seven 
 sacraments, should command British troops. The dukes of York and 
 Cumberland, Lords Eldon and Hawkesbury, were in a rage. Oxford 
 University and the Dublin Orange corporation petitioned against the bill. 
 Dublin University (to its honor be it spoken) braved the threats of the 
 bigoted duke of Cumberland that it would lose his favor if it refused 
 to petition against the measure. Plunket, in his -first speech in the 
 English House of Commons, denounced the royal duke's outrageous and 
 unconstitutional attempt " to disturb the peace of that university." Per- 
 ceval advertised in the public papers that "the Church was in danger." 
 Immediately the yell of ''No Popery" arose over England. At first the 
 
TUE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 4G7 
 
 half-ddiotic old king made no objection to the bill, but when his decaying 
 
 mind (at best not very sound) understood the nature of the measure, 
 when his two sons, just mentioned, and Lords Eldon and Hawkesbuiy, 
 who had frequent access to him, made him look at it from their point 
 of view, he showed an invincible repugnance to the measure and a tho- 
 rough distrust of his ministers. He asked Lord Howick one day, "What 
 was going on in the House of Commons?" On being told that the bill 
 was to come on, he gave vent to his dislike. 
 
 Next day, he graciously told the ministers that he must look out for 
 new servants. The ministers subsequently proposed to drop the bill 
 altogether. In the nervous state of irritation, to which he had been 
 worked up by his bigoted sons and others, this was not enough to satisfy 
 him. He monstrously required a pledge, " that they would never more 
 bring forward any measure whatever respecting Papists." Though the 
 ministers had no idea of emancipating the Catholics, then at all events, 
 they could not go so far as to give a pledge contrary to their oath as 
 privy counsellors — "faithfully and truly to declare their mind and opin- 
 ion, according to their hearts and consciences, in all things to be moved, 
 treated and debated in council." 
 
 Accordingly they resigned. The famous " No Popery " cabinet suc- 
 ceeded them. The duke of Portland became first lord of the treasury, 
 pious Perceval, chanceller of the exchequer, Castlereagh, secretary for the 
 colonies and war department, George Canning, secretary for foreign af- 
 fairs (melancholy to find a man so brilliant and generous in his aspira- 
 tions in such evil company) ; Camden was president of the privy council, 
 Eldon, chancellor of England. The duke of Richmond became viceroy of 
 Ireland, with Lord Manners as Irish chancellor, and Sir Arthur Wellesley, 
 already distinguished for his Asiatic campaigns, and destined to win far 
 greater renown in Europe and to see the imperial star of Napoleon pale 
 before him, as Irish secretary. 
 
 Great indignation was felt by numbers of members of both Houses 
 of Parliament at the arbitrary dismissal of the Grenville ministry. Ef- 
 forts were made against the principle of the required pledge. But all in 
 vain. The king and his " No Popery " friends prevailed. Mr. Tighe, 
 an Irish member, thought the tranquillity of Ireland would be effected 
 by the removal of the duke of Bedford. He said few recruits were got 
 
468 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 for the army in Ireland, because the tree exercise of the religion of the 
 Catholic soldiers was interfered with. He also said, that "since the 
 union, Ireland had felt no community of rights, no community of com 
 merce, the only community it felt was that of having one hundred as- 
 sessors in the British Parliament, who were to give ineffectual votes for 
 the interest of their country, as he might do that night.'''' Sir John New- 
 port, also an Irish member, said: "Ireland would force itself upon the 
 consideration of the House and of the empire. ... it was in vain to trifle 
 with the pledges given." He added that "the noble duke at the head 
 of the present government had given a still stronger pledge. He had 
 written two letters to two officers of the Irish brigade, inviting them to 
 enter into the service of this country, on the promise of making the Irish 
 Act of 1793 general, and farther, of opening the whole military career to 
 them!" 
 
 The ministerial changes caused great commotion and dismay among 
 the Catholics of Ireland. On the 18th of April, 1807, a Catholic 
 meeting took place at the Exhibition Room, William street. Lord Fin- 
 gal was in the chair. The debate was as to the propriety of forward- 
 ing the petition for presentation. The difference of opinion on this 
 subject was considerable. Grattan, acting on the advice of friends of 
 their cause in London, particularly Sheridan, had recommended the com- 
 mittee to withhold it, Keogh proposed that, from respect to the min- 
 istry (for, in spite of their shortcomings, he praised them) and in def- 
 erence to the advice of Mr. Grattan and other friends, the presentation 
 of their petition for emancipation should be postponed. Mr. O'Gorman 
 opposed Mr. Keoglvs motion. But Mr. O'Connell gave it his powerful 
 support. He spoke of the veteran Catholic leader, John Keogh, and 
 his services to their cause, in terms of almost tilial veneration. He said 
 he would call him "the venerable father of the Catholic cause; for he 
 was the oldest, as well as the most useful, of her champions ; he had 
 exhausted his youth in the service of the Catholics, and his old age was 
 still vigorous in the constitutional pursuit of emancipation." Sustained 
 by the vigorous advocacy of O'Connell, Mr. Keogh's resolution to post- 
 pone carried the day; the committee was dissolved, after Lord Fingal 
 had been deputed to present a respectful address to the duke of Bedford, 
 prior to his departure from Dublin. It is not very easy to see what 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O' CORNELL. 469 
 
 legitimate claims this viceroy had to entitle him to such a compliment 
 from the Catholic bod)*; still less is it easy to enter into the feelings of 
 the Dublin populace, on the day of the viceroy's embarkation for Eng- 
 land, some of whom, carried away by a foolish enthusiasm, took out 
 the horses from the viceregal carriages, and, yoking themselves in their 
 place, drew the duke and duchess to the water's edge. The viceroy, so 
 far from having done anything for their cause to merit this exaggerated 
 manifestation of popular regret and gratitude, had, in reality, during 
 the whole course of his administration, endeavored to keep back the 
 Catholic claims.* 
 
 * The chief books from which I have drawn the materials of the foregoing chapter are, "The 
 History of Ireland, from its Union with Great Britain, in January, 1801, to October, 1810." by 
 Francis Plowden, Esq.; Mitchel's "Continuation of MacGeoghegan ;" "Life and Times of Daniel 
 O'Connell," Dublin, J. Mullany, 1 Parliament street; Fagan's "Life of O'Connell;" Daunt's 
 "Personal Recollections " of O'Connell ; Wise's "History of the Catholic Association;" "History 
 of Europe," by Sir A. Alison, Bart.; Moore's "Life of Byron;" "Grattau's Speeches;" Duvis's 
 ' Memoir of Currau ;" " Currau's Life," by his son, etc. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The "No-Popery Ministry" show their teeth — Jack Giffard, "the dog in office "'— 
 Grattan's invective against Giffard — Insurrection and Arms acts — Noble conduct 
 of Richard Brinsley Sheridan — The bishop of Quimper's pastoral— Furious intol- 
 erance — The "Shanavests" and "Caravats" — Liberal Protestants — Divisions of 
 the Catholic Committee; O'Connell's views prevail — Catholic petition — Dr. 
 duigenan made a privy counselor — the catholic leaders — lords flngal, 
 Ffrench, Trimleston, etc. — O'Connell — John Keogh — Denis Scully — Counsellor 
 Clinche and Dr. Dromgoole — Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman — O'Connell's amusing 
 
 ANECDOTES ABOUT HIM — An AMUSING ANECDOTE TOLD BY THE LATE FATHER KeNYON — 
 
 O'Connell on Jack Lawless — Lord Fingal, Dr. Milker, Grattan and the veto — 
 Great agitation on the question of the veto — Secret Understanding in 1790 
 between Pitt. Castlereagii and the bishops — Declaration of the bishops against 
 
 THE VETO — A FRIAR'S EXPLANATION OF THE MEANING OF THE VETO — SlR ARTHUR Wf.L- 
 LESLEY "DOING THE DIRTY WORK" AS IRISH SECRETARY — O'CONNELI.'s OPINION OF WEL- 
 LINGTON — Edmund Burke on the relations of the Catholic clergy to the English 
 government — Parliament refuses the smallest concession to the Catholics — 
 O'Connell becomes more and more famous and powerful. 
 
 %IIE "No-Popery" ministry were not long in office before they 
 ||v " showed their teeth." But even before they had time to per- 
 rj^f petrate any actual deed of intolerance or tyranny, the bigoted 
 corporation of Dublin hastened to show their confidence in the 
 new oppressors of their country, by presenting the freedom of the 
 city to the new viceroy, the duke of Richmond, in a gold, and to his 
 secretary, Sir Arthur Welleslcy, in a silver, box. The appropriate orator 
 on the occasion when these gifts were voted by the corporation was the 
 notorious, or infamous, Jack Giffard, who said, this was not the mere 
 compliment of custom, but a special recognition of their known deter- 
 mination "to maintain the Constitution in Church and State" — in other 
 words, to maintain the Ascendency party in the enjoyment of its exclu- 
 sive privileges and the Catholics in grinding servitude. 
 
 This Giffard was one whom, at a somewhat later period, our hero used 
 to lash with his most merciless invective. It may amuse the reader to 
 give Sir Jonah Barrington's account of the circumstances which first 
 brought this wretch originally an obscure, if not nameless, adventurer, 
 
 470 
 
.AMJES MTEE 
 

THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 471 
 
 then a struggling apothecary, before the public: "When I was at the 
 Dublin University," says Sir Jonah, "the students were wild and law- 
 less. Any offence to one was considered an offence to all; and as the 
 elder sons of most men of rank and fortune in Ireland were then edu- 
 cated in Dublin College, it was dangerous to meddle with so powerful a 
 set of students, who consequently did precisely what they chose (outside 
 of the college gates). If they conceived offence against anybody, the 
 collegians made no scruple of bringing the offender into the court and 
 pumping him well; and their unanimity and numbers were so great 
 that it was quite impossible any student could be selected for punish- 
 ment. In my time we used to break open what houses we pleased, 
 regularly beating the watch every night — except in one parish, which 
 we always kept in pay to lend us their poles wherewith to right the 
 others. In short, our conduct was outrageous ; and the first check 
 we ever received was from Giffard, who was a director of the watch, 
 and kept a shop close to the Parliament House. He having in some 
 way annoyed the collegians, they determined to pump Giffard; but they 
 reckoned without their host. He intrenched himself in his house, which 
 we assailed, breaking all his windows. He gave repeated Avarnings to 
 no purpose ; and a new assault being commenced, Giffard fired a pistol, 
 and a collegian was wounded in the wrist ; whereupon the besiegers im- 
 mediately retired from the fortress. It was a lucky shot for Giffard, who 
 immediately obtained some parochial office for his firmness, made him- 
 self of importance on every trifling subject, and harangued constantly 
 in the vestry. Of his subsequent progress I know nothing till about 
 the year 1790, when I found Giffard an attache" to the Castle in divers 
 capacities. He was afterwards placed in the revenue department, 
 became a common councilman, and at length high-sheriff; at which 
 time he acquired the title, which forsook him not, of ' the Dog in Office.' 
 He had a great deal of vulgar talent, a daring impetuosity, and he was 
 wholly indifferent to opinion. From first to last he fought his way 
 through the world, and finally worked himself up to be the most sturdy 
 partisan I ever recollect. His detestation of the Pope and his adoration 
 of King William he carried to an excess quite ridiculous — in fact, on 
 both subjects he seemed occasionally delirious." 
 
 It was at Sir Jonah Barrington's election, subsequently, during the 
 
472 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Liverpool administration, that Giffarcl, then sheriff of Dublin, on some 
 absurd grounds, objected to Grattan's vote. He dared to say, "We 
 want no rebels here." Grattan, on the spur of the moment, overwhelmed 
 the wretched being with the following terrible burst of invective: "Mr. 
 Sheriff, when I observe the quarter whence the imputation comes, I am 
 not astonished at it. It comes from the hireling traducer of his country, 
 the excommunicated of his fellow- citizens, the regal rebel, the unpun- 
 ished ruffian, the bigoted agitator! — in the city, a firebrand; in the 
 court, a liar; in the streets, a bully; in the field, a coward! and so des- 
 picable is he to the very party he wishes to espouse, that he is only tol- 
 erated by them for performing those execrable offices the less vile refuse 
 to execute." All Giffarcl could utter in reply was, " I would spit upon 
 him in a desert," It was with difficulty, next day, that Barrington 
 could persuade the fiery Grattan not to demean himself by sending the 
 caitiff a message, as if his concise but nervous philippic were not "sat- 
 isfaction" more than sufficient, "I must have a crack at the fellow," 
 Grattan would keep repeating for near an hour. 
 
 But to return to the "JSJo Popery" government. Their accession to 
 power aggravated the insolence of the Orange faction all through the 
 island. The Catholic people were more unhappy than before; their 
 leaders more despondent and disorganized ; their prospects more gloomy. 
 The government used extraordinary exertions to secure a majority in 
 the elections that preceded the assembling of the new Parliament. For 
 example, Mr. Ormsby, the solicitor for the forfeited estates in Ireland, 
 personally waited on Mr. James Grogan to bribe him to support the 
 ministerial candidates at the "Wexford election, by promising to restore 
 to the family all the forfeited estates of his late brother, Cornelius Gro- 
 gan. Sir Arthur Wellesley, indeed, declared that the Irish government 
 had given Mr. Ormsby no instructions on the subject. Sir Arthur Wel- 
 lesley lost no time in bringing in two bills to rivet the English chain 
 more securely and intolerably on the unfortunate country that gave him 
 birth. One- was an "Insurrection Act;" the other an "Arms Act." 
 It came out in the course of the debates that both these bills had actu- 
 ally been devised by the late pseudo-liberal government of Lord Gran- 
 ville, but there had not been time to pass them previous to the resigna- 
 tion of that ministry. Secretary Elliott and the popular Bedford had 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 473 
 
 recommended and now supported them. This fact places in a strong 
 light the easy, credulous good-nature of the Irish people, who have so 
 often failed to perceive that, in their dealings with Ireland, there is 
 little, if any, difference between the Whig and Tory parties;. 
 
 Both these truculent bills passed. It is melancholy to find Mr. 
 Grattan voting for the "Insurrection Act," which renewed the viceroy's 
 power to proclaim disturbed counties, and gave authority to magistrates 
 to arrest persons found out of their dwellings between sunset and sun- 
 rise. Grattan disliked Jacobinism and French principles, and he was 
 deluded by Secretary Elliott into believing that societies holding such 
 views and "secret meetings of a dark and dangerous description" 
 existed in Ireland. The support of this cruel measure greatly alienated, 
 as it was only natural it should, his friends in Ireland. However, he 
 strenuously opposed a clause in the bill which authorized magistrates 
 to enter houses by night, on suspicion that any of the inmates were 
 absent, or to give a warrant for a similar purpose to any one who might 
 say he had such a suspicion. Any persons absent might be appre- 
 hended as idle or disorderly, unless thc3 r could prove that they were 
 absent about their lawful occupations. " But who," Grattan exclaimed, 
 "were the persons to be vested with the power? Perhaps some lawless 
 miscreant — some vagabond. Perhaps the discretion of that reasonable 
 time was to be lodged in the bosom of some convenient menial, some 
 postilion, coachman, hostler or ploughboy, who, under the sanction of the 
 law, was to judge when it would be a reasonable time for him to rush 
 into the apartment of a female, while she was hastily throwing on her 
 clothes to open the door to this midnight visitor. This would give a 
 wound that would be felt long." The brilliant Sheridan nobly differed 
 from his friend Grattan and most of his party. He very pertinently 
 asked, "Would they state in the preamble of the bill, 'Whereas a very 
 small part of Ireland was some time ago disturbed by the Threshers, 
 and whereas that disturbance has been completely put down by the 
 ordinary course of the law, and Ireland is now completely tranquil, be 
 it therefore enacted, etc., That most extraordinary powers, etc. V " 
 Sheridan also opposed the Arms bill. He ridiculed it, saying, "Nothing 
 like a blacksmith was to exist in Ireland, lest he might possibly form 
 something like a pike." Considering the general spirit of the bill, he 
 
474 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 thought a clause only wanted to make it high treason to communicate 
 either of these bills to the French emperor, lest he should look on them 
 as direct invitations to him to visit that part of His Majesty's empire. 
 A parliamentary inquiry into the state of Ireland, moved for on the 14th 
 of August by Sheridan, was refused by the government. 
 
 The fame of the intolerant conduct of the "No Popery" cabinet 
 soon reached France. The bishop of Quimper, in a pastoral, contrasted 
 British intolerance with the absolute toleration accorded by Napoleon to 
 the various sects in his empire. English hypocrisy and cant were 
 painted in their true colors. Her religious fanaticism was unmasked, 
 and her cruel persecution of Ireland indignantly denounced. " See," he 
 writes, "the sufferings which England inflicts upon Ireland, which is 
 Catholic, like you, and subject to her dominion. The three last ages 
 present only the affecting picture of a people robbed of all their religious 
 and civil rights. In vain the most enlightened men of that nation have 
 protested against the tyrannical oppression. A new persecution has 
 ravished from them even the hope of seeing an end to their calamities. 
 An inflamed and misled people [the English) dares applaud such injus- 
 tice." The English government and press were furious at this pastoral, 
 which was assumed to be evidence of a Franco-Hibernian conspiracy. 
 They now resorted to base fabrications to rouse the "No Popery" spirit 
 to its utmost pitch of ferocity. It was stated by the government jour- 
 nals that a document, of a nature menacing to England and signed by 
 Napoleon and Talleyrand, had fallen into the hands of the ministers. 
 It was also mendaciously stated that the pope had issued a bull, exhort- 
 ing the "titular bishops" of Ireland to encourage devotion to the views 
 of Bonaparte, and that this bull was accompanied by a paper contain- 
 ing a solemn declaration of Napoleon, that he was determined to give 
 the religious ascendency in Ireland to the Roman Catholics. 
 
 These artifices of an unscrupulous government succeeded in stirring 
 up the bigots of the Ascendency faction. The cries of "No Popery" 
 and "The Church is in danger" rang through the island. The agrarian 
 or rural organizations of this year — called " Shanavests" or " Caravats" 
 — were represented to be secret political societies in the French interest. 
 In reality, these societies were simply the desperate efforts of a trampled 
 peasantry to resist the extortions of the tithe-system and of rack-rents. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 475 
 
 These two societies, so far from being associated in a political conspiracy, 
 vowed to belabor each other at fair and market. Mr. Plowden tells us 
 that "when the Insurrection and Arms bills passed into law, it is no 
 less true than singular that in all the counties then said to be disturbed, 
 not a single charge was to be found on the calendar of sedition or rnsitr- 
 gency at the preceding assizes." Competitors for the farms of old occu- 
 piers were the real objects of the hostility of both organizations; they 
 also desired to fix a general rate of tithes and rent. In truth the arm 
 of the ordinary law, which had succeeded in putting down the system 
 of the Threshers, would have sufficed to suppress these organizations 
 also without any recourse being had to the suspension of the consti- 
 tution. 
 
 To the credit of the Irish Protestants, for the honor of human nature 
 itself, the vile arts of the ministers failed to arouse quite as fell a spirit 
 of bigotry as they desired and expected. The Orange corporation of 
 Dublin, indeed, set an example of bigotry which was not generally fol- 
 lowed ; they entrusted a petition against the claims of the Catholics to 
 the duke of Cumberland for presentation in the House of Lords. Good 
 feeling, confidence in their Catholic brethren, a sense of the danger, 
 which a divided nation would have to meet in case of invasion by an 
 enemy, influenced the better-disposed and more sensible portion of the 
 Protestants of Ireland. The members of the University of Dublin did 
 not yield to the efforts made by the duke of Cumberland to intimidate 
 them into following the lead of Oxford in petitioning against the claims 
 of the Catholics. From nine counties the Irish Protestants sent in 
 petitions in favor of emancipation. Considering these and other facts, 
 it seems to me perfectly clear that, if the Irish Parliament had remained 
 in existence, the Catholics would have been completely emancipated 
 lung before '29. The free Irish Parliament had already, at one blow, 
 demolished more than half the fabric of penal legislation. On the 
 other hand, it was an Irish Parliament, completely enslaved to the 
 English legislature, that had lent itself to the odious work of building 
 up that stronghold of inhuman tyranny. 
 
 In the meetings of the Catholic committee, which took place about 
 this period, the Catholic leaders were generally divided on the question 
 whether or not they should then petition Parliament. This was the sub- 
 
I — 
 I 
 
 47G THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 ject of debate at a meeting held in January, 1808. Lord Fingal occu- 
 pied the chair. Some of the aristocratic leaders of the Catholics be- 
 lieved that the time was unfavorable for petitioning. The more demo- 
 cratic leaders, among whom O'Connell was every day becoming more 
 and more prominent, for the most part held the contrary opinion, and 
 thought that a petition should be forwarded to London at once. O'Con- 
 nell said, "The Catholics of every part of Ireland had been consulted. 
 . . . Numerous answers had been received from the most respectable 
 persons in all the counties, who all concurred in this one opinion, that 
 the petition should be forwarded without the smallest delay. . . . The 
 petition had not only the good wishes of our liberal and enlightened 
 Protestant brethren of Ireland, but some of them had expressed their 
 sentiments by a public resolution ; he alluded to that of the gentry of 
 the county of Tipperary. ... He regretted that he could not speak of 
 it" {the conduct of the Protestants) "in terms according with the grati- 
 tude of his heart. It reminded him, however, of that affectionate atten- 
 tion and care for the rights of Irishmen, which had induced the Irish 
 Protestants of the present generation to lighten the fetters of the Catho- 
 lic, and totally to emancipate the Presbyterian, a wise and magnani- 
 mous policy, which would have long since restored the Catholics to 
 complete freedom had their cause and their country been left in the 
 hands of Irish Protestants." [Here he was vehemently applauded.) 
 "Under those circumstances nothing but disunion among themselves 
 could ever retard the Catholic cause ; division, while it rendered them 
 the object of disgust to their friends, would make them the scorn and 
 ridicule of their enemies." 
 
 O'ConneU's views prevailed. It was finally resolved, unanimously, 
 that the petition should be presented to Parliament without delay. 
 Even though the administration was for the most part composed of ran- 
 corous bigots, there were certain reasons why the Catholics, at this time, 
 should have cherished some hopes of speedy success to their cause. The 
 power of Napoleon was just then at its greatest height. The British 
 empire was obliged to contend single-handed against nearly the whole 
 of Europe. The continental system, which now embraced even Pussia, 
 shut almost every European harbor against English commerce. Every 
 rational consideration, then, seemed to counsel the necessity of concil- 
 
iating the Irish Catholics. We have seen that numbers of their Prot- 
 estant countrymen had eagerly adopted this view. The " Protestant 
 declaration" in favor of a Catholic relief bill was signed by such im- 
 portant names as those of the marquis of Headfort, the earl of Ormond, 
 the earl of Meath, the earl of Bessborough, viscounts Clifton and Dillon, 
 and a crowd of other wealthy proprietors. 
 
 Accordingly, the earl of Fingal took the Catholic petition over to 
 London. He went around amongst the liberal members of both Houses 
 in search of a peer and a commoner who would be civil enough to present 
 the humble petition of himself and his co-religionists. This was a suffi- 
 ciently humiliating ordeal for the premier earl of Ireland to have to go 
 through. This chief of a house — the Plunkets — as old as the Danish 
 invasions, met with a rebuff from the duke of Portland, the descendant 
 of William the Third's Dutch favorite, Bentinck. Finally the noble 
 "Papist" asked Lord Grenville and Mr. Grattan to present it. It was 
 laid on the table of the House of Lords. When Henry Grattan offered 
 it in the Commons, Canning and Perceval, scrutinizing it sharply, de- 
 tected an informality. Several names appeared to be written by the 
 same hand. This, they contended, invalidated the petition. In conse- 
 quence of this objection it was not received by the House. 
 
 If the government, and the majority in Parliament who supported 
 them, were determined to withhold their rights from the Catholics, they 
 were also ready enough to curtail benefits already accorded and to add 
 insult to injury. The grant to the college of Maynooth was cut down 
 from thirteen thousand to nine thousand pounds. Sir John New- 
 port of Waterford and another Irishman, General Matthew, struggled 
 against this bigoted and beggarly stinginess. Two evangelicals — the 
 sanctimonious Perceval and that sublimely philanthropic stickler for the 
 emancipation of the blacks, the pious Mr. Wilberforce — gratified their 
 narrow feelings of hostility to Catholics by opposing those who desired 
 to continue the larger and more liberal grant. General Matthew boldly 
 attributed this paltriness to the sinister influence of that rancorous 
 prince, the duke of Cumberland. 
 
 Among the bitterest opponents of the Maynooth grant at this time 
 was that notorious champion of intolerance, Dr. Patrick Duigenan. This 
 firebrand had just been made a privy counsellor by the duke of Eich- 
 
478 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 mond, who thus signalized the commencement of his vice-regal career 
 (it was he also who had recommended the reduction of the Maynooth 
 grant) by acts hostile and insulting to the Catholics of Ireland. Duige- 
 nan said that his Catholic countrymen were always traitors in theory, and 
 wanted but the opportunity to be traitors in action. This brought down 
 on the head of the venomous bigot some merited expressions of indigna- 
 tion. Mr. Barham execrated such scandalous and wicked sentiments. 
 Then the government were sharply taken to task for having appointed 
 Duigenan a privy counsellor. Sir Arthur Wellesley defended the extraor- 
 dinary appointment. 
 
 This Patrick Duigenan was one of the most whimsical characters 
 that figured in that age of whimsical Irishmen. He was not without 
 courage and energy, ability and learning. But he was rough, vulgar, 
 violent and obstinate. To all appearance full of prejudices, not to be 
 vanquished by reason, he was the most bigoted and intemperate of par- 
 tisans. He was sufficiently fertile in sophistical arguments ; invective, 
 however, was the great element of all his harangues and writings. 
 Some doubted the sincerity of his apparent fanaticism on account of 
 the glaring inconsistency which was his strangest characteristic. In 
 private life his bigotry and intolerance seemed to lose all their mastery 
 over his conduct. Not merely were all his servants and a number of 
 acquaintances, who shared his hospitality and were generously assisted 
 by his purse, Catholics, but his first wife also belonged to the same 
 religion. Her sister, Miss Cusack, had been a nun before the French 
 Revolution ; this lady, too, lived with the eccentric doctor. Stranger 
 still, a Catholic ecclesiastic generally dwelt in the house of this outra- 
 geous defamer of Catholics, as confessor and domestic chaplain to the 
 ladies, and often did the honors of the right honorable bigot's table. 
 His person somewhat resembled his mind. His figure was stout, his 
 face, clever-looking but coarse, was expressive of the dogmatism of his 
 disposition. The intemperate virulence of his abuse of the Catholics 
 rather tended, in the end, to serve their cause and to damage that of 
 their antagonists, which he advocated with so much apparent zeal. In 
 other words, he put forward the principles of intolerance in their naked 
 hideousness. Sir Jonah Barrington, to whose sketch, drawn with his 
 usual felicity, I am indebted for this brief outline of his character, says, 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 47<j 
 
 in his "Anecdotes of the Union," that "Dnigenan had an honest heart, 
 a perverted judgment and an outrageous temper; and, as if he conceived 
 that right was wrong, he surlily endeavored to cloak his benevolence 
 under the rough garb of a rude misanthropy. In private society he was 
 often genial and convivial; and when his memory, his classic reading 
 and miscellaneous information were converted to the purposes of humor 
 and entertainment, they gave his conversation a quaint, joyous, eccen- 
 tric cast, highly entertaining to strangers, and still more pleasing to 
 those accustomed to the display of his versatilities." In composing 
 his rhapsodical productions he adopted a strange method. Folding a 
 sheet of paper in four leaves, he scribbled away hurriedly on both sides 
 of each leaf, and then sent the closely-written manuscript to the printers 
 without reading it over or correcting a word. He was determined to 
 print whatever came uppermost, which he considered likely to be best 
 and sure to be most natural. Such was the Eight Honorable Patrick 
 Duigenan. 
 
 To return to the Catholic Committee. It may not be amiss, at this 
 point, briefly to notice the men who were the chief leaders, in those days, 
 of the two sections of the Catholic body. I shall begin with the aristo- 
 cratic party, who were less vigorous in their plans of action than the 
 democratic section, were averse to going too fast, were generally desirous 
 that the committee should keep back their petitions till the arrival of 
 some more favorable time, and who also, when the veto question came 
 up, recommended the concession to the king of the right of having a 
 veto on the appointment of the Catholic bishops. 
 
 Of this aristocratic section of the committee his high rank made the 
 earl of Fingal — who, descended from one of the Scandinavian sea-kings 
 of the old days prior to the Norman invasion, was the premier earl of 
 Ireland — ostensibly at least, the chief personage. He seems to have 
 been a highly -polished and amiable gentleman, high-minded and patri- 
 otically inclined ; not wanting in personal courage, but at the same time 
 weak and credulous. He was in frequent communication with the lead- 
 ing statesmen of the time, who probably were sometimes able to play 
 upon his unsuspicious nature so far as to learn the designs and influence 
 the policy of the Catholic body. I do not, however, see any valid reason 
 to doubt the honor and integrity of this nobleman's intentions. As it 
 
 31 
 
480 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 was all along his interest, more perhaps than that of most other Cath- 
 olics, to see emancipation achieved, so it is reasonable to believe that it 
 was his sincere and constant desire to aid in bringing about that result 
 according to the best of his ability and judgment. 
 
 Two other Catholic noblemen, the lords Ffrench and Trimleston. took 
 a very prominent part in the movement of those days. The former 
 wanted the cultivated manners of Lord Fingal; he seems, indeed, to 
 have been somewhat rough in his bearing and careless in his attire; but, 
 on the other hand, he possessed more force of character and energy than 
 his brother-peer. In spite of an imperfect education, he had consider- 
 able natural ability, was by no means destitute of wit and power of sar- 
 casm. Upon the whole, however, his character repelled rather than 
 attracted. He was fierce and proud. His subsequent fate was tragic 
 in the extreme. In consequence of a financial crash (his lordship was 
 a banker), he committed suicide. 
 
 Lord Trimleston had received his education in France. He appears 
 to have been somewhat vain and affected, even foppish. He was fond 
 of boasting of the "patrician blood" of the Barnewells (Barnewell was 
 his lordship's family name). These three noblemen were willing, if not 
 anxious, to concede the power of the veto to the king. For this, and 
 possibly other, reasons, they are remembered with little favor or grati- 
 tude by the Irish people. There were other aristocrats who then took 
 more or less part in the affairs of the committee— Lords Gormanstown 
 and Netterville, and the Bellows, the baronet and his brother, the pen- 
 sioned counsellor. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say here that there was no intellect, in the 
 more democratic section of the committee, at all approaching O'Con- 
 nell's. If, however, he towered intellectually over all his associates, as 
 much as the divine Achilles, in bodily stature, over the other Homeric 
 chieftains, still some of the other popular leaders were men of very con- 
 siderable, if not very high, abilities. 
 
 John Keogh, of whom I have so often had occasion to make honorable 
 mention, had not yet wholly retired from the field of agitation. It was 
 not till the year 1810 that, the leadership finally passing from his 
 hands, he withdrew from public life, and left our hero, without any rival, 
 the recognized leader of the Catholics. I shall have occasion before 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 481 
 
 long to refer to Keogh's last interview with O'Connell. The liberator 
 does not deny that his predecessor in the leadership of the Catholics 
 rendered good service to their cause. Keogh was a man of ability, 
 integrity and courage. 
 
 Another Catholic leader of distinguished ability, in those days, was 
 Denis Scully, a barrister and author of the valuable " Statement of the 
 Penal Laws," a man of grave, thoughtful and statesman -like intellect. 
 Then the gay and combative Peter Bodkin Hussey contrasted strikingly 
 with the solid counsellor Scully. Of the character of the red-haired 
 Hussey the reader has already seen a sketch from the lips of O'Connell. 
 
 James Bernard Ciinche and Dr. Dromgoole were influential in the 
 Catholic councils from their extensive learning. The reading of both 
 was chiefly of an abstruse and out-of-the-way kind. Mr. Ciinche was 
 a black-letter lawyer. He was not merely deep in the science of juris- 
 prudence, but in that of theology also. He was an able writer, though 
 his style seems to have been occasionally vicious in point of taste and 
 swollen with forced conceits and metaphors. Mr. Ciinche was the 
 author of many of the addresses and resolutions, that in those times 
 were issued in the name of the Catholic bishops. He spoke almost as 
 ably as he wrote, but his oratory had pretty much the same defects as 
 his writings. It had little about it that could attract a popular audi- 
 ence. Indeed, we are told by Wyse that such listeners often deemed 
 his eloquence and learning, in the words of Shakespeare, " weary, stale, 
 flat and unprofitable." Truths that people already feel keenly in their 
 hearts, they naturally think it a waste of logic to have laboriously 
 demonstrated to their intellects. Many a barrister, vastly inferior to 
 Mr. Ciinche in merit, whose intellect that gentleman justly enough 
 deemed light and flimsy, outstripped him in the race for professional 
 success, and probably regarded him as a ponderous jiedant. The intel- 
 lect of the large-headed, bushy-browed Dr. Dromgoole was cast in a 
 somewhat similar mould. The logic of the schools was his delight; 
 Thomas Aquinas his favorite author. He was nicknamed the Duigc- 
 nan of the Catholic party. Perhaps (premising, however, that he was 
 somewhat more a man of the world than Adams) his learned eccentrici- 
 ties bore some partial resemblance to those of Fielding's hero, Parson 
 Adams. At all events, he was, in many respects, a man of another age 
 
482 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 than that in which he lived. He was honest and zealous, courageous 
 in maintaining his peculiar views. A sort of rivalry existed between 
 him and the learned Clinche ; they differed about church-government. 
 On this subject Mr. Clinche had written a work of ponderous erudition, 
 with a view chielly to prove that bishops should have the right of 
 appointing their own successors whenever the pope waived his preroga- 
 tive of appointing them himself. 
 
 Counsellor Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman (the uncle, as I said before, 
 of Richard O'Gorman, the '48 rebel, iioav an eminent barrister in New 
 York) was also prominent among the leading Catholics in these earlier 
 days of O'Connell's political life. He was a large, ungraceful-looking 
 man, with a strong voice and a careless delivery in speaking. The 
 matter, however, was superior to the manner. It was sensible and 
 seasoned with a dry wit. O'Connell used waggishly to say that, when- 
 ever O'Gorman meditated delivering a speech which "should resound 
 through the world," he was sure to case his stout legs in a pair of white 
 silk stockings, striped with black. It would appear that this style of 
 costume for his legs was adopted in imitation of Earl Grey. He had 
 once accompanied, as their secretary, a deputation that waited on the 
 earl. On this occasion he had observed, with an intense interest more 
 becoming a flunkey than a patriot leader, that the earl's shanks were 
 sheathed in white silk stockings, striped with black. Ever after he is 
 stated to have arrayed his legs similarly, whenever he was about to 
 make an extraordinary effort of oratory. Perhaps, as Othello believed 
 in the virtue of that peculiar handkerchief which " an Egyptian did his 
 mother give," so Mr. O'Gorman had faith in the mystic efficacy of white 
 silk stockings, striped with black, to brighten the harangues of a popu- 
 lar orator. 
 
 O'Connell told Mr. Daunt the following anecdote about Counsellor 
 O'Gorman: "O'Gorman, previously to emancipation, was one of the 
 most violent out-and-out partisans of the Catholic party. He often 
 declared that I didn't go far enough. We were once standing together 
 in the inn at Ennis, and I took up a prayer-book which lay in the 
 window and said, kissing it, 'By virtue of this book I will not take 
 place or office from the government until emancipation is carried. Now, 
 Purcell, my man ! will you do as much ?' Purcell O'Gorman put the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 483 
 
 book to his lips, but immediately put it away, saying, 'T won't swear; 
 I needn't! my word is as good as my oath — I am sure of my own 
 fidelity!' When Chief-Baron O'Grady heard this story, he remarked, 
 ' They were both quite right. Government has nothing worth O'Con- 
 nell's while to take until emancipation be carried ; but anything at all 
 would be good enough for Purcell O'Gorman.' " 
 
 Another of O'Connell's reminiscences of this gentleman is still more 
 Some waggish barrister once accused O'Gorman of being a 
 
 amusing 
 
 musician. He denied the charge stoutly. 
 
 "A jury," said O'Connell, relating the occurrence in the committee- 
 room of the Repeal Association, "was thereupon impannelled to try the 
 defendant, who persisted in pleading ' Not guilty ' to the indictment for 
 melodious practices. The jury consisted of Con Lyne, under twelve dif- 
 ferent aliases — such as 'Con of the Seven Bottles,' 'Con of the Seven 
 Throttles,' 'Crim. Con.' and so forth. The prosecutor then proceeded to 
 interrogate the defender: 'By virtue of your oath, Mr. O'Gorman, did 
 you never play on any musical instrument?' 'Never, on my honor,' 
 replied Purcell. 'Come, sir, recollect yourself. By virtue of your oath, 
 did you never play second fiddle to O'Connell ?' The fact was too noto- 
 rious to admit of any defence, and the unanimous jury accordingly 
 returned a verdict of guilty." 
 
 That extraordinary humorist, my friend, the late Father Kenyon, the 
 well-remembered parish priest of Templederry, in the North Riding of 
 the county Tipperary, told me another odd anecdote about this Nicholas 
 Purcell O'Gorman. He was once asked to dine with the judges — Dogh- 
 erty and Crampton, if I remember rightly — during some assizes, perhaps 
 at Ennis, the county-town of Clare. It happened to be a day of absti- 
 nence in the Catholic Church. The judges, being Protestants, had never 
 adverted to this circumstance, so that no fish was provided. When they 
 had sat down to table, one of the judges asked O'Gorman what would he 
 be helped to. "Oh!" quoth O'Gorman, "I'll take some of that salmon 
 you've got before you ;" and he pointed to a joint of roast mutton. 
 The fact of its being a day of abstinence at once Hashed across the mind 
 of the judge. He reddened, became embarrassed and began to stammer 
 forth long-winded apologies. The other judge — Crampton, I believe; 
 however, the name is of little consequence — after a minute or so, inter- 
 
rupted the speaker quite coolly, and said, pointing to the dish, "Can't 
 you just do what Mr. 0' Gorman asks you to do? Just help him to some 
 of that salmon before you." The other ceased his apologies; in a few 
 seconds they all began to laugh heartily, and the judge, relieved from 
 his embarrassment, helped Mr. 0' Gorman to a portion of the salmon 
 before him. 
 
 It was not till a period somewhat later than 1808 that the noted 
 "Jack Lawless" became conspicuous in the Catholic movement. How- 
 ever, I may as well give O'Connell's opinion of him here. Later I shall 
 quote Richard Lalor Shiel's entertaining sketch of him, as he appeared 
 at the Clare election. 
 
 Mr. Daunt asked O'Connell his opinion of "Jack Lawless" as a public 
 speaker. 
 
 "He began admirably," replied O'Connell, "and proceeded wretch- 
 edly. His first four or five sentences were exceedingly good — the lan- 
 guage excellent, the sentiments impressive, the delivery admirable. 
 But then he began to fail, and continued to the end in a strain of inco- 
 herence. Sometimes, indeed, he got off right well — that is, if he was 
 interrupted near the outset. He would then reiterate his opening points 
 with excellent effect, and with the spirit which the stimulus of a little 
 brushing opposition infused into his manner. 
 
 " But Jack was an unpleasant sort of fellow to transact public 
 business with. One day in committee Jack told us he meant to bring 
 publicly forward at that day's meeting a certain topic, which I was of 
 opinion it would be infinitely wiser and more prudent to leave in the 
 shade. I expressed that opinion very strongly, and was backed by 
 many persons. Lawless seemed reluctant to acquiesce, but at last he 
 said, 'O'Connell, you are right — I see you are quite right; I shall 
 say nothing on that subject at the meeting.' I thanked him for his 
 acquiescence, and in order to make assurance doubly sure, 1 said to him 
 as we were passing through the little boarded entry into the great room, 
 
 " 'Now, Jack, you'll be sure to hold your tongue about that affair?' 
 
 " ' Do you mean to doubt my word ?' retorted Jack, rather angrily. 
 'Have I not promised to be silent? I consider my honor as pledged.' 
 [ was quite satisfied, and we went in. I moved somebody into the chair, 
 and sat down to look over a letter, when up started Jack, and dashed 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 485 
 
 full into the topic upon which he had just promised silence ! Of course 
 I had to draw the sword upon him in reply." 
 
 Mr. Daunt adds: "This wayward and unmanageable gentleman 
 greatly liked the excitement of a skirmish. I am told that after receiv- 
 ing a severe castigation from O'Connell, he would ski]) into the com- 
 mittee-room, rubbing his hands in the highest glee, and exclaiming, 
 'Well, had not we a nice debate?' " 
 
 The Catholic petition, which had been rejected by the House of Com- 
 mons on account of the informality of the signatures, was now sent back 
 from Ireland, properly signed, and presented to the House on the 25th 
 of May, 1808, by Henry Grattan. He showed the absurd inconsistency 
 of the English government in having conceded to the Catholics the right 
 to vote for members of Parliament and to hold all military and civil 
 offices, except about fifty situations and seats in either house of Parlia- 
 ment, and to exclude them from those seats in Parliament on the ground 
 that they were perjurers on principle and did not respect the obligations 
 of oaths; .... "that is to say, that those persons so admitted by the 
 law into the constitution, forming a part of your army and navy, arc 
 destitute of the principles which hold together the social order, and 
 which form the foundation of government, and that they are thus 
 depraved by their religion." 
 
 But the important part of Mr. Grattan' s speech, which it is abso- 
 lutely necessary to introduce into this biography, from its influence in 
 bringing about events in which our hero took the most conspicuous part, 
 is the following passage: "And here I have a proposition to make — a 
 proposition which the Catholics have authorized me to make; it is this: 
 that in the future nomination of bishops His Majesty may interfere and 
 exercise his royal privilege, and that no Catholic bishop be appointed 
 without the entire approbation of His Majesty. In France the king used 
 to name ; in Canada the king names ; it is by no means incompatible 
 with the Catholic religion that our king should name; and I do not see 
 any great difficulty on this head." 
 
 This is the origin of the celebrated question of the veto, which occa- 
 sioned so many debates in the Catholic Committee, so much controversy 
 in writing as well as in speech, and so much dissension and bad blood in 
 the Catholic body for a number of years. Lord Fingal had remained in 
 
London after the first rejection of the petition. He had got into com- 
 munication with some Mends of the Catholics, especially Mr. Ponsonby. 
 Anxious to hasten the emancipation of the Catholics, he had let himself 
 be deluded into the belief that, if the Catholics would submit to a royal 
 veto on the appointment of their bishops, the success of the Catholic 
 cause would be greatly facilitated. Fortified in this conviction by the 
 advice of Dr. Milner, the learned controversialist, who was an English 
 vicar-apostolic, and also a sort of agent in England for the Irish Catholic 
 bishops, Lord Fingal, in conjunction with this English prelate, ventured 
 to authorize Messrs. Grattan and Ponsonby to offer, on the part of the 
 Catholics, the right of the veto to the Crown. Lord Fingal had indeed 
 got powers from the Catholics of Ireland to manage their petition, but 
 they had never for a moment imagined that he would make such an 
 offer as this of the veto. 
 
 For the present, in spite of the offer, the bigotry of Perceval and his 
 majorities caused the rejection of the petition. 
 
 It appears that in 1799 ten of the Irish bishops, constituting the 
 board of Maynooth College, allowed themselves to be deluded by Pitt 
 and Castlereagh to agree, " That in the appointment of Roman Catholic 
 prelates to vacant sees within the kingdom, such interference of govern- 
 ment as may enable it to be satisfied of the loyalty of the person ap- 
 pointed is just, and ought to be agreed to." This statement was accom- 
 panied with an admission, "That a provision through government for the 
 Roman Catholic clergy of this kingdom, competent and secured, ought 
 to be thankfully accepted." This transaction never came fully to light 
 till 1810. The reverend Father Brenan, in his "Ecclesiastical History," 
 seems to think it natural that the prelates should try to conceal this 
 transaction, especially when they found themselves " swindled," by Mr. 
 Pitt and the other British statesmen, "out of the stipulated price of their 
 seduction" to the support of the accursed measure of the union. 
 
 Leaving this negotiation of 1799 and returning to the year 1808, 
 the Irish Catholics were filled with indignation at the prospect of the 
 British government's being able to extend its corrupting influence over 
 their "virtuous hierarchy." Clergy and people were determined to 
 maintain their Church's independence of the State. The Irish Catholic 
 prelates, warned and alarmed by the roar of popular indignation, met 
 
THE LIKE OF DAXTEL O'CONNELL. 487 
 
 in regular national synod on the 14th and 15th of September, 1808, in 
 Dublin, and passed the following resolutions: " It is the decided opinion 
 of the Roman Catholic prelates of Ireland, that it is inexpedient to 
 introduce any alteration in the canonical mode hitherto observed in the 
 nomination of the Irish Roman Catholic bishops, which mode long 
 experience has proved to be unexceptionable, wise and salutary. 
 
 " That the Roman Catholic prelates pledge themselves to adhere to 
 the rules by which they have been hitherto uniformly guided — namely, 
 to recommend to His Holiness only such persons as are of unimpeach- 
 able loyalty and peaceable conduct." These synodical resolutions bore 
 the signatures of twenty-three prelates. Three dissented; they had 
 signed the resolutions of 1799. 
 
 Meetings were held all through the island to protest against the 
 veto scheme. The bishops were thanked for their resolutions. The 
 people w T ere resolved rather to remain without emancipation than sutler 
 the British government to acquire any control over their Church. The 
 press swarmed with pamphlets. Of all this opposition to the veto 
 O'Connell was from first to last the commanding spirit. Dr. Milncr, 
 after the use of his name in Parliament, published a statement, that he 
 had no authority to sanction any such arrangement as would confer the 
 power of the veto on the king, and complaining that he had been mis- 
 quoted. After the Irish bishops had published their resolutions, this 
 eminent prelate became one of the most vehement and uncompromising 
 opponents of the veto. We shall see instances of his opposition before 
 this biography reaches its conclusion. 
 
 I shall here, for the sake of a little variety, give a comical explana- 
 tion of the meaning of the veto, which was given by a friar in 1813. 
 The poor friar was announcing a meeting on the vexed question of this 
 terrible veto. The story is one of O'Connell's. 
 
 " 'Now, ma boughali,'' said the friar, 'you haven't got gumption, and 
 should therefore be guided by them that have. This meeting is all 
 about the veto, d'ye see. And now, as none of ye know what the veto is, 
 I'll just make it all as clear as a whistle to yez. The veto, you see, is a 
 Latin word, ma boughali, and none of yez understands Latin. But / will 
 let you know all the ins and outs of it, boys, if you'll only just listen to 
 me now. The veto is a thing that — you see, boys, the veto is a thing 
 
488 THE LI FE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 that — that the meeting on Monday is to be held about.' (Here there 
 were cheers and cries of 'hear! hear!') 'The veto is a thing that — in 
 short, boys, it's a thing that has puzzled wiser people than any of yez ! 
 In short, boys, as none of yez are able to comprehend the veto, I needn't 
 take up any more of your time about it now; but I'll give you this 
 piece of advice, boys : just go to the meeting and listen to Counsellor 
 O'Connell, and just do whatever he bids yez, boys !' " 
 
 Wyse, speaking of Lord Fingal's conference with Mr. Ponsonby and 
 other supporters of the Catholic cause, says : " These conferences after- 
 ward proved of the most injurious consequence to the Catholic commu- 
 nity. Whether from inadvertence or zeal or injudicious submission to 
 the opinions of parliamentary advisers, Lord Fingal appears precipi- 
 tately to have consented to the proposition of a measure for which cer- 
 tainly he had no adequate or specific authority from the body itself." 
 Most of the Catholic aristocracy took the side of Lord Fingal in this 
 transaction ; thus the misunderstanding between the aristocratic and 
 popular sections of the Catholic body increased daily, and their cause 
 was consequently weakened for the time. 
 
 I shall here give, without any comment, a curious passage from a 
 letter of the then Irish secretary, Sir Arthur Wellesley, written to Lord 
 Hawkesburv on the 4th of February, 1808, shortly before this affair of 
 thereto. Sir Arthur writes : " I understand that the English Catholics 
 have lately made some endeavors to unite their cause with the Irish of 
 the same persuasion. The Irish appear to hope to derive some advan- 
 tage from this union of interests, of which it can only be said that, if it 
 should be made, it will inoculate them with more religion, and may have 
 the effect of moderating their party violence, and, at all events, it will 
 give us an additional channel for knowing their secrets.'' 1 As the English 
 Catholics were far more willing to accord the veto than the Irish, and as, 
 moreover, they were, generally speaking, little favorable to democratic 
 principles, it is more than probable that Lord Fingal's readiness to con- 
 cede to the Crown the right of interference with episcopal appointments 
 was mainly brought about by the influence of their views. In fact, we 
 have seen that he took the advice of Dr. Milner, an English bishop, 
 before he committed himself. 
 
 Sir Arthur Wellesley did not remain much longer in his post of chief 
 
secretary of Ireland. In this year, 1808, lie commenced that career of 
 victory in Spain which gradually conducted him to the height of military 
 renown. In his Irish administration he neither won, nor deserved to 
 win, any share of the gratitude of his countrymen. He made himself a 
 willing instrument of oppression, not, perhaps, of altogether as ruthless 
 a nature as that which prevailed under the rule of some of his prede- 
 cessors, but, at the same time, unnecessarily harsh and unjust. But 
 what is most surprising of all — considering that he has contrived to get 
 the reputation (and, in some respects, at least, it is not wholly unmer- 
 ited) of being a man with a strong sense of duty, of being a man also 
 straightforward and honest — is to see the aptitude, and even inclination, 
 which he showed, while Irish secretary, for doing the dirty work of cor- 
 ruption. He engages con amove in the task of purchasing the foul ser- 
 vices of spies and informers, superintending and directing himself the 
 necessary negotiations. He also seems to have undertaken the chief 
 management of the corrupt traffic in parliamentary votes and seats and 
 influence. He coolly calls this sort of thing "turning the moral weak- 
 ness of individuals to good account" — "good account" meaning simply 
 the triumph of his party's schemes, good, bad or indifferent. 
 
 Here is one of his precious letters on the subject of corrupting the 
 press. It is addressed to Sir Charles Saxton, Bart., and is dated 10th 
 April, 1809 : " I am one of those who think that it will be very dan- 
 gerous to allow the press in Ireland to take care of itself, particularly as 
 it lias been so long in leading-strings. I would, therefore, recommend 
 that in iDroportion as you diminish the profits of the better kinds of 
 newspapers, such as the Correspondent and the Freeman 's Journal, and 
 some others of that class, on account of proclamations, you should 
 increase the sum they are allowed to charge on account of advertise- 
 ments and other publications. It is absolutely necessary, however, to 
 keep the charge within the sum of ten thousand pounds p>er annum." 
 The great warrior, even amid all the anxieties and preoccupations of his 
 Portuguese and Spanish campaigns, could keep his attention alive to, and 
 i.na eye fixed on, the congenial business of corrupting the Irish press. 
 
 On the 12th of January, in the same year, that secret agent in dirty 
 affairs of state, to whom I have already slightly referred in a former 
 chapter, J. Pollock of Kavan, writes thus to Sir Arthur: "If you have 
 
490 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 Walter Cox, who keeps a small book-shop in Anglesea street, he can let 
 yon into the whole object of sending this book" ("Pieces of Irish His- 
 tory," by William James McNevin, New York) "to Ireland at this time; 
 and further, if you have not Cox, believe me, no sum of money, at all 
 within reason, would be amiss in riveting him to government. I have 
 spoken of this man before to Sir Edward Littlehales and to Sir Charles 
 Saxton. He is the most able, and, if not secured, by far the most for- 
 midable, man that I know of in Ireland. The talk we have had about 
 Catholic emancipation is wholly, with the great body of the Catholics, a 
 cloak to cover their real object. Their real objects are political power, 
 the Church estates, and the Protestant property in Ireland." 
 
 O'Connell had but a poor opinion of the celebrated "Iron Duke." 
 Tlie duke was certainly an indifferent enough character, if we regard 
 him only in the light of an Irishman. Indeed, we may call him a deci- 
 dedly bad Irishman. But, viewing him from other points of view, he 
 appears to greater advantage ; so that, upon the whole, I am inclined 
 to think 0"Conneli unjust in holding such a disparaging estimate of 
 Wellington as, judging from his words on various occasions, he did. 
 
 " I have two faults to find with him," says O'Connell. " One is, that 
 I never yet heard of his promoting any person in the army from mere 
 merit, unless backed by some interest. The second fault is, that the 
 duke has declared that the only misfortune of his life is his being an 
 Irishman. There is a meanness, a paltriness, in this, incompatible with 
 greatness of soul. But abstractedly from sentiment he may be right 
 enough; for, great as his popularity and power have been in England, 
 I have no doubt they would have been infinitely greater if he had been 
 an Englishman. John Bull's adoration would have been even more 
 intense and devoted if the idol had not been a Paddy." 
 
 O'Connell had in his possession the original of a curious letter, 
 written by the marquis of Wellesley, the famous duke's almost equally 
 famous eldest brother, to a Mr. Mockler of Trim. It is a reply to an 
 application made by that gentleman to the writer (then only earl of 
 Mornington) to procure a commission in the army for his son. The sub- 
 sequently all-powerful statesman — at one time viceroy of India, now r 
 minister of foreign affairs, anon lord-lieutenant of Ireland — apologizes 
 to Mr. Mockler for his utter inability to help him to the object of his 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 491 
 
 desire. His excuse is, that "commissions are so hard to be got, that 
 his brother Arthur s name 11 {the name of the future victor of Waterloo, 
 prince, duke, peer of Great Britain, marshal in I forget hoio many services) 
 "had been two years upon the list, and he had not yet got an appointment." 
 
 If Arthur had failed to get this commission, how many events in 
 European history, but especially in English and Irish history, would 
 have turned out quite differently ! 
 
 But to return to the question of the veto. It may not be out of place 
 to quote some remarks of the illustrious Edmund Burke which have a 
 direct bearing on the subject and are replete with that great statesman's 
 usual profound political wisdom. In his Letter to a Peer he says : "Never 
 were the members of one religious sect fit to appoint pastors to another. 
 Those who have no regard for their welfare, reputation or internal quiet 
 will not appoint such as are proper. The seraglio of Constantinople is 
 as equitable as we are, whether Catholics or Protestants, and, where 
 their own sect is concerned, fully as religious ; but the sport which they 
 make of the miserable dignities of the Greek Church, the factions of the 
 harem to which they make them subservient, the continual sale to which 
 they expose and re-expose the same dignity, and by which they squeeze 
 all the inferior orders of the clergy, is nearly equal to all the other 
 oppressions together exercised by Mussulmans over the unhappy mem- 
 bers of the Oriental Church. It is a great deal to suppose that the 
 present Castle would nominate bishops for the Roman Church of Ireland 
 with a religious regard for its welfare. Perhaps they cannot, perhaps 
 dare not, do it." Again, in a letter to Dr. Hussey, the Catholic bishop 
 of Waterford,he says: "If you (the Catholic bishops) have not wisdom 
 enough to make common cause, they will cut you off one by one. I am 
 sure that the constant meddling of your bishops and clergy with the 
 Castle, and the Castle with them, will infallibly set them ill with their own 
 body. All the weight which the clergy have hitherto had to keep the 
 people quiet will be wholly lost if this once should happen. At best 
 you will have a marked schism, and more than one kind, and I am 
 greatly mistaken if this is not intended and diligently and systematically 
 pursued." 
 
 Some individuals of the extreme National party of Ireland have 
 sometimes wished that the English government would get hold of the 
 
492 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Catholic clergy and make them a salaried body. They argue that the 
 clergy would, in that case, lose all political influence whatsoever, and 
 they would no longer be in a position to throw obstacles in the way of 
 the patriots who struggle to put an end to British connection. But a 
 fallacy pervades all these speculations. It is not quite certain that the 
 clergy would, in the supposed case, lose their political influence ; and if 
 they did not, under such circumstances it would be exercised in a way 
 more ruinous to the designs of Irish nationalists than ever. As things 
 actually stand, if the Irish people were truly in earnest and went the 
 right way to work for independence, they would encounter little opposi- 
 tion from the clergy — in fact, they would be sure to carry them along 
 with them. One probable cause of the lukewarmness of the clergy to 
 our national struggles is their scepticism as to the sincerity and devotion 
 of the leaders and followers engaged therein. In speaking of the pos- 
 sible good or evil, that might result from the state-payment of the Cath- 
 olic clergy of Ireland, I have omitted the consideration of the injury, 
 that might result to the religion and morality as well of the people as 
 of the clergy themselves. 
 
 At the close of the parliamentary session of 1808, Lord Grenville 
 made a motion that Catholic merchants should be made eligible to the 
 posts of governor or directors of the Bank of Ireland. Against this 
 proposal a perfect howl of bigotry arose in the enlightened British legis- 
 lature. Lord Westmoreland said, "that no further concessions whatever 
 should, under present circumstances, be granted to the Catholics." He 
 also gave Lord Grenville and the "Whigs a smart rap. He said, " He 
 was surprised to see such motions so often brought forward by those 
 who, when they were themselves in power, employed every exertion to 
 deprecate and prevent such discussions." Whigs out of place are the 
 champions of Irish grievances ; in office they almost invariably become 
 what O'Connell styled them, "the base, bloody and brutal Whigs." 
 The bigoted Redesdale, ex-Irish chancellor, fell into a state of panic at 
 the danger which would inevitably menace the Protestant interest, if such 
 a monstrous innovation took place as to allow Papists to become bank 
 directors. He said, " The more you were ready to grant them, the more 
 power and pretensions you gave to the Catholics to come forward with 
 fresh claims, and perhaps to insist upon them." This sage counsellor 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 493 
 
 then proceeded to abuse the Catholics in general and their priests in 
 particular. 
 
 But if the brutal insolence and bigotry of the Tories refused to the 
 Catholics even so paltry a concession as that proposed by Lord Grenville, 
 they had no hesitation about giving Dublin a new police bill. This bill, 
 along with its other merits, gave scope for a little jobbing, as it created 
 eighteen new places for police magistrates. The session of Parliament 
 terminated on the 8th of July, 1808, having done no good for Ireland, 
 but, on the contrary, having perpetrated against her a more than average 
 amount of British oppression. 
 
 Meanwhile the veto question still excited the general mind of Ireland 
 and set her patriots by the ears. In the words of Mr. Mitchel, " These 
 debates at once raised an immense controversy, both in England and in 
 Ireland, which lasted many years, and produced innumerable books and 
 pamphlets, discussing the limits between spiritual and temporal power, 
 the meaning of loyalty and of the oath of supremacy, and "the liberties 
 of the Galilean Church!" 
 
 In the midst of all this turmoil, our hero grew daily both in power 
 and in fame. In the next chapter we shall see him at length the recog- 
 nized leader of his countrymen. His policy was not, like that of the 
 aristocratic section of the Catholics, one of delay and of withholding 
 petitions. On the contrary, it was aggressive, it was a policy of imme- 
 diate and untiring effort and action. In a word, O'Connell's continual 
 cry, from this time forward, was, "Agitate, agitate, agitate!"* 
 
 * The books to which I am indebted for the materials of the foregoing chapter are : " The His- 
 tory of Ireland from its Union with Great Britain, in January, 1801, to October 1810," by Francis 
 Plowden, Esq. ; Wyse's " History of the Catholic Association ;" Mitchel 's " Continuation of McGe- 
 oghegan ;" Father Brenan's "Ecclesiastical History of Ireland ;" " Wellington Correspondence;" 
 " Grattan's Speeches ;" " Works of Edmund Burke;" Barrington's "Personal Sketches;" "Select 
 Speeches of Daniel O'Connell," by his son John; Fagau's "Life of O'Connell;" O'Neill Daunt's 
 'Personal Recollections;" "Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell," etc., Dublin, John Mullany, 1 
 Parliament street, etc. etc. etc, 
 
CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 Orange murders and massacres — Fight between the Kings county militia and the 
 Orange yeomanry — The " No-Popery " government connive at the Orange atroci- 
 ties — Insurrection acts — Assemblage of Orange delegates in 1808 — Disingenuous- 
 ness of the leading orangemen — o'connell on the orangemen — government par- 
 TIALITY — Double-dealing and hypocrisy of the duke of Richmond — His tour 
 
 THROUGH MUNSTER — He OFFENDS THE BaNDON ORANGE LEGION BY HIS MOCK CONCILIA- 
 TION of Catholics — Viceregal smooth talk and Catholic gullibility — Religious 
 
 PERSECUTION OF CATHOLICS IN THE ARMY — O'CONNELL SPEAKS AGAINST TITHES IN HIS 
 NATIVE COUNTY — REORGANIZATION OF THE CATHOLIC COMMITTEE IN 1S09 — O'CONNELL's 
 FORESIGHT — THE VETO QUESTION AGITATED AGAIN — TlIE CATHOLIC PETITION REJECTED BY 
 
 Parliament — Chief-Baron Woulfe — His elaborate oration on the veto demol- 
 ished by O'Connell; O'Connell's humorous application of an old fable — Repeal 
 motion in the Protestant Corporation of Dublin in 1810 — The Catholics join in 
 the demand for repeal — great meeting in the exchange — o'connell's power- 
 FUL SPEECH IN FAVOR OF REPEAL — JOHN KeOGH RETIRES FROM THE LEADERSHIP OF THE 
 
 Catholic body, and Daniel O'Connell succeeds him — New programme — O'Connell 
 on his own frequent repetitions — hopeless insanity of george the third — tlie 
 Prince of Wales becomes prince-regent — Great hopes of emancipation — Bitter 
 disappointment of the catholics; the regent breaks his pledges — lady hert- 
 FORD'S EVIL INFLUENCE — WeLLESLEY Pole's CIRCULAR — STATE PROSECUTION OF Dr. 
 
 Sheridan — Spirited conduct of the Catholic Committee — Meeting in Fishamble 
 street Theatre. 
 
 „^|4^ ; KIIILE the Catholic Committee, during the years between 1803 
 rap^K an d 1809, Ave re thus endeavoring, with more or less energy, to 
 
 *M^MzM awaken public feeling and sympathy in behalf of their cause, 
 M? ^ ' holding meetings in Dublin on every occasion that seemed to 
 t^g give them an opportunity of urging their claims — meetings at Mr. 
 Ryan's house in Marlborough street, at Mr. McDonnell's house in Allen 
 court, at the Coffee-House in Earl street, at the Repository in Stephen's 
 Green, at the Exhibition room in William street, at the Cock Tavern, 
 Henry street, at the Star and Garter, Essex street, at the Rotunda and 
 elsewhere — the hostile spirit of the Ascendency faction, and especially 
 of the Orangemen, remained as inveterate as ever. During the admin- 
 istration of the duke of Richmond several outrages of the most lawless 
 
 description were perpetrated by the Orangemen against the Catholics. 
 
 494 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 495 
 
 At Corinshiga, a mile and a half from the- town of Newiy, on the evening 
 of the 23d of June, 1808, a number of men, women and children were 
 amusing themselves at a bonfire. Some danced around a garlanded 
 pole. Others looked on and chatted. While they were thus enjoying 
 themselves, free from all anxiety, eighteen armed yeomen suddenly drew 
 near. Their sergeant deliberately ordered them to "present and fire," 
 which they did repeatedly, killing one of the crowd named McKeown, 
 and wounding several. Little as the magistrates of Newry loved the 
 Catholics, such a heartrending occurrence shocked them. They offered 
 a reward for the miscreants who had perpetrated this ruthless deed, and 
 also wrote to the viceroy, begging that he would take some steps to pro- 
 tect the unarmed Catholics against the Orange brigands, the lowest of 
 whom were allowed to possess arms. The duke's reply civilly expressed 
 regret at the sad occurrence, but weeks passed over, and still nothing 
 was done by government to vindicate outraged justice and humanity. 
 One of the ruffian yeomanry concerned in the butchery was, indeed, 
 apprehended, through the exertions of the local authorities, but he was 
 guarded with so little vigilance that he speedily managed to escape. So 
 secure of impunity did the Orangemen feel, that a party of the same corps, 
 to which the assassins belonged, took occasion one day, when returning 
 from parade, to fire a volley, in a spirit of bravado, over the house of the 
 murdered person's father. The report of the volley threw his hapless 
 wife into convulsions. 
 
 The Catholic inhabitants in the neighborhood being in a state of 
 terror for their lives, Mr. Waring, one of the magistrates, sent copies of 
 the depositions of some of them to the Castle, and earnestly entreated 
 government to issue a proclamation offering a reward for the apprehen- 
 sion of the murderers. Mr. Secretary Traill replied that the government 
 declined to take any steps in the matter. On the 3d of August, Mr. 
 Waring remonstrated with the government for their strange inaction, 
 and maintained that even yet they might do some good by a proclama- 
 tion, if it were only in showing their strong disapproval of such outrages. 
 This remonstrance was not even honored by a reply. Even the adver- 
 tisement, sent by the local magistrates to the Hue and Cry, was not 
 inserted in that police sheet. In short, the whole matter ended, and not 
 one of the nineteen criminals was ever brought to justice. Is it any 
 
496 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 marvel that, in many parts of Ulster, the Catholics have been wont, 
 when the Orange anniversaries of the 1st and 12th of July would come 
 around, either to barricade their dwellings and quench the lights or else 
 to make defensive preparations for a nocturnal combat? 
 
 A somewhat similar deed of horror occurred even in the capital, not 
 very far from the Castle itself. Some sportive boys dressed up a foun- 
 tain in Kevin street with green boughs and flowers. They also kin- 
 dled a bonfire. A few Orange fanatics took offence at this display of 
 thoughtless gaiety. They hastily procured loaded guns and fired upon 
 the mirthful groups around the festooned fountain and the bonfire. 
 "Wild shrieks instantaneously arose. The panic-stricken groups scat- 
 tered in haste, but not before one victim was killed outright and several 
 others were grievously wounded. 
 
 On the 12th of August, 180S, a party of fifty Kings county militia- 
 men, who had volunteered into the line, marched without arms from 
 Strabane to Omagh, in the county Tyrone. Three hundred Orange 
 yeomen were already there celebrating the anniversary of the battle of 
 Aughrim. One of these knocked off the cap of one of the militiamen 
 because it was bound with green. This, indeed, was the regimental 
 color ; but then it was also the Croppy color, and consequently offensive 
 to the loyalty of the "true blue." The militiaman had the spirit to 
 strike the insulting ruffian. A general row ensued. The unarmed 
 Kings county men retreated to the barrack before the onslaught of the 
 three hundred armed yeomen. There procuring arms, they defended 
 themselves successfully, and killed four of their lawless assailants. 
 Thomas Hogan, a corporal of the Kings county men, was tried for the 
 murder of the brigands, and, incredible as it may appear, Avas found 
 guilty of manslaughter ! Such was the justice accorded to Catholics 
 in those times ! 
 
 At Mountrath, in July of the same year, the Orangemen murdered 
 the Rev. Mr. Duane, the parish priest. The year following they mur- 
 dered a man named Kavanagh in his own house, beating his brains out 
 in the presence of his Avife and four children. On the first day of this 
 same July, at Balieborough, in the county Cavan, the Orangemen vio- 
 lently attacked the dwelling of the parish priest, fired several shots at 
 him and left him for dead. Not contented with this, they also wrecked 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 4lU 
 
 the chapel and wounded and insulted every Catholic they encountered 
 that day. 
 
 These atrocities, both at Mountrath and Balieborough, so far from 
 having ever brought down just punishment on those guilty of them, 
 seem to have hardly called forth the slightest inquiry. 
 
 In truth, the government, in those days, might be said to give direct 
 encouragement to the Orange banditti. Catholics, too, were excluded 
 from positions to which the law now entitled them — from grand-juror- 
 ships, for example. If a high-sheriff showed himself at all favorable to 
 them, he was excluded from the next list. Sir Arthur Wellesley, if 
 during his secretaryship he was not exactly a party to the Orange atro- 
 cities, at least did little or nothing to repress them, and he was uniformly 
 rigorous in carrying out measures against the Catholics. Of course, the 
 peasantry were occasionally roused by their wrongs so as to lose all 
 patience. A bailiff, an exterminating agent or an extortionate tithe- 
 proctor might sometimes fall a victim to the vengeance of an oppressed 
 and maddened people. Instead of dealing with these crimes under the 
 ordinary forms of law, the government would carry through Parliament 
 unconstitutional acts, that might, indeed, be justified if a country were 
 actually in a state of insurrection, but in no state of things short of this. 
 If the suspension of the habeas corpus act were not renewed, an Insur- 
 rection Act did the work of tyranny quite as well. In fact, however 
 the names may vary, Ireland almost invariably has coercion acts under 
 one form or another. 
 
 There is reason to believe that in September, 1808, when the Catholic 
 bishops of Ireland assembled in a national synod to oppose the veto, the 
 delegates of the Orange societies met in Dawson street, Dublin, to coun- 
 teract their resolutions. The incurable bigots, J. C. Beresford, James 
 Verner, Patrick Duigenan and delegates from seventy-two English lodges 
 (chiefly Lancastrian) attended. It is supposed that at this meeting the 
 Orangemen remodelled their society. Mr. Mitchel says : " It is not easy 
 to arrive at the exact truth respecting all the secret tests and oaths and 
 degrees of this mischievous body; the precise forms have been from 
 time to time altered, and their 'grand masters' and their organs of the 
 press have boldly denied what is alleged against the society, although 
 such allegation had been true very shortly before, and was substantially 
 
498 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 true when denied, even if some trifling form may have been altered to 
 justify the denial." Mr. Plowden also, writing in 1810, justly censures 
 the disingenuousness of those Orangemen of education and fortune, who 
 " affect to disclaim everything objectionable in the system, and to throw 
 it exclusively upon the incorrigible ignorance and bigotry of the rabble, 
 who are alike in every country and of every persuasion. This was base 
 artifice to disguise or conceal the countenance and support which the 
 Orange societies have uniformly and unceasingly received from govern- 
 ment. If the obligations and oaths of Orangemen were of a virtuous 
 and beneficial tendency, why not proclaim them aloud ? If illegal and 
 dangerous, why criminally conceal them ? Whilst the Orange aristoc- 
 racy thus affect to disclaim their own institute in detail, their activity 
 in keeping the evil on foot is supereminently criminal." 
 
 I shall here anticipate events a little and give a passage from a 
 speech delivered by O'Connell at an aggregate meeting held in May, 
 1811: 
 
 " From most respectable authority I have it, that Orange lodges are 
 increasing in different parts of the country, with the knowledge of those 
 whose duty it is to suppress them. If I have been misinformed, I would 
 wish that what I now say may be replied to by any one able to show 
 that I am wrong. I hold in my hand the certificate of an Orange purple- 
 man (which he produced), who was advanced to that degree as lately as 
 the 21th of April, 1811, in a lodge in Dublin. I have adduced this fact 
 to show you that this dreadful and abominable conspiracy is still in 
 existence; and I am well informed, and believe it to be the fact, that 
 the king's ministry are well acquainted with this circumstance. I have 
 been also assured that the associations in the North are reorganized, 
 and that a committee of these delegates in Belfast have printed and 
 distributed five hundred copies of their new constitution. This I have 
 heard from excellent authority; and I should not be surprised if the 
 attorney-general knows it. Yet there has been no attempt to disturb 
 these conspirators, no attempt to visit them with magisterial authority, 
 no attempt to rout this infamous banditti." 
 
 The British government knew better than to interfere with the licen- 
 tiousness of such useful allies as the Orange banditti in keeping down 
 Ireland. The Convention Act and the acts against the administration 
 
of secret oaths were always ready in the legislative armory of the 
 foreign government to be used against patriotic assemblies of delegates 
 or against patriotic oath-bound societies. But the Orangemen were sure 
 of impunity in all their proceedings; the delegates that assembled at 
 their meeting in Dublin had no need to be under the slightest apprehen- 
 sion of a state-prosecution for violating the Convention Act. 
 
 The duke of Richmond, however, tried to play a double-dealing game. 
 At the same time that his government did something more than connive 
 at these Orange atrocities, he affected to discountenance bigoted demon- 
 strations in his own presence. This was with a view to conciliate the 
 Catholics, so as to prevent them from "agitating" for their rights. As 
 there were many influential Catholics in Minister, he made a conciliatory 
 tour through that province in the year 1809, and gave orders that no 
 exclusive or marked displays of Orangeism should be allowed to take 
 place along his line of route. At Bandon in Cork, the southern strong- 
 hold of the Orange society, when the loyal Bandon legion paraded on 
 the 1st of July to celebrate the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, 
 their commander and grand master astonished them by a very unusual 
 style of address: "Those Orange emblems," said he, "are calculated to 
 keep up animosities, and his grace the lord-lieutenant does not wish 
 anything of the sort on the 2^'esent occasion.'" At once they dispersed, 
 full of indignation. On the 6th, their next parade-day, they assembled 
 defiantly, every man wearing orange lilies. When ordered to remove 
 those emblems, or else to ground their arms, after a few moments of 
 hesitation, with the exception of twenty-five, all the men of the legion, 
 which was about six hundred strong, angrily threw down both arms and 
 accoutrements. On the 24th of July they gave their reasons for so 
 doing. This determined conduct of the Bandon Legion made the gov- 
 ernment for a long time afraid of opposing the "loyal" displays of the 
 Orange society, lest they should in any degree offend and alienate that 
 strongest " garrison " for the maintenance of English dominion in 
 Ireland. 
 
 But, in spite of the drawback to. the success of his tour, occasioned 
 by the so-called "defection of the Bandon Orangemen," the viceroy did 
 not wholly fail in the accomplishment of the primary object of his ex- 
 cursion. He partially succeeded in gulling the credulous Catholics of 
 
F" 
 r 
 
 5Q0 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'GONNELL. 
 
 Munster. Though lie was notoriously and zealously carrying out the 
 sinister policy of the " ]\ T o-Popery " government, the trampled people, 
 long accustomed to contumely, could not help listening Avith something 
 like satisfaction to his speeches, full of bland and conciliatory hypocrisy. 
 It was so pleasant and comforting to the amour propre of the Catholics, 
 still in a condition of semi- Helot ism, to hear him courteously thanking 
 Dr. Power, the Catholic bishop of Waterford, for his aid in putting down 
 the disturbances in that county. It Avas still more delightfully soothing 
 when he assured the bishop that he had special instructions from His 
 Majesty to make no distinction between Protestant and Catholic, and 
 when he lamented that he had no power to deviate from the laws that 
 imposed disabilities on the Catholics. At the dinner given to him at 
 the Mansion House in Cork, when the toast of " The Protestant Ascend- 
 ency of Ireland" was announced, he declared he wished to see no ascend- 
 ency in Ireland but that of loyalty. At another dinner, given by the 
 merchants, traders and bankers of the same city, his beautiful sentiments 
 of toleration out-Heroded the balmiest style of English cant. He said, 
 "He wondered that, religion being only occupied with a great object 
 of eternal concern, men should be excited to rancorous enmity because 
 they sought the same end by paths somewhat different." Mr. Mitchel 
 says : " This kind of language, which has been the common style of Irish 
 viceroys ever since, was first brought in vogue by the No-Popery duke 
 of Richmond." Be this as it may, his thrice-brassy British impudence 
 gulled the Catholics more or less, and deadened for the time the vigor of 
 their efforts to achieve emancipation, and this although many of the 
 Irish Catholic soldiers in the British army were at this very period 
 undergoing an absolute religious persecution. I shall here quote Mr. 
 Mitchel's summary of one or two of those cases : 
 
 "At Enniskillen, a Lieutenant "Walsh turned a soldier's coat, in order 
 to disgrace him for refusing to attend the Protestant service; others were 
 effectually prevented from attending the service of their own church by 
 an order not to quit the barracks till two o'clock on the Sunday, when 
 the Catholic service was over, as at Newiy. The case which acquired 
 the most publicity, and produced the strongest effect upon Ireland, was 
 that of Patrick Spence, a private in the county Dublin militia, who had 
 been required (though known to be a Catholic) to attend the divine 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 501 
 
 service of the Established Church, and upon refusal was thrown into the 
 Black Hole. During his imprisonment he wrote a letter to Major White, 
 his commanding officer, urging that in obeying the paramount dictates 
 of conscience he had in no manner broken in upon military discipline. 
 Pie was shortly after brought to a court-martial, upon a charge that his 
 letter was disrespectful and had a mutinous tendency. He was convict- 
 ed, and sentenced to receive nine hundred and ninety-nine lashes. Upon 
 being brought out to undergo that punishment, an offer was made to him 
 to commute it for an engagement to enlist in a corps constantly serving 
 abroad ; this he accepted, and was transmitted to the Isle of Wight, in 
 order to be sent out of the kingdom. The case having been represented 
 to the lord-lieutenant by Dr. Troy, the titular archbishop of Dublin, Mr. 
 W. Pole wrote him a letter, which stated that the sentence had been 
 passed upon Spence for writing the disrespectful letter — not denying, 
 therefore admitting, that the committal to the 'Black Hole' was for 
 the refusal to attend the Protestant church ; but that, under all the cir- 
 cumstances, the commander-in-chief had considered the punishment 
 excessive, and had ordered the man to be liberated and to join his regi- 
 ment. When Spence arrived in Dublin, he was confined several days, 
 and then discharged altogether from the army. The copy of Spence's 
 letter, which he vouched to be authentic, contained nothing in it either 
 disrespectful or mutinous. The original letter was often called for, and 
 always refused by those who had it in their possession, and might, con- 
 sequently, by its production determine the justice of the sentence of 
 nine hundred and ninety-nine lashes." 
 
 No officer was ever punished or reprimanded for any one of the many 
 instances of petty tyranny of this description that occurred. From this 
 fact the reader may estimate the sincerity and practical worth of the 
 duke's post-prandial sentiments of toleration. 
 
 In the year 1809, Mr. Parnell tried, in the House of Commons, to 
 carry a motion for inquiry into the mode of collecting tithes in Ireland. 
 In the debate which followed, Sir John Newport accused Lord Castle- 
 reagh of forgetting all the pledges he had made at the time of the union 
 to promote the public welfare of Ireland. Castlereagh stated that he 
 knew of no pledge made, either by Mr. Pitt or himself, about tithes or 
 the Catholic question. He even audaciously denied that he had ever made 
 
502 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 any pledge whatever as to Ireland. Mr. C. Hutchinson assailed him also; 
 but Castlereagh was in a position to treat with scorn these isolated 
 efforts on behalf of Irish rights. The motion was of course set aside. 
 
 In or about this time we find O'Connell attending an anti-tithe 
 meeting in his native county, Kerry. He held up the advocates of the 
 iniquitous and oppressive tithe-system to ridicule. He showed up the 
 greed of the Protestant parsons, who took the potatoes of the Catholic 
 peasantry as tithe, without giving them any value in return, and jocu- 
 larly said, that, "if they deprived the peasant of the staff of life, they 
 should carry him on their shoulders." He succeeded in carrying the anti- 
 tithe resolutions. Probably this was his first occasion for displaying his 
 oratorical powers in his native county. 
 
 On the 24th of May, 1809, a well-attended meeting of Catholics was 
 held in the Assembly Booms, William street, Dublin. The requisition 
 calling the meeting was signed by Lord Netterville, Sir Francis Goold, 
 Daniel O'Connell, Richard O'Gorman (father to Richard O'Gorman of 
 New York), Edward Hay (author of the history of the Wexford Rebellion), 
 Denis Scully, Dr. Dromgoole and other familiar names. Mr. O'Gorman 
 proposed to petition Parliament. John Keogh opposed this. He spoke 
 bitterly of the treachery of English statesmen toward the Catholics in 
 the affair of the union. In the English Commons they had nothing but 
 enemies or lukewarm friends. The present ministry came into office on 
 the express terms of excluding the Catholic claims. Their predecessors 
 had willingly consented to abandon a bill, only nominally in favor of the 
 Catholics, to save their places. The Catholics were doubly deceived at 
 the time of the union. The proposals for their support from the union- 
 ists and anti-unionists were hollow. Had the Catholics been then lib- 
 erally treated by their Parliament, they would have raised a cry in its 
 defence, and the union would have been shaken to atoms. No one had 
 a right to suppose he wished to relinquish the Catholic claims. With 
 his dying breath he would recommend them never to relax in the pursuit 
 of their rights. No man could expect success to the petition. Without 
 that expectation he saw no probability of aught but mischievous conse- 
 quences from the measure. He resisted it not to retard, but to forward, 
 their claims. 
 
 Mr. Keogh's resolution passed; but the meeting then organized a 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 503 
 
 new Catholic Committee, consisting of the Catholic peers, the survivors 
 of the Catholic delegates of 1793, and certain gentlemen lately appointed 
 by the Catholics of Dublin to prepare an address. The meeting resolved 
 that these persons "do possess the confidence of the Catholic body.' 7 
 This committee was to consider the expediency of preparing a petition, 
 not to the present, but to the next, session of Parliament. O'Conneli, 
 seeing clearly that this permanent general committee might, by the arti- 
 fices of the jealous government, be made to appear as coming under the 
 provisions of the Convention Act, introduced, with a view to guard against 
 this legal danger, a resolution, "That the noblemen and gentlemen afore- 
 said are not representatives of the Catholic body, or any portion thereof; 
 nor shall they assume or pretend to be representatives of the Catholic 
 body, or any portion thereof." O'Connell's resolution was carried unani- 
 mously. Thus, while it was desirable that the committee should seem 
 to speak the general sense of the Catholic body, because, whenever 
 Grattan would present a Catholic petition in the House of Commons, he 
 would be met invariably with the objection "that such petition did not 
 speak the general sense of the Catholics," it was, at the same time, 
 necessary to guard against the snares and perils of the Convention Act. 
 But after all, in spite of O'Connell's ingenuity, a packed jury could 
 easily be found to bring the members of the committee within the pro- 
 visions of the Convention Act. Still, for the present, the Catholic cause 
 seemed to acquire fresh vigor from the permanent organization of such 
 an influential committee. The recent adhesion of a number of clever 
 lawyers to the agitation also tended to increase its prestige. 
 
 In the year 1810 the veto question came up again. The English 
 Catholics were in favor of it. The Irish strenuously opposed it. A 
 printed copy of a plan of emancipation, on the terms of giving the king 
 a veto on the appointment of the Catholic bishops, while at the same 
 time a state provision should be made for the clergy, was enclosed by 
 Sir John Cox Hippesley, an English member of Parliament, in a letter to 
 Dr. Troy. This was read by the secretary, Mr. Hay, to a large meeting 
 of the Catholics of Dublin, held late in January, 1810. This project, 
 tempting as it was, was rejected with indignation. Clergy and laity 
 equally spumed it. A petition for unconditional emancipation was 
 brought by Lord Fingal to London. Mr. Grattan, vexed at the opposi- 
 
504 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 tion to the veto, said he presented it merely to have the claims of the 
 Catholics put on record. He was sorry no sentiment in favor of the veto 
 seemed to prevail. "The pope," he said, "was almost certain now to he 
 a subject of France; and a subject of France, or French citizen, could 
 never be permitted to nominate the spiritual magistrates of the people 
 of Ireland." This was more like opposing the prayer of the petition 
 than supporting it. Grattan's violent horror of "French influence" was 
 weak and absurd, utterly unworthy of so great an Irishman. It is not 
 surprising that the motion in favor of the Catholics was lost by a major- 
 ity of one hundred and four. In the upper House, Lord Donoughmore 
 presented the petition, and supported it with an advocacy more generous 
 than Grattan's. No one, he said, Avas ignorant that unity under one 
 and the same head "was the essential distinguishing characteristic of 
 the Catholic Church, and yet they were told that the Irish Catholics 
 were the most unreasonable of men because they would not renounce 
 upon oath this first tenet of their religion and consent to recognize a 
 new head of their Church in the person of a Protestant king." He also 
 ridiculed the apprehensions (if the bigots. The petition, however, was 
 rejected by a majority of eighty-six. 
 
 In the course of the disputes on the veto question, which ranged over 
 several years, O'Connell Avas opposed by Stephen "Woulfe, a man who, 
 after distinguishing himself both at the lay college of Maynooth and in 
 Trinity College, Avas now one of the most promising of the Catholic law- 
 yers — indeed, one of the most intellectual men, Catholic or Protestant, 
 to be found at the Irish bar. He Avas also knoAvn in the Avorlcl of letters. 
 Woulfe was a native of the county Clare, Avhere he inherited a small 
 estate. He was a man of tall stature (six feet high), with a counte- 
 nance that bespoke his mental power. In the early period of his pro- 
 fessional career he took so much interest in the strife of politics that 
 his friends thought he Avas neglectine: his oaaii affairs for the concerns 
 of his country. However, he Avas destined, years after, Avhen emancipa- 
 tion was achieved, to attain the exalted dignity of lord chief-baron. Sir 
 Michael O'Loghlen, the master of the rolls, and he, were the first Catholic 
 judges. Plunket paid homage to Woulfe' s great abilities, b} r asking in 
 the English House of Commons, "What could compensate the British 
 empire for the exclusion from its public seivice, which the penal laws 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 505 
 
 necessitated, of such a mind as that of him who wrote the admirable 
 treatise entitled ' The Balance of Evils V " It is stated by some that the 
 famous apophthegm, "Property has its duties as well as its rights," the 
 credit of which has been given to the Scotchman Drummond, in reality 
 belongs to Woulfe, and that he communicated the saying in a letter to 
 Drummond. At all events, a sentence of his — "To foster public opinion 
 and make it racy of the soil" — was honored by being made the motto 
 of that celebrated Irish patriotic paper, the old "Nation." Woulfe had 
 a shrill, piercing voice that lent a strange effect to his oratory. I have 
 seen in the "Dublin Citizen" an odd description of its higher notes. 
 The writer says, apparently without any intention to be funny, " Scald 
 an eagle in melted lead, and his scream will give you some idea of the 
 tones of Woulfe in a state of excitement," I quote this from memory. 
 It is well that the writer didn't pun on the name of Wolfe Tone. I may 
 add that O'Conncll esteemed Woulfe highly, in spite of their difference 
 of opinion on the question of the veto. 
 
 On the morning of the 20th of January, 1843 (the repeal year), the 
 Rev. Dr. Coll of Newcastle, county Limerick, at his own breakfast-table, 
 after praising Chief-Baron Woulfe, then deceased, said to the liberator, 
 " I believe, Mr. O'Connell, he was strongly opposed to you on the veto 
 question." 
 
 "Yes," answered O'Connell; "Woulfe thought that emancipation 
 should be purchased at the expense of handing over to government the 
 appointment of the Catholic bishops, under the name of a veto. The 
 only occasion in which we came into public collision with each other on 
 that subject was at a great meeting in Limerick, when he made a pow- 
 erful speech — as powerful as could be made in a bad cause — in favor of 
 the veto. He came forward to the front of the gallery — we were in the 
 body of the house; and in the delivery of his discourse there was mani- 
 fested some little disposition to interrupt him, but I easily prevented 
 that. When I rose in reply, I told the story of the sheep that were fat- 
 tening under the protection of their dogs, when an address to them to 
 get rid of their dogs was presented by the wolves. I said that the lead- 
 ing Woulfe (pronounced ivolf) came forward to the front of the gallery 
 and persuaded the sheep to give up the dogs; they obeyed him, and 
 were instantly devoured; and I then expressed a hope that the Catholics 
 
506 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 of Ireland would be warned by that example never to yield to a Woulfe 
 again. With that pleasantry our differences ended ; for he admitted that 
 the popular sentiment was against him, and he gave up any further 
 agitation of the question." 
 
 "I well recollect that occasion," said Dr. Coll to Mr. Daunt; "and 
 afterward Woulfe observed : ' How useless it is to contend with O'Connell ! 
 Here I have made an oration that I had been elaborating for three weeks 
 previously' and this man entirely demolishes the effect of all my rhetoric 
 by a flash of humor and a pun upon my name.' " 
 
 .Although this may have been O'Connell's only direct collision with 
 Woulfe on the veto question, he had, nevertheless, other encounters 
 with Woulfe that had reference to subjects of debate, which arose out 
 of the divisions, among the emancipationists, on this angrily-vexed 
 question. 
 
 In the summer of the year 1810 a loud demand for the repeal of the 
 accursed act of union was made in Dublin. It began with the Protest- 
 ants, though subsequently the Catholics chimed in with their patriotic 
 cry. In the corporation of Dublin, then exclusively Protestant, Mr. 
 Hutton, pursuant to notice, made an able speech, in which he gave a 
 vivid picture of the bankruptcy, famine, ruin and despair visible in 
 every street of the city. The nation's debt, he said, was ninety millions 
 sterling. Two millions, wrung from the sweat of the peasantry, were 
 squandered abroad by absentees. Two millions and a half more went 
 as interest on that insupportable debt. His resolutions to the effect 
 that repeal was the cure for all these evils, in spite of the vehement 
 opposition of Jack Giffard and his crew, were carried by a majority of 
 thirty. 
 
 Next followed a requisition from the grand jurors of Dublin to the 
 two high-sheriffs, Sir Edward Stanley and Sir James Puddall, to call a 
 meeting of freemen and freeholders to consider "the necessity that exists 
 of presenting a petition to His Majesty and the imperial Parliament 
 for a repeal of the act of union." Stanley refused to summon the meet- 
 ing; "it would agitate," said he, "the public mind." Riddall, however, 
 called it, and, on the 18th of September, 1810, Protestants and Catho- 
 lics were unanimous in ascribing the misery of their country to the ope- 
 ration of the baneful union. On this occasion O'Connell made a powerful 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL, 507 
 
 speech. I shall give from it several specimens of our hero's eloquence 
 at this comparatively early period of his public life. 
 
 After a lively picture of the evil consequences of the union, which 
 blighted all the bounteous gifts showered by Providence on Ireland and 
 her inhabitants — after showing that the act was a violation of the 
 national and inherent rights of the Irish people — after quoting the 
 authorities of the greatest lawyers against its legality, the orator thus 
 proceeds: "The union was, therefore, a manifest injustice, and it con- 
 tinues to be unjust at this day; it was a crime, and must be still crim- 
 inal, unless it shall be ludicrously pretended that crime, like wine, 
 improves by old age, and that time mollifies injustice into innocence. 
 You may smile at the supposition, but in sober sadness you must be 
 convinced that we daily suffer injustice, that every succeeding day adds 
 only another sin to the catalogue of British vice, and that if the union 
 continues it will only make crime hereditary and injustice perpetual. 
 We have been robbed, my countrymen, most foully robbed, of our birth- 
 right, of our independence. May it not be permitted to us mournfully 
 to ask how this consummation of evil was perfected ? . . . How, then, 
 have we become enslaved ? Alas ! England, that ought to have been to 
 us a sister and a friend — England, whom we had loved" (Humbug of the 
 first water I most wonderful, and sometimes deluding, Daniel!) "and 
 fought and bled for — England, whom we have protected, and Avhom 
 we do protect — England, at a period when, out of one hundred thou- 
 sand seamen in her service, seventy thousand were Irish — England 
 stole upon us, like a thief in the night, and robbed us of the precious 
 gem of our liberty; she stole from us 'that which in naught enriched 
 her, but made us poor indeed.' " ( What does he mean by saying, " that 
 which in naught enriched her"?) "Reflect, then, my friends, on the 
 means employed to accomplish this disastrous measure. I do not speak 
 of the meaner instruments of bribery and corruption — we all know that 
 everything was put to sale — nothing profane nor sacred was omitted in 
 the union mart — offices in the revenue, commands in the army and navy, 
 the sacred ermine of justice and the holy altars of God, were all profaned 
 and polluted as the rewards of union services. By a vote in favor of the 
 union, ignorance, incapacity and profligacy obtained certain promotion ; 
 and our ill-fated but beloved country was degraded to her utmost limits 
 
508 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 before she was transfixed in slavery. . . . Even the rebellion was an 
 accidental and secondary cause ; the real cause of the union lay deeper, 
 but is quite obvious. It is to be found at once in the religious dissensions 
 which the enemies of Ireland have created and continued, and seek to 
 perpetuate, amongst ourselves, by telling us of, and separating us into, 
 wretched sections and miserable subdivisions. They separated the 
 Protestant from the Catholic, and the Presbyterian from both; they 
 revived every antiquated cause of domestic animosity, and they in- 
 vented new pretexts of rancor; but above all, my countrymen, they 
 belied and calumniated us to each other ; they falsely declared that we 
 hated each other, and they continued to repeat the assertion until we 
 came to believe it; they succeeded in producing all the madness of party 
 and religious distinctions ; and, while we were lost in the stupor of in- 
 sanity, they plundered us of our country, and left us to recover at our 
 leisure from the horrid delusion into which Ave had been so artfully 
 conducted. 
 
 " Such, then, were the means by which the union was effectuated. 
 It has stripped us of commerce and wealth ; it has degraded us, and 
 deprived us not only of our station as a nation, but even of the name 
 of our country ; we are governed by foreigners ; foreigners make our 
 laws, for were the one hundred members who nominally represent Ire- 
 land in what is called the imperial Parliament, — were they really our 
 representatives, what influence could they, although unbought and 
 unanimous, have over the five hundred and fifty-eight English and 
 Scotch members? But what is the fact? Why, that out of the one 
 hundred, such as they are, that sit for this country, more than one-fifth 
 know nothing of us, and are unknown to us. . . . Sir, when I talk of 
 the utter ignorance, in Irish affairs, of the members of the imperial 
 Parliament, I do not exaggerate or mistake — the ministers themselves 
 are in absolute darkness with respect to this country. I undertake to 
 demonstrate it. Sir, they have presumed to speak of the growing pros- 
 perity of Ireland. I know them to be vile and profligate ; I cannot be 
 suspected of nattering them ; yet, vile as they are, I do not believe they 
 could have had the audacity to insert in the speech, supposed to be 
 spoken by His Majesty, that expression, had they known that, in fact, 
 Ireland was in abject and increasing poverty. . . . When you detect the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 50!) 
 
 ministers themselves in such gross ignorance as, upon such authority, to 
 place an insulting falsehood, as it were, in the mouth of our revered 
 sovereign, what, think you, can be the iitness of nine minor imps of 
 legislation to make laws for Ireland ? . . . I would be glad to sec the 
 face of the man, or rather of the beast, who could dare to say he thought 
 the union wise or good; for the being who could say so must be devoid 
 of all the feelings that distinguish humanity. . . . The union has con- 
 tinued only because we despaired of its repeal. Upon this despair alone 
 has it continued; yet what can be more absurd than such despair? If 
 the Irish sentiment be but once known, if the voice of six millions be 
 raised from Cape Clear to the Giants' Causeway, if the men most remark- 
 able for loyalty to their king and attachment to constitutional liberty 
 will come forward as the leaders of the public voice, the nation would, 
 in an hour, grow too great for the chains that now shackle you, and the 
 union must be repealed without commotion and without difficulty. Let 
 the most timid amongst us compare the present probability of repealing 
 the union with the prospect that, in the year 1795, existed of that meas- 
 ure being ever brought about. Who in 1795 thought a union possible? 
 Pitt dared to attempt it, and he succeeded ; it only requires the resolution 
 to attempt its repeal — in fact, it requires only to entertain the hope of 
 repealing it — to make it impossible that the union should continue. But 
 that pleasing hope can never exist whilst the infernal dissensions on 
 the score of religion are kept up. The Protestant alone could not 
 expect to liberate his country ; the Roman Catholic alone could not do 
 it; neither could the Presbyterian; but amalgamate the three into the 
 Irishman, and the union is repealed. Learn discretion from your ene- 
 mies : they have crushed your country by fomenting religious discord — 
 serve her by abandoning it for ever. Let each man give up his share 
 of the mischief; let each man forsake every feeling of rancor. But I 
 say not this to barter with you, my countrymen ; I require no equivalent 
 from you. Whatever course you shall take, my mind is fixed. I trample 
 under foot the Catholic claims, if they can interfere with the repeal ; I 
 abandon all wish for emancipation, if it delays the repeal. Nay, were 
 Mi Perceval to-morrow to offer me the repeal of the union upon the terms 
 of re-enacting the entire penal code, I declare it from my heart, and in the 
 presence of my God, that I would most cheerfully embrace his offer. Let 
 
510 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 as then, my beloved countrymen, sacrifice our wicked and groundless 
 animosities on the altar of our country; let that spirit which, heretofore 
 emanating from Dungannon, spread all over the island and gave light 
 and liberty to the land, be again cherished amongst us; let us rally 
 around the standard of old Ireland, and we shall easily procure that 
 greatest of political blessings, an Irish king, an Irish House of Lords 
 and an Irish House of Commons." Long-continued applause followed 
 the close of this noble peroration. Resolutions to petition for repeal 
 were adopted unanimously. This speech not merely produced a great 
 effect on the audience, that listened to it with breathless attention in the 
 hall of the Royal Exchange, but it deeply moved the entire nation. The 
 cause of repeal, from first to last, stirred to its inmost depths the heart 
 of O'Connell, and consequently his words on the theme of self-govern- 
 ment always had magical effect on the minds and feelings of his coun- 
 trymen. His appeals to the sentiment of Irish nationality never failed 
 to find a response in every true Irishman's heart, aye, to agitate the 
 true man's whole being to its very centre. 
 
 From the moment that this oration, printed on a broad sheet and 
 surmounted with the orator's portrait, was circulated throughout the 
 island, the Catholics looked with pride and hope and exultation to our 
 hero as their future leader; and, in truth, before the close of that very 
 year, O'Connell was the recognized leader of the Irish people — at least 
 of the people of the old, unconquerable Celtic race. I shall take from 
 Mr. Daunt's "Personal Recollections" "the liberator's" own short nar- 
 rative of his accession to the popular leadership: 
 
 "I also spoke in support of the repeal," said O'Connell, referring to 
 the great meeting at the Exchange, which I have just spoken of, "and 
 thenceforth do I date my first great lift in popularity. Keogh saw that 
 I was calculated to become a leader. He subsequently tried to impress 
 me with his own policy respecting Catholic affairs. The course he then 
 recommended was a sullen quiescence; he urged that the Catholics 
 should abstain altogether from agitation, and he labored hard to bring 
 me to adopt his views. But I saw that agitation was our only available 
 weapon. I saw that by incessantly keeping our demands and our griev- 
 ances before the public and the government we must sooner or later 
 succeed. Moreover, that period, above all others, was not one at which 
 
THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 511 
 
 our legitimate weapon, agitation, could have prudently been let to rust. 
 It was during the war, and while Napoleon — that splendid madman!" 
 [Oh, Daniel, for shame!) — "made the Catholics of Ireland so essential 
 to the military defence of the empire, the time seemed peculiarly appro- 
 priate to press our claims. About that period a great Catholic meeting 
 was held. John Keogh was then old and infirm, but his presence was 
 eagerly desired, and the meeting awaited his arrival with patient good- 
 humor. I and another were deputed to request his attendance. John 
 Keogh had this peculiarity — that when he was waited on about matters 
 of business, he would talk away on all sorts of subjects, except the busi- 
 ness which had brought his visitors. Accordingly, he talked a great 
 deal about everything except Catholic politics for the greatest portion of 
 our visit; and when at length we pressed him to accompany us to the 
 meeting, the worthy old man harangued us for a quarter of an hour to 
 demonstrate the impolicy of publicly assembling at all, and ended by 
 coming to the meeting. He drew up a resolution, which denounced the 
 continued agitation of the Catholic question at that time. This resolu- 
 tion, proceeding as it did from a tried old leader, was carried. I then 
 lose and proposed a counter-resolution, pledging us all to incessant, un- 
 relaxing agitation; and such were the wiseacres with whom I had to 
 deal, that they passed my resolution in the midst of enthusiastic accla- 
 mations, without once dreaming that it ran directly counter to John 
 Keogh's! Thenceforward, I may say, I was the leader. Keogh called 
 at my house some short time after ; he paid me many compliments, and 
 repeated his importunities that I might alter my policy. But I was 
 inexorable; my course was resolved upon and taken. I refused to 
 yield. He departed in bad humor, and I never saw him afterwards. 
 
 " Keogh was undoubtedly useful in his day. But he was one who 
 would rather that the cause should fail than that anybody but himself 
 should have the honor of carrying it." 
 
 In truth, before the repeal meeting O'Connell had virtually become 
 leader. A vote of thanks had been passed by the Catholic Committee 
 to Keogh "for his long and faithful services to the cause of Catholic 
 emancipation." Also a manifesto, signed "Daniel O'Connell, chairman," 
 had been issued by the same body, urging the people to adopt a new and 
 more combined form of political action. The continual rejection of the 
 
 33 
 
512 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 
 
 Catholic petitions by the Houses of Parliament showed plainly that, to 
 make the* Catholic cause succeed, a more vigorous policy and a more 
 energetic will were required, than had hitherto been brought forward to 
 direct the movement. 0' Council's address proposed a plan of action 
 somewhat similar to that adopted in all his subsequent agitations. The 
 committee was to act as a central body in Dublin. But there were also 
 to be permanent local boards all through the country, holding commu- 
 nication, indeed, with the central body, but preserving a large power of 
 independent action. Frequent local meetings were recommended, from 
 which beneficial results to the general cause were expected by the com- 
 mittee. This system of self-agency, it was argued, would produce cohe- 
 rence of conduct adequate to insure success. " In the exercise of the 
 elective franchise, for instance," the address said, "what infinite good 
 might not result from Catholic coherence! What painful examples are 
 annually exhibited of the mischief flowing from the want of this cohe- 
 rence!" The mode of action of the organization was to be peaceful and 
 legal ; at the same time there was the half-uttered threat, or at least 
 hint, that the people, if redress of their grievances were delayed too' 
 long, might at last lose patience and seek to win their rights by violent 
 methods. 
 
 Though repeal of the union was probably dearer to O'Connell's heart 
 (we have his own word, repeatedly uttered, that it was so), and assuredly 
 dearer to the hearts of the majority of the Irish people, than emancipa- 
 tion, yet, as the latter was, for obvious reasons, easier of achievement 
 than the former (I have shown, at the commencement of the preliminary 
 sketch, why the latter could be achieved by peaceful agitation, and why, 
 according to my judgment, the former could not), so he deemed it the 
 practical question to grapple with in the first instance. Emancipation 
 once achieved, he might begin to look for repeal. 
 
 In carrying on his agitations O'Connell w r as not ashamed of repeat- 
 ing himself frequently in his speeches. It was impossible for a man, 
 speaking so often on the same subjects, to avoid this repetition. Be- 
 sides, in politics, as in religion, the broad and grand essential truths are 
 comparatively few in number, and they need constant iteration. ]S T apo-^ 
 leon and Fox believed in the efficacy. of repetition to saturate the mind 
 with conviction. When The Dublin Evening Mail sneered at O'Connell 
 
 L L 
 
for repeating himself, making light of the censure, he merely said that 
 he would continue to enunciate those great truths again and again. 
 The following remarks, made to his friend Mr. Daunt one day, immedi- 
 ately after he had given a clever rehash of many former speeches at the 
 Corn Exchange, are valuable, as giving his notions on the subject of 
 repetition : 
 
 " Now there are many men who shrink from repeating themselves, 
 and who actually feel a repugnance to deliver a good sentiment or a 
 good argument, just because they have delivered that sentiment or that 
 argument before. This is very foolish. It is not by advancing a polit- 
 ical truth once or twice, or even ten times, that the public will take it 
 up and firmly adopt it, No ; incessant repetition is required to impress 
 political truths upon the public mind. That which is but once or twice 
 advanced may possibly strike for a moment, but will then pass away 
 from the public recollection. Ton must repeat the same lesson over and 
 over again if you hope to make a permanent impression — if, in fact, you 
 hope to infix it on your pupil's memory. Such has always been my 
 practice. My object was to familiarize the whole people of Ireland with 
 important political truths, and I could never have clone this if I had not 
 incessantly repeated those truths. I have done so pretty successfully. 
 Men, by always hearing the same things, insensibly associate them with 
 received truisms. They find the facts at last quietly reposing in a corner 
 of their minds, and no more think of doubting them than if they formed 
 part of their religious belief. I have often been amused when at public 
 meetings men have got up and delivered my old political lessons in my 
 presence as if they were new discoveries worked out by their own inge- 
 nuity and research. But this was the triumph, of my labor. I had 
 made the facts and sentiments so universally familiar that men took 
 them up and gave them to the public as their own." 
 
 One of the reporting staff, on constant duty at the Eepeal Associa- 
 tion, once remarked to Mr. O'Neill Daunt, " Mr. O'Connell always wears 
 out one speech before he gives us another." 
 
 In October, 1810, King George the Third became a lunatic once 
 more, or perhaps it would be more correct to say he sank into drivelling 
 idiotcy. From this attack he never recovered. The little stock of wits he 
 e.'-er possessed was now gone for ever. From this time forward, in hopeless 
 
514 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 and helpless imbecility and darkness, Lis bodily vision darkened like 
 Lis mental, the aged king dragged along tLe remaining years of Lis now 
 wretched existence, confined to Lis palace, occasionally knocking Lis 
 hoary Lead, discrowned by God's dread visitation, against tLe velvet- 
 lined and carefully-padded walls of Lis sumptuous apartments, as Le 
 went wandering and groping about amid regal magnificence wbicL 
 seemed to be a bittery mockery of 
 
 " This old, blind, mad, helpless, weak, poor worm." 
 
 For over a decade of weary years the "once-feared" monarch survived 
 thus miserably. While he had been at all able to exercise the functions 
 of royalty, he had been an inveterate foe and an insuperable obstacle 
 to the realization of Catholic emancipation, more through a perverted 
 conscientiousness than a deliberate inclination to oppress. As he was 
 narrow-minded to a degree, his conscience was called on to sanctify 
 the most erroneous notions. His natural firmness then, as a matter 
 of course, degenerated into a stupid and obstinate clinging to wrong. 
 Thus his obstinacy in the dispute with the American colonies cost Eng- 
 land her noblest American dependencies, millions of treasure and 
 deluges of blood. TLe same obstinacy exercised its baneful influence 
 over Lis European policy. But above all, tLe Catholics of Ireland looked 
 on it as tLe source of their continued thraldom. 
 
 Accordingly, the accession of his eldest son, George, prince of Wales, 
 to the regency filled them with extravagant hopes. In fact, they believed 
 at first that the only obstacle to their emancipation was at length re- 
 moved. The regent had not merely made repeated professions of his 
 good-will to the CatLolics and their cause ; Le was even known to Lave 
 pledged Limself expressly, on more tLan one occasion, that as soon as 
 Le should enjoy the regal authority Le would do everything in his power 
 to secure Catholic emancipation. In 1806 he had pledged himself to this 
 effect through the duke of Bedford, in order to induce the CatLolics not 
 to urge their claims. Chancellor Ponsonby, tLe same year, put forward a 
 similar promise in tLe name of tLe prince-regent. It was stated that Le 
 Lad given such a pledge to Lord Kenmare at Cheltenham. But, above all, 
 it was believed that he Lad given a formal pledge to Lord Fingal, in tLe 
 presence of the lords Petre and Clifford, and that this pledge was taken 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 515 
 
 down in writing and signed by these noble men shortly after the termi- 
 nation of the royal interview. Whatever disputes might arise about 
 particular cases of alleged promises on his part, there was no doubt 
 whatever that the prince had bound himself in honor to the sustainment 
 of the Catholic cause on more than one occasion. Nevertheless, this 
 base and thoroughly-depraved wretch, whose whole life proves him to 
 have been utterly destitute of faith and truth and honor, yet who has 
 been styled, with pretty general acceptance (such is the innate flunkey- 
 ism of the majority of mankind), "the finest gentleman of his age," no 
 sooner found himself in possession of the regal power than he resolved, 
 without scruple or hesitation, on violating all his pledges. In short, he 
 retained the sanctimonious bigot Perceval as his prime minister, and 
 surrounded himself with the bitterest enemies of the Catholic cause. It 
 has been stated that he was influenced to this violation of his plighted 
 faith and honor chiefly by the persuasions and fascinations of the mar- 
 chioness of Hertford, the lady who was his mistress at the time he 
 became prince-regent. This bewitching siren was then somewhat more 
 than fifty years of age. The taste of his royal highness generally pre- 
 ferred lady-loves who were "fat, fair and forty" to more youthful and 
 less full-blown charmers. On the present occasion, the royal voluptuary 
 took delight in beauty still more ripened by time. I shall shortly have 
 occasion to refer to this mature enchantress, Lady Hertford, and the 
 famous "witchery" resolutions that were called forth by her anti-Cath- 
 olic interference. 
 
 The prince was not content even with breaking his promise to the 
 Catholics. An aggressive policy towards the Catholic Committee was 
 resolved on. An attempt to suppress it must be made. It was all very 
 well to tolerate it while a feeble, pliable peer, a friend to the veto, too, 
 like Lord Fingal, was the recognized head of the Catholics, but, with a 
 bold and vigorous intellect, like O'Connell's, directing their affairs, the 
 committee was likely to become too formidable to " the powers that be." 
 Accordingly, on the 12th of February, 1811, Wellesley Pole, who had 
 succeeded his brother, Sir Arthur Wellesley (the latter was now com- 
 manding the British army in the Peninsula), as chief secretary for Ire- 
 land, issued a confusedly-written circular, addressed to the sheriffs and 
 principal magistrates of Ireland. In this document the Catholic Com- 
 
51 G THE LIFE OF DAK1EL O'COXNELE. 
 
 mittee is denounced as "an unlawful assembly sitting in Dublin." 
 Weilesley Pole was desirous to bring the action of the members of the 
 Catholic Committee within the sweep of the Convention Act. His cir- 
 cular contains the following not very lucid directions to the sheriffs : 
 "You are required, in pursuance of the provisions of an act of the 33d 
 of the king, c. 29, to cause to be arrested and commit to prison (unless 
 bail shall be given) all persons within your jurisdiction who shall be 
 guilty of giving, or having given or published, any written or other 
 notice of the election or appointment, in any manner, of such repre- 
 sentative, delegate or manager as aforesaid; or if attending, voting or 
 acting; or of having attended, voted or acted in any manner in the 
 choice or appointment of such representative, delegate or manager; and 
 you are to communicate these directions, as far as lies in your power, 
 forthwith to the several magistrates of the same county." 
 
 O'Connell, as we have seen, had exercised all his foresight to secure 
 the committee from the snares of the Convention Act. His foresight, 
 however, proved unavailing. The imprudence of some of his associates 
 gave an opening to the government. Lord Fingal and others were 
 arrested. The question, whether the provisions of the Convention Act 
 had been violated, was submitted to a jury, in the persons of Dr. Sheri- 
 dan and Mr. Kirwan. The state prosecution of Dr. Sheridan com- 
 menced on the 21st of November, 1811. The question was, what did 
 the words in the act, " under pretence of petitioning," mean ? The Crown 
 lawyers maintained that pretence meant purpose, and that the Catholics, 
 even when meeting for the bond fide [genuine, in good faith) purpose of 
 petitioning, came under the prohibitions of the Convention Act. The 
 counsel for the traverser maintained that if delegates assembled really 
 and truly to petition Parliament, then the meeting was quite legal. The 
 Castle was baffled. O'Connell gained great credit by this case. He was 
 not, indeed, a leading counsel. Being kept by the Catholic disabilities 
 from the inner bar, of course the king's counsel took precedence of him. 
 But he was able to show his great skill in cross-examination. No man 
 could surpass him in throwing a witness off his guard, by first asking 
 him a series of apparently indifferent questions, and then, having led 
 him into the snare, perplexing and confounding him by a rapid fire of 
 unexpected interrogatories. Besides, it was generally believed that the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 plan of defence was suggested by him. The escape of Dr. Sheridan was 
 a great triumph, especially as the jury were Protestants. 
 
 The Catholics, elated by their triumph, resolved to hold a meeting 
 for the purpose of petitioning. They assembled in Fishamble Street 
 Theatre a few days after the trial. Before Lord Fingal, who, it was 
 intended, should be chairman, had arrived, a police-magistrate entered 
 and stood beside the vacant chair. He excited no small amount of 
 curiosity in the minds of those present. On the arrival of Lord Fingal, 
 the combative Counsellor Hussey — he of the fiery red locks — at once 
 stood up and moved " that the earl of Fingal do take the chair." 
 O'Connell quietly seconded the motion. Next, Lord Netterville moved 
 and Nicholas Purcell 0' Gorman, barrister, seconded the resolution, that 
 " the Catholic petition be now read." At this stage of the proceedings 
 the police magistrate began taking a part in the scene, and the action of 
 the drama became interesting and lively. 
 
 Police Magistrate. "My Lord Fingal, I beg to state my object in com- 
 ing here. His Excellency the lord-lieutenant has been informed that 
 this is a meeting of the Catholic Committee, composed of the peers, 
 prelates, country gentlemen and persons chosen in the different parishes 
 of Ireland. I come here by direction of the lord-lieutenant, and as a 
 magistrate of the city of Dublin I ask you, the chairman of this meet- 
 ing, if that be the case, and if so, what is your object?" 
 
 Lord Fingal. "Our purpose in coining here is perfectly legal and 
 constitutional." 
 
 Magistrate. " That is not an answer to my question." 
 
 Lord Fingal. " What is your question ?" 
 
 Magistrate. "I ask, is this a meeting of the Catholic Committee — a 
 meeting composed of the peers, prelates, country gentlemen and others 
 of the city of Dublin?" 
 
 Lord Fingal. "I certainly do not feel myself bound to give you any 
 other answer than that I have already given. "We have met for the sole, 
 legal and constitutional purpose of petitioning." 
 
 Magistrate. "My lord, I ask you, as chairman of this meeting, in 
 what capacity are you met?" 
 
 Lord Fingal. "We are met to petition Parliament." It is clear that 
 Lord Fingal is determined not to let the magistrate get much out of him. 
 
518 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Magistrate. " My lord, that is not an answer to my question. I hope 
 I have leave to speak?" 
 
 Some disturbance among the people had occurred at this point of the 
 proceedings. However, it stopped, when several voices cried out, " Hear 
 the magistrate ! Hear the magistrate !" 
 
 Magistrate. " I beg leave to ask your lordship again, is this a meet- 
 ing of the Catholic Committee, constituted by the Catholic peers, 
 prelates, country gentlemen and the persons appointed in the several 
 parishes of Dublin?" 
 
 Lord Fingal. " I am not aware that I can give you any other answer 
 than that I have already given." 
 
 Magistrate. " Then, my lord, your answer is that you are a meeting 
 of Catholics assembled for a legal and constitutional purpose ?" 
 
 Here several persons cried out, "No, no; there was no answer in 
 such terms." 
 
 (yConncll. "It is a most unusual thing for any magistrate to come 
 into a public meeting to catechise, ask questions and put his own con- 
 structions upon the answers." 
 
 Magistrate. "My lord, am I to understand that you decline telling 
 me fully what meeting you are, and the purpose of your meeting?" 
 
 Lord Fingal. "We are met for a legal and constitutional purpose.'' 
 
 Magistrate. " I wish to be distinctly understood. Am I to under- 
 stand that you will give no other answer to my question ? Do you give 
 no other answer?" 
 
 Here some disturbance interrupted the magistrate. One person 
 cried, "Read the petition;" another cried, "Where's Mr. Hay? Hear 
 the magistrate!" 
 
 Magistrate. " My Lord Fingal, I consider your declining to give me 
 an answer as an admission that this is the Committee of the Catholics 
 of Ireland." 
 
 O'Connell. "As what passes here may be given in evidence, I beg 
 leave to say that the magistrate has received a distinct answer to his 
 question. It is not for him to distort any answer he has received into 
 a meaning of his own ; he is to take the words in their literal signifi- 
 cation." 
 
 Magistrate. " My lord, I consider your refusing to give any other 
 
THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 519 
 
 answer as an admission of the fact of this being the Catholic Com- 
 mittee." 
 
 0' Council. "If yon please to tell gentlemen that such is your belief, 
 it is of no consequence to us. We are not to be bound by your opinion." 
 
 Magistrate, doggedly. " Does your lordship deny that this is the Cath- 
 olic Committee?" 
 
 Counsellor Finn. "My Lord Fingal has neither given you admission 
 nor denial." 
 
 ' Conned . "We do not want the magistrate's assistance to make out 
 meanings for us. Let him not imagine that he can bind this meeting 
 by any assertion he thinks proper to make." 
 
 Magistrate. "Then I repeat that your lordship's refusal to give me a 
 direct answer is an admission that this meeting is the Catholic Com- 
 mittee, and being such, it is an unlawful assembly. As such I require 
 it to disperse. It is my wish to discharge my duty in as mild a manner 
 as possible. I hope no resistance will be offered. I hope that I need 
 not have recourse to the means I am intrusted with for the purpose of 
 dispersing the meeting." 
 
 Lord Fingal, " I do not intend to resist the laws, but I shall not 
 leave this seat until I am forced to do so, that I may bring an action 
 against the person removing me." 
 
 Magistrate. " My lord, I shall remove you from the chair. My doing 
 so will be an arrest." 
 
 Taking Lord Fingal by the arm, the magistrate, with a gentle vio- 
 lence, so to speak, pushed him out of the chair. Immediately Counsellor 
 O'Gorman moved Lord Netterville into the chair; but this nobleman, in 
 his turn, was expelled by the magistrate. Finally, when a third chair- 
 man, the Hon. Mr. Barnewell, was proposed, the meeting separated at 
 the recommendation of Sir Edward Bellew.* 
 
 * The principal authorities consulted in writing the foregoing chapter are: "The History of 
 Ireland, from its Union with Great Britain, in January, 1801, to October, 1810," by Francis Plowden, 
 Esq. ; Mitchel's "Continuation of McGeoghegan ;" "Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell," Dublin, 
 J. Mullany, etc.; Fagan's "Life of O'Connell;" "Personal Recollections," by O'Neill Daunt; 
 " The Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P., edited, with Historical Notices, etc., by his Son, 
 Jjhn O'Connell, Esq.;" "Grattan's Speeches;" Wise's "History of the Catholic Association," etc. 
 
CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 Aggregate meeting at Fishamble Street Theatre — Percy Bysshe Shelley declares 
 for Catholic emancipation and repeal of the union — Suppression of the Cath- 
 olic Committee — It is succeeded by the Catholic Board — Powerful speech of 
 O'Connell; his onslaught on Sir Charles Saxton and Wellesley Pole — Dissen- 
 sions BETWEEN THE ARISTOCRATIC AND POPULAR SECTIONS OF THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT — 
 
 Lord Ffrench and the " Edinburgh Review " assail the Catholic lawyers — Edmund 
 Burke on the appointment of Irish Catholic bishops by the Crown — O'Connell 
 rouses the Irish Catholics from the torpor of serfdom; his daring denuncia- 
 tions of tyranny — His indulgence in personalities — Bill for exchanging the 
 English and Irish militias; O'Connell denounces it; an address of thanks is 
 
 SENT TO HIM FROM DlNGLE — SPLENDID SPEECH OF GrATTAN IN FAVOR OF CATHOLIC EMAN- 
 cipation — o'connell's generous admiration of gllattan — lively scene in the 
 House of Commons; Colonel Hutchinson brands the Act of Union; the House is 
 
 TURNED INTO A BEAR-GARDEN — ASSASSINATION OF THE PRIME MINISTER, Mr. PERCEVAL; 
 
 o'connell's speech on this event — the liverpool ministry — peel chief secretary 
 for Ireland — Peel on O'Connell — O'Connell's style of eloquence. 
 
 ^W^MMEDIATELY after the singular occurrence with which I con- 
 (W.VM CUK ^ et ^ ^ ie l ast chapter, a requisition, signed by three hundred 
 k^MM names, and calling on the Catholics to assemble at an aggre- 
 (WfA gate meeting in Fishamble Street Theatre, was placarded on 
 If the walls of Dubin. The new meeting, not being an assembly 
 of delegates, but an aggregate one, afforded the magistrates no legal 
 pretext for dispersing it like the former. O'Connell admitted, at this 
 meeting, that a magistrate was legally entitled to ask any assemblage 
 of people, whether or not they were assembled for a legal purpose; 
 but he denied that a magistrate had any authority to catechise them 
 further. According to O'Connell, he should be prepared to act on their 
 answer to his first question. Our hero praised the prudent conduct of 
 the chairman of the other meeting, who had afforded no precedent for 
 the continuation of such a practice. This prudent course of the chair- 
 man, he said, would be henceforth a protection against the vexatious 
 interruptions of ignorance and presumption. He denied that, in hold- 
 ing an aggregate meeting instead of a meeting of the committee, the 
 
 520 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 521 
 
 Catholics shrank from the ground on which they had stood before. It, 
 was not the Catholics, it w r as the government, that shrank. The Cath- 
 olics had always contended for the right of petition; they did not now 
 shrink from a trial of its legality. It was the Crown lawyers who 
 shrank from it. He threatened proceedings against the authorities. 
 Finally, he told his audience that perseverance alone was needed — a 
 firm and temperate determination — to make their cause in the end 
 successful. 
 
 One thing, in addition to the peculiar circumstances under which it 
 was summoned, renders this meeting worthy of notice. It w T as attended 
 by one of the most celebrated English poets of those days — the benevo- 
 lent, but mistaken, Percy Bysshe Shelley — doomed, alas! to find, not 
 many years later, an untimely death in the waters of the gulf of Spezzia. 
 The tone which he adopted at this meeting was one of moderation. At 
 this time he seems to have taken considerable interest in Irish affairs. 
 Some observations of his remain, which — along with a certain visionary 
 wildness and extravagance, a certain mingling of the jargon of pseudo- 
 philanthropy and progress, so prevalent in this canting nineteenth cen- 
 tury; a certain Utopianism, in short — show manifest signs of a heart 
 and imagination and intellect better able to realize the peculiar features 
 and difficulties of the Irish question, than Englishmen in general, even 
 those of the highest intellect, or even many of our Irishmen, could boast 
 of. At all events, he was able to see clearly that emancipation, gained 
 by itself, would, in any sense worth speaking of, profit only "the higher 
 orders of the Catholic persuasion;" and he also had sufficient insight to 
 perceive that, in a consideration of Ireland's grievances and obstacles to 
 prosperity, the paramount grievance and obstacle even in those days 
 was the thrice-accursed union. The observations of Shelley are worth 
 quoting here : 
 
 " It is my opinion that the claims of the Catholic inhabitants of Ire- 
 land, if gained to-morrow, would in a very small degree aggrandize their 
 liberty or happiness. The disqualifications principally affect the higher 
 orders of the Catholic persuasion ; these would chiefly be benefited by 
 their removal. Power and wealth do not benefit, but injure, the cause 
 of freedom and virtue. I am happy, however, at the near approach of 
 this emancipation, because I am inimical to all disqualifications C»r 
 
522 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 opinion. It will not add one comfort to the cottager, will snatch not 
 one from the dark dungeon, will root out not one vice, alleviate not one 
 pang. Yet it is a foreground of a picture, in the dimness of whose dis- 
 tance I behold the lion lie down with the lamb and the infant play with 
 the basilisk ; for it supposes the extermination of the eyeless monster, 
 Bigotry, whose throne has tottered for two hundred years. I hear the 
 teeth of the palsied beldam Superstition chatter, and I see her descend- 
 ing to the grave. Reason points to the open gates of the temple of 
 religious freedom ; Philanthropy kneels at the altar of the common God. 
 I regard the admission of the Catholic claims and the repeal of the Union 
 Act as blossoms of that fruit, which the summer sun of improved intel- 
 lect and progressive virtue are destined to mature. I will not pass 
 without reflection the legislative union between Great Britain and Ire- 
 land; nor will I speak of it as a grievance so tolerable or unimportant 
 in its nature as that of Catholic disqualification. The latter affects few, 
 the union affects thousands; the one disqualifies the rich from power, 
 the other impoverishes the peasant, adds beggary to the city, famine to 
 the country, multiplies abjectness, whilst misery and crime play into 
 each others hands under its withering auspices. I esteem, then, the 
 annihilation of this second grievance as something more than a mere 
 sign of good. I esteem it to be in itself a substantial benefit. The 
 aristocracy of Ireland (much as I disapprove of other distinctions than 
 those of virtue and talent, I consider it useless, hasty and violent not 
 for the present to acquiesce in their continuance) — the aristocracy of 
 Ireland suck the veins of its inhabitants, and consume that blood in 
 England." 
 
 All these proceedings, however, ended in the suppression of the 
 Catholic Committee. The counter-prosecution, undertaken against Lord 
 Chief-Justice Downes for signing the warrants for the apprehension of 
 the Catholic leaders, the illegality of which the verdict in Dr. Sheridan's 
 case seemed to determine, failed in spite of (VConnell's vigorous efforts. 
 In short, the government had gained its point in suppressing the Cath- 
 olic Committee. That body was succeeded by the Catholic Board, which 
 at first manifested an equal share of courage and energy. 
 
 While the affairs of the Catholics remained in this critical position 
 O'Connell was increasing his reputation both as a lawyer and a political 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 leader. When the attorney-general, Saurin, presumed to impute trea- 
 sonable intents to the Catholic Committee, O'Connell, with his usual 
 forensic boldness, told him in open court that his charge was "false and 
 groundless." At another Cathciic meeting, which took place on the 
 29th of February, 1812, after a vote of thanks to the general committee 
 of the Catholics of Ireland had been moved, coupled with a request 
 '"that they would not meet until the legality of their doing so should be 
 decided," O'Connell spoke, at considerable length, to a resolution of 
 thanks "to our friends in Parliament, Earl Grey and Lord Grenville." 
 In this harangue O'Connell covered with ridicule the jury, the judges 
 and the prosecuting counsel who had taken part in Mr. Kirwan's case. 
 He also denounced the secretary, Sir Charles Saxton, who had been 
 guilty of shameful interference with the arrangement of the jury-list. I 
 shall give some extracts from this speech : 
 
 "The first topic that presented itself was the late trial of Mr. Kir- 
 wan. That trial had proved only what was already well known — namely, 
 that it was possible for the Irish administration, with all its resources, 
 to find a single jury to take upon itself to swear that pretence means 
 purpose, and that the man who was admitted, by his prosecutors and 
 judges, to be innocent in act and intention, was in law and fact guilty. 
 
 " It, however, proved that one such jury was possible, for those who 
 saw that jury must admit that it was not in human nature to afford 
 such another. Whv, the administration had been so diligent in the 
 search of originals, that they had actually found out a Mr. Donovan, 
 who keeps or kept a crockery-ware shop on the Quays, and who, until 
 the second day of the trial, never had heard of the subject-matter of the 
 trial! So he declared before he was sworn on the jury. What think 
 you of any man, not absolutely deaf, who had been for three preceding 
 months in Dublin, and had never before heard of that prosecution ? 
 
 " But a verdict obtained in the manner that had been was of no im- 
 portance. The public mind was in nowise affected by it. It was antici- 
 pated, from the commencement of the pieces of plain prose with which 
 the prosecution was opened, to the morsel of brilliant hypocrisy with 
 which it was closed. The verdict was of no estimation, even in the 
 opinion of the very prosecutors, who felt the impossibility of obtaining 
 another; and in that despair relinquished this extraordinary crusade 
 
I 
 
 524 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 against the right of petition. To this despair alone could be traced the 
 abandonment of the opposition to allow the Catholics the poor privilege 
 of placing themselves in a body upon their knees. 
 
 " Two traces had been left on the memory of the late state trial. The 
 one was ludicrous — the other had in it something of a more grave 
 nature. The first merely recalled the recollection of the farcical epi- 
 thets applied by the solicitor-general (Bushe) to three individuals. Of 
 the attorney-general he had said 'that he was the most learned and 
 wisest of mankind' (a very general laugh). Mr. Justice Day he called 
 'a magnanimous judge' (much and very general laughter) ; and what was 
 still more ridiculous, he styled himself ' a friend to the Catholics of Ire- 
 land ' (shouts of laughter). The magnanimous judge had, indeed, returned 
 the compliment, and in a speech which was, with some absurdity, called 
 the passing of sentence on Mr. Kirwan, but which, in fact, was, what it 
 ought to be, an eulogium on that gentleman — an eulogium in which all 
 classes would readily join — the magnanimous judge retorted the compli- 
 ment, and called the solicitor-general 'the friend of the Catholics? 
 
 " Good God ! what a notion those men must have of our stupidity ! 
 what dupes and idiots they must take us to be ! I am ready to concede 
 'magnanimity' to the judge; but that this barrister should be our 
 friend — that he who commenced his political career with being, whilst 
 yet young, the supporter of the blood-written administration of Lord 
 Camden — that he who can look at his own children, and then doom ours 
 to be degraded — who has shown himself ready to embrace any servitude, 
 in the way of his profession, and to ensure his promotion — that man 
 may continue to persecute us — I consent — but he shall never enjoy the 
 notion of our considering him as a 'friend;' we know him well.'' 
 
 He next attacks the interference of Sir Charles Saxton with the jury- 
 list as the graver recollection left behind by Kirwan's trial : 
 
 " I own I was so far deceived as to expect that all that was solemn 
 and sanctified about the chief-justice would have been roused into the 
 semblance of animation when he heard that the Crown solicitor and Sir 
 Charles Saxton hunted in couples for the knowledge of the jury. I, in 
 vain, hoped to see the spark of what I should call honest constitutional 
 fire illumine all that was dark and delightful in the pomp of religious 
 display; but no, alas! no; the interference, whatever it was, of the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 525 
 
 chief secretary of the Castle respecting a jury in Dublin, passed off 
 without arousing one slumbering emotion, and precisely as if the chief 
 secretary were the accustomed assistant of the attorney for the prose- 
 cution. 
 
 " But this is a grave and serious subject. Of what value is property, 
 of what value is life, if the chief secretary of the Castle, with all the 
 power, all the wealth and all the influence of the Crown in his hands, is 
 to take any part whatsoever respecting the management of the jury?" 
 
 He next blames himself and others, who had the conduct of Mr. 
 Kirwan's defence, for neglecting to examine Sir Charles Saxton. The 
 solicitor-general had promised "that the counsel for the Crown would 
 sift the transaction to the bottom," Referring to this false promise, O'Con- 
 nell says : " Those were his words ; we idly believed him, when he com- 
 pelled Sir Charles to attend. Of course we were deceived ; but why, 
 then, did we not ourselves examine the secretary? I must confess I 
 cannot tell. It passed over, and we all felt our error. Would to God 
 we had examined him ! Would to God we had sifted him on his oath — 
 where, from whom, when he got the jury-list? how it happened that the 
 numbers were altered ? was it corruption ? was it a miracle ? . . . 
 
 "Allow me to say one word more as to the late trial. The prosecu- 
 tors iusulted us by excluding every Catholic from the jury; they injured 
 us, too, by excluding every Presbyterian. How I thank them for the 
 compliment they paid, on this second trial, to the sterling integrity of 
 the Irish Presbyterians — the very best class of men in any community ! 
 To all that is generous and warm in the Irish character, they add a firm- 
 ness and a discretion which improves every manly virtue. I do greatly 
 admire the friends of religious and civil liberty, the Presbyterians of 
 Ireland." 
 
 After these broad and generous sentiments of toleration — the like of 
 which, I regret to say, are seldom heard among leading Irish Catholics, 
 and scarcely ever among English Catholics, in our own day — O'Connell 
 uttered some rather questionable sentiments on the subject of secret 
 conspiracy and on certain schemes then afloat in Ireland among certain 
 disaffected persons. His harangue next tore to pieces, in his most slash- 
 ing and merciless style, a wretched speech delivered by Wellesley Pole 
 in the British House of Commons which described the Catholics as 
 
526 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 recently departing from their original moderate determination to confine 
 themselves to petitioning and to avoid any breach of the Convention 
 Act. Wellesley Pole complained that latterly the committee undertook 
 to manage, not the Catholic petition, but Catholic affairs ; that a com- 
 mittee of grievances was appointed, which held weekly meetings ; that 
 the forms of the House of Commons were imitated ; that this violence 
 had alarmed the lords Fingal and Ffrench, and others of the more respect- 
 able Catholics; that these gentlemen deemed the committee had exceeded 
 their powers. He even asserted that the lords Fingal and Ffrench had 
 seceded from the committee. 
 
 O'Connell begins his onslaught on this speech by affecting to disbe- 
 lieve in the genuineness of the report " contained in a paper bearing, 
 with a constant contempt for truth, the sacred name of ' PatrioV " He 
 says : " I cannot bring myself to believe that any man could pronounce 
 such a discourse. The style is of the poorest order, . . . and there are a 
 thousand phrases in it which demonstrate that no man of common edu- 
 cation could have composed it. But it would be absurd to waste time 
 in censuring more of this composition ; it is the absence of truth and 
 decency which distinguishes it and entitles it to some notice amongst 
 our calumnies. 
 
 " Let me be pardoned whilst I delay you to expose its want of ve- 
 racity. It is by calumny alone that our degradation is continued ; if 
 nothing were told of us falsely, if 'naught was set down against us in 
 malice,' we should long since have been emancipated. My lord, I beg 
 leave to confute these calumnies, not because they are talented or skilful, 
 but simply to oppose the system of detraction." 
 
 He takes six of Wellesley Pole's assertions and demolishes them. I 
 shall give one or two passages: "It is also asserted, second, 'That Lord 
 Ffrench, in consequence of the violence of the members of the com- 
 mittee, seceded from them.' 
 
 " When shall I find time to express my astonishment at this asser- 
 tion? — an assertion directly, pointedly and positively the contrary of the 
 fact. Mr. W. W. Pole could never have said any such thing. Why, 
 Lord Ffrench was in the chair when Mr. Pole sent his police-justice to 
 disperse that committee. Loi-d Ffrench entered into a correspondence 
 with Mr. Pole to maintain that committee. He lent his character, his 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 527 
 
 rank and his talents to support that committee; and, in perfect defiance 
 of Mr. W. W. Pole, he did support it, What becomes of the audacious 
 assertion of his secession? 
 
 "I wish my noble friend — for so I am proud to call him — were. 
 allowed by his health to be here this day: how he would refute this 
 calumny! He never seceded or deserted the Catholic cause; and I can 
 assure Mr. W. W. Pole that there breathes not the man who would pre- 
 sume to tell his lordship that he seceded from the Catholic Committee 
 or the Catholic rights. I know the reply which such presumption would 
 meet and merit," 
 
 O'Connell also denied the assertion "that the carl of Fingal had 
 seceded." Lord Fingal, who was present, assented to O'Connell's denial. 
 After touching on various other points of Wellesley Pole's speech, the 
 orator proceeds thus : 
 
 "Yes, this article illustrates the active genius of the speech. Un- 
 founded assertion, ridiculous argument, paltry self-sufficiency and ludi- 
 crous quotation. ... I have to apologize for attaching so much import- 
 ance to matters so insignificant. 
 
 " I hasten to conclude by expressing my conviction that the emanci- 
 pation is certain, and will be immediate. The generous, the cordial 
 support of our Protestant brethren, in Ireland, assures us of it, The 
 petition — which is exclusively their measure, and with respect to which 
 every Catholic has scrupulously avoided the least interference — the 
 Protestant petition has, at this moment, more signatures to it than were 
 affixed to any petition of our own. It has been supported in every 
 county by the wealth, talent and rank of our affectionate countrymen, 
 and I am proud to see amongst us this day, at the head of so many 
 of our Protestant friends, a noble lord (Glentworth) whose ardent 
 patriotism entitles him to the gratitude of every class of his fellow- 
 subjects." . . . 
 
 " We have the Protestants of Ireland in our favor ; the Protestants 
 of England — at least the rational part of them — are not opposed to us. 
 No, in the two last discussions in Parliament, the right and justice of 
 our claims were conceded, even by those who opposed on the ground of 
 the time. There was but one solitary exception — a single individual, 
 Sir John Nichol, who was sent forward as the scapegoat of English 
 
528 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 bigotry, to revive ancient calumny and to add some fresh ones ; he was 
 installed in the enviable office of successor to Dr. Duigenan ; but, good 
 Lord! he is quite unfit for the employment, There was about Duigenan 
 a sturdy, robust, unblushing effrontery, that enabled him to assert any- 
 thing, and prevented the possibility of his retreating. This poor Nichol, 
 however, was no sooner attacked and ridiculed, at every tide, than he 
 explained one passage, softened down another and gave up a third, until 
 he himself abandoned, piecemeal, the web of intolerance, so that it 
 really appears that even the fertile resource of bigoted calumny is at 
 length exhausted. 
 
 "Of the prince" [the ivorthlcss regent) "I shall say nothing — uncer- 
 tainty as to present circumstances, reliance on the past, and the linger- 
 ing and dutiful affection in a heart devoted to the friend of Ireland " 
 [humbug!), "restrain me. To canvass the subject would appear to be the 
 entertaining of a doubt. 
 
 " Oh ! but there is one objection still remains to our emancipation; it is. 
 quite novel and most important. Our enemies object to the tone whicli 
 the Catholics use. This notable objection was struck out by the earl of 
 Rosse. He disliked our tone. He might as well have quarrelled with 
 our accent ; but that would be rather a strong measure in Lord Eosse 
 (laughter). Seriously, however, the descendant of Sir William Parsons 
 has a hereditary right to be the enemy of the Catholics upon any pre- 
 text, or even without one. I do not belfeve this lord has fallen into 
 inconsistency. I have some faint recollection that, under the name of 
 Sir Lawrence Parsons, he once enacted patriotism in Ireland. I may 
 be mistaken, but I do not think he ever supported our claims ; and I 
 am quite sure I wish he never may. 
 
 " But our tone is disliked. Yes, my lord, they dislike the tone which 
 men should use who are deeply anxious for the good of their country, 
 and who have no other object. We are impressed with the sense of the 
 perils that surround us, and of all the calamities impending on a divided 
 and distracted people." [Here he alludes to the menacing might of Na- 
 poleon.) . . . 
 
 "We, my lord, assume the tone which may terrify the invader; we 
 use the tone of men who appreciate the value of civil liberty, and who 
 would die sooner than exchange it for the iron sway of military rule 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 529 
 
 We talk as men should who dread slavery and disgrace, but laugh to 
 scorn the idea of danger. Shall it be asked, if the invader arrived — 
 
 " ' And was there none — no Irish arm 
 
 In whose veins the native blood runs warm ? 
 And was there no heart in the trampled land 
 That spurn' d the oppressor's proud command ? 
 Could the wronged realm no arm supply 
 But the abject tear and the slavish sigh'? 
 
 Why yes, my lord, we are told if we had been servile and base in our 
 language, and dastardly in our conduct, we should be nearer success; 
 that the 'slavish tear,' the 'abject sigh,' would have suited our dignity; 
 that had we shown ourselves prone to servility and submission, and 
 silent in oppression, we should advance our emancipation : and that by 
 proving, by our words and actions, that we deserve to be slaves, we 
 should ensure liberty." 
 
 I have quoted thus largely from this speech, because I think it an 
 important one, especially from a biographical point of view. It gives 
 striking specimens of O'Connell's peculiar views of public men and 
 public policy. We see plainly his great anxiety to conciliate Protest- 
 ants, his strong dislike of secret movements, his apparent disinclination 
 to look to France for assistance, his sanguine readiness to promise his 
 followers immediate success, even when success, as in the present 
 instance, was problematical, or, at least, remote. His tendency to bold 
 personalities is also conspicuous. To notice a more trifling particular, 
 we find him in this early speech using a quotation from Byron that was 
 a favorite one with him in his latter days — "My bosom's lord sits lightly 
 on his throne." With regard to his vehement denial of the possibility 
 of secession on the part of his noble friends, in this he partially deceived 
 either his auditory or himself, or both. Before long we shall see this 
 secession actually taking place. In fact, the aristocratic members of 
 the Catholic movement entertained a decided feeling of jealousy towards 
 the popular section, and especially towards O'Connell and other aspiring 
 young lawyers, who were gradually taking the leadership of the Catholic 
 body out of their hands. In a meeting which had taken place nearly a 
 year before the present one, Lord Ffrench had assailed the lawyers, 
 describing them as "men who ought to be suspected, as having more to 
 
530 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 expect than any other description of Catholics;" and, with a view "to 
 put down the lawyers" by an appeal to the people, on the same occasion 
 he had moved " that the Catholic concerns be referred to an aggregate 
 meeting to be held that day fortnight." O'Connell had replied, " That 
 for his part he should be most grateful if the bar were altogether ex- 
 cluded from Catholic politics. And if the noble lord could attend exclu- 
 sively to the affairs of the Catholics he, for one, should rejoice at their 
 being placed in such excellent hands. He (O'Connell) would then think 
 himself justified in devoting himself exclusively to his professional pur- 
 suits. He had no difficulty in calling on the all-seeing Deity to attest 
 the truth of his assertion, that the conscientious discharge of duty to 
 an afflicted country was his leading motive in coming forward. The 
 committee, however, had done their duty well." O'Connell's speech 
 then c;oes on to show the services rendered to the Catholic bodv bv the 
 committee, and to correct some misstatements of the Edinburgh Review. 
 This celebrated periodical had, in a recent article on Irish politics, thus 
 assailed the more popular section of the Catholic Committee : " The 
 original managers of the Catholic cause were men of singular prudence 
 and moderation — of high rank and acknowledged abilities. The distinc- 
 t-ion they obtained by their judicious and well-concerted endeavors natu- 
 rally excited the jealousy of some members of the body, who had nut exactly 
 the same qualifications; and the very success which had crowned their 
 efforts produced, in the most sanguine and impetuous spirits, a degree 
 of impatience at those slow and regulated movements, to which in real- 
 ity they had been principally indebted for their success. In the crowded 
 meetings of the Dublin Catholics, accordingly, there had recently arisen 
 a set of rash, turbulent, ambitious or bigoted men, who evidently aimed 
 at getting the management of this great cause, and, in some measure, 
 the command of this great population, into their own hands, and em- 
 ployed, for the attainment of this object, the common arts that are 
 resorted to by all who are more desirous of popularity than scrupulous 
 about the means of procuring it. They flattered and inflamed their 
 auditors by speaking in exaggerated terms of their wrongs, their num- 
 bers and their power; and, mingling something like the language of 
 intimidation with their arguments and remonstrances, affected a much 
 warmer zeal for the rights of the body, and a much more lofty deter- 
 
mination to bring the cause to a speedy issue, than had suited the cau- 
 tious policy of their more experienced leaders. The success of these arts 
 was neither to be wondered at, nor in common times very much to be 
 dreaded. The assembled multitudes in Dublin might applaud the vehe- 
 ment and bombastic harangues of a few ambitious counsellors and attor- 
 neys, but the Catholic prelacy and aristocracy were likely to maintain a 
 practical ascendency in the management of their common cause. In 
 this crisis, however, the question of the veto was suddenly brought 
 under public discussion, and the measure being furiously cried out 
 against by those who trembled at the thought of a real conciliation, the 
 cry was rashly taken up by the rash and sanguine, who spurned at the 
 idea of compromise, and by the ambitious, who sought only for an 
 opportunity to distinguish themselves. By their impetuosity and their 
 clamors they confounded some and infected others, and, appearing by 
 their noise and activity to be far more numerous than they actually 
 were, they finally succeeded in intimidating the prelates themselves into 
 an acquiescence in their absurd opposition." I may add that this review 
 also contains a statement that the Catholics were excluded from not 
 more than about forty offices besides the Houses of Parliament. 
 
 O'Connell comments on these severe criticisms of the Edinburgh 
 with unusual moderation. Upon the whole, he is grateful to the article 
 for some good things it contains, in spite of the palpable hits against 
 himself: "I see myself among those whom they style 'bombastic coun- 
 sellors.' ... It is not in the nature of popular feeling to continue long 
 in gratitude; but I have no hesitation in saying that the Catholics of 
 Ireland deserve to be slaves if they ever forget what they owe to the 
 writers of that article." However, he maintains that they are deplora- 
 bly ignorant of the condition of Ireland and the Irish. He says: "I 
 am prepared to prove that there are twelve hundred and fifty-four 
 offices from which the Catholics are excluded by the direct operation of 
 the law, and thirty thousand places from which they are excluded by 
 its consequences. , . . Catholics are excluded from the following offices : 
 In Parliament, 900 ; in corporations, 3981 ; in the law, 1058 ; in the 
 army, 9000; in the navy, 12,200; other offices, 2251 — amounting in 
 the entire to 30,490. Catholics were excluded, in addition to all this, 
 from the collection and management of the public money. ... In Eng 
 
 & 
 
532 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 land there was no liberty of conscience for Irish Catholic officers. If 
 they went to England with their regiments, they must violate their prin 
 ciples or quit the service. Why did the pious Perceval and the holy 
 Wilberforce allow Popery in the German legion, and persecute it among 
 the loyal Irish ? The committee were desirous that the hirelings who 
 did the dirty work of the Wellesleys should dare to contradict the facts 
 which his statement contained." 
 
 O'Connell next glances at the jealousies and elements of disunion 
 in the committee: "The old curse of the Catholics is, I fear, about to 
 be renewed ; division, that made us what we are, is again to rear its 
 standard amongst us. I recollect, in reading the life of 'the great 
 duke of Ormond,' as he was called, I was forcibly struck with a 
 despatch of his written about 1661, to vindicate himself from a charge 
 of having given Catholics permission to hold a public meeting in Dublin. 
 His answer is remarkable. He rejects with disdain the foul calumny 
 of being a favorer of Papists, though he admits he gave them leave to 
 meet; 'because,' said he, 'I know by experience that the Irish Papists 
 never met without dividing and degrading themselves.' One hundred 
 and fifty years have since elapsed, and we are still in thraldom, because 
 no experience can, I fear, cure us of this wretched disposition to divide. 
 I have already consumed too much of the time of the meeting ; I shall 
 therefore conclude by moving the order of the day, 'that the Catholic 
 petition be forthwith presented to Parliament.' I am anxious to place 
 that out of the way of dissension. The cry of 'No petition!' was sup- 
 posed, in the country, to be the watchword of party in Dublin. For- 
 merly gentlemen talked for hours in praise of 'dignified silence,' and of 
 'frowning upon their enemies,' and of 'muttering curses deep, not loud.' 
 Now, indeed, their faces are decked with smiles; they are smoothing 
 their whiskers and talking of delicacy ; they entreat, with courtly air, 
 that we would not embarrass our friends of the new administration." 
 
 In this dispute we see evidences of the growing dissensions between 
 the Catholic aristocracy and the popular leaders of Ireland. The veto 
 question embittered the misunderstanding. I so far agree with the 
 remarks of the Edinburgh Revieiv, as to think that the veto dispute 
 helped to overthrow "the practical ascendency" of the Catholic aristoc- 
 racy. But for his persistent and unbending opposition to the veto, 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 O'Connell would, in all probability, have remained for years without 
 attaining the boundless influence with his people which he so speedily 
 reached. The reviewer, however, is himself most absurd in calling this 
 opposition "absurd." O'Connell was perfectly right both on principle 
 and as a matter of policy in resisting the veto, even though he may 
 thereby have retarded the concession of emancipation. Grattan subse- 
 quently, in brilliant, but bitter, language, accused him of having done 
 so. Be that as it may, emancipation, clogged with the veto, would have 
 been a questionable boon indeed; and if O'Connell, by his obstinate 
 refusal to yield on this point, alienated from his side the illustrious 
 Grattan, he might console himself by the fact that the profounder views 
 of the equally illustrious Burke, on a project similar to that of the veto, 
 coincided with his own. I have already quoted some remarks from 
 "Burke's Letter to a Peer." I shall here give some additional sentences 
 from the same epistle : 
 
 "But allowing the present Castle finds itself fit to administer the 
 government of a church which they solemnly forswear— and forswear 
 with hard words and many evil epithets — yet they cannot ensure them- 
 selves that a man like the late Lord Chesterfield will not succeed to them. 
 This man, while he was duping the credulity of the Papists with fine 
 words in private, and commending their good behavior during a rebellion 
 in Great Britain — 1745 — was capable of urging penal laws against 
 them in a speech from the throne, and stimulating with provocatives the 
 wearied and half-exhausted bigotry of the then parliament of Ireland. 
 Suppose an atheist playing the part of a bigot to be in power again in 
 this country, do you believe he would faithfully and religiously admin- 
 ister the trust of appointing pastors to a church which, wanting every 
 other support, stands in tenfold need of ministers who will be dear 
 to the people committed to their charge, and who will exercise a really 
 paternal authority among them?" This letter, containing these and 
 other equally forcible considerations, was republished on the occasion of 
 the veto dispute, and produced a greater impression than any other of the 
 numerous pamphlets that appeared on the question. 
 
 Even if there had been no veto question, it is probable that misun- 
 derstandings would have arisen between O'Connell and the aristocratic 
 leaders of the Catholics. His bold, uncompromising policy and mode 
 
534 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL, 
 
 of action, his vehement, outspoken, impassioned, denunciatory elo- 
 quence, above all, his fierce antagonism to the Castle and its minions, 
 were altogether at variance with their cautious and temporizing plans, 
 their mild and conciliatory language, their bland demeanor and courtier- 
 like relations to the members of the government. The sturdy tribune 
 of the democracy, robust in body and mind, was ill associated with the 
 pliable, smooth-tongued, superfine aristocrats, given to all sorts of finesse 
 and intriguing ways. In short, the alliance was an unnatural one, and 
 sure, in any event, to be speedily ruptured. 
 
 There is nothing, for which O'Connell has been more condemned by 
 many, than for the excessive license which he allowed his tongue. Very 
 few, if any, great orators, ancient or modern, have indulged so frequently 
 in invective. It must be admitted that his severity was sometimes 
 hardly justifiable, and that his ridicule frequently degenerated into 
 downright scurrility and buffoonery. Still, upon the whole, I am in- 
 clined to agree with those, who think that his readiness to lash unspar- 
 ingly his opponents in the high places ought to be classed among his 
 highest merits. At a time when the long thraldom of the penal laws 
 had made crouching slaves of too many of his coreligionists, when the 
 iron had sunk so deeply into their souls, it was well that they should 
 have had one of their own race and creed — a sufferer under the same 
 ban, a Catholic pleading for Catholics — free from all subserviency, at all 
 times ready to brave the frown of power and fearlessly tell the tyrant 
 and the tyrants' tool their villainy to their teeth. When the trampled 
 Catholics saw their leader no respecter of persons, they learned to be 
 independent. His defiance, and disdain, and fierceness at once roused 
 their souls from the torpor of serfdom. Their hearts felt the throb of 
 reviving manhood. What Catholic could hear the great Catholic advo- 
 cate thundering forth his terrible denunciations against Attorney- General 
 Saurin, in the memorable case of Magee, which I shall shortly notice at 
 great length, and feel himself any longer a slave ? In short, generally 
 speaking, in the most savage onslaughts of O'Connell, there is something 
 to be found not unhealthy, and his broadest and coarsest buffoonery is 
 redeemed by a certain genial humor and bonhommie. It should be 
 remembered, too, that all really healthy, and manly, and earnest, and 
 heroic ages are ages of free, broad, bold, unvarnished speech ; that, on 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 535 
 
 the other hand, the ages in which measured, mincing, cautious, conven- 
 tional delicacies of language prevail, are more than likely to he feeble, 
 effeminate, faithless, cowardly and thoroughly vicious ages. 
 
 Sometimes, when Dan would say something very broad and scurri- 
 lous against some man of power, the people would laugh at him. It 
 was most amusing then to hear Dan say, good-lmmoredly (his look on 
 those occasions was always most comic), "I can't help it; it's a way 
 I've got." After this the laughter would become twice as uproarious as 
 before. This was the way he excused himself when his audience, at the 
 Baltinglass repeal meeting, in '43, began to laugh at him for speaking 
 of the earl of Wicklow and his agent as "the pig Lord Wicklow and his 
 agent, Bogtrotter Fenton." 
 
 It is amusing, too, to find Dan at times speaking as if he wasn't at 
 all aware that he had the slightest turn for abusing people. Thus, when 
 pleading, in mitigation of punishment, on behalf of the notorious Watty 
 Cox, in 1811, we find him uttering the following sentence apparently in 
 perfect good faith : " The writer, when speaking of the abominable 
 tyrant of- France — I use the words of my client, in which, in his affi- 
 davit, he describes the present ruler of that country. I would be under- 
 stood as incapable of applying such phrases myself to any man.'" 
 
 In May, 1811, it was proposed to exchange the militias of the two 
 countries, so that the militia regiments of Ireland might be ordered to 
 England, where the penal laws against Catholic military men were still 
 in operation, and the regiments of Great Britain ordered to Ireland. 
 An English writer says of this bill: "By means of this interchange of 
 militia, a military force would be quartered in Ireland, not influenced by 
 the local interests or prejudices of that country, which would be at hand 
 to assist in the suppression of the disturbances that might arise from 
 the disappointed hopes of the majority of the people, respecting their 
 civil and religious privileges. If the policy of subjecting them be once 
 established, the policy of interchanging the militia can no longer be 
 called in question." O'Connell denounced this measure energetically. 
 At an aggregate meeting in Fishamble street, on the 28th of May, he 
 maintained that the bill was unconstitutional — contrary to the nature 
 and intention of the militia service. " It was not a transfer which was 
 proposed ; it was an annihilation of the Irish militia." An address, 
 
thanking him for his efforts, was sent to O'Connell from Dingle, in his 
 native county: "We are particularly anxious to convey to you our de- 
 cided approbation of the manliness, candor and perspicuity with which 
 you have developed the tendency of the intended transfer of our militia, 
 and displayed the machinations of those deluded men who style them- 
 selves Orangemen and Purplemen. We request you to accept our most 
 cordial thanks." Such was the address to our hero, signed by Edward 
 Fitzgerald on behalf of "the clergy, gentlemen, magistrates and free- 
 holders of Dingle." These strong expressions occur in the reply of 
 O'Connell : " For my part, I hate the Inquisition as much as I do the 
 Orange and Purple system, and for the same reason. The man who 
 attempts to interfere between his fellow-man and his Deity is, to my 
 mind, the most guilty of criminals." Irishmen of our own days would 
 do well to take these enlightened sentiments of the "liberator" home 
 to their heart of hearts, and treasure them up there, in order to guide 
 themselves by their light in all dealings with their countrymen of 
 religious persuasions differing from their own. 
 
 It appears that Grattan thought the petition against the militia bill, 
 adopted by the meeting, contained language which unfitted it for pre- 
 sentation to the legislature. O'Connell, differing from him, said : " It 
 was the opinion of Mr. Grattan that the petition was not, in its present 
 form, presentable to the House of Commons, and to such an authority 
 the highest respect was due. For myself, I have no hesitation in saying 
 that I approve of the petition in its present form. I deny the assertion 
 that it is a libel on the Protestants of England and Ireland. To them 
 it has not the slightest nor the most remote application; it is solely 
 applicable to the bigoted proselytising system encouraged and acted on 
 by the present administration." 
 
 The committee saw no reason to alter the petition. However, they 
 lost time in examining it. Dining the delay, the bill was hurried 
 through Parliament and became law. 
 
 On the 31st of May, 1811, Henry Grattan once more presented the 
 Catholic petition to the English Parliament. On this occasion he pleaded 
 for the rights and liberties of his Catholic countrymen with his accus- 
 tomed subtlety, power and splendor: "This is an occasion," said the 
 veteran orator, "in which we are assembled to try the bulk of the popu- 
 
r 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 537 
 
 lation of Ireland." The testimony against them begins by alleging 
 "that an immense body of Christians, subjects of this empire, are worse 
 than any class or nation of idolaters — that they are not trustworthy in 
 civil life. But if this charge be true, then it can be no less true that 
 the Messiah has failed, that the Christian religion is not of divine origin, 
 since its effect and operation have been to deprave and immoralize man- 
 kind. . . . The qualifying oath ... a deist, an atheist may likewise 
 take it. The Catholics are alone excepted ; and for what reason ? . . . 
 If a deist be fit to sit in Parliament, it can hardly be urged that a 
 Christian is unfit. If an atheist be competent to legislate for his coun- 
 try, surely this privilege cannot be denied to the believer in the divinity 
 of our Saviour. But let me ask you if you have forgotten what was the 
 faith of your ancestors, or if you are prepared to assert that the men 
 who procured your liberties are unfit to make your laws ? ... If our 
 laws will battle against Providence, there can be no doubt of the issue 
 of the conflict between the ordinances of God and the decrees of man. 
 Transient must be the struggle, rapid the event, Let us suppose an 
 extreme case, but applicable to the present point. Suppose the Thames 
 were to inundate its banks, and, suddenly swelling, enter this House 
 during our deliberations (an event which I greatly deprecate . . .), and 
 a motion of adjournment being made, should be opposed, and an address 
 to Providence moved, that it would be graciously pleased to turn back 
 the overflow, and direct the waters into another channel. This, it will 
 be said, would be absurd ; but consider whether you are acting upon a 
 principle of greater intrinsic wisdom, when, after provoking the resent- 
 ments, you arm and martialize the ambition of men, under the vain 
 assurance that Providence will work a miracle in the constitution of 
 human nature, and dispose it to pay injustice with affection, oppression 
 with cordial support. This is, in fact, the true character of your expect- 
 ations — nothing less than that the Author of the universe should sub- 
 vert his laws to ratify your statutes, and disturb the settled course of 
 nature to confirm the weak, the base expedients of man. What says 
 the decalogue ? Honor thy father. What says the penal law ? Take 
 away his estate ! Again, says the decalogue, do not steal. The law, 
 on the contrary, proclaims you may rob a Catholic ! The great error 
 of our policy is, that it presupposes that the original rights of our nature 
 
53S THE LIFE OF DANIEL 0"COXXELL. 
 
 may be violated with impunity. . . . The duke of Cumberland, son of 
 George the Second, would not allow a man to be recruited in Ireland, 
 except, perhaps, a weaver from the North. And what was the conse- 
 quence ? "VVe met our own laws at Fontenoy. The victorious troops of 
 England were stopped in their career of triumph by that Irish brigade 
 which the folly of the penal laws had shut out from the ranks of the 
 British army." 
 
 (VConnell felt, and on various occasions expressed, the most generous 
 admiration of the splendid eloquence and patriotism of Henry Grattan. 
 "That greatest foe of Ireland," said he, "the late earl of Clare, honored 
 Grattan with his hate ; and can we forget how a committee of the House 
 of Lords turned itself, under Lord Clare, into a committee to assassinate 
 Grattans character, and with monstrous effrontery charged him with 
 treason ? Had they believed it, not only their duty, but their inclina- 
 tion, would have forced them, at that melancholy period when little 
 evidence was necessary, to prosecute him even to death. Our country 
 being entranced in the death-sleep of the union, I pity the Irishman who 
 does not feel pleasure in repeating with me, that Henry Grattan is alone 
 worthy to sound the trumpet of her resurrection." 
 
 What a pity it was that neither Grattan, nor O'Connell himself, ever 
 really committed what the English government call high treason ! 
 
 On the 14th of June, 1811, a curious and lively scene took place in 
 the House of Commons. In a debate having reference to Irish distil- 
 leries, Colonel Hutchinson, an Irish member, and one of the Donough- 
 more family, irritated the English members beyond all patience by 
 denouncing the act of union and English illiberality and selfishness. 
 His speech and conduct in the House tended to rouse the sinking 
 spirits of his countrymen. " While Great Britain," said he, " thankfully 
 receives in her necessity the raw corn from Ireland, she would illiberally 
 shut out the Irish spirits manufactured from that raw material. But, 
 according to the principle of the union, there should be a free trade and 
 no duties; or, if the trade was not free, the duties should be equal. 
 When this principle operated against Ireland, it was carried out effect- 
 ually, but when Ireland required that it should be likewise carried out 
 against Scotland, Irish trade was interdicted, and the union violated. Ad- 
 mitting, however, that the Irish distiller did reap some advantages from 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. Bod 
 
 the Irish spirit trade with England, was she therefore to be deprived of 
 the trade itself? If so, would they restore to Ireland all that she had 
 lost bv the degradine; and abominable measure of the union ?" 
 
 This rather strong language of the worthy colonel incontinently raised 
 a hurricane in the alien House of Commons. Cries of "Order! order! 
 Chair! chair!" resounded on all sides. 
 
 The speaker of the House interposed and said: "The honorable 
 member will do well to recollect that such is not the language which 
 it becomes this House to hear or him to use, in speaking of a grave and 
 solemn act of Parliament." 
 
 An almost unanimous roar of "Hear! hear!" from the infuriated 
 English members followed the speaker's delectable specimen of British 
 jargon. When at length there was a lull in the tumult, Colonel Hutch- 
 inson said : 
 
 "Sir, I trust I am incapable of using language unworthy of this 
 place or of myself. In saying what I have said, I have obeyed the dic- 
 tates of feelings of which I am not ashamed ; and while I know them 
 to be just, I know not why I am to suffer the expression of them to be 
 suppressed." 
 
 "The collective wisdom" of England could not by any means con- 
 trive to digest this plain and truthful way of putting the case. The 
 colonel's truths were abhorrent to the souls of these magnanimous 
 Britons. So "the hurly-burly" recommenced, and they relieved their 
 outraged feelings by the sort of parliamentary howling usual on similar 
 occasions. Cries of "Chair! chair! Order! order!" swelled from the 
 throats of the disorderly mob louder and more fiercely than ever. The 
 speaker resolved on contributing to the patriotic demonstration another 
 slight instalment of British cant: 
 
 " The honorable member will be pleased to see the necessity of con- 
 forming to the usages of this House in the expression of his opinion." 
 
 "Hear! hear! hear! hear!" veiled forth the several hundred 
 throats of the collective wisdom of Great Britain ! 
 
 " To conform," said stout Colonel Hutchinson, " to the usages of this 
 House I am every way disposed ; but my right as a member is what I 
 shall never resign." (Cries of " Order! order!") " If liberty of speech 
 be not the right of every member of this House, I know not what is. I 
 
I r 
 i 
 
 540 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 have always considered it the right of every member of this House to 
 declare boldly what he honestly feels. With respect to the measure of 
 the union my feelings have been strong and uniform. I saw danger to 
 this country in the measure when it was first proposed, and in that 
 danger the degradation and ruin of my country. As the common friend 
 of both, I resisted it by every means in my power ; and am I now to be 
 denied the melancholy privilege of deploring the humiliating state to 
 which that measure has reduced my country? Am I to be denied the 
 right of complaining that she has been tricked out of her independence 
 by promises which have been all violated and hopes that have been all 
 blasted ? If, however, there be a secret determination to rob her gradu- 
 ally of the few advantages to which, under the union, she may be enti- 
 tled, let gentlemen avow this determination." 
 
 And so this strange scene in that occasionally disreputable "bear- 
 garden," the English House of Commons, came to an end. I must, how- 
 ever, in candor admit that almost all large assemblies are, from time to 
 time (that is, under the influence of exciting circumstances), liable to 
 behave almost, if not altogether, as uproariously and viciously as the 
 English House of Commons did on the occasion just referred to. I 
 believe it is the Cardinal de Eetz who says, that all large assemblies of 
 men, no matter what their rank or education may be, are apt occasion- 
 ally to turn into mobs. 
 
 An event of some importance to the whole British empire took place 
 in London one evening in May, 1812. The "intolerant bigot," Perceval, 
 as O'Connell called the prime minister, had just stepped from his car- 
 riage, and was walking through the lobby of the House of Commons, 
 when a lunatic, named Bellingham, fired at him with a pistol. In a few 
 moments the minister was a corpse. " Where is the villain who fired ?" 
 cried a voice expressive of intense agony. The cry was taken up by 
 those all around. " I am the unfortunate man," said the assassin, 
 quietly. "Who are you?" many voices exclaimed, while the crowd 
 stood around astonished and horror-stricken. "My name is Bellingham. 
 It is a private injury. I know what I have done. It was a denial of 
 justice on the part of the government." The assassin, though a lunatic, 
 suffered capital punishment. It is difficult to understand what the 
 bigoted earl of Bosse, degenerate from what he was when famous as the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 541 
 
 patriotic Sir Lawrence Parsons, could have possibly meant by saving, 
 with reference to Perceval's murder, "You see, my lords, the consequence 
 of agitating the question of Catholic emancipation." Between Catholic 
 agitation and Bellingham's crime there was no earthly connection. 
 
 O'Connell, in speaking on the subject of the " No- Popery " premier's 
 murder, took the case of a peasant boy shot by an Orangeman, and 
 placed it alongside "the causeless assassination which had deprived 
 England of a prime minister." He asked his hearers, "Are all your 
 feelings to be exhausted by the great? Have you no pity for the Irish 
 widow who lost her boy, her hope? 'My child,' she said, 'was but 
 seventeen. On Sunday morning he left me quite well, but he came 
 home a corpse.' Are her feelings to be despised and trampled on ? Is 
 the murderer to remain unpunished ? Oh yes, for Byrne was a Papist ; 
 the assassin, Hall, an Orangeman ; nay, a Purple marksman. You 
 should recollect that his grace, the duke of Richmond, did not pardon 
 Hall until after a patient trial. After that patient trial Hall had 
 been convicted — convicted of having murdered in the public streets, 
 and in the open day, with arms entrusted for the defence of the 
 public peace, an innocent and unoffending youth. Hall has been par- 
 doned and set at large. Is there no vengeance for the blood of the 
 widow's son ? The head of that government, which has allowed the 
 blood of Byrne to flow unrequited, may have vindicated the notion of a 
 Providential visitation for unpunished crime." 
 
 Perceval was a narrow-minded and inveterate enemy to the Catholic 
 claims. On hearing Grattan exclaim in the House of Commons, " The 
 naked Irishman has a right to approach his God without a license from 
 his king," O'Connell tells us, that on hearing this magnanimous senti- 
 ment, "that contemptible little creature Perceval assumed rather the 
 appearance of a convicted criminal receiving the just sentence of the 
 law, than of a man placed at the head of the government of England." 
 After his assassination a change or rather modification of the adminis- 
 tration took place. This change, however, brought little increase of hope 
 to the much-enduring Catholics of Ireland. Lord Liverpool was the 
 new prime minister. Both Canning and Castlereagh had seats in the 
 cabinet. Robert Peel, afterwards so famous as prime minister, became 
 the chief secretary for Ireland. He was then only twenty-four years of 
 
age. He retained the Irish secretaryship for six years, during which 
 period he carefully studied the character and wants of the Irish nation. 
 Mr. Mitchel says: "Of all English statesmen in modern times, Sir 
 Robert Peel may be said to have understood Ireland best — to Ireland's 
 bitter cost." Towards the end of his life he affected a great desire to ame- 
 liorate the condition of Ireland; in the old "plantation" style, however. 
 
 Peel, though all through his career he was a bitter political oppo- 
 nent and even enemy of O'Connell, had yet a high opinion of 0' Council's 
 parliamentary abilities and eloquence. Long after 1812, the date we 
 have arrived at, while the Reform Bill was under discussion, the merits 
 of the harangues of the supporters and opponents of that measure were 
 one day canvassed at Lady Beauchamp's. Our hero's name happening 
 to turn up, some superfine, fastidious critic exclaimed, "Oh, a broguing 
 Irish fellow ! who would listen to Mm ? I always walk out of the House 
 when he opens his lips." 
 
 "Come, Peel," said old Lord Westmoreland, "let me hear your 
 opinion." 
 
 "My opinion, candidly, is," replied Sir Robert, "that if I wanted an 
 efficient and eloquent advocate, I would readily give up all the other 
 orators of whom we have been talking, provided I had with me this 
 same ' broguing Irish fellow.' " No doubt the nice individual, who 
 "always walked out of the House when Dan opened his lips," felt him- 
 self "taken down pretty considerably." 
 
 In 1812, O'Connell's robust style of eloquence had already given him 
 high rank among the popular orators of his country. His language was 
 seldom ambitious or ornate. Indeed, when he tried to introduce orna- 
 ment he was not always happy. Occasionally, however, without appa- 
 rent effort, the vigor and elevation of his ideas gave animation and beauty 
 to his diction. He was clear in statement, admirable for powerful rea- 
 soning, and prompt and adroit in reply; but when he "hurled his high 
 and haughty defiance" at tyrants, and poured out his vials of burning 
 wrath and scorn on their despicable tools, he was frequently magnificent. 
 Indeed, his invectives were sometimes terrible. I have admitted that 
 he too often indulged in scurrilous personalities and intemperate abuse 
 — eloquent Billingsgate, in short — unworthy of his great powers. In 
 truth, though his heart was warm and good-natured, his disposition 
 
?:V • m-i 
 
 -'1WEJL IFISM.f&WSOSS'o 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 543 
 
 genial and jovial, his temper, on the other hand, was irritable as that 
 of a poet. 
 
 " His easy humor, blossoming 
 Like the thousand flowers of spring" (Davis), 
 
 redeemed and "covered a multitude of sins." His pathos, too, was 
 genuine; as it came from the heart of the speaker, so it mastered the 
 feelings of the audience with irresistible sway. His friend, Mr. Daunt, 
 says : " Like his great countryman, Curran, he was unequal. He could 
 soar to the loftiest heights of parliamentary debate, or talk down to the 
 level of the lowest democratic audience." To me his parliamentary 
 efforts, as a rule, seem much inferior to his popular harangues or his 
 speeches at the bar. In the entire range of forensic oratory, if we 
 except the speech of Demosthenes " On the Crown" (the masterpiece of 
 human eloquence), there is no oration which surpasses, or perhaps even 
 equals, in truth, scorn, defiance, boldness, vehemence and power, O'Con- 
 nell's wonderful defence of Magee. In rhetorical finish, indeed, it is 
 surpassed by many. Robustness was probably O'Connell's most striking 
 characteristic as a speaker. His eloquent fellow-laborer Shiel remarked 
 of him, " That he Hung a brood of sturdy ideas upon the world, without 
 a rag to cover them." The most singular feature of his intellect was 
 the element of subtlety, or even a something approaching to craft, that 
 was curiously blended with his massive strength and outspoken 
 manhood.* 
 
 * The principal authorities for the foregoing chapter are : " Life and Times of Daniel O'Con- 
 neli," Dublin, J. Mullany, etc. ; " Mitchel's Continuation of McGeoghegan ;" "The Select Speeches 
 of Daniel O'Connell, M. P., edited, with Historical Notices, etc., by his son, John O'Connell, Esq.;" 
 " Works of Edmund Burke ;" " Edinburgh Review ;" " Grattan's Speeches ;" Alison's " Europe ;" 
 " Personal Recollections of O'Connell," by Win. J. O'Neill Daunt ; Wise's " History of the Catholic 
 Association," etc. 
 U 
 
 — T~T- IV 
 
CHAPTEE XIV. 
 
 American, Irish, English, Scotch and French opinions of O'Connell's eloquence. 
 
 SHALL devote the present chapter to several criticisms on 
 O'Connell's eloquence. As they embody the opinions not 
 merely of Irish, but of American, English, Scotch and French 
 critics, they testify how far and how widely the fame of our 
 hero has travelled. The break in the narrative will relieve the 
 sense of monotony, while the agreeable variety of the criticisms will 
 add to the reader's interest. 
 
 As I am writing this biography in America, I shall let the American 
 critic take precedency. Mr. N. P. Eogers, editor of the New Hampshire 
 Herald of Freedom, who was a prominent member of the Abolition party 
 in America, many years ago, during our hero's lifetime, writing to his 
 friend Mr. H. C. Wright, another American Abolitionist, who, at the 
 time, resided in England, gives the following brief, but judicious, cri- 
 tique on a certain peculiar and striking feature of O'Connell's style of 
 eloquence : 
 
 "You have seen O'Connell. Is he not a chieftain? Did you ever 
 see a creature of such power of the tongue ? I never saw any one who 
 could converse with an audience like him. Speeches may be as well 
 made by other men, but I never heard such public talk from any body. 
 The creature's mind" (I detest this ivay of using the word creature) "plays 
 before ten thousand, and his voice Hows as clearly, and as leisurely, as 
 in a circle round a fireside ; and he has the advantage of the excite- 
 ment it affords to inflame his powers." 
 
 After quoting a portion of this criticism, the well-informed author 
 ("Major Muskerry" is his nom de phone) of a short, but clever and 
 agreeable, biography of O'Connell, that appeared some few years ago in 
 Mr. Mitchel's New York Citizen, adds, " This (public talk) was precisely 
 the character of Lord Chatham's eloquence, as described by Grattan, 
 who said he had a familiar, lecturing way." 
 
 514 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 I shall now give an elaborate comparison of the oratorical powers of 
 O'Connell with those of Demosthenes and Lord Brougham, written by 
 an Irishman. I would be understood, however, as by no means endors- 
 ing all the opinions it contains : 
 
 "Without being in the least influenced by popular sentiment, we do 
 not hesitate to assign to O'Connell a prominent place amongst the best 
 orators of any age. He cannot, indeed, be compared in detail to any 
 particular one who is worthy of him. In man}' features, however, and 
 these the most noble, he bears a striking resemblance to Demosthenes 
 and Brougham. In strength and clearness he is equal to either. Of all 
 the three, the grand characteristic is energy; but the energy of the Celt, 
 though more active, is less intense, than that of the Greek, and more 
 intense than that of the Scot, though not so durable or expansive. Of 
 method — which, although less an endowment than an acquisition, is 
 yet albeit a property of great wit — they had an equal share, but from 
 different sources, and displaying a different organism. In his arrange- 
 ment, Demosthenes observes the rhetorical rules without being burdened 
 or narrowed by them. Brougham, early fashioned by mathematical dis- 
 cipline, is almost as systematic as a geometer. He keeps the subject 
 always in view, but this severity does not impoverish or straiten him, 
 for the stores of his learning are so vast, so rich and so various that the 
 abundance of his materials would embarrass, were it not for his skill in 
 disposing them. O'Connell is generally, even in his set speeches, negli- 
 gent of method. He was, notwithstanding, capable of laying down a 
 judicious plan, but he seems to have been impatient of the trouble. 
 When he gave sufficient consideration to a subject, he put his materials 
 into order with rapidity and success. In general he sought no more 
 than a good beginning, and left the sequel to chance; for he depended 
 on his adroitness in selecting, combining, compounding and gilding, to 
 extemporize a palatable dose pro re natd. But even on state occasions, 
 when he came forward prepared and trimmed, he could ill conceal the 
 toga of the pleader. Some of his ablest efforts are constructed on the 
 scheme of a law argument; but it must be remembered that some law 
 arguments are magnificent specimens of composition. Whatever be the 
 subject of disquisition, learning will always afford materials to give 
 scope to method. In this respect, Brougham has had the advantage 
 
546 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 over almost all the public men of his time, while the springs of know- 
 ledge supplied O'Connell with hut few streams to be skilfully conducted 
 into a common channel ; so that if, in the point under consideration, he 
 appears inferior to his illustrious contemporary, it is perhaps rather from 
 absence of means than lack of ability. In argument, the Athenian 
 convinces more by the loftiness of his manner than the strictness of his 
 logic ; and while he is not greater than the Briton in force, he is less in 
 philosophical dignity. In dialectic power the Hibernian is on a level 
 with either, but above both in acuteness and subtlety; whilst in the mat- 
 ter of the argument there may be much parity, in the conduct of it there 
 is little. Demosthenes is vehement, vituperative, insolent ; Brougham, 
 impassioned, haughty, or derisive; O'Connell, impetuous, abusive, or 
 insinuating. The first is never gay or embellished; the second never 
 indolent or frivolous; the third is always robust and busy — generally in 
 a genial humor, and with a nosegay, whether fresh or faded. Versatility 
 renders O'Connell the most agreeable and entertaining. The gain, how- 
 ever, which results from it, does not always compensate for the trifles 
 employed to support it. Given to grave enjoyments, yet we feel Demos- 
 thenes dry for want of those jets of vivacity with which O'Connell 
 sprinkles his parterre and refreshes his flowers ; but, on the other hand, 
 the former imparts an enthusiasm which lenders us insensible of fatigue 
 and compels us to persevere with him to the end. O'Connell under- 
 stood, but perhaps undervalued, connection and continuity. He fre- 
 quently breaks off to present you with pleasant scenery; gives you time 
 to contemplate the landscape; and then calls you back to resume the 
 journey with regaled senses and revived energy. Brougham does not 
 draw you aside so often or so capriciously ; and when he does, it is not to 
 lighten your burden or to beguile your way, but to amplify the under- 
 standing, to illustrate his proofs, to triple the light, and to beautify the 
 philosophy. Demosthenes never deviates in search of fascinating pros- 
 pects and cheerful repose; he is stern, unaccommodating, unmerciful. 
 He needs no rest himself, and gives you none ; he wants no stop, and 
 grants no stay ; you are whirled to the destined goal out of breath, but 
 exulting in the triumphant career. Let volition listen for a moment to 
 any of the three, and she is shorn of her wings — she is no longer at 
 liberty, but yields to th.e imperious authority of the Greek, the powerful 
 
 J 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 547 
 
 sorcery of the Scot, or the soft seduction of the Irishman. In imagina- 
 tion — that most rare and fructifying gift of the mind, which creates, 
 animates and illumines, which engenders tender sentiments, quickens 
 noble passions and sheds celestial odor over the soul — in imagination 
 Brougham holds the first place, and Demosthenes the second ; though 
 both must give way to Burke, and even he to Sheridan. But in fancy, 
 exuberant in all delights, which is often hard to be distinguished from 
 imagination, to O'Connell rightfully belongs the not undisputed sceptre ! 
 Demosthenes, O'Connell and Brougham are equally remarkable for the 
 solidity of their intellect, but in the quality of comprehensiveness the 
 last has the largest share. O'Connell shows his knowledge of the human 
 heart more frequently than either of the others. If he did not under- 
 stand mankind better, he accommodated himself to them more, and was 
 better fitted to do so by the pliancy of his passions and the bent of his 
 opinions. Consequently, he used men, and especially the untaught, 
 more successfully. In his sway over the affections he is approached by 
 neither; and taking into consideration the different audience and differ- 
 ent circumstances, whatever we may have to deduct from his oratory 
 must be recompensed by our praise of him as an orator. In one respect 
 he stands conspicuous — he is almost the only man that ever flattered de- 
 mocracy and visibly improved it, Each attains to the same height, but 
 not with the same facility or grandeur. Demosthenes leaves the earth 
 most naturally, mounts most swiftly, moves with the ease of instinct, but 
 at every cleaving of his wings the poles thunder. When his rivals soar, 
 they gain the empyrean by a succession of mighty efforts, and with the 
 resounding as of mighty waters — Brougham keeping his undazzled eye 
 fixed on the orb of day, and O'Connell calmly surveying the milder 
 glories of the fields of air. Between the merits of the two modern 
 masters, whoever ventures to decide, let him not forget that while the 
 genius of Brougham was aided by consummate art, O'Connell's fame 
 rests upon his genius alone. What the one produced was the mature 
 progeny of patient gestation; that of the other a sudden birth. The 
 one brought his works to perfection by repeated touches of skill; the 
 other to wonderful excellence by a single felicitous stroke. In Brougham 
 we admire the majestic proportions and classical symmetry;* in O'Con 
 
 * This may be true of his design, but his style was often very harsh and rugged. 
 
r - 
 
 548 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 nell, the flow of natural graces and youthful charms, adorning manly 
 strength and glowing with warm festivity." 
 
 The foregoing analysis is undoubtedly very ingenious ; still, I feel con- 
 strained to dissent from many of the views it advances. In the first 
 place, I do not think that either O'Connell or Brougham approaches the 
 height where Demosthenes sits supreme. In truth, the immortal Athe- 
 nian sits alone and unapproachable, unless it be thought that Henry 
 Grattan has claims to stand side by side with him. Though Grattan 
 and he have little resemblance in most of their characteristics, they hav-e 
 one feature in common — the blending, in a continuous, hurrying torrent, 
 of vehement reasoning and red-hot, impassioned declamation. Another 
 great Irishman — Plunket — though probably, on the whole, not a superior 
 orator to O'Connell, has far more resemblance in point of style to the 
 austere, overwhelming manner of Demosthenes. I must also differ from 
 the criticism that would give Sheridan, brilliant as he undoubtedly is, 
 the palm for imagination at the expense of Edmund Burke. To my 
 mind, if Burke's other oratorical gifts had been on a par with his far 
 and deep-reaching political vision and his vividness of imagination, he 
 would run far ahead of all orators. With regard to Brougham's elabo- 
 ration of some of his masterpieces, the statement of the critic is quite 
 accurate. That powerful orator himself tells us, that he wrote the 
 peroration of his defence of Queen Caroline twenty times over before he 
 could satisfy himself; and, if I remember rightly, even then he was 
 hardly satisfied. As I am giving Irish criticisms of O'Connell's elo- 
 quence, I may as well here subjoin a miniature picture taken from the 
 introduction of John Mitchel's "Jail Journal." In a small space we 
 find several exquisite touches: "At the head of that open and legal 
 agitation was a man of giant proportions in body and in mind ; with no 
 profound learning, indeed, even in his own profession of the law, but 
 with a vast and varied knowledge of human nature in all its strength, 
 and especially in all its weakness ; with a voice like thunder and 
 earthquake, yet musical and soft at will as the song of birds ; with a 
 genius and fancy tempestuous, playful, cloudy, fiery, mournful, merry, 
 lofty and mean by turns, as the mood was on him ; a humor broad, bac- 
 chant, riant, genial and jovial; with profound and spontaneous natural 
 feeling and superhuman and subterhuman passions, yet withal a bound- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. o4D 
 
 less fund of masterly affectation and consummate histrionism— hating 
 and loving heartily, outrageous in his merriment, and passionate in his 
 lamentation, he had the power to make other men hate or love, laugh or 
 weep, at his good pleasure ; — insomuch that Daniel O'Connell, by virtue 
 of being more intensely Irish, carrying to a more extravagant pitch all 
 Irish strength and passion and weakness, than other Irishmen, led and 
 swayed his people by a kind of divine or else diabolic right." 
 
 And now, as a specimen of English criticism, let us give the discrim- 
 inating lines on O'Connell that occur in Lord Lytton's poem, entitled 
 " St. Stephen's :" " 
 
 "With what amaze the stout old rebel* saw 
 His Irish rival break, yet shirk the law, 
 All patriot rules portentously reverse, 
 Turn Freedom's cap into Fortunio's purse ! 
 Bid Mike and Paddy, much bewildered, know 
 ' Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow : 
 Your pence to-day, your liberties next year, 
 Erin-go-bragh ! — I thank you for that cheer;' 
 The bargain struck; if aught remains to strike, 
 The blow descends on Paddy and on Mike ; 
 Even thus a chess-king, castled in his nook, 
 Plays out his pawns and skulks behind a rook. 
 
 "The Briton saw and felt his hour was come, 
 His stout heart quailed, his manly voice was dumb-; 
 And as old Cleon, in the Athenian play, 
 Snubbed by the sausage-vender, skulks away, 
 Sir Francis left the Demos he had led, 
 And Whigs installed the sausage- man instead. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 But not to Erin's coarser chief deny, 
 
 Large if his faults, Time's large apology: 
 
 Child of a land that ne'er had known repose, 
 
 Our rights and blessings, Ireland's wrongs and woes; 
 
 Hate at St. Omer's into caution drilled, 
 
 In Dublin law-courts subtilized and skilled; 
 
 Hate in the man, whatever else appear 
 
 Fickle or false, was steadfast and sincere. 
 
 But with that hate a nobler passion dwelt — 
 
 To hate the Saxon was to love the Celt. 
 
 Had that fierce railer sprung from English sires, 
 
 His creed a Protestant's, his birth a squire's, 
 
 * Sir Francis Burdett, 
 
No blander Pollio whom our bar affords 
 Had graced the woolsack and cajoled 'my lords.' 
 Pass by his faults, his art be here allowed, 
 Mighty as Chatham, give him but a crowd ; 
 Hear him in senates, second-rate at best, 
 Clear in a statement, happy in a jest; 
 Sought he to shine, then certain to displease; 
 Tawdry yet coarse-grained, tinsel upon frieze : 
 His Titan strength must touch what gave it birtn 
 Hear him to mobs, and on his mother earth ! 
 
 "Once to my sight the giant thus was given, 
 Wall'd by wide air, and roofed by boundless heaven; 
 Beneath his feet the human ocean lay, 
 And wave on wave flowed into space away. 
 Methought no clarion could have sent its sound 
 Even to the centre of the hosts around; 
 And as I thought rose the sonorous swell, 
 As from some church-tower swings the silvery bell. 
 Aloft and clear, from airy tide to tide 
 It glided, easy as a bird may glide; 
 To the last verge of that vast audience sent, 
 It played with each wild passion as it went; 
 Now stirr'd the uproar, now the murmur still'd, 
 And sobs or laughter answer'd as it willed. 
 
 "Then did I know what spells of infinite choice, 
 To rouse or lull, has the sweet human voice ; 
 Then did I seem to seize the sudden clue 
 To the grand troublous Life Antique — to view, 
 Under the rock-stand of Demosthenes, 
 Mutable Athens heave her noisy seas." 
 
 I shall next give the Scotchman's criticism : 
 
 "To give a critical account of the oratory of Mr. O'Connell has so 
 often been tried with but little success, that there is not much encour- 
 agement to repeat it, and a very few remarks only will be ventured on. 
 It seems to be much questioned whether Mr. O'Connell's oratory is nat- 
 ural or artificial. It is insisted, on the one side, that he throws so 
 much of his internal soul into every word he utters, that the words are 
 the expression of his feelings at the time, and nothing more; while, on 
 the other hand, it is maintained that his fine and accurate modulations 
 of voice and appropriate action could only be reached by long study of 
 dramatic effect. The truth is, perhaps, partly in either opinion. He is, 
 no doubt, possessed of strong and vigorous feelings, and nature has 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 551 
 
 given him the means of accurately expressing them ; but art has 
 stepped in and taught him how to make use of these qualities — taught 
 him not merely how to exhibit his own feelings, but how to bring the 
 audience along with him. Sir William Jones has said that any man of 
 common sense and tolerable talent may, by perseverance, become an 
 eloquent speaker. But no man Mill ever acquire the art of affecting an 
 audience, as Mr. O'Connell does, through sheer stud}'. His eloquence is 
 more to be felt than admired, although it has much even of literary 
 merit ; and he is more like that ancient orator after whose address the 
 audience cried out, 'Let us march against Philip!' than him of whom 
 they merely said, 'How well the orator has spoken!' Many orators of 
 the present day issue speeches which, after being printed, show in many 
 respects better taste, greater beauty of language, and even more em- 
 phatic declamation, than are sometimes to be found in those of O'Con- 
 nell. That he could meet them on their own ground there is little doubt, 
 but the critical merits of a speech, when printed, are nothing to him in 
 comparison with its effect on the hearts of the multitude around him; 
 and hence what may appear vapid or untasteful to the reader, has, by a 
 glance, a curl of the lip, or a change of the voice, produced an electric 
 effect on the listener. Thus, when he said of the Tories, ' But they never 
 shall succeed!' there was nothing in the expression but what any man 
 might have used ; but the triumphant glance of the eye, and the bold 
 menacing attitude of defiance suddenly assumed by so powerful a look- 
 ing man, whose eventful history was fresh in the mind of every listener, 
 had a startling and rousing effect. A man of slight physical powers, or 
 of little influence in the political world, would have made the attempt 
 in vain ; indeed, lie would only have been ludicrous. Mr. O'Connell's 
 private manners and conversation are of an extremely pleasing and fas- 
 cinating description. When he is for the first time followed from the 
 hustings to the parlor, he gains on the heart of the individual by the 
 exchange. In the great public theatre of his exertions, we expect to 
 meet him all that both his friends and adversaries have painted him — 
 the presiding spirit of the scene, the man whose intellect inspires mul- 
 titudes, whether for good or bad. But to find the man, who has organ- 
 ized millions in his own country, in private life unassuming, gentle and 
 pleasing, is something so completely unexpected that, by itself, it tends 
 
552 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELn. 
 
 more to attract the mind than all the vigor, brilliancy and sarcasm of 
 his oratory. The private guest expects to see before him the powerful 
 leader through a turbulent and intricate period of politics — the bold 
 presider over popular opinion — the shrewd, deep-headed counsellor who 
 taught his adherents how to evade unjust and oppressive laws — the elo- 
 quent speaker in the first school of oratory. He sees a man to whom 
 nature has given physical energy for all these, and on whose face she 
 has stamped expression which might be adapted to them all, but who 
 appears to belong, not to the arena in which he is so well known and so 
 much admired, but to be the agreeable and unassuming member of the 
 society in which he is accidentally cast. The profound lawyer, the bold 
 orator and the wary pacificator of his turbulent country are as much 
 forgotten as the virulent demagogue and unscrupulous agitator which 
 his foes represent him. AVe have nothing at first sight but the finished 
 and perfect gentleman, who turns out, on farther acquaintance, to be the 
 elegant scholar and the man of varied, interestino- and select informa- 
 tion. In oratory Mr. O'Connell becomes at once striking and impressive; 
 indeed, were the opening periods of his speeches far less emphatic than 
 they are, they would naturally produce a great effect on those who should 
 keep in mind the vast energies wielded by the speaker. But when he 
 is met among a few individuals, his public character at once passes 
 away, and he is no longer the observed of all observers, but a simple 
 member of society, pleased with the conversation of those around him, 
 and giving pleasure in return by his own. He seems by no means the 
 man who is stooping for a moment from higher objects of exertion, and 
 showing how gracefully he can stoop. He is one of the party. He 
 laughs at all their jokes and merry sayings, and gives his own in return. 
 There is a continual play of laughing good humor on his countenance; 
 and one would believe, on seeing him so situated, that he had no cares, 
 no anxieties, no laborious moments to meet, no hundreds upon hundreds 
 of letters to answer, and, in short, nothing to do but to enjoy himself 
 with the persons present, and add to their enjoyment. As Mi - . O'Con- 
 nell has long directed his vast energies solely to the advantage of his 
 native country, it is believed by most people to be the only object of 
 his thoughts; his information, however, on general history and litera- 
 ture is vast and extremely accurate, and the conversation in which he 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 558 
 
 displays his knowledge would lie of itself sufficient to found a reputa- 
 tion. It is. perhaps, his consciousness of how little he requires to shine 
 in this department thai has made him appear by no means anxious to 
 display his powers, while he never keeps pompously aloof from the subject 
 of general discussion, whatever it may be. He joins the conversation 
 easily and naturally, and his additions to its interest soon make the lis- 
 tener forget that he is in the presence of the great orator and statesman, 
 in the new claims which are so unexpectedly made on his admiration." 
 
 Doubtless O'Connell had a fair share of general reading, but, in spite 
 of the above glowing account of the extent of his information derived 
 from books, I am inclined to agree with Mr. Mitchel that his literary 
 attainments were neither very extensive nor very profound. The book 
 of human nature was the volume he had most deeply studied. I have 
 some recollection of an account, which 1 read, some years ago, in one of 
 the first-class British magazines, of a dinner-party in London, where he 
 was one of the guests. Amongst these were a good many literary men, 
 owing to which circumstance much of the conversation turned upon 
 literary topics. I remember, the writer makes the remark that evidently 
 conversation of this sort was not the great agitator's forte. Still, it could 
 not but happen that a man of such vast and various powers of mind, 
 whenever he should chance to turn his attention to literature, however 
 cursorily, would be likely to make some striking reflections on whatever 
 authors he might happen to take up. Mr. Daunt has preserved some 
 acute and judicious remarks, uttered by him, from time to time, on books 
 and writers. I mean, on the first suitable occasion, to select for the 
 reader, from the "Personal Recollections," a few favorable specimens of 
 O'Connell's literary opinions. 
 
 I shall now give without curtailment the eloquent sketch of O'Con- 
 nell, viewed chiefly in the light of an orator, which is appended to the 
 celebrated series of portraits of the orators of France by the Viscount 
 de Cormenin, or Timon — to give him the nom de phone by which he is 
 more widely known. O'Connell is the only foreigner to whom the very 
 high distinction of a place in this brilliant gallery of illustrious speakers 
 was accorded. Timon appears to consider O'Connell the highest exem- 
 plification of his idea of popular oratory. It is not difficult, then, to 
 understand why he included O'Connell in his portrait-gallery. As I 
 
554 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 have not a copy of the original by me, I shall make use of J. T. Head- 
 icy's translation : 
 
 "Scarce had the brilliant Mirabeau, on a sudden veiled by the vapors 
 of the tomb, gone down in the full splendor of his meridian, than a new 
 luminary was seen to rise upon the horizon of Ireland. 
 
 "Mirabean! O'Connell! towering beacons, planted at the two ex- 
 tremities of the revolutionary cycle, as if to open and to close its ever- 
 memorable scenes. 
 
 " If my design were to consider O'Connell but as a parliamentary 
 orator, I might compare the British nation with oars, and our tribune 
 with the British ; I might say that the latter has more country gentle- 
 men of eccentric and inveterate prejudices, and the former contains 
 more special pleaders and pretentious judgers ; that the English deputy 
 does everything for his party, the French deputy everything for himself; 
 that the one is an aristocrat even in his democracy, and the other demo- 
 cratic even in his aristocracy; that the one is more proud of great things, 
 the other more boastful of small; that the one is always systematic in 
 his opposition, and the other almost always individual; that the one is 
 more sensible to interest, to calculation, to expediency, to reason, and 
 the other to imagery, to eloquence, to the surprises and adventures of 
 political tactics; that the one is more sarcastic and more harsh, and the 
 other more inclined to personality of the keen and scoffing kind ; that 
 the one is more grave and more religious, and the other more volatile 
 and more unbelieving; that the one stuffs his harangues with citations 
 from Virgil, Homer, the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, and that the other 
 could not mention the names and events of his own national history 
 without making the members yawn or exciting the laughter of both the 
 spectators and the parliament ; that the one acts but with effort, slowly, 
 upon heads of much solidity, but massive and heavy, while the other is 
 divined by the intelligence, prompt and penetrative, of his auditoi-s, 
 before the phrase has quite left his lips ; that the one constructs lei- 
 surely the scaffolding of his lengthy periods of indefinite argumenta- 
 tions, bristling with science, jurisprudence and literature, whilst the 
 other would shock the simple and delicate taste of our nation by a heap 
 of metaphors, however beautiful, and would fatigue our intellect by a 
 contexture too strong; and strino-ent of his reasonings. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 555 
 
 " I might add that the English nation has more force and the French 
 more grace. There more genius, here more intellect, There more cha- 
 racter, here more imagination. There more political prudence, here 
 more impulsive generosity. There more forecast, here more actuality. 
 There more profundity of philosophical speculation and more respect for 
 the dignity of the human species, here more propensity to contemplate 
 one's self coquettishly in the glass of his oratory, without taking 
 account of the merits and perfections of others. The one, in tine, of 
 these nations more jealous of liberty, the other of equality. The one 
 more proud, the other more vain. The one besotted with bigotry, the 
 other skeptical in almost all things. The one capable of preparing and 
 awaiting the triumph of its cause, the other precipitating the occasion 
 and impatient to vanquish, no matter under what leaders. The one 
 retiring into some sequestered corner to indulge its dumps, the other 
 capering about, and, at the first preludings of the fiddle, mixing in all 
 sorts of quadrilles. The Englishman computing how much his blood 
 should bring him of territory and influence, and his money of interest, the 
 Frenchman squandering the one without knowing where, and the other 
 without knowing why. 
 
 " I should say, in conclusion, that both, in spite of their defects and 
 their vices, are the expression of a great people ; and that so long as 
 the English tribune shall rise amid the seas in its proud and illustrious 
 island, and so long as the French tribune shall remain erect amid the 
 rubbish of aristocracy and despotism, the liberty of the world is in no 
 danger of perishing. 
 
 "But it is not the parliamentary orator that I am here to draw; it 
 is not Demosthenes pleading his own cause in the oligarchical forum of 
 Athens; it is not Mirabeau throwing off the splendors of his magnif- 
 icent language in the hall of Versailles, before the three orders of clergy, 
 nobility and commons; it is not Burke, Pitt, Fox, Brougham, Canning- 
 shivering the glass-work of Whitehall with the thunders of their aca- 
 demical eloquence : it is another kind of eloquence— an eloquence with- 
 out name, prodigious, transporting, spontaneous, and the like of which 
 has never been heard by the ancients or the moderns ; it is O'Connell, 
 the great O'Connell, erect upon the soil of his country, with the heavens 
 for dome, the boundless plain for tribune, a whole people for auditory, 
 
55G THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 and for subject that people, incessantly that people, and for echo the 
 universal acclamations of the multitude, resembling the hollow-toned 
 mutterings of the tempest, or the dashing of the billows against the 
 rock-barred beach of the ocean. 
 
 " Never, in any age or country, has any man obtained over his nation 
 an empire so sovereign, so absolute, so entire. Ireland impersonates 
 herself in O'Connell. He is, in some sort, himself alone, her army, her 
 parliament, her ambassador, her prince, her liberator, her apostle, her god. 
 His ancestors, descendants of the kings of Ireland, wore at their side 
 the falchion of battles. He, a tribune of the people, carries likewise the 
 falchion of other battles — the falchion of eloquence, more redoubtable 
 than the sword. 
 
 "Behold O'Connell with his people, for they are veritably his: he 
 lives in their life, he smiles in their joys, he bleeds in their wounds, he 
 weeps in their sorrows. He transports them from fear to hope, from 
 servitude to liberty, from the fact to the law, from law to duty, from 
 supplication to invective, and from anger to mercy and commiseration. 
 He orders this whole people to kneel down upon the earth and pray, and 
 instantly they kneel and pray; to lift their eyes to heaven, and they lift 
 them; to execrate their tyrants, and they execrate; to chant hymns 
 to liberty, and they chant them; to sign petitions for the reform of 
 abuses, to unite their forces, to forget their feuds, to embrace their 
 brothers, to pardon their enemies, and they sign, unite, forget, embrace, 
 pardon ! 
 
 "Our Berryer dwells but in the upper regions of politics. He 
 breathes but the air of aristocracy. His name has not descended into 
 the workshop and the cottage. He has not drank of the cup of equality. 
 He has never handled the rough implements of the mechanics. He has 
 never interchanged his words with their words. He has never felt the 
 grasp of their horny hands. He has never applied his heart to their 
 heart and felt its beatings. But O'Connell, how cordially popular! 
 How entirely Irish ! What magnificent stature ! What athletic form ! 
 What vigor of lungs ! What expansion of heart in that animated and 
 blooming countenance! What sweetness in those large blue eyes! 
 What joviality! What inspiration! What wit-flashings inexhaust- 
 ible ! How nobly he bears his head upon that muscular neck, his head 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 551 
 
 tossed backward, and exhibiting in every lineament his proud inde- 
 pendence ! 
 
 "What renders him incomparable with the orators of his own coun- 
 try as well as of ours, is, that without premeditation, and by the sole 
 impetuosity, the mere energy of his powerful and victorious nature, he 
 enters body and soul into his subject, and appears to be rather possessed 
 by it himself than to possess it. His heart runs over, it moves by 
 bounds, by plunges, until the spectator can almost reckon its every 
 pulsation. 
 
 "Like a full-blooded courser suddenly checked upon his sinewy and 
 trembling haunches, so 0' Council can stop short in the unbridled career 
 of his eloquence, turn sharply round and resume it. So much has his 
 genius of presence, of elasticity and of vigor ! 
 
 "You would think at first that he falters and is going to sink beneath 
 the weight of the internal god by whom he is agitated. Presently he 
 recovers himself, a halo around his brow and his eye full of flame, and 
 his voice, which has nothing of mortal, begins to reverberate through 
 the air and to till all space. 
 
 " How explain, how define that extraordinary genius, which finds no 
 repose in a body for ever in motion, and which is equal to the despatch 
 of a large professional business, civil and criminal, to the laborious 
 investigation of the laws, to the immense correspondence of the associ- 
 ation, to the agitation nightly and daily of seven millions of men — that 
 soul of fire which heats O'Connell without consuming him — that intel- 
 lect of so incredible an agility, which touches every subject without tar- 
 nishing it, which never tires, and which amplifies itself by all the space 
 it has traversed, which does not divide but multiply itself by diffusion, 
 which draws new vigor and force from its very exhaustion, which wastes 
 constantly without the necessity of repairing itself, which surrenders 
 and abandons itself to the impetuosity of passion, without losing for an 
 instant its self-possession— that phenomenon of an old age so green and 
 so vigorous, that puissant life which has the vitality of several others, 
 that inexhaustible efflux of an exceptional nature without parallel and 
 without precedent ? 
 
 " Had O'Connell marched, his claymore in hand, to the encounter of 
 despotism, he would have been crushed beneath the forces of the British 
 
558 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 aristocracy; but he intrenched and fortified himself behind the bulwark 
 of the law, as in an impregnable fortress. He is bold, but he is perhaps 
 still more adroit than bold. He advances, but he retires. He will go 
 to the utmost limits of his rights, but not an inch beyond. He mails 
 himself in the buckler of chicanery, and battles upon this ground, foot 
 to foot, by means of captious interpretations and a network of subtleties 
 which he casts around his adversaries, who no more can extricate them- 
 selves from its entangling meshes. Scholastic, hair-splitting, wily, 
 shiftful, a keen attorney, he snatches by trick whatever he cannot wrest 
 by force. Wliere others would sink, he saves himself. His skill defends 
 him from his impetuosity. 
 
 " Meanwhile the specialty of his end does not divert his attention 
 from the general interests of humanity. He desires economy in the 
 public expenditures, because it is the duty of every government. He 
 desires freedom of worship, because it is the will of the human con- 
 science. He wishes the triumph of ideas, because it is the only triumph 
 which sheds no blood, the only one which rests upon opinion and justice, 
 and above all the only one which endures. 
 
 "He is poetical to lyrical sublimity, or familiar to conversational 
 simplicity. He attracts to him his auditory, and transports it upon the 
 platform of the theatre, or at times descends himself and mingles with 
 the spectators. He does not leave the stage for a moment without 
 action or recitation. He distributes to each his part. He seats himself 
 in judgment, He questions and condemns. The people ratify, lift hands 
 and imagine themselves in a court-house. 
 
 "Sometimes O'Connell brings the internal drama of the family to 
 subserve the external drama of public affairs. He introduces his aged 
 father, his ancestors and the ancestry of the people. He expedites his 
 orders; he commands the audience to sit, to stand or to prostrate itself; 
 he assumes the direction of the debates and the police of the assem- 
 blage; he presides, be reads, he reports, he offers motions, petitions, 
 requisitions; he arranges, he improvisates narrations, monologues, dia- 
 logues, prosopopeias, interludes, plots and counterplots. He knows that 
 the Irishman is at once mirthful and melancholy, that he likes at the 
 same time the figurative, the brilliant and the sarcastic, and so he breaks 
 the laughter by tears, the sublime by the ridiculous. He assails in a 
 
body the lords of Parliament, and, chasing them from their aristocratic 
 covert, he tracks them one by one as the hunter does the wild beast. 
 lie rallies them unmercifully, abuses them, travesties and delivers them 
 over, stuck with horns and ludicrous gibbosities, to the hootings and 
 hisses of the crowd. If interrogated by any of the auditors, he stops, 
 grapples his interrupter, floors him, and returns briskly to his speech. 
 It is thus that, with marvellous suppleness, he follows the undulations 
 of that popular sea, now agitated and obstreperous beneath the strokes 
 of his trident, now ruffled by the breath of the gentle breeze, now placid, 
 lucent and golden with the sunbeams, like a bath of the luxurious 
 sirens. 
 
 "O'Connell is neither Whisc, nor Torv, nor Radical in the English 
 sense. Accordingly, Whigs, Tories and Radicals bear him that invet- 
 erate hatred and that haughty scorn of a conquering people for the sub- 
 ject of the conquered — of an Englishman for the Irishman, of a Prot- 
 estant for the Catholic. But this hatred, this scorn, these insolences 
 cannot daunt him. Unlike our orators, so sentimental and so fastidious, 
 because they are without conviction, without heart and without faith, 
 O'Connell never doubts of the triumph of his cause ; and even in the 
 House of Commons, looking his adversaries firmly in the face, he 
 exclaims : 
 
 " ' I will never be guilty of the crime of despairing of my country ; 
 and to-day, after two centuries of suffering, here I stand amidst you in 
 this hall, repeating the same complaints, demanding the same justice, 
 which was claimed by our fathers, but no longer with the humble voice 
 of the suppliant, but with the sentiment of our force and the conviction 
 that Ireland will henceforth find means to do, without you, what you 
 shall have refused to do for her ! I make no compromise with you ; I 
 want the same rights for us that you enjoy, the same municipal system 
 for Ireland as for England and Scotland. Otherwise, what is a union 
 with you ? A union upon parchment ! "Well, we will tear this parch- 
 ment to pieces, and the empire will be sundered !' 
 
 "This is high-toned, and a man must feel himself almost a king to 
 hold such language. 
 
 "Speak not to this man of a different subject. His patriotic soul, 
 all capacious as it is, can contain no other. He is not, even in London 
 
 SG 
 
560 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 and in the Parliament of the three kingdoms, a member of Parliament. 
 He is but an Irishman.. He has but Ireland, all Ireland, in his heart, 
 in his thought, in his memory, on his lips, in his ear. 
 
 " 'I hear,' says he, 'day after day, the plaintive voice of Ireland cry- 
 ing, "Am I to be kept for ever waiting and forever suffering?" $o, 
 fellow-countrymen, you will be left to suffer no longer; you will not have 
 in vain asked justice from a people of brothers.' (Humbug!) ' England 
 is no longer that country of prejudices where the mere name of Fopery 
 excited every breast, and impelled to iniquitous cruelties. The repre- 
 sentatives of Ireland have carried the Reform Bill, which has enlarged 
 the franchises of the English people ; they will be heard with favor in 
 asking their colleagues to render justice to Ireland.' (Fudge!) 'But 
 should it prove otherwise, should Parliament still continue deaf to our 
 prayer, then we will appeal to the English nation ; and if the nation, 
 too, should suffer itself to be blinded by its prejudices, we will enter the 
 fastnesses of our mountains and take counsel solely from our energy, our 
 courage and our despair.' 
 
 " It is impossible to invoke in terms, more forcible and touching, the 
 reason, the conscience and the gratitude of the English people, and to 
 mingle more artfully supplication with menace, than in this beautiful 
 passage. 
 
 " But you feel that this gigantic orator is straitened, is stifled, under 
 this cupola, of the English Parliament, like a huge vegetable under a 
 bell-glass. That his breast may distend, his stature tower and his voice 
 thunder, he must have the air, the sun and the soil of Ireland. It is 
 only on touching that sacred land, that land of his country, that he 
 respires and unfolds himself. It is but there, in presence of his people, 
 that his revolutionary eloquence, his defying eloquence, launches aloft, 
 unbinds and radiates its thousand splendors like the immense sheaves 
 of a firework. It is but then that he pours out the boiling torrents of 
 that prodigious irony which avenges the slave and desolates the tyrant ! 
 
 "Not that his raillery -is keen; it does not pierce like a needle. 
 Like the ancient sacrificer, he lifts his axe, he strikes the victim between 
 the two horns, just in the middle of the forehead : the animal emits a 
 long groan and drops. * 
 
 "He should be seen mustering his indignation and his energies, 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 5G1 
 
 when he recounts the long history of his country's misfortunes, her op- 
 pressions, her woes; when he wakes from the tombs those generous 
 heroes, those unswerving citizens, who have ensanguined with their 
 blood the scaffolds of Ireland, its plains and its lakes ; when he is ex- 
 hibiting to his brave adherents the lamentable spectacle of their liberty 
 lacerated by the sword of England ; the soil of their fathers in the hands 
 of those tyrants, the government instituted by them and for them, for 
 them alone; the tribunals of justice crammed with their creatures; the 
 parliaments sold, the laws written in blood, the soldiers turned into 
 executioners, the prisons full ; the peasantry ground by taxation, brutal- 
 ized by ignorance, emaciated by sickness and famine, haggard, bowed to 
 the earth, and extended on a litter of fetid straw ; the hovels hard by 
 the palaces ; the insolence of the aristocracy ; idleness without charge 
 and without pity; labor without remuneration and without respite; 
 martial law re-established ; habeas corpus suspended ; the administra- 
 tion overrun with strangers ; nationality proscribed ; religion incapaci- 
 tating for either judges, or juries, or witnesses, or landholders, or school- 
 teachers, or even constables, under penalty of radical nullity and even 
 capital punishment; the Catholic churches empty, bare, without orna- 
 ments; their priests beggars, wanderers, outlaws; the Anglican Church, 
 the while, with joyous brow and heart, having her hands stuck deep in 
 her sacks and coffers of gold. Then roll down the tears from every eye 
 amid a solemn and fearful silence, and that whole people, overwhelmed, 
 heart-broken with its sobbings, revolves in its heaving bosom the direful 
 day of vengeance. 
 
 " Meanwhile, let England, from the elevation of her palaces, and upon 
 her beds of purple and down, give trembling ear to the moanings of that 
 Enceladus who mutters beneath the mountain which holds him impris- 
 oned. He traverses its subterranean recesses, he mounts upon his legs, 
 he upheaves with his back the kindling furnaces of democracy; and, in 
 the terror of an approaching eruption, England is stricken with dismay, 
 the fiery flood is already upon her feet, and she retires precipitately, lest 
 the volcano burst and blow her into the air. 
 
 " What cares this turbulent orator, this savage child of the moun- 
 tains, for Aristotle and rhetoric, for drawing-room politeness, for the 
 proprieties of grammar, or the urbanity of language ? He is the people, 
 
562 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 he speaks like the people. He has the same prejudices, the same re- 
 ligion, the same passions, the same thought, the same heart — a heart 
 that beats through every pulse for his beloved Ireland, a heart that hates 
 with all its energies the tyrannical Albion. See yon not how he pene- 
 trates, how he merges himself, into the very vitals of his cherished coun- 
 trymen, in order to feel and to palpitate as they palpitate and feel? 
 How he puts himself in their shackles, how he binds around him the 
 irons of their servitude, that he may the better blush with them for 
 their bondage, and the better burst its chain? How he plunges into the 
 glories of their bygone days? Then leads them back to their living- 
 sores, their desolation, their political Helotism, their social misery, their 
 destitution, their degradation ! How he reanimates again, how he re- 
 freshes them with the religions breathings of his hopes! How he cheers 
 them with the proud accents of liberty, and overwhelms them so effect- 
 ually with his voice, his exclamations, his denunciations, his soul, his 
 arms and his whole body, that at the end of the discourse this orator 
 and this entire audience of fifty thousand men have but one body, one 
 soul, one cry of ' 01d Ireland for ever!' 
 
 "Yes, it is Ireland, his best-beloved Ireland, that he has set, as upon 
 an altar, in the centre of all his hopes, of all his affections. He sees 
 but her, he hears but her, in Parliament, in the church, at the bar, at 
 the domestic fireside, in the club-room, at the banquet-table, amid his 
 triumphal orations, absent, present, in all places, at all times! He 
 reverts to her unceasingly by a thousand avenues — routes bordered with 
 abysses and precipices, lofty mountains and lovely lakes, and fertile 
 plains and winding meadows. Yes, thou it is, green Erin, emerald of 
 the seas, whose cincture he unbinds upon the sands of the beach. Thou, 
 who appearest to him seated on the spiral summit of the temples of 
 Catholicism, thou, whom he hears in the murmurings of the storm, thou, 
 whom he respires in the perfumed breeze of the zephyrs ! Thou, whom 
 anon he imagines drawing against the Saxon thy formidable claymore 
 to the sound of the thunder of battles ! Thou, whom he prefers, poor 
 beggar though thou art, with thy rags, thy shrivelled body and thy straw- 
 covered hovels, to the glittering palaces of aristocracy, to insolent Eng- 
 land, to the queen of the ocean ! Thou, of whom he contemplates, with 
 respectful pity, the languishing graces and the hollow and laded cheeks, 
 
because thou art the tomb of his ancestors, the cradle of his sons, the 
 glory of his life, the immortality of his name, the palm tree blossomed 
 with his eloquence; because thou lovest thy children and lovest him, 
 the greatest of them ; because thou sufferest for them, for him ; because 
 thou art Ireland ; because thou art his country ! 
 
 "Our French parliamentary speakers do not succeed in drawing a 
 single vote in the wake of their orations. They have witnessed so many 
 revolutions, served so many governments, subverted so many ministries, 
 that they have ceased to put faith in either liberty or power. They are 
 neither Saint-Simonians, nor Christians, nor Turks, nor Anabaptists, nor 
 Vaudois, nor Albigenses — they believe in no religion, absolutely none. 
 But for O'Connell, he has a firm faith in the wondrous prestiges of his 
 art; he believes undoubtinglv in the future emancipation of Ireland. 
 He believes in the God of the Christians, and it is because he believes, 
 because he hopes, that his eagle sustains his flight sublime in the upper 
 regions of eloquence, upon pinions already frozen with the ice of so 
 many winters. He never separates the triumph of religion from the 
 triumph of liberty! He thrills with delight, he is transported, wrapt 
 in his magnificent visions of the future, and his inspired words have 
 something of the grandeur of the firmament which over-canopies him, 
 of the air and space which surround him and of the popular waves 
 which pour along in his footsteps, when he exclaims, after the Clare 
 election : 
 
 " ' In presence of my God, and with the most profound sentiment of 
 the responsibility attached to the solemn and awful duties which you 
 have twice imposed upon me, fellow-countrymen, I accept them; and I 
 find the assurance of duly discharging them, not in myself, but in you. 
 The men of Clare well know that the only basis of liberty is religion. 
 They have triumphed, because the voice which was raised for the coun- 
 try had first been breathed in prayer to the Lord. Now, hymns of lib- 
 erty are heard throughout the land; they play around the hills, they till 
 the vales, they murmur in our streams, and the torrents, with voice of 
 thunder, re-echo back to the mountains, " Ireland is free !" ' " 
 
 In another work of the same author — "Etudes snr les Oratettrs Par- 
 Uamentaires" par Timon, Paris, 1839 {Studies on the Parliamentary 
 Orators, by Timon) — he has the following appreciative passage on 
 
564 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 £» 
 
 O'Connell's eloquence : " Eloquence has not all its influence — its strong, 
 sympathetic, stirring influence — except on the people. Look at O'Con- 
 nell, the greatest, perhaps the only, orator of modern times. What a 
 colossus! How he draws himself up to his full height! How his voice 
 sways and governs the waves of the multitude ! I am not an Irishman ; 
 I have never seen O'Connell ; I do not know his language ; I should not 
 understand were I to listen to him. Why, then, am I more moved by 
 his discourses — badly translated, discolored, maimed, stripped of the 
 allurements of style, gesture and voice — than by all those heard in my 
 own country? It is because they bear no resemblance to our rhetoric, 
 which is disfigured by paraphrase ; because passion, true passion', 
 inspires him — the passion which can say everything. It is because he 
 tears me from the ground, rolls and drags me into his torrent; that he 
 trembles, and I tremble ; that he kindles, and I feel myself burning ; 
 that he weeps, and tears fill my eyes ; that his soul utters cries, which 
 ravish mine ; that he carries me off upon his wings, and sustains me in 
 the hallowed transports of liberty. Under the impression of his mighty 
 eloquence, I abhor and detest with a furious hatred the tyrants of that 
 unfortunate country, as if I were the countryman of O'Connell; and I 
 take to loving the green island as much as if it was my own country." 
 
 In the year 1812, the period of O'Connell's life at which we have 
 arrived, he had many opportunities of displaying his vast command 
 over all the resources of popular oratory. I shall now give one of the 
 finest specimens of his eloquence. The Catholic Board in Dublin had 
 just passed a strong resolution in the teeth of the increased virulence 
 of the "No Popery" cry, which seemed to menace a fresh religious per- 
 secution, sanctioned by the administration. On the 21th of July, a 
 meeting of Catholics, held at the Commercial Buildings, George's street, 
 Limerick, endorsed the proceedings of the Board in Dublin, which some 
 had condemned. O'Connell, who happened at the time to be on circuit, 
 spoke at this Limerick meeting. He thanked the Irish Protestants 
 warmly for their liberal support of Catholic emancipation. He de- 
 nounced the English government for their bigotry and mendacity in 
 vehement terms. He treated with indignant scorn Castlereagh's au- 
 dacious denial that, in the years 1797 and 1798, the government knew 
 anything of the use of torture in Ireland. He also denounced the false- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 5G5 
 
 ness and venality of the government press, especially of a journal then 
 published in London, called the Courier, which he said was "worthy of 
 the meridian of Constantinople at its highest tide of despotism." He 
 vigorously defended the Catholics from the imputations flung upon them 
 by their enemies. He reminded the citizens of Limerick, amid great 
 applause, of the valor of their ancestors. They should sec to the repre- 
 sentation of their city, drive out the opponent of their liberties, Colonel 
 Vereker, and prevent Limerick from being made a close borough. But 
 the close of the oration was what drew forth the highest applause, and 
 won for the orator a special resolution of admiration and gratitude. As 
 the present chapter has been wholly devoted to the subject of our hero's 
 eloquence, it will be in perfect keeping to terminate it with the perora- 
 tion of this Limerick speech. It will give the reader an admirable 
 illustration of his eloquence. 
 
 "Yes, if Ireland be fairly roused to the battle of the country and of 
 freedom, all is safe. Britain has been often conquered : the Bomans 
 conquered her; the Saxons conquered her; the Normans conquered her; 
 in short, whenever she was invaded, she was conquered. But our coun- 
 try was never subdued ; we never lost our liberties in battle, nor did we 
 ever submit to armed conquerors. It is true the old inhabitants lost 
 their country in piecemeal, by fraud and treachery ; they relied upon the 
 faith of men who never, never observed a treaty with them, until a new 
 and mixed race has sprung up, in dissension and discord ; but the Irish 
 heart and soul still predominate and pervade the sons of the oppressors 
 themselves. The generosity, the native bravery, the innate fidelity, the 
 enthusiastic love of whatever is great and noble, — those splendid charac- 
 teristics of the Irish mind remain as the imperishable relics of our coun- 
 try's former greatness — of that illustrious period, when she was the light 
 and glory of barbarous Europe, when the nations around sought for 
 instruction and example in her numerous seminaries, and when the 
 civilization and religion of all Europe were preserved in her alone. 
 ( Continued cheering. ) 
 
 "You will, my friends, defend her. You may die, but you cannot 
 yield to any foreign invader. {Hear! hear!) Whatever be my fate, I 
 shall be happy, while I live, in reviving amongst you the love and admi- 
 ration of your native land, and in calling upon Irishmen — no matter 
 
how they may worship their common God — to sacrifice every contempt- 
 ible prejudice on the altar of their common country. [Great applause.) 
 For myself, I shall conclude, by expressing the sentiment that throbs in 
 my heart; I shall express it in the language of a young bard of Erin" 
 (the eloquent Charles Philips, of whom we shall hear again, in " The Em- 
 erald Isle") "and my beloved friend, whose delightful muse has the sound 
 of the ancient minstrelsy : 
 
 " ' Still shalt thou be my midnight dream, 
 Thy glory still my waking theme, 
 And every thought and wish of mine, 
 Unconquered Erin, shall be thine!'" 
 
 ("Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, 31. P., edited, with Historical No- 
 tices," etc., by his son, John OConnell, Esq., etc.) 
 
^ 
 
 yT^euo^i^i 
 
THE FATE OF KING DATHI. 
 
 Entered arfnrili up tn art of Cnut/ress, A. D-18B&, hy T. fttrrttt »J- Soil, in the t/nV.'s oftce of the district CV <>t of the If. S. /or the southern district of N. V 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Famous "Witchery" resolutions — Commotion and fury caused by them — O'Cox- 
 
 NEI.L DENOUNCES THE REGENT'S VIOLATION OF HIS PLEDGES TO THE CATHOLICS — HlS 
 REGRET ON ACCOUNT OF LORD MoiRA's WEAKNESS — MoiRA's NOBLENESS IN '98 ; HE DIS- 
 APPOINTS THE EXPECTATIONS OF THE CATHOLICS IN 1812 — O'CoNNELL TELLS THE PEOPLE 
 TO DISTRUST THE MINISTRY, TO TRUST THEMSELVES ALONE — APPARENT PROSPECT OF IMME- 
 DIATE EMANCIPATION IN 1S12 — FAVORABLE VOTES IN PARLIAMENT — O'CoNNELL ENUME- 
 RATES THE OPPORTUNITIES OF FREEDOM LET SLIP — CaSTLEREAGII's " HITCHES " — ABSURD 
 ARGUMENTS OF THE OPPONENTS OF EMANCIPATION — CHEVALIER McCaRTHY TRIES TO GET 
 UP A VOTE OF CONFIDENCE IN THE LIVERPOOL MINISTRY, BUT FAILS — "LIBERTY Hall" 
 
 — Sensational anecdote of the prince-regent's mistress, Lady Hertford — Gross 
 
 PROFLIGACY OF THE REGENT'S COURT — The REGENT'S NAME HISSED AT A St. Patrick's 
 DAY BANQUET IN LONDON ; SHERIDAN HISSED FOR TRYING TO DEFEND HIM — GENERAL 
 ELECTION OF 1812 — O'CoNNELL's LEGAL PENETRATION — HlS POWERFUL SPEECH ON THE 
 
 elections — Enthusiastic popular admiration of "the Man of the People" — O'Cox- 
 
 NELL PRAISES THE GALLANT LORD COCHRANE AND JOHN PlIILrOT C'URRAN, AND IN- 
 VEIGHS bitterly against Lord Castlereagh and other enemies of Ireland— The 
 
 GAINS AND LOSSES OF THE ELECTION — C'URRAN DEFEATED BY GENERAL NeEDHAM, THE 
 
 Ascendency candidate, at Newry — A few recreant Catholics basely vote against 
 Curran — Admirable speech of Curran — Lawless's vote of censure on those mem- 
 bers of the Catholic Board who acted against Curran — Vote of censure first 
 carried, afterwards qualified by a motion of Dr. Dromgoole — Politic course of 
 O'Connell — O'Connell's speech repudiating all designs of establishing Catholic 
 
 AiCENDENCY. 
 
 i 
 
 ROBABLY this "No Popery" cry, which arose in 1812, had 
 ^§ been stimulated by the celebrated "witchery" resolutions of the 
 SIS) preceding month, of which 1 shall now take some notice. I 
 have already mentioned that the Prince of Wales, on becoming 
 $P prince-regent, had shamefully broken his pledges to the Catholics. 
 A strong manifestation of Catholic indignation at this breach of faith 
 took place at a meeting held in Fishamble Street Theatre, on Thursday, 
 June the 18th, 1812, Lord Fingal, as usual, being in the chair. Mr. 
 Ilussey informed this meeting how the gentlemen sent to London on the 
 part of the Catholics were "bluntly refused" a private interview with 
 the prince; how Mr. Secretary Ryder told them that their address to his 
 royal highness should be presented at one of his public levees, "in the 
 
 5R7 
 
THE LIFE 01-' DAXIEL 0'COXXELL. 
 
 usiiiil way;" bow thoso presenting it were only allowed to state its pur- 
 port and origin ; and how it was handed over to a lord in waiting to be 
 consigned to oblivion. 
 
 The regent had expressed no opinion on the occasion of the present- 
 ation; "but," added Mr. Hnssey, "this melancholy fact is sufficiently 
 understood, that his royal highness did not think fit to offer any recom- 
 mendation to Parliament upon the subject ; and it is notorious that the 
 minister seemed to have acquired new zeal in propagating his old insin- 
 uations against the Catholic people, and in repeating his old experiment 
 against religious liberty." 
 
 After Mr. Hnssey's address, certain resolutions, supposed to have 
 been, compiled by Counsellor Denis Scully, were brought forward by 
 O'Connell, moved by Lord Killeen (the eldest son of the earl of Fingal), 
 and seconded by Mr. Barnewall. I shall give some passages from these 
 resolutions. The third says: "That from authentic documents now before 
 us we learn with deep disappointment and anguish how cruelly the 
 promised boon of Catholic freedom has been intercepted by the fatal 
 ivitehcry of an unworthy secret influence hostile to our fairest hopes, 
 spurning alike the sanctions of public and private virtue, the demands 
 of personal gratitude, and the sacred obligations of plighted honor." 
 The Catholics also spoke of a certain " impure source," to which the 
 disappointment of their hopes, their protracted servitude, the invasion 
 of their right of petitioning, illegal state-prosecutions, all their imme- 
 diate grievances, in short, could be traced. They expressed their just 
 contempt for tickle courtiers or "the pompous patronage" of men who 
 would sacrifice "at the shrine of perishable power" or to "the blandish- 
 ments of a too luxurious court," the "feelings and interests of millions." 
 They also expressed their resolution never to abandon the pursuit of 
 "equal constitutional rights — unconditional, unstipulated, unpurchased 
 by dishonor." 
 
 These "witchery" 1 resolutions were levelled against the influence, 
 hostile to the Catholic cause, supposed to be exercised over her royal 
 paramour by the marchioness of Hertford. This profligate woman was 
 credited with having kept in power Perceval and his "No-Popery" col- 
 leagues, when the prince became regent. These famous witchery reso- ; 
 lutions created a tremendous sensation. The prince, of course, was i. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 5G9 
 
 furious, doubtless the lady herself was furious, the convivial viceroy, the 
 duke of Richmond, was furious, the bigoted "No-Popery" partisans 
 were furious. Even many timorous or deceitful friends or would-be 
 patrons of the Catholics were displeased. 
 
 After a zealous Protestant member of the committee, Counsellor 
 Finlay (subsequently assistant-barrister for' Roscommon), had delivered 
 an able speech, O'Connell addressed the meeting. I shall give a few 
 passages from this speech, commencing with the opening one: 
 
 "I have, my lord, much to say, but I shall say little: I cannot ven- 
 ture to detain you after my eloquent friend — after the brilliant display 
 you have just witnessed of the talents and powerful eloquence of my 
 learned and excellent friend, Mr. Finlay. We do, indeed, owe him much; 
 I was about to regret that he was not a Catholic, I was so pleased with 
 him, and so anxious that we might have the credit of such talents; but 
 when I consider, I think it better that matters should be as they are; 
 for it must gratify every Catholic in Ireland to have Protestant talent 
 Mich as his come forward to grace and support our assemblies; and it 
 is a new source of unconquerable strength to our cause to have Protest- 
 ant and Catholic equally ardent in the struggle in which we are engaged. 
 His are talents which ministerial corruption could not purchase, for they 
 arc beyond all price." 
 
 Mi-. O'Connell next brings four of the faithless regent's pledges to 
 the Catholics before the meeting: 1st. One made through the duke of 
 Bedford. 2d. One made through Chancellor Ponsonbv. 3d. A written 
 one in the possession of the earl of Kenmare. He speaks thus of the 
 fourth : 
 
 " The fourth and last pledge, which, for the present, I shall mention, 
 was that given by his royal highness to a noble lord" [Fingafy "now 
 present. At the conversation I allude to, that noble lord was accom- 
 panied by the late Lord Pet re and the present Lord Clifden. After 
 retiring from the presence of his royal highness, the declarations which 
 he was so graciously pleased to make were, from a loyal and affectionate 
 impulse of gratitude, committed to writing, and signed by the three noble 
 lords." 
 
 It is in this speech that the passage on Perceval's assassination, 
 already quoted by me, occurs. In this speech, too, he speaks of the 
 
570 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 once-popular Lord Moira. After saying that Perceval's death had 
 "opened a near prospect, of their emancipation," he proceeds: 
 
 "At the moment I am speaking the bill for our relief would have 
 been in its progress through the legislature; we should have been eman- 
 cipated this very session, unconditionally and completely emancipated, 
 but for what? — I speak it in no anger, but in the deepest sorrow — but 
 for Lord Moira. 
 
 "Lord Moira is a name that I have never before pronounced without 
 enthusiasm. I am quite aware of his high honor, his unbounded gene- 
 rosity, his chivalrous spirit; his heart has ever been without fear, his 
 intentions have ever been, and will over be, without reproach ; Ireland 
 was justly proud of him; where could his fellow be met with? In the 
 disastrous period that preceded the union — at the time that measure 
 was in preparation ; when Foster and Clare banished Abercrombie from 
 Ireland, because he was humane; when murders marked the day, and 
 the burning cottages of the peasantry illumined the darkness of the 
 night; when affright and desolation stalked through the land ; when it 
 was a. crime to love Ireland and death to defend her; at that awful 
 moment, Moira, the good, the great Moira, threw himself between his 
 country and her persecutors; he exposed their crimes; he denounced 
 their horrors; he proclaimed and proved their guilt; and, although they 
 were too powerful to be beaten down by him, he has left his country the 
 sad consolation of beholding a perpetual record of the infamy of her 
 oppressors. 
 
 "Good God! if his advice had been taken in 1797, what innocent 
 blood would have been spared ! how many cruel oppressors would have 
 been punished ! and oh ! our country would still have a name and be a 
 nation ! 
 
 "Can these services be forgotten? can these virtues be unremeni- 
 bered ? No, never; but still the truth must be told : this is Lord Maims 
 administration. He it was that stood between some worthless minions 
 and the people's hopes. He had to choose between them, and he has 
 given his protection, not to Ireland or the Catholics, but to Lord Yar- 
 mouth and his family. It is now confessed that a single word from 
 Lord Moira would have dismissed the minions, and placed Earl Grey 
 and Lord Grenville at the head of affairs. "Why was not that fated 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL 571 
 
 word pronounced? Alas! I know not. Full sure, however, I am, that 
 the intention which restrained it was pure and honorable; but I, at the 
 same time, feel its fatal effects-. We are, my lord, to continue slaves, 
 because Lord Moira indulged some chivalrous notions of courtly romance! 
 
 "It may be said that, as Lord Moira has interfered, the Catholics 
 may reasonably expect some relief. Let us not be deceived. From the 
 present ministry we cannot expect anything. . . . 
 
 "But, in sober sadness, in whom are we to confide? Are we to 
 believe the word of Castlereagh ? My lord, 1 would not believe his oath. 
 Already has he been deeply pledged. He was a United Irishman, and, 
 as such, must have taken their test. ... It pledged him to Catholic 
 emancipation and parliamentary reform. . . . But how has he redeemed 
 those pledges? Why, he has emancipated the Catholics by duping some 
 of them at the union, and uniformly voting upon every question against 
 us ; and he has reformed the parliament by selling it to the British min- 
 ister. May this Walcheren minister be suitably rewarded in the execra- 
 tion of his country ! and may he have engraved on his tomb for an 
 epitaph, 
 
 "'Vendidit hie auro patriam' ('He sold his country for gohV)\ 
 
 "No, my lord, from us Castlereagh can obtain no confidence; nor 
 can his colleague, Lord Sidmouth, expect that the friends of toleration 
 can contide in his promises. Lord Sidmouth, who declared to Parlia- 
 ment that he would prefer the re-enactment of the penal code to the 
 extension of one other privilege to the Catholics; Lord Sidmouth, who 
 began his absurd career of persecution with the dissenters in England ; 
 that Lord Sidmouth (liberal and enlightened gentleman!) has been 
 selected for the home department. He it is who is to regulate the 
 motions of our provincial government; he it is that is to cheer the 
 drooping spirit of persecution in this country. His natural allies aie 
 embodied here— the group of 'good men,' as they fantastically designate 
 themselves, who manage the legal adminisrtation of this country; men 
 who have worked themselves into reputation with ancient maidens and 
 decayed matrons by gravity of deportment and church-wardening piety, 
 but who all their lives have been discounting religion and the Deity into 
 promotion and the pay and plunder of office — those men, together with 
 
572 THE LIFE OF DAXIEE O'COXXELL. 
 
 our friend, the solicitor-general" (Bvshe), "have a suitable companion 
 in Lord Sidmouth, and Ave should, instead of concessions, be prepared 
 rather to expect some other persecution, grounded, if possible, upon a 
 pretext still more absurd than that 'pretence means purpose;' that 
 assertion winch I defy an honest man, however credulous, to believe. 
 
 " From this ministry we expect nothing; let us be on our guard, and 
 cautiously watch their progress. As Lord Moira has been their patron, 
 they Avill endeavor to deceive him with a show of concession; but their 
 object is to give a change to the question. In its present shape it presses 
 upon them with all the force of present expediency and all the weight 
 of eternal justice. If they could entrap us into collateral discussions, 
 if they could entangle us in the chicanery of arrangements and securities, 
 the public attention would be distracted and turned from the principal 
 object, time would be wasted in useless discussions, animosities would 
 be created upon points of little real importance, and whilst the ministry 
 practised the refinements of bigotry, they would give themselves credit 
 fin- unbounded liberality. 
 
 •'These are not imaginary fears; the nature of the subject must 
 convince anv man that such was the design of an administration that 
 had for its only recommendations intolerance and incapacity. 
 
 " Indeed, the indiscretion of the party has already betrayed itself. 
 It is not twenty-four hours since a friend of mine had occasion to con- 
 verse with one of those right honorablcs who do the business of the 
 Castle, who are always as ready to pack juries as to obtain pardon for 
 an assassin, or to write paragraphs in the Patriot. My friend said, 
 'Why, you are going, I find, to emancipate the Catholics at length.' 
 'We!' replied the other. 'Oh no; Canning's motion will entangle the 
 rascals completely; Ave shall easily get rid of them without committing 
 ourselves.' 
 
 "Of these men, Lord Donoughmore has advised us to be distrustful. 
 I beg leave to say more. Let us utterly disbelive them. It is impos- 
 sible that they can do anything for us; they would be false to them- 
 selves if they were true to Ireland. But Ave are not without our 
 resources; wo have them in ourselves; Ave have them in the liberality 
 of our Irish Protestant brethren; Ave have them in the support of such 
 men as the all-accomplished Vernon, son to the archbishop of York — as 
 
THE LIFK OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. f)73 
 
 tiro honest and independent Robert Shaw. We have also a rich resource 
 in the eternal ridicule with which bigotry has lately covered itself in the 
 persons of its chosen apostles, Paddy Duigenan and Jack Giffard; but, 
 above all, we are strong in the justice of our cause, and in the inextin- 
 guishable right of man, in every soil and climate, to unlimited liberty 
 of conscience. Let us, however, expect nothing from the mere patronage 
 of courts and ministers. The advice given by a noble advocate of ours, 
 to other slaves, in a poem that it is impossible to read without delight, 
 is not inapplicable to our situation : 
 
 " ' Hereditary bondsmen ! know ye not, 
 
 Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow — 
 By their right arms the conquest must be wrought. 
 
 Will Gaul or Muscovite redress you? — No. 
 
 True, they may lay your proud despoilers low, 
 But not for you will freedom's altars flame. 
 
 Shades of the Helots! triumph o'er your foe. 
 Greece, change thy lords, thy state is still the same ; 
 Thy glories all are o'er, but not thy years of shame.' " 
 
 (This quotation from "Childe Harold" ivas a favorite one with CX Council 
 all through his life.) . . . 
 
 " It is true that after common sense has overthrown every pretence 
 that there is anything in the Catholic religion hostile to loyalty or lib- 
 erty, another ground has been long since taken, and from time to time 
 revived, by the unhappy dulness of one pedant or the other. It consists 
 in an admission that the Catholic religion is quite innocent, and even 
 laudable, in other countries, but that it acquires malignity from the soil 
 on its transplantation into Ireland. In short, that other Papists are 
 innocent or good, but that Irish Papists are execrable. 
 
 "This precious doctrine has been dressed up anew, in sufficiently 
 bad English, and published in a pamphlet called a ' Speech,' by that 
 
 snug little Foster who represents Trinity College in Parliament 
 
 I should fear it not" (the might of Napoleon) "if a system of conciliation 
 and mutual tolerance were once adopted — if justice Avere distributed by the 
 hand of confiding generosity — if the persecutions ceased, and that the per- 
 secutors were removed— if Grey were prime minister, and Moira, then 
 restored to the hearts of his countrymen " (according to Tone, t/iere had 
 been a time wher. the Irish might have chosen Moira their king), " lord-lieu- 
 
574 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'OONKELL. 
 
 tenant. Every village would produce a regiment, and every field serve 
 for a redoubt. The prince would then be safe and glorious" (humbug!), 
 " and the country, combined in its strength, would laugh to scorn the 
 power of every enemy. 
 
 "This is a vision, but it might have been realized. And why has 
 this prospect been closed? Why, to preserve the household I Oh, most 
 degrading recollection ! My feelings overpower me ; I must be silent." 
 
 I shall now give a few passages from a speech on Catholic emancipa- 
 tion, delivered by our hero at an aggregate meeting held on the 2d of 
 July, 1812. Lord Fingal, the chairman, commenced the proceedings by 
 congratulating the meeting on the certainty of their ultimate triumph. 
 He also observed that "the bringing of the Penal Code under notice 
 was ensuring success to the Catholic cause, because it was impossible 
 to consider its provisions without having the mind coerced to assent to 
 its repeal." Mr. Randal McDonnell followed in the same strain, urging 
 the necessity of ever-increasing exertion on the part of the Catholics to 
 back up the efforts of their friends in Parliament. Our hero followed 
 Mr. McDonnell, commencing with compliments to the secretary, Mr. 
 Hay. O'Connell next made some remarks, which show that, to all ap- 
 pearance (but the appearance was illusory), the Catholic cause was then 
 just on the eve of triumphing: 
 
 "We have to contemplate a novel scene: the Parliament of the 
 United Kingdom, after nearly twelve years of neglect or rejection, has 
 at length undertaken the consideration of our o;reat cause. One branch 
 of the legislature, by a triumphant majority, has resolved to investigate 
 the Penal Code of Ireland, with a view to its repeal; and perhaps before 
 this hour a similar resolution has been adopted by the House of Lords. 
 
 " The voice of the House of Commons is, at all events, certain. 
 In it the Irish people have a distinct pledge that the question of their 
 freedom is to be taken into consideration, for the purpose of final 
 adjustment, at an early period of the next session. The House of Com- 
 mons is unequi vocally pledged to some measure of emancipation. 
 The effect of this vote may perhaps be diminished when it is recol- 
 lected that, during the present session, the same honorable House has 
 r.iore than once rejected all inquiry; but times are altered, and wc 
 have now arrived at what appears to be the first great step in the 
 
THE [.!!•';•: OF DANIEL O'ewXXELL. r>t<j 
 
 progress to complete religious liberty. The preliminary to emancipation 
 is over, and emancipation itself, full and entire, is (lie natural, if not the 
 nec3ssary, consequence 
 
 '• I rejoice, my lord, at our victory — not as the conquest of one party 
 '!• an other, nor with the view to any triumph over any other denomi- 
 nation of my countrymen, but because I look niton it as a victory ob- 
 tained by the combined activity of all classes of Irishmen over their 
 own prejudices, and over intolerance and illiberality. It is that species 
 of victory that ought to endear the Irish Protestant to the Irish Catholic, 
 because it has been obtained for the benefit of the latter, principally by 
 the exertions of the former. It is doubly dear, because it holds out the 
 prospect of mutual conciliation and mutual affection." 
 
 He then says that, while he is ready, like Lord Fingal, to confide in 
 the growing liberality of the British nation (and more fool he, with all 
 his worldly wisdom, if he means what he says; and if he don't mean 
 what he says, why does he say it?), he must at the same time "conjure 
 the meeting to place its first and principal reliance in the determined 
 spirit and unalterable resolution to persevere until emancipation shall 
 he complete, never to relax their efforts until religious freedom is estab- 
 lished." This is to the point; still more so the greater portion of his 
 next sentences : 
 
 "I may, without any allusion to its military import, which I dislike" 
 {humbug!), "remind my countrymen of the advice of Cromwell to his 
 soldiers. The night was wet, and they, as usual, were engaged in prayer. 
 'Confide,' said he, 'in the Lord; put all your trust and confidence in the 
 Lord, but be quite sure to steej) uj)ott your matchlocks.'' " (Laughter and 
 loud cheering.) The version of Cromwell's saying, in Colonel Stewart 
 Blacker's spirited, though perverse, Orange ballad, "Oliver's Warning," 
 is as follows : 
 
 "Then put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry." 
 
 O'Connell argues that their own history teaches them Cromwell's 
 lesson: ""Within the last twenty years," he says, "there were no less 
 than three different periods at which the Catholics might have been 
 emancipated, if a combination of exertion had been used. 
 
 " Twenty years, however, have passed away, and we are still slaves. 
 
 ■17 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL OTOXXELL. 
 
 My days, the blossom of my youth and the flower of my manhood, have 
 been darkened by the dreariness of servitude. In this my native land — 
 in the land of my sires — I am degraded without fault or crime, as an 
 alien and an outcast, We do not, my lord, deserve this treatment. We 
 are stamped by the Creator with no inferiority; and man is guilty of 
 injustice when he deprives us of our just station in society. I despise 
 him who can timidly and meanly acquiesce in the injustice. Oh, let us 
 at length seize this opportunity of abolishing the oppression for ever." 
 
 In '93, he tells them, they failed to secure complete emancipation, 
 " simply because the Catholics were not sufficiently combined amongst 
 themselves and sufficiently determined." 
 
 At the period of the union, they were divided, too. I shall give the 
 following passage in full: "We thought and acted differently upon this 
 melancholy subject, and, amidst the bitter anguish which the memory 
 of my extinguished country excites, I have consolations both personal 
 and public. First, because the opposition to the union was (and I thank my 
 God for it) the first act of my political life; and, second!}', I feel some com- 
 fort that the Catholics did not barter the constitution of their native land 
 for advantages to themselves. I blame no person for the failure of eman- 
 cipation on that occasion; on the contrary, I proudly rejoice that the 
 Catholics, even those of them who supported that baleful and degrading 
 measure, ' despised any idea of trafficking upon, or profiting by, the 
 miseries of Ireland. 
 
 " My lord, all the Catholics arc free from the guilt of having partici- 
 pated in the sale of their country; and this benefit results, that they 
 are bound by no contract to continue their thraldom. Nay, the exist- 
 ence of the penal code is soothed by the recollection that, in the efforts made 
 to procure redress, a popular spirit is roused, which, if not soon laid by the 
 voice of emancipation, may e/cne rede a determination to reanimate the fallen 
 constitution ! 
 
 " The third and last period, at which the Catholics might have been 
 emancipated, occurred since I had the honor to be an humble laborer in 
 the Catholic cause; it was the commencement of Mr. Fox's adminis- 
 tration. . . . Mr. Scully was present as a delegate at those declarations. 
 when Mr. Fox proclaimed the restrictive code as a crime — religious lib- 
 erty as a right. ' I cannot,' said that enlightened man — ' I cannot con- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELE. o7 i 
 
 sent to become your advocate, unless you are ready to concede to all other 
 sects the toleration you require for yourselves.' 'We should be unwor- 
 thy to obtain it, could we hesitate to accede to your terms; we would 
 gladly bestow upon all mankind what we ask for ourselves,' was the 
 reply. 
 
 "Upon this avowed principle, in 1805, Mr. Fox supported the claims 
 of the Catholics; in 1806, that very Mr. Fox became minister. What 
 could have prevented that principle from being carried into action?" 
 
 O'Connell attributes the failure on this occasion to the "mistaken 
 confidence of the Catholics," to "the unsuspecting credulity of the Irish 
 heart." "The noble generosity of the Irish disposition could not bear 
 to doubt where it entertained affection; or perhaps the very novelty of 
 the voice of kindness had its charms. The Irish had been so long used 
 (o obloquy and harshness, that they received as a boon, deserving of 
 gratitude, the mere language of conciliation. The result was, that the 
 favorable moment of compelling that administration either to emanci- 
 pate or to resign, was passed by, and our servitude continues to this 
 hour. 
 
 "Let us profit by those lessons But shall we fail? Think 
 
 you, are we to owe our freedom to Lord Castlercagh and to Lord Sid- 
 mouth? Let us, my lord, beware of raising too high the expectations 
 of the country. In such a people as the Irish the effects of disappoint- 
 ment may be terrific. They are too apt to believe that which they wish. 
 They are too prone to rely; and when the hour of political treachery has 
 come, when the promised 'graces' are withdrawn from light, the sudden 
 violence of disappointed expectation is not likely to be controlled by the 
 influence of reason. Already we have seen the effects of blasting the 
 hopes of the Irish people." After referring to the administration of 
 Lord Fitzwilliam, the hopes then raised, and the dire consequences that 
 followed from the disappointment of those hopes, he thus continues : 
 "Let us spare our country from the horrid consequences of outraged 
 feelings. This is the last resort of public liberty in Europe, the only 
 country where the sword alone, the tyrant's law, does not prevail. I, 
 my lord, for one, am determined not to survive the representative sys- 
 tem of government in this countiy. Surely we ought not to endanger 
 it by rousing those angry passions which must result from betrayed con- 
 
fidence. We should warn the people not to believe overmuch those who 
 are hackneyed in duplicity and treachery. 
 
 "The opposition to Catholic emancipation has assumed a new shape; 
 bigotry and intolerance have been put to the blush or covered with ridicule ; 
 everybody laughs at Jack Giffard and Paddy Duigenan, and their worthy 
 compeer and colleague in England, Sir William Scott'' (Lord Eldorfs 
 brother, afterwards Lord Slowed), "no longer ventures to meet with adverse 
 front the justice of our cause. He may, indeed, talk of setting our ques- 
 tion at rest — he may declaim upon the moral inferiority of the Irish Cath- 
 olics; but let him rest assured that so Ions as his children — if he have 
 any — so long as the swarthy race of his Scotts. are placed by law on any 
 superiority to the Irish Catholics, so long will it be impossible to put the 
 question to rest. It never can, it never shall rest, save in unqualified, 
 unconditional emancipation." 
 
 Having indulged in a parting sarcasm at Scott for having, as judge 
 of the admiralty court, decided "precisely the same question in two dif- 
 ferent ways," he scouts the veto, the "arrangements."' the "sanctions," 
 the "securities," which, one after the other, British ministers talked 
 of getting before conceding emancipation. He then proceeds in this 
 style: " Having disposed of 'veto, arrangement, sanctions and securi- 
 ties,' there remains but one resource for intolerance: the classic Castle- 
 reagh has struck it out ; it consists in — what do you think? Why, in 
 'hitches!' Yes, 'hitches' is the elegant word which is now destined to 
 protract our degradation. It is in vain that our advocates have in- 
 creased; in vain have our foes been converted; in vain has William 
 Wellesley Pole become our warm admirer. Oh, how beautiful lie must 
 have looked advocating the Catholic cause! And his conversion, too, 
 has been so satisfactory — he has accounted for it upon such philosophic 
 principles! Yes, he has gravely informed us that he was all his life a 
 man detesting committees : you might see by him that the name of a 
 c mmittee discomposed his nerves and excited his most irritable feel- 
 ings; at the sound of a committee he was roused to madness. Now, 
 the Catholics had insisted upon acting by a committee — the naughty 
 Papists had used nothing but profane committees; and, of course, he 
 proclaimed his hostility. But in proportion as he disliked commit te< s. 
 si: did he love and approve of aggregate meetings — resjzsl able aggregate 
 
meetings. Had there been a chamber at the Castle large enough lor an 
 aggregate meeting, lie would have given it. AYho does not see that it is 
 quite, right to d oat upon aggregate meetings and detest committees, by 
 law, logic, philosophy and science of legislation? All recommend the 
 one and condemn the other; and at length the Catholics have had (he 
 -Did sense to call their committee a board, to make their aggregate 
 meetings more frequent. They, therefore, deserve emancipation, and, with 
 the blessing of God. he (Mr. Pole) would confer it on them! (Laugh- 
 ter and cheers.) 
 
 "But, seriously, let us recollect that Wellesley Pole is the brother of 
 one of our most excellent friends — of Marquis Wellesley, who has so 
 gloriously exerted himself in our cause, who has manfully abandoned 
 one administration because he could not procure our liberty, and re- 
 jected power under any other unless formed on the basis of emancipa- 
 tion, aral who has, before this hour in which I speak, earned another 
 unfading laurel and the eternal affection of the Irish people by his mo- 
 tion in the House of Lords. . . . Lord Castlereagh, too, has declared 
 in our favor, with the prudent reserve of 'the hitches;' he is our 
 friend, and has been so these last twenty years — our secret friend ; as 
 he says so upon his honor as a gentleman, we are bound to believe him. 
 If it be a merit, in the minister of a great nation, to possess profound 
 discretion, this merit Lord Castlereagh possesses in a supereminci.t 
 degree. Why, he has preserved this secret with the utmost success. 
 Who ever suspected that he had such a secret in his keeping? . . . 
 admirable contriver! most successful placeman! — most discreet 
 and confidential of ministers! 
 
 "But what are his •hitches'.' They constitute another ' secret.' 1 
 think, however, I understand them. In the morning papers of this day 
 there appeared a call upon the Protestants of the county of Sligo to 
 come forward in support of the establishment. It looks like the tocsin 
 of intolerance; the name signed to it is John Irwin. ... If he be a 
 hireling of the administration, and that this is the first demonstration 
 of the 'hitches,' I proclaim his miserable attempt to the contempt of the 
 enlightened Protestants of Ireland — its fate is certain. The government 
 may give it a wretched importance, but they never can afford if strength : 
 they may give it 'sanction.' but they cannot procure 'security' for big- 
 
otiy. The Protestants, Presbyterians, and the Quakers of Ireland have 
 too recently evinced the noble liberality of their sentiments — their sense 
 of our wrongs, and their sympathy in the sufferings of their brethren, 
 who arc, in their turn, ready to die in their defence. The Irish Protest- 
 ants of every denomination arc too just and too wise to be duped into 
 the yell of bigotry. The result of the attempt is certain. . . . 
 
 "I said I understood Castlereagh's 'hitches,' and I proclaim this as 
 one of them; I know, too, we shall have new persecutions. . . . Believe 
 me, my prophetic fears are not vain ; I know the managers well, and 
 place no confidence in their holy seeming. Again, England affords an- 
 other opportunity of extending the 'hitches,' under the pretence of 
 making laws to prevent rebellion there; the administration will sus- 
 pend the habeas corpus, for the purpose of crushing emancipation here. 
 . . . The new laws occasioned by English rioters will pass harmless 
 over their heads, and fall only upon you. . . . The 'hitches,' the 
 'hitches' plainly mean all that can be raised of venal outcry against us, 
 and all that can be enacted of arbitrary law, to prevent our discussions. 
 
 "Still, still we have resources — we have rich resources in those affec- 
 tionate sentiments of toleration which our Irish Protestant brethren 
 have proudly exhibited during the present year. The Irish Protestants 
 will not abandon or neglect their own work; it is they who have placed 
 us on our present elevation; their support has rendered the common 
 cause of our common country triumphant. Our oppressors, yielding an 
 unwilling assent to the request of the Protestants of Ireland, may com- 
 pensate themselves by abusing us in common; they may style us agi- 
 tators. Mr. Canning calls us agitators with ulterior views; but I lose 
 Protestant agitators are the best friends to the security and peace of the 
 country; and as to us, Popish agitators — for I own it, my lord, I am 
 an agitator, and we solemnly promise to continue so, until the period of 
 unqualified emancipation, until 'the simple repeal' — as to us, agitators 
 among the Catholics, we are become too much accustomed to calumny 
 to be terrified at it, But how have we deserved reproach and obloquy? 
 How have we merited calumny? . . . Let us rouse the Irish people, from 
 one extreme to the other of the island, in this constitutional cause. 
 Let the Catholic combine with the Protestant, and the Protestant with 
 the Catholic, and one generous exertion sets every angry feeling at rest, 
 
and banishes, for ever, dissension and division. . . . We shall confer an 
 honor on ourselves, and ensure the safety of our country." 
 
 It may not be out of place to give here one or two specimens of the 
 ludicrous style of argument against the Catholic claims, resorted to by 
 English statesmen even in this year, 1812. Indeed, puerilities as absurd 
 were used against emancipation even up to the very day on which it was 
 conceded, in 1829. 
 
 On the 31st of January, 1812, Lord Aberdeen had indignantly ashed 
 in the House of Lords: "After all the concessions that have been made 
 to the Catholics, of what can they now complain? Their complaint is 
 reduced to this — that they are still precluded from holding certain offices. 
 Will their advocates contend that they can claim, as a matter of right, 
 their admissibility to those offices? If that doctrine is set up, I for one 
 do not hesitate to declare that it is not tenable." 
 
 Lord Sidmouth had demanded: "Is not emancipation a religious 
 question ? Is it not the duty of the House to protect the true religion, 
 established by law ? Must they not greatly detract from the estimation 
 in which the true religion is held, if they so far countenance the mass 
 as to put it on a level with the Established Church? if they allow it to 
 be regarded as a matter of indifference whether persons go to mass, to 
 church, or to the synagogue?" 
 
 Castlereagh affected to dread that the power of the pope in Ireland 
 would be used against the interests of the British empire. The pope 
 was now a prisoner in the hands of Napoleon. Referring to this, Cas- 
 tlereagh observed: "But, although it (the see of Rome) had hitherto 
 conducted itself in a way that no fault could be found with it, it did not 
 follow that if a future pope should be absolutely nominated by Bona- 
 parte, that the ecclesiastical influence of the Pope might not be very 
 much abused in Ireland. This was a danger that should be guarded 
 against; and in that case, without denying the pope to be their spirit- 
 ual head (which was a main tenet of their religion), the correspondence 
 between the bishops and the pope ought to be carried on in so open and 
 undisguised a manner as not to give reasonable alarm to the state." 
 
 Mr. Tierney, in replying to Castlereagh, said, with great readiness. 
 " He could not imagine why an Irish bishop should not, in such a case, 
 be dealt with like an English bishop, who would only lose his head." 
 
5S2 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 At an aggregate meeting of the Catholics, in 1812. a certain Chev- 
 alier McCarthy appeared in the interests of the aristocratic section of 
 the Catholic body. He endeavored to induce the meeting to pass some- 
 thing like a vote of confidence in the Liverpool administration. Coun- 
 selor O'Gorman denounced the majority of the ministry as "bitter 
 enemies, the remaining part of it disavowing us and disclaiming our 
 emancipation, even fettered and restricted as they would give it. They 
 have been for seven years past talking of those ' fences,' ' guards,' 
 ' vetoes,' ' restrictions.' and, as they now call them. ' hitches,' and they 
 have not as yet told us what they want or what we arc to do. They 
 have not agreed on this yet among themselves, and they call on us to 
 anticipate by our offers the result of their own discordant counsels. 
 And to these men you are called on to humiliate yourselves!" The 
 chevalier's attempt was defeated. 
 
 One peculiarity of the Liverpool cabinet, which was nicknamed by 
 Mr. Tiernay "Liberty Hall," was tin 1 apparent absence of restriction on 
 the political opinions, regarding certain questions, of the individual 
 members composing it. Thus, Catholic emancipation was supposed to 
 be left an open question. Mr. Canning might lean towards emancipa- 
 tion; Lord Eldon be its bitter foe. The political squibs of the day made 
 merry with this feature of the administration. One calls on the 2;ood 
 fellows to till, for this is "Liberty Hall," where each may enjoy his pint 
 and opinions to himself. All may follow their fancies: 
 
 " Here Castlereagh sit.*, after wasting his wind 
 In telling us everything else but his mind," 
 
 and, released from his pledge to enslave Ireland, his place being sure, 
 he may think she ought to be saved ; 
 
 " While Eldon, enjoying a lull dispensation 
 From everything (bless him!) that's like toleration, 
 May still load the Papists with blubber and gall, 
 And ne'er be worse for it in Liberty Hall." 
 
 Sidmouth may trim, since to do so is now second nature to him; and 
 
 \ snsittart is licensed "to go on without knowing one thing he's about." 
 
 It is not surprising that the signs, not unfavorable to the Catholic 
 
 cause, which appeared in Parliament in 1812, turned out illusory. Big- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 583 
 
 otry was still too strong and rampant to listen to justice and toleration. 
 The "No Popery" cry was vehement. No doubt, too, that rather anti- 
 quated charmer, the marchioness of Hertford, used, not without effect, 
 all her influence as favorite of royalty, to defeat the hopes of the Cath- 
 olics. I may as well quote from the " Memoirs of the Times of George the 
 Fourth," a curious and somewhat sensational passage, having reference 
 to this notorious court-beauty: "It is strange that every person, even 
 the most profligate, abuses Lady Hertford ; yet all the aristocracy in 
 
 England receive her and visit her. Lord said the other night, that 
 
 she had as much murdered one of her admirers as if she had pulled the 
 trigger which had shot him. He then proceeded to say, that at the time 
 she left that admirer she had one daughter by him, whom she loved much, 
 but upon whom her husband doated also. So, in order not to part with 
 this girl she feigned its sickness and death, and buried a dead hid, 
 instead of the child, at Leghorn, and sent the girl away to England. 
 She sent her under the care of a man whom I can never look upon with- 
 out dislike. Think of any one's kidnapping another's child, and to please 
 a woman! The wretched father wept his lost child for some time, and, 
 when it was convenient to Lady Hertford to rid herself of that child, 
 she had the kid disinterred in proof of the deception which she had 
 practised, and informed the father that she sent him back his daughter 
 alive and well. The shock proved too great for the unhappy man, who 
 went mad and shot himself; and the villainy has hitherto remained 
 unpunished — the perpetrator of this tragedy can walk about in peace. 
 
 People generally end this tragic tale by saying, ' Poor ! he was a 
 
 great fool.' It will be better at the day of judgment to be that great 
 fool, than the woman who is dignified with the false epithet of clever." 
 
 Of this lady Mr. Mitchel says: "Her husband and her son were the 
 closest boon companions of the lover of the father's wife and of the son's 
 mother. These famous 'witchery' resolutions were supposed to have so 
 strongly aroused the Protestant feelings of the prince, as to adjourn all 
 thought of Catholic emancipation for many years, and to have been the 
 cause of the exceedingly bad grace with which King George the Fourth 
 at last assented to that measure." 
 
 The Irish in London had also displayed their contempt for that most 
 worthless voluptuary, the prince regent, in the course of this same year, 
 
584 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 1812. When celebrating the festival of St. Patrick, on the 17th of 
 March, they had drunk the aged king's health with applause, but the 
 regent's was received with partial applause and loud and repeated 
 hisses. Melancholy to relate, our brilliant Sheridan, whose health was 
 also drunk, on that occasion, in returning thanks for the compliment 
 paid him, endeavored to defend his ungrateful and thoroughly hollow- 
 hearted " crony," the prince. In a low tone, Mr. Sheridan said he felt 
 " shocked at the sulky coldness and surly discontent with which they 
 had, on that evening, drunk the health of the prince regent (disappro- 
 bation). ... He knew well the sentiments of the prince; and so 
 well satisfied was he that they were all that Ireland could wish that 
 he (Mr. Sheridan) hoped that as he had lived up to them, so he might 
 die in the principles of the regent (hisses and applause). He should be 
 sorry personally to have merited their disapprobation (cries of ' Change 
 the subject!' and 'Speak out!'). He could only assure them that the 
 prince remained unchangeably true to those principles (here the clamors 
 became so general that the speaker became inaudible)." The celebrated 
 Cobbett expresses gratification at the circumstance of the prince's name 
 having been received with hisses, instead of the "loathsome parasitical 
 applause" of former times. For Sheridan he expresses some sympathy, 
 or. at least, sorrow: "Oh, poor Sheridan! hissed down by his own coun- 
 trymen, hooted down by those very persons who formerly heard him 
 with such raptures. Here he ends, then ; or if not, what is he reserved 
 for? . . . Perhaps there is not, in the history of man, so complete an 
 instance of sinking as we have here before us. There was a time when 
 Mr. Sheridan was not only looked upon, but was, second to no man in 
 England, . . . from 1785 to 1796, . . . the most efficient opposer of 
 Pitt and his band. I find all his motions well framed and well timed 
 — all his speeches eloquent ; . . . and what in the same man do I see 
 now? An underling of the Jenkinsons and the Percevals!" Jenkin- 
 son was the family name of Lord Liverpool. It should, however, be 
 remembered that Sheridan was at this time old, shattered in mind and 
 in bodily health, ruined in his fortunes, dependent, harassed by a thou- 
 sand clinging cares. 
 
 We now come to the general election of 1812. The ministry, after 
 having lost their chief, Perceval, and after having suffered the shock 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 585 
 
 of a vote of want of confidence in the lower house, were still more 
 startled by seeing a motion favorable to the Catholics carried by a large 
 majority in the Commons, and only lost in the Lords by a majority 
 of one, so that the nominal defeat might be regarded, under existing 
 circumstances, as a virtual triumph. Indeed, O'Connell, in the Lim- 
 erick speech from which I have already quoted, tells us that " the pious 
 Lord Eldon, with all his conscience and calculations, and that immac- 
 ulate distributor of criminal justice, Lord Ellenborough " [English chief- 
 justice), secured this majority of one " by the aid of a lie — a false, pos- 
 itive, palpable lie," told knowingly by the Courier, a London paper "in 
 the permanent pay of peculation and corruption," and " worthy of the 
 meridian of Constantinople at its highest tide of despotism. This pa- 
 per," he continues, "was directed to assert the receipt of a letter from 
 Dublin, from excellent authority, declaring I know not how many peers, 
 sons of peers, and baronets had retracted the resolutions of the 18th 
 of June" (the "witchery" resolutions), "that those resolutions were car- 
 ried by surprise, and that they had been actually rescinded at a subse- 
 quent meeting." O'Connell goes on to denounce this statement as a 
 gross and unfounded lie. " But the Courier received its pay, and it 
 was ready to earn the wages of its prostitution." He next points out 
 the enormous bribes given by government to purchase the services of 
 one miserable paper in Dublin; and he asks: "If the bribe here be so 
 high, what must it be in England, where the toil is so much greater? 
 And think you, then, that the Courier published, unsanctioned by its 
 paymasters, this useful lie?" 
 
 Affairs looking thus favorable for the Catholic party, the partisans 
 of which, especially our hero, exerted themselves with the utmost zeal, 
 during the parliamentary recess, at various meetings throughout the 
 country, to advance their cause, the government determined not to trust 
 to the influence of the newly- roused "No Popery" cry on the existing 
 Parliament. They resolved on a dissolution. Accordingly, early in Oc- 
 tober, 1812, the usual proclamation for that purpose appeared, and writs 
 for a general election were immediately issued. 
 
 "On Thursday, the 5th of November, 1812, an aggregate meeting of 
 the Catholics of the county of Dublin was held at Kilmainham, osten- 
 sibly to petition Parliament, in reality to discuss the results of the elec- 
 
586 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 tions just terminated, the conduct of particular persons in various 
 localities during the struggle and the general state and prospect of the 
 cause. William Gerald Baggott, of Castle Baggott, took the chair. The 
 proceedings were commenced by Randal McDonnell, who, after praising 
 the conduct of the poorer classes of electors during the recent contest, 
 introduced the resolutions that had been drawn up. Then arose, on 
 every side, loud calls for "O'Connell! O'Connell!" The journals of the 
 day tell us that, "after a short hesitation, the Man of the People came 
 forward and spoke to the following effect." 
 
 But before I give a few extracts from O'Connell's oration on this oc- 
 casion, I wish to observe, on the authority of John O'Connell, that the 
 legal opinions delivered by his illustrious father in the Limerick speech, 
 from which the passage, closing the last chapter, is an extract, "were 
 all verified in the courts of law. The city of Limerick, from being a 
 nomination borough, was, by means of legal decisions, thrown open to 
 popular control, as Mr. O'Connell had pointed out. The expense was 
 enormous, but was cheerfully borne by the 'patriotic citizens." A Mr. 
 Edward Ryan and a Mr. Patrick Creagh subscribed, each, £500. O'Con- 
 nell had roused the slumbering people of Limerick and pointed out the 
 road to victory. The Verekers (the head of this family is Lord Gort) 
 were, at the general election we are noticing, driven from the represent- 
 ation of that city. It must be owned, however, that Thomas Spring 
 Rice (afterwards chancellor of the exchequer and Lord Monteagle), the 
 successful popular candidate, turned out in the long run no great acqui- 
 sition. He was probably the first Irishman who nicknamed himself " a 
 West Briton." 
 
 But the reader and the populace are alike impatient to hear the 
 opening of O'Connell's harangue. As a rule, you cannot measure the 
 greatness of O'Connell by isolated extracts. The old saying, that you 
 can judge of the strength and stature of Hercules from his foot [exp'de 
 Hcrculem), is not so often verified in O'Connell's case as in that of 
 Gr.ittan or Curran, etc. To see and comprehend the massivencss and 
 might of O'Connell, you must review all his speeches, take his elo- 
 quence in its totality. Then the giant towers aloft before your mind's 
 eye. In the present instance, however, he commences with a noble 
 burst of genuine Irish feeling and pathos that directly storms the heart: 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 587 
 
 "I could not be an Irishman, if T did not feel grateful, if I was not 
 overpowered at the manner in which you have received me. Sony, 
 sunk and degraded as my country is, I still glory in the title of Irish- 
 man." (Bursts of applause.) " Even to contend for Ireland's liberties is 
 a delightful duty to me." (Enthusiastic plaudits.) "And if anything is 
 wanting, in addition to the evidence of such humble efforts as I have 
 already been engaged in, for the restoration of our freedom and inde- 
 pendence, to evince my devotion to the cause of my country, I do swear, 
 by the kindness you have shown me now, by any I have ever expe- 
 rienced at your hands, and by all that I hold valuable or worthy of 
 desire, that my life is at her service." (Applause.) "And may the 
 heavy hand of adversity fall down upon me, and upon all that are 
 dearest to me — the children of my heart — if ever I forsake the pure 
 pursuit of the liberty of Ireland." (Cheering for several minutes.) "Gen- 
 tlemen, we are now arrived at a period when we are not only struggling 
 for the interest of our own religion, but for the liberty, security and peace 
 of our Protestant brethren, both here and in England." (Ajyilaitse.) 
 
 " We are arrived at an important crisis, when a serious profession 
 has been made, on our behalf, by the English Parliament. This is the 
 first time that a declaration such as that to which I allude was ever 
 made in the senate. It is the first time that the voice of religious lib- 
 erty was really heard in the British Parliament; the first time that men 
 were allowed to judge for themselves, and to obey the divine precept, of 
 treating others as they themselves would wish to be treated." (Rear! 
 hear !) 
 
 "The period is highly important, and calls for all the watchfulness, 
 zeal and assiduity of which we are capable. An administration (formed, 
 Heaven knows how!) have given us a specimen of their acting a neu- 
 tral part towards us. They have promised that they shall not interpose 
 their authority to interrupt the good intentions of any man. Some of 
 them have even pledged themselves to support the Catholic question ; 
 and probably half of them have given some earnest of their improved 
 liberality. I will, however, give them little credit for sincerity; I be- 
 lieve they would not even pretend to lay much claim to our confidence ; 
 they have too much modesty to expect to be believed by us." (Laughter 
 and cries of Hear! hear!) "We have, I believe, without paying much 
 
588 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 attention to the professions of the cabinet, arrived at a most important 
 crisis. It behooves every man of us to do his duty, and to take care 
 that we shall lose none of the important acquisitions we have made. 
 This very administration of whom I am speaking, notwithstanding all 
 their fair promises, have been busily employed in throwing new imped- 
 iments in our way since last session. But those impediments shall do 
 us little injury, if we do our duty. They certainly are our natural ene- 
 mies; they hate liberty; they have an inherent abhorrence of freedom; 
 and their hostility to us is particularly embittered by our contempt for 
 them." [Loud applause.) "Yes, gentlemen, such are the men whom 
 you, in your resolutions, have justly termed 'incompetent' and 'prof- 
 ligate;' such are the men who now command the destinies of those 
 realms, and probably the fortunes of Europe." (Hear! hear!) 
 
 He next refers to a favorable change of sentiment towards the Cath- 
 olic body on the part of the celebrated naval hero, Lord Cochrane, then 
 one of the members for Westminster. The gallant Cochrane had been 
 prejudiced against the Catholics on account of what he deemed the 
 slavish doctrines of "the Eomish Church." O'Connell says: "It is 
 some consolation, gentlemen, that there is some person who can assure 
 ministers there is no danger in granting us emancipation — we are not 
 too fond of liberty." (Laughter.) "But, gentlemen, see the consistency 
 and rationality of our calumniators! At one time they say we are agi- 
 tating democrats, crying aloud for an unwarrantable portion of freedom ; 
 the very next moment they turn round, and tell us that we have a marvel- 
 lous propensity for slavery!" (Loud cries of Hear! hear!) . . . "Let 
 Lord Cochrane recollect what the first Irishman that ever was born said 
 at Newiy." (Here the learned, gentleman was interrupted for several min- 
 utes by the acclamations of the assembly.) 
 
 "I am not surprised," continued Mr. 0*Connell when silence was 
 again restored — " I am not surprised that you should feel the most 
 ecstatic emotions of the Irish heart when I but allude to the name of 
 John Philpot Curran." (Renewed cheering.) " It recalls to us everything 
 that is dear or interesting in our history, it pronounces everything that 
 we are proud to live with in this age, and everything that shall be esti- 
 mable in the minds of posterity." (Loud applause.) "I know the 
 name of John Philpot Curran has conducted you back involuntarily to 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 589 
 
 that most awful era in our annals when we were deprived of our independ- 
 ence, and metamorphosed into the colony of a people who were not and 
 who are not in the least worthy of being our masters ! But, my friends, 
 if we are true to ourselves — if Protestants and Catholics be alive to their 
 commonest and most intimate interests — we may, profiting, among other 
 aids, by the assistance of this very idol of ours to whom you have just 
 paid your affectionate tribute, — we may, I say, become a kingdom once 
 more ! " (Th under s of appla use. ) 
 
 " I had adverted to what my most venerated friend, John Philpot 
 Curran, said at Newry. I would take leave to remind Lord Cochrane 
 of it, assuming it to be the expression of Catholic feeling. The Irish 
 Cicero there observed that Englishmen love the privilege of being gov- 
 erned by Englishmen. I would tell my Lord Cochrane that Irishmen 
 fully as highly value the privilege of being governed by Irishmen." 
 [Long-continued applause. ) 
 
 In the next paragraph, O'Connell has occasion to say : "In the 
 course of my professional pursuits I have been one hundred times 
 compelled to swear that I did not think it lawful to commit murder." 
 (A laugh.) . . . "But we are told we have predilections: we do not 
 deny the charge. As for my part, I do not value the man who has 
 not his predilections and resentments; but at the same time, Lord 
 Cochrane may be as much afraid of our predilections for the grand 
 lama of Tartary as for the Pope of Rome." (Hear! hear!) 
 
 " Those imputations upon our value for an oath evince only the mis- 
 erable ignorance of our opponents, with regard to our principles and 
 uniform conduct. They bring to my recollection, again, the words of 
 the great Curran at Newry, and serve to convince me still more of their 
 entire justice, when he said 'that they are unfit to rule us, making laws, 
 like boots and shoes for exportation, to fit us as they may.' " (Long- 
 continued applause. ) 
 
 After a few sentences in praise of the gallant Cochrane, O'Connell 
 proceeds to review the gains and losses to the Catholic cause in the elec- 
 tions. As much of the interest of this survey was necessarily of a tem- 
 porary nature, I shall skim over the rest of the speech rapidly. He 
 complains that " Christopher Hely Hutchinson has lost his election in 
 Cork." But in various other places additional supporters of the Cath- 
 
590 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 olic cause have been returned. He is delighted that "in Downpatrick 
 even John Wilson Croker" (the Quarterly reviewer, the Rigby — the man 
 for "the dirty work" — of Disraeli's novel of "Coningsby") "of the 
 admiralty, has, to use a northern phrase, been kicked out." (Laughter 
 and- cheers.) "I remember, about six years ago, when this gentleman 
 and I were going circuit together, his Protestantism did not keep my 
 Popery much in the background." [Laughter and cheers.) " If, however, 
 he were not a Protestant, I verily believe he would have been doomed to 
 drudge all his life at the bar, though he has been, since that time, in 
 Parliament, and is now rewarded with a situation in the admiralty. . . . 
 In Trinity College ... we have had an accession to our strength, in 
 that credit to Ireland, that ornament to the bar and that honor to 
 human intelligence, William Conyngham Plunket." (Lmtd applause.) 
 In Dublin, "Jack Giffard, the police magistrates and Billy McAuley" 
 could not get a man in opposition to Mr. Shaw. " The 'felonious rabble' 
 of the corporation, if I may use the delicate expression of one of its 
 members, had not courage to produce one person to oppose Henry 
 Grattan, who ' watched Ireland's independence in its cradle, and fol- 
 lowed it to its tomb.' . . . 
 
 "Such is the state of the elections; such is the state of your cause. 
 Is it not demonstrative, that if you had a Protestant parliament in 
 Ireland, they would emancipate you?" 
 
 The reporters describe the manner in which this sentence was re- 
 ceived by Mr. O'Connell's auditory as having been enthusiastic in the 
 extreme. The shouts of applause were taken up again and again, for 
 many minutes, with unabated, or even increasing, fervor — in fact, "it 
 was not for a long time that he was suffered to proceed." He then took 
 occasion to say that the Catholics of Clare (destined also to glorify them- 
 selves in 1829, at the Clare election, the most remarkable event con- 
 nected with O'Connell's life) had covered themselves with eternal honor. 
 He assailed Castlereagh, who was returned by a northern constituency, 
 with infinite gusto: "In speaking of Lord Castlereagh, I do not know 
 how to select words to adequately express my feelings. I should become 
 an old man in foaming out the torrent of hatred and indignation with 
 which my bosom teems. . . . Let the man who buried thousands of our 
 brave troops in the marshes of Walcheren, and destroyed the springs of 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 591 
 
 his country's liberty, know the feelings which are experienced by an 
 Irishman when" his name is mentioned." [Loud applause.) 
 
 " To counterbalance the gloom that is thrown over the mind when the 
 success of an enemy to the cause of Ireland is contemplated, I might 
 exhibit the prospects that are presented by the residence of the young 
 duke of Leinster amongst us." (Loud acclamations.) "Inheriting such 
 a load of the virtues of his ancestry, his promises are great. Indeed, 
 there is something in the name of Fitzgerald to cherish and console 
 Ireland under the heaviest afflictions." (Loud applause.) . . . "As to 
 the 'No Popery' agitators, we have leading them a Mr. Steward Corry, 
 whoever he may be ; a Mr. Owen Wynne, who is said to be a great en- 
 couragerof fat pigs." (Much laughter.) "He is also, however, a brother 
 to that important dignitary, the caterer-general of the Castle. Then we 
 have a Mr. Counsellor Webber, who was an assistant-barrister" (assistant- 
 barristers, a class of Inferior judges, are now called chairmen of counties), 
 "or, in the words of the great Flood, who had availed himself of the 
 'refuge for tried, incapacity.' In one county, an obscure clergyman was 
 the author of a pompous string of anti-Catholic resolutions. 
 
 "But the hypocritical affectation of liberality in those gentlemen 
 was worst of all!" (Near! hear!) "Catholics were their loving 
 brothers! everything that was sweet and delightful and sublime and 
 affectionate ! !" (Laughter.) "They love us — oh how dearly ! — but they 
 desire us to continue slaves ! They desire us to tight for them and to pay 
 the taxes; — but they keep the rewards to themselves!" 
 
 At the same time O'Connell took good care, while denouncing what 
 he called "the disgraceful efforts" of a "disgraceful no-Popery faction" 
 in the counties of Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon and Longford, to contrast 
 with them " that formidable and imposing document, the Protestant peti- 
 tion, signed by every one of wealth, respectability or talent that was to 
 be found throughout the country." 
 
 After descanting, at some length, upon the necessity of unanimity of 
 sentiment among all classes at the awful crisis now impending (mean- 
 ing, I presume, the final struggle with Napoleon the Great), O'Connell 
 said, " It would be much wiser for ministers, at this juncture, to enter into 
 a treaty of amity with the Catholics of Ireland, than to lavish a subsidy 
 of eighty thousand pounds upon Bernadotte " (the French marshal who had 
 
 33 
 
592 THE LIFE OF DANJEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 been elected crown-prince of Sweden, and who was now turning against his 
 old master, Napoleon, in his sinking fortunes), than to build hopes upon 
 the insurrection in Paris, form alliances with a chieftain in South Amer- 
 ica, or conclude arrangements with the cley of Algiers." Mr. O'Connell 
 sat down amid loud acclamations. 
 
 At this general election of 1812, John Philpot Curran stood for 
 Newry. Many of his friends had long desired to see him in the English 
 Parliament. They did not consider his fame firmly enough established 
 in England. A few orations, on great occasions, in the House of Com- 
 mons, would root it deep as an oak tree, even in that alien soil. For 
 himself, he wished chiefly to be able to aid Grattan in pushing the Cath- 
 olic claims. In obedience, then, to a requisition from Newry, he con- 
 tested that borough with General Needham, a member, I presume, of 
 the bigoted house, which owns the neighboring earl of Kilmorey as its 
 head, probably an Irishman by birth, though Curran calls him "a gen- 
 tleman of- another country" (perhaps meaning in feeling); at all events, 
 distinguished for having slaughtered Irish rebels in '98. In this con- 
 test (shameful to relate!) Curran was defeated. A miserable Catholic 
 merchant (still more shameful to relate!) seconded General Needham. 
 Little space as I have now to spare, I cannot refrain from giving some 
 passages from the speech delivered by Curran, when, on the sixth day 
 of the election, seeing that the borough was lost, he withdrew from the 
 contest. Thomas Davis considers that this speech contains "a most 
 emphatic announcement of the power of agitation to achieve its ends;" 
 in fact, in some degree anticipates O'Connell's exposition of his theory 
 of "agitation." 
 
 I shall first quote the passage in which Curran holds up to merited 
 scorn the pitiful Catholic sneak who seconded General Needham : 
 
 "If you remember the indignant laugh that was excited in the 
 course of the poll, when the returning officer demanded of the poll-taker 
 ' how many had voted for the master of the rolls, and how many for us,' 
 you must, I think, be satisfied that there must be something base in 
 this business. Sad, indeed, is the detail of this odious and ludicrous 
 transaction, but it is too instructive to be passed over in silence. 
 
 "When the election opened, an old gentleman arose and proposed 
 my gallant opponent, as being a gentleman of ' great intiuence in the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 59o 
 
 borough,' and who had 'served it' for three Parliaments — that is, in other 
 words, a gentleman Avho had the dregs of its population under his feet, 
 and who had, for three Parliaments, been the faithful adherent of every 
 minister, and upon every vital question, the steady and remorseless 
 enemy, so far as a dumb vote would go, of this devoted island? 
 
 "And indeed, what could you expect from a gentleman of another 
 country, who could have neither interest in you nor sympathy for you, 
 but was perfectly free to sell you or to bestow you at his pleasure? 
 
 " This motion was seconded — I blush to think of it, I burn at being 
 obliged to state it — bv a merchant of Newrv, himself a Catholic, him- 
 self the uniform victim, as he, together with his Catholic brethren, had 
 been the uniform victims, of the principles of a gentleman whom he 
 thought proper to support. 
 
 "Never shall I forget the figure which the unhappy man made — 
 hesitating, stammering, making a poor endeavor to look angry, as if 
 anger could cast any veil over conscious guilt, or conscious shame, or 
 conscious fear; and to what extent must he have felt all those sensa- 
 tions, if he looked forward, not merely to the sentiment of indignation 
 and contempt which he was exciting in the minds of those that he be- 
 trayed, but the internal horror that he must feel, when thrust forward 
 to the bar of his own conscience, and the dreadful sentence of expiatory 
 torture which that indignant conscience must pronounce upon him? 
 However, he was bold enough to second the motion ; and I think the 
 general is altogether indebted to the virtue of this independent Catholic, 
 and of two other equally virtuous Catholics, of JSTewiy, for his final 
 success, if success it can be called. . . . 
 
 "You saw those who voted for their country; you saw those who 
 voted against their country, and against themselves. Every honorable, 
 every respectable man within your borough, except the unfortunate Mr. 
 Caulfield and his two associates, were in the former class. But why do 
 I except them ? They do not belong to that class of public spirit or 
 honor; you saw the class to which these unfortunate men properly 
 belong. You saw a succession of poor creatures, without clothes upon 
 their back, naked as if they had been stripped for execution, naked as 
 if they had been landed from their mothers, consigned to the noble gen- 
 eral at the moment of their birth — no part of them covered but their 
 
594. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 chins, as if nature had stuck a beard upon them in derision of their 
 destiny. . . . The union was the last and mortal blow to the existence 
 of Ireland as a nation— a consummation of our destruction, achieved by 
 that perpetual instrument of our ruin, our own dissensions. 
 
 "The whole history of mankind records no instance of any hostile 
 cabinet— perhaps even of any cabinet — actuated by the principles of 
 honor or shame.* The Irish Catholic was taught to believe that if he 
 surrendered his country, he would cease to be a slave. The Irish Prot- 
 estant was cajoled into the belief that if he concurred in the surrender 
 he would be placed upon the neck of a hostile faction. Wretched dupe! 
 you might as well persuade the jailer that he is less a prisoner than the 
 captives he locks up, merely because he carries the key of the prison in 
 
 his pocket. 
 
 "By that reciprocal animosity, however, Ireland was surrendered : 
 the guilt of the surrender was most atrocious, the consequences of the 
 crime most tremendous and exemplary. We put ourselves into a con- 
 dition of the most unqualified servitude; we sold our country, and we 
 levied upon ourselves the price of the purchase; we gave up the right 
 of disposing of our properties; we yielded to a foreign legislature to 
 decide whether the funds necessary to their projects or their profligacy 
 should be extracted from us or be furnished by themselves. The con- 
 sequence has been, our scanty means have been squandered in her 
 internal corruption, as profusely as our best blood has been wasted in 
 the madness of her aggressions or the feeble folly of her resistance; our 
 debt has accordingly been increased more than tenfold ; the common 
 comforts of life have been vanishing; we are sinking into beggary; our 
 poor people have been worried by cruel and unprincipled prosecutions ; 
 and the instruments of our government have been almost simplified into 
 the tax-gatherer and the hangman. 
 
 "At length, after this long night of suffering, the morning-star of our 
 redemption cast its light upon us; the mist was dissolved, and all men 
 perceived that those whom they had been blindly attacking in the dark 
 were, in reality, their fellow-sufferers and their friends. We have made 
 a discovery of the grand principle in politics— that the tyrant is in 
 
 * I follow Mr. Mitchel's reading of tlie foregoing sentence, rather than that in my copy of 
 Curran's speeches, which seems to me altogether unmeaning. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 595 
 
 every instance the creature of the slave; that lie is a cowardly and a 
 computing animal; and that, in every instance, he calculates between 
 the expenditure to be made and the advantage to be acquired. 
 
 " I, therefore, do not hesitate to say, that if the wretched island of 
 Man, that refagium peccatorum, had sense and spirit to see the force of this 
 truth, she could not be enslaved by the whole power of England. The 
 oppressor would see that the necessary expenditure in whips, and chains, 
 and gibbets, would infinitely countervail the ultimate value of the 
 acquisition ; and it is owing to the ignorance of this unquestionable 
 truth that so much of this agitated globe has, in all ages, been crawled 
 over by a Manx population. This discovery, at last, Ireland has made : 
 the Catholic claimed his rights; the Protestant generously and nobly 
 felt as he ought, and seconded the claim. A silly government was 
 driven to the despicable courage of cowardice, and resorted to the odious 
 artillery of prosecutions ; the expedient failed ; the question made its 
 way to the discussion of the senate. I will not tire you with a detail. 
 A House of Commons, who, at least, represented themselves — perhaps 
 afraid, perhaps ashamed, of their employers — became unmanageable 
 tools in the hands of such awkward artists, and were dissolved; just as 
 a beaten gamester throws the cards into the fire in hopes in a new pack 
 to find better fortune." 
 
 Almost immediately after this, while Curran was alluding to the 
 unworthy means by which his defeat was brought about, a Mr. Bell, 
 an agent in opposition to Mr. Curran, stood up, and fixed his eyes 
 upon the master of the rolls, with a very peculiar expression of coun- 
 tenance. 
 
 Mr. Curran, "Mr. Seneschal, I demand of you, as returning officer, 
 that I, a candidate, shall be protected, as you are in duty bound to do, 
 from being disturbed by the obscene and unnatural grimaces of a 
 baboon." 
 
 Mr. Jebb, the counsel for the seneschal, immediately interposed, and 
 ordered Mr. Bell to sit down. 
 
 Curran resumed his speech. I wish to call attention to the following- 
 brief passage : " Nothing but the noblest and most disinterested patri- 
 otism led the Protestants of Ireland to ally themselves, offensively and 
 defensively, with their afflicted, oppressed Catholic countrymen." 
 
596 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Mr. Curran concludes his speech to the men of Newiy in farewell 
 words affectionate and full of feeling : 
 
 "And now, my friends, I bid you adieu, with a feeling at my heart 
 that can never leave it, and which my tongue cannot attempt the 
 abortive effort of expressing. If my death do not prevent it, we shall 
 meet again in this place. If you feel as kindly to me as I do to you, 
 relinquish the attestations which I know you had reserved for my de- 
 parture. Our enemy has, I think, received the mortal blow; but, though 
 he reels, he has not fallen, and we have seen too much, on a greater 
 scale, of the wretchedness of anticipated triumph. Let me, therefore, 
 retire from among you in the way that becomes me, and becomes you, 
 uncheered by a single A-oicc, and unaccompanied by a single man. May 
 the blessing of God preserve you in the affection of one another." 
 
 Curran was only beaten by the small majority of two. If the masses 
 of the enthusiastic populace of Newry, who, on his arrival, a few days 
 before, had taken the horses from his carriage and, with their own hands, 
 had drawn him into their town in "anticipated triumph," had possessed 
 the right of suffrage, he would have won by an overwhelming majority. 
 But restricted as the number of electors was, it was in the power of a 
 few false, cowardly Catholics, who were creeping into petty rural import- 
 ance and inclined to crook the servile knee to government intluence, to 
 turn the scale against the illustrious patriot. Curran's parting words 
 held out some hope to the men of Newry that he might meet them at 
 the hustings once more. But they never saw him again ; this was his 
 last election contest. Indeed, his health began to break down soon after; 
 towards the end of 1817 he died. 
 
 Other friends of the Catholic cause, besides Curran, were opposed by 
 recreant Catholics at this general election. This ignoble conduct roused 
 the fires of discord in the Board. Mr. Lawless wished to carry a motion 
 declaring that the guilty parties had forfeited the confidence of that 
 body. O'Connell, fearing that a vote of censure would be the source of 
 endless and pernicious dissensions, endeavored, on the 14th of November, 
 to smother it and restore a genial and harmonious feeling, by moving 
 that a dinner should be given by the Catholics to their Protestant sup- 
 porters. This motion was carried unanimously. But Mi'. Lawless per- 
 severed in demanding a vote of censure on certain members of the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 597 
 
 Board who had acted against John Philpot Cumin, at his recent contest 
 for Newiy. Against these delinquents, in particular, honest Jack was 
 furious. This was, in all probability, the occasion on which Jack Law- 
 less manifested that whimsical and surprising oblivion of the promise 
 just made by him not to bring forward a ticklish motion, to which 
 O'Connell referred in the story, narrated to Mr. O'Neill Daunt, which 
 I have already given in Chapter XI. Doubtless, the indignation 
 felt by Lawless was only natural. To many the case would seem one 
 justly calling for a vote of censure. Still, there was much to be said in 
 favor of the more prudent course recommended by O'Connell. He ob- 
 served that "he had no doubt of the propriety of inflicting the great 
 and heavy punishment of their censure on men who had yielded to the 
 basest motives of betraying their country. . . . But he was sure that a 
 meeting of Irishmen — of Catholics and of gentlemen — would not con- 
 found the base and despicable betrayer of his native land, the shameless 
 deserter of the tried friends of the cause, and the man who had acted 
 from an impulse the most honorable to any man, that of redeeming 
 plighted faith." 
 
 A Mr. Byrne had pleaded in behalf of Mr. Caulfield of Newry, that 
 that gentleman, having been under the impression that Mr. Cony, who 
 had delayed for ten days an order for his release from prison in the evil 
 times of '98, was to be a candidate for Newry at this election, had pledged 
 himself to General Needham, as his opponent, before Mr. Curran had 
 appeared in the field. This excuse, to which O'Connell seemed to attach 
 some weight, apparently failed to satisfy the populace, whose ears con- 
 tinued to drink in with avidity satirical street-songs, the burden of which 
 told "the boys" to "push about the glasses 0," and promised support 
 to corruption, "while Caulfield's whiskey passes 0!" 
 
 I shall quote one or two additional sentences from O'Connell's sen- 
 sible speech on the vote of censure of the 14th of November : " If an 
 indiscriminate stigma of this nature were to be sent abroad, it would be 
 easily converted into the instrument of private malignity. ... It was 
 true there had been room for censure. But the Board should, at least, 
 give those persons an opportunity of satisfying themselves before it 
 inflicted punishment upon them ; it should hear before it decided." 
 They should deliberate coolly, not when "doubly excited by a description 
 
598 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 of the transcendent merits of Curran." He shows also, in this speech, 
 which he concludes by moving for an adjournment, which was carried, 
 his usual dread of their falling within the sweep of the Convention Act. 
 
 On Saturday, the 28th, a densely-crowded meeting assembled to 
 renew the discussion. O'Connell complained of the unwarrantable ex- 
 ercise of authority by certain individuals, who had taken on them to 
 issue summons to attend the adjourned debate. O'Connell also pro- 
 posed a further adjournment till the following Monday; he thought they 
 required a larger place of meeting to give room to the vast crowd of 
 people, who then blocked up the passages and thronged even the street 
 below. In spite of O'Connell's efforts, however, the debate proceeded 
 on Lawless's motion, put in the following shape : " That such persons as 
 had deserted the tried friends of the Catholics at the last general elec- 
 tion were no longer deserving of their confidence." After several ani- 
 mated speeches for and against the motion, Nicholas Purcell 0' Gorman 
 moved, as an amendment, that they should add a sentence expressing 
 approval of the explanations given by Mr. Lalor of Cranagh and some 
 of the others originally inculpated. This amendment O'Connell sup- 
 ported, but not as an addition to Lawless's motion. That he considered 
 " unjust, indiscreet and inconsistent, ... It would go to divide the body; 
 . . . would censure persons who at the same time were held to have 
 satisfied public opinion. ... It was unfair, after acknowledging vindi- 
 cations, to send out to the world a vague and general censure, that might 
 be turned against the best men in the community. 
 
 "Another gentleman (a Mr. Costigin) had said, 'Let those the cap 
 fits wear it;' but it was not always the person whom the cap best fitted 
 that it was placed upon by the public. It seldom happened that the 
 individual whom the cloak of infamy best suited would of himself put 
 it on. . . . 
 
 " It should be borne in mind that that Board was the organ, as it were, 
 of the Catholic people. Being so, its denunciations came to be consid- 
 ered, and were, in effect, the denunciations of that people. The Catholic 
 Board should not forget those men whose active patriotism had worked 
 up the cause. ... It was no small triumph to observe gentlemen of the 
 first rank and consideration in the country coming forward to vindicate 
 themselves to that Board. . . . Their frown was now sufficient to cast 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 590 
 
 dismay around any man they attacked ; but it behooved them to prove 
 that the moderation and justice with which they exercised that power 
 were commensurate with its magnitude. Whatever might he the de- 
 cision of that day, he would take upon himself to assert, that no Catholic 
 in the land would venture to vote again in a manner that could subject 
 him to their displeasure. . . . 
 
 "He thought individual votes of censure, on everyaccoir.it, hi; : , 
 reprehensible, and certain to be attended with the very worst conse- 
 quences. It would be nothing less than transforming the Catholic Board 
 —which possessed the dear, invaluable, unbought confidence of the Irish 
 people— into a terrible inquisition. ... No one, however conscious of 
 his own innocence, could feel or could be safe. He claimed for him- 
 self sincerity at least ; . . . yet, if this system were to be established, 
 he knew not how soon he might be unjustly and summarily condemned; 
 should a faction, who could muster twenty or twenty-five votes, have it 
 in their power to act in this manner, he knew not how soon they 
 might come forward and say, 'Daniel O'Connell does not deserve the 
 confidence of the Catholic people.' 
 
 " He prayed the Board to act with the dispassionate candor becoming 
 them as a great deliberative assembly." 
 
 But O'Connell was defeated on this occasion. According to his son 
 John, the room had been packed in favor of Lawless's motion. After 
 two divisions, "one upon the amendment of approval, and the other on 
 a subsequent amendment to adjourn, the censuring vote was carried." 
 
 However, the affair did not rest here. On the 5th of December, 
 1812, the Board held another meeting. Dr. Dromgoole revived the 
 ' question of the vote of censure. He maintained its impolicy in an able 
 speech, concluding with the following resolution: "Resolved, That, in 
 order to meet the public and private calumnies which the enemies of 
 religious liberty have circulated, we feel ourselves bound to declare, that 
 the resolutions of last spring and summer, respecting candidates for 
 Parliament, could not be, and were not intended, to enjoin or sanction 
 the violation of promises entered into at any time previous to their 
 adoption." 
 
 This resolution, recommended by O'Gorman and by a speech from 
 O'Connell, which is said to have produced a powerful impression on his 
 
GOO THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONUELL. 
 
 hearers, was unanimously carried, after some explanatory speeches from 
 individuals who had supported the vote of censure. I shall merely give 
 two or three passages from O'Connell's harangue. 
 
 After regretting that a certain feeling "of mistaken delicacy" had 
 prevented him from more actively opposing "the vote of censure" — 
 chiefly on account of his relationship to one of the parties inculpated, 
 Mr. Lalor of Cranagh, whose vindication in the papers he had drawn 
 up — he proceeds thus: " For I could not see what right or authority you 
 had to pass any such resolution. If Mr. Lalor had forfeited the con- 
 fidence of the Catholics of the county of Tipperary, they might have 
 declared that he was no longer to be a manager of their petition, as the 
 Catholics of Newry did with respect to Mi'. Jennings, and from that 
 moment he would have ceased to be a member of this Board ; but when 
 you passed a vote of censure you clearly travelled out of your authority, 
 and into the hands of the attorney-general ; you abandoned, for a mo- 
 ment, the conduct of your petition, for which alone you are appointed, 
 and you committed yourselves to the tender mercies of your friends in 
 the King's Bench. It is, therefore, fortunate that your resolution passed, 
 as I am ready, if necessary, to show, irregularly, and after having been, 
 in point of fact, negatived. I do not say this to reflect upon or to 
 diminish the triumph of those who have succeeded in that vote; I intro- 
 duce it simply to show you that we have a valid defence against any 
 attack of the attorney-general upon this ground — an attack which, I am 
 convinced, he would have already commenced, but that he and your othci 
 enemies imagine that you are about to do their work for them, and to 
 destroy yourselves by your own dissensions. 
 
 "There is an unhappy spirit broke out amongst us: it is the inev- 
 itable consequence of turning this Board into a species of mock tribunal, 
 and destroying individuals with an axe, which you call ' abstract cen- 
 sure.' . . . 
 
 "And have we not enemies enough and to spare? Have we not 
 Lord Manners and his grace of Richmond in front, whilst the attorney- 
 general and the Dublin grand-jury hang on our rear? Have we not on 
 our flank the bigoted Liverpool and that Castlcreagh, long exercised in 
 every dark stratagem of ruin, who would, for emolument, barter a seat 
 in heaven, if he had any interest in that country? At this moment 
 
THE LIFE OF DA MEL O'COXNELL. G01 
 
 bigotry is awakened from the slumber into which Protestant liberality, 
 in Ireland, had cast her — bigotry, at the command of power — bigotry, 
 lured by the beloved voice of interest has aroused in every part of the 
 land. The first in station and in rank set the example of obedience to 
 the command which they themselves issued. Every little village bigot 
 in the land is animated with the hope of discounting his despicable 
 malignity into the pay and plunder of some office. Mark the active 
 rancor of their hostility," etc. . . . He shows the opposition of the 
 bigots to patriots at the recent elections. He exposes their calumnies 
 and misrepresentations. He denounces "a falsehood signed with the 
 classic name of Abraham Bradley King, lord-mayor, but not the less 
 unfounded." In spite of party hostility, O'Connell lived to be a great 
 benefactor to this Orange mayor and to earn his undying gratitude. Our 
 hero concludes his speech in the following wise and conciliatory strain: 
 "I do, therefore, conjure gentlemen, in the name of that afflicted 
 country, which has so many ardent and affectionate votaries in this 
 room, to waive all matters of form, and let us now, at once, adopt a reso- 
 lution of admitted truth and necessary conciliation. Let us think that 
 poor Ireland, goaded and distressed, wants all our attention. Let us 
 sacrifice every angry feeling, turn from the past with the temper of for- 
 giving kindness, and to the future with all the firmness which will result 
 alone from unanimity in our own body. Contixue divided, axd our 
 
 CAUSE IS LOST FOR EVER!" 
 
 On Tuesday, the 15th of the same month, at an aggregate meeting 
 in Fishamble Street Theatre, resolutions were passed bearing reference 
 to the preparation and presentation of the Catholic petition to both 
 Houses during the next session, also to the preparation of an address to 
 Mr. Hely Hutchinson, who had lost his election at Cork, expressive of 
 Catholic feeling towards him. In addition to these, other strongly- 
 worded resolutions contradicted certain allegations, in recent addresses 
 of the grand-juries of the city of Dublin and other places, containing 
 various charges against the Catholics, especially that of aiming at the 
 establishment of a Catholic ascendency. ISText, thanks were voted to 
 Sheriff Harty, for his conduct in office, and, according to the usual 
 custom of Catholic meetings in those days, to the Protestants who had 
 attended — in particular to Counsellors Finlay and Walsh for their 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 speeches. It was when the resolution referring to Mr. Hutchinson was- 
 put from the chair that a loud and general call for O'Connell arose. On 
 his presenting himself to the meeting, he Avas saluted with enthusiastic 
 acclamations that lasted for several minutes. Silence being restored, he 
 spoke at considerable length on the recent exhibitions of the enemies 
 of the Catholic cause. He held up to ridicule the insignificant John 
 Earl of Aldborough, and lashed the mendacious London Courier. From 
 this speech I shall only call attention to one or two passages : 
 
 " But their absurdities shall not be the ground on which we shall 
 defend ourselves. The accusation" [of seeking Catholic ascendency) "is 
 contrary to our feelings — to our opinions ; we have already expressed 
 our disapprobation of any connection subsisting between government and 
 the Catholic prelates; and I am free to say, that there is no event which 
 I should consider more fatal to the liberties of Ireland than what they 
 have called a Catholic ascendency. Our prelates would no longer be the 
 respectable characters in which we now revere everything that is vir- 
 tuous or respectable; they would, at least, have more temptations to 
 become otherwise ; and whenever they should degenerate into the tools of 
 the minister, then should I consider the doom of Ireland as sealed for ever." 
 
 In this speech he also reminds his hearers of the pledges made to 
 the Catholics by the last Parliament, and suggests the danger which 
 might result from their violation. He says: "Let them" (the member;: 
 of the legislature) "recollect the terrible confusion that ensued when a 
 former pledge was revoked." This refers to the pledge given by the 
 viceroy, Lord Fitzwilliam, in 1795, which pledge was left unredeemed 
 when Pitt recalled that nobleman. O'Connell fortifies his views with 
 the authority of the now bigoted anti-Catholic Lord Boss, who, during 
 his earlier career as the patriotic Sir Lawrence Parsons, had said, in 
 179-5, in the Irish House of Commons, "that if a resistance to anything 
 would be productive of evil consequences, it was that against the wishes 
 of i!;3 people, and the prospects which have been held out to them; that 
 if the demon of darkness should come from the infernal regions upon 
 earth, and throw a firebrand among the people, he could not do more to 
 promote mischief." After quoting this passage, O'Connell adds: " 1 
 hope some one will remind him of this part of his speech at the Kings 
 county meeting, which I hear he is to attend to-morrow. He continues, 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. B03 
 
 'he had never heard of a parallel to the infatuation of the minister' 
 (he may see one now); 'and if he persisted, every man must have live 
 or six dragoons in his house.' 
 
 "And it was true; for in many houses it was necessary for the 
 owners to have five or six dragoons, and the whole country was thrown 
 into confusion. I hope and trust that no such consequences will ever 
 again occur, though sure I am that such is the desire of the British min- 
 ister. He wishes (to make use of the words of Christopher Hely Hutch- 
 inson) that you should draiv the sioord, to afford him an opportunity of 
 throwing away the scabbard. Certain I am, that at this very moment 
 there is a foul conspiracy to draw the warm-hearted, but unthinking, 
 people of Ireland into a sham plot, to give an opportunity of wreaking 
 vengeance on her dearest sons." He then warns them to shun all 
 temptation to join in disturbances. The speech was frequently inter- 
 rupted by vehement cheering. 
 
 Passing by a speech delivered by O'Connell on the 13th of Febru- 
 ary, 1813, in reference to the conduct of the English Catholics, and more 
 particularly of one of their agents, named Charles Butler, a strenuous 
 advocate of the veto, whose unauthorized interference in Irish Catholic 
 affairs, hostility to the Irish Board, and desire to transfer the direction 
 of the emancipation movement from the hands of the Irish to those of 
 the English Catholics, who were jealous of the former, had naturally 
 provoked our hero, I shall end this chapter with a few passages, chiefly 
 of a humorous character, from his speech addressed, on the 8th of May, 
 1813, to the Catholic Board on the subject of "No Popery petitions." 
 The petition styled that of the "freeholders, freemen and inhabitants 
 of the city of Dublin," presented with ludicrous pomp and ceremony, 
 contained an immense number of forged and fictitious names of the 
 most absurd kind. O'Connell desired that this fact should be brought 
 under the notice of the imperial Parliament, Before analyzing the 
 fraudulent signatures, he speaks eloquently of the wrongs and calumnies 
 suffered by the Catholics of Ireland: "It was not," says he, "in the field 
 of battle that our liberties were cloven down." [Hear! hear!) "No! 
 Our ancestors, when they fought, if they did not advance as victors, sur- 
 rendered upon the faith of an honorable capitulation ; but that faith 
 was violated, and its violation was justified by calumny !" (Hear! hear! 
 
dOi THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 hear!) " The Catholics were accused of entertaining opinions which the} 
 have ever detested — of adopting positions and principles which they 
 have ever abhorred. Charges were brought forward and repeated against 
 them, which could be aptly contradicted only in the broad vulgarity of 
 Lord Ellenborough's language — 'Charges false as hell!' " 
 
 But it is to the more humorous portions of this speech that I wish 
 especially to call the reader's attention. After saying that " The Prot- 
 estants of Ireland petitioned last year on our behalf; the wealth, the 
 worth, the talent of the Irish Protestants — everything that was noble, 
 and dignified, and intelligent, and independent amongst our Protestant 
 brethren united in that petition" — after other remarks of the same tend- 
 ency, he commences an enumeration of the bond fide " No-Popery " sig- 
 natures by saying, " It was a matter, therefore, of much curiosity to 
 discover who the two thousand eight hundred 'freemen, freeholders and 
 inhabitants of Dublin' could possibly be." Having given an analysis 
 of "the entire catalogue of genuine signatures," he proceeds, thus: 
 
 "But there will remain near two thousand signatures to be still 
 accounted for — near two thousand signatures will remain, for whom no 
 owner can be found." (Hear! hear!) "Of these there are some hun- 
 dreds which purport to belong to individuals who have indignantly dis- 
 claimed them. There are, in short, some hundreds of forgeries. Need 
 we give a more striking instance than that of Mr. Stephens? He dis- 
 covered that his name had been forged to this petition, and immediately 
 wrote to the mayor to inform him of the circumstance. The mayor did 
 not condescend to give any reply, but took the known forgery to England, 
 and presented it to the House as genuine." (Hear! hear!) "When for- 
 gery was exhausted, mere fiction was resorted to. There was danger in 
 giving names which, being in common use, might be disavowed by indi- 
 viduals bearing them. The fabricators of this petition set disavowal at 
 defiance ; they produced names which no man ever bore or will bear 
 (Hear! hear!)] they invented John Hedpath, and coupled him with 
 John Ridpath ; they attached James Hedpath to James Ridpath ; they 
 united the noble families of the Feddlies to the illustrious race of Fid- 
 dlier; they created the Jonneybones, and added the McCooliens to the 
 Muldongs; to the uncleanly Rottens is annexed the musical name 
 of Navasora ; the Sours and the Soars, the Dandy s and the Fea- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL, 605 
 
 kens : the Gilbasleys and the Werrillas ; five Ladds and live Talks ; the 
 Leaps and the Zealthams; the Hnzies and the Hozies; the Sparlings 
 and the Sporlings; the Fitzgetts and the Fibgetts; the Hoftins and the 
 Phantons; and the Giritrows, and the Hockleys, and the Bi'eakleys; the 
 Russinghams, and the Favuses, and the Sellhews, and the Mograts and 
 Calyells — all, poor innocents, are made to combine against as, and to 
 chime with the Pithams and Paddams, the Cliimnicks, and Rimnicks, 
 and Gimmicks, and the Rowings and Riotters. They threw in the 
 vulgar Bawns, and, after a multitude of fantastic denominations, they 
 concluded with Zachariah Diamond." {Great laughter.) 
 
 " In short, a more tasteless group of imaginary beings was never 
 conjured up by the delusions of magic. To the tune of 'Jonny Arm- 
 strong,' they gave us five-and- twenty Armstrongs, and placed eighteen 
 Taylors on the list. It ought to have been ' four-and-twenty tailors, all 
 in a row;' there would have been some pleasantry in it. In short, by 
 these means, by the force of mere invention, upwards of one thousand 
 names have been added to this petition, and one thousand children of 
 the brain of those worthy managers of intolerance appeared in formid- 
 able array against us at the bar of the House of Commons, covered with 
 the mantle of the mayor for swaddling-clothes." {Laughter.) . \ . 
 
 " To impose upon that House" {of Commons) "is, I presume, a breach 
 of its privileges." {Hear!) "Let us demand inquiry and investigation. 
 Oar assertion will be, that two-thirds of the signatures to this petition 
 were forged or simply fictitious. But we will not require an assertion to 
 be credited without proof; we will challenge inquiry; Ave will show five 
 hundred names without an owner; and we will then point out the 
 fabricators of this mean and dishonorable scheme to retard the progress 
 of emancipation. 
 
 " If we are mistaken, our enemies can easily confute us ; they have 
 only to produce the individual. Mr. Riotter may head their party. I 
 should be glad to see the gentleman. If he does not live in the city — 
 this Riotter — I presume he is to be found in the liberties. After him, 
 our enemies can show off Mr. Wevilla, hand-in-hand with Mr. Navasora; 
 and Johnny Bones, Esq., may appear with Fibgetts, Gent.; and even 
 Mr. Knowing can be summoned to come forward in company with Mr. 
 Dandy." {Cheers and laughter.) 
 
606 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 "But why should I fatigue with the ridiculous catalogue? If those 
 men exist — pardon my supposition — if they exist, they live for our ene- 
 mies ; if they do not exist, then what is to become, in public estimation, 
 of those our enemies — of those worthy allies of the traducers of her 
 royal highness? [Caroline, the slighted and accused wife of the prince- 
 regent, of whose cause O'Connell teas a champion.) Perhaps their spirit 
 of loyalty may save them in Parliament from punishment, but their 
 fraud and forgery will consign them to the execration and contempt of 
 posterity." O'Connell concluded, amid great cheering, by moving the 
 following resolution : 
 
 "Resolved, That a sub-committee of twenty-one members be ap- 
 pointed to take into consideration the most proper method of investi- 
 gating and respectfully submitting to Parliament the alleged forged and 
 fictitious signatures to the petition against the Catholic claims, presented 
 to the House of Commons by the lord-mayor of Dublin." This resolu- 
 tion, seconded by the wealthy Major Bryan of Jenkiustown, county 
 Kilkenny, was agreed to unanimously. Another resolution was added : 
 "Resolved, That the committee be directed to request the aid of such 
 of our Protestant brethren as may be pleased to assist in accomplishing 
 the object of their report."* 
 
 * The books to which I am indebted for the materials of the foregoing chapter are, " The Select 
 Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P., edited, with Historical Notices, etc., by his son, John O'Con- 
 nell, Esq.;" "Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell, etc., Dublin, J. Mullany, 1 Parliament street;" 
 "History of Ireland," by John Mitchel ; "The Speeches of the Right Honorable John Philpot 
 Curtail, edited, with Memoirs and Historical Notices, by Thomas Davis, Esq.;" "Memoirs of the 
 Times of George the Fourth;" "Cobbett's Register;" Moore's "Memoirs of R. B. Sheridan." 
 
 -~.~--~— ~- w i - -— .~---- -■ i imiii i r ■"■^ -.«<~~— • -j-^^-.^^-™. -..»*...■ — .-. .-,.- -.. , ........ 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Plan of the remainder of this biography — O'Connell's memorable defence of Magee 
 on a charge for libel — His terrible invectives against Saurin, the attorney- 
 general — His bold defiance of the judges — His noble appeal to the Orange 
 jury; their baseness and servility — O'Connell threatens the attorney-general 
 in court with personal chastisement — The judges astounded at his daring — 
 Magee meanly disavows O'Connell — Magee's sentence — Moral triumph of O'Con- 
 nell — Meetings in approval of his conduct — Notices of the case of Hugh Fitz- 
 patrick and other forensic efforts of O'Connell. 
 
 |S HAVE dwelt at greater length upon the details of O'Connell's 
 ^ rise to the leadership of the Catholics of Ireland than may 
 possibly seem justifiable, considering the limits within which 
 this biography must be confined and the circumstance that the 
 incidents of so many long years of his career yet remain to be 
 noticed. But, after all, this period of his ascent to such unprecedented 
 power over his -countrymen seems to me to comprehend one of the most 
 instructive portions of his biography — one that illustrates, perhaps 
 better than any other part of his life, the true nature of the man in his 
 prime, and of the vast difficulties with which he had to contend, the 
 character of the men associated with him in the struggle, and, in short, 
 all the peculiar features of the cause and the movement which he di- 
 rected. The greater number of the subsequent years of his career need 
 only be noticed in a rapid summary. At the close of this period of the 
 veto question, divisions arose in the Catholic councils, that, along with 
 other circumstances and causes, tended to paralyze the struggle and 
 retard its success for years. The public events, then, of the years between 
 1813 and 1823 may be sketched very slightly. So also may those of the 
 years between 1829 and 1813, the memorable year of the monster meet- 
 ings for "repeal of the union." On the other hand, his wonderful and 
 famous defence of Magee, his reconstruction of the Catholic Association 
 in 1823, his triumph of '29, his last repeal movement, and the closing- 
 clays of his life, together with a few scattered incidents of peculiar bio- 
 graphical value, must be reproduced or given in some detail. I mean, 
 
 39 G07 
 
608 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 too, to introduce at least one other chapter of anecdotes and varieties, 
 illustrative of his opinions and fancies, and of his sports and habits 
 during his periodical relaxations from public cares at Darrynane Abbey. 
 As I have, in the course of the last few chapters, given copious specimens 
 of his style of speaking on political subjects, so, in order to complete 
 the picture of O'Connell as a great orator, I mean to devote the present 
 one to extracts from his forensic masterpiece, the noble defence of Magee. 
 This chapter once concluded, few other incidents or passages shall be 
 allowed to trespass unduly on the reader's attention. I shall rigidly 
 economize my remaining space. 
 
 The celebrated state-trial of the King versus Magee commenced on 
 the 26th of July, 1813. Magee, the proprietor of the Dublin Evening 
 Post, was prosecuted by the bigoted attorney-general, Saurin — the de- 
 scendant of one of the Huguenot families of France — for an alleged libel 
 on the duke of Richmond, the viceroy. Some articles in his paper con- 
 tained a review and condemnation of the viceroy's administration. 
 Saurin was assisted by the subtle and brilliant solicitor-general, Bushe. 
 The day on which the trial opened the court was crowded from an early 
 hour, owing to the intense interest which the case excited in the public 
 mind. It had been twice postponed on account of the absence, as the 
 affidavits of the traverser stated, of witnesses material to his defence. 
 The attorney-general had already told the judges "they would be shocked 
 to hear that the defendant was indicted and charged, by this indictment, 
 with charging bis grace of Eichmond with being a 'murderer.' " On the 
 days of postponement and during some preliminary proceedings, that 
 followed the entrance of the lord chief-justice, shortly after eleven o'clock 
 on the morning of the trial, sharp altercations had arisen between the 
 attorney-general and O'Connell, who was leading counsel for the tra- 
 verser. In truth, there was black and bitter blood between the two. 
 At length, an Orange jury having been sworn, the trial commenced. 
 Mr. Kemmis opened the indictment, and the attorney-general followed 
 in a ferocious speech. His bloodhound style of hunting down his game 
 had been well illustrated in the prosecution of Dr. Sheridan, already 
 slightly noticed. He had commenced his speech on that occasion in the 
 following strange style : " My lords and gentlemen of the jury, I cannot 
 but congratulate you and the public that the clay of justice has at last 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 009 
 
 arrived" In the present state-prosecution he was perfectly furious. 
 The terrible invectives of O'Connell preserve for us a vivid image of his 
 truculence. It was on Tuesday, the 27th of July, that O'Connell rose 
 to speak for the defence. The court was densely crowded ; expectation 
 was wound up to the highest pitch ; breathless silence prevailed. 
 
 "I consented," began the great advocate, "to the adjournment yes- 
 terday, gentlemen of the jury, from that impulse of nature which com- 
 pels us to postpone pain. It is, indeed, painful to me to address you ; 
 it is a cheerless, a hopeless task to address you — a task which would 
 require all the animation and interest to be derived from the working 
 of a mind fully fraught with the resentment and disgust created in mine, 
 yesterday, by that farrago of helpless absurdity with which Mr. Attorney- 
 General regaled you. 
 
 "But I am now not sorry for the delay. Whatever I may have lost in 
 vivacity, I trust I shall compensate for in discretion. That which yester- 
 day excited my anger, now appears to me to be an object of pity, and that 
 which then roused my indignation, now only moves to contempt. I can now 
 address you with feelings softened, and I trust subdued ; and I do, from 
 my soul, declare, that I now cherish no other sensations than those 
 which enable me to bestow on the attorney-general, and on his discourse, 
 pure and unmixed compassion. 
 
 " It was a discourse in which you could not discover either order, or 
 method, or eloquence; it contained very little logic, and no poetry at all. 
 Violent and virulent, it was a confused and disjointed tissue of bigotry, 
 amalgamated with congenial vulgarity. He accused my client of using 
 Billingsgate, and he accused him of it in language suited exclusively for 
 that meridian. He descended even to the calling of names : he called this 
 young gentleman a 'malefactor,' a 'Jacobin' and a 'ruffian,' gentlemen 
 of the jury; he called him 'abominable,' and 'seditious,' and 'revolu- 
 tionary,' and 'infamous,' and a 'ruffian' again, gentlemen of the jury; 
 he called him a 'brothel-keeper,' a 'pander,' 'a kind of bawd in breeches,' 
 and a 'ruffian' a third time, gentlemen of the jury. 
 
 " I cannot repress my astonishment, how Mr. Attorney- General could 
 have preserved this dialect in its native purity. He has been now for 
 nearly thirty years in the class of polished society; he has, for some 
 years, mixed amongst the highest orders in the state ; he has had the 
 
610 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 honor to belong for thirty years to the first profession in the world — to 
 the only profession, with the single exception, perhaps, of the military, 
 to which a high-minded gentleman could condescend to belong — the 
 Irish bar ; — to that bar at which he has seen and heard a Burgh and a 
 Duquery ; at which he must have listened to a Burton, a Fonsonby, and 
 a Curran ; to a bar which still contains a Plunket, a Ball, and, despite 
 of politics, I will add a Bushe. With this galaxy of glory flinging their 
 light around him, how can he alone have remained in darkness ? How 
 has it happened that the twilight murkiness of his soul has not been 
 illumined with a single ray shot from their lustre? Devoid of taste 
 and of genius, how can he have had memory enough to preserve this 
 original vulgarity? He is, indeed, an object of compassion, and, from 
 my inmost soul, I bestow on him my forgiveness and my bounteous 
 pity. 
 
 " But not for him alone should compassion be felt. Becollect that 
 upon his advice, that with him as the prime mover and instigator, those 
 rash, and silly, and irritating measures of the last five years, which 
 have afflicted and distracted this long-suffering country, have originated 
 — with him they have all originated. Is there not, then, compassion 
 due to the millions whose destinies are made to depend upon his counsel ? 
 Is there no pity due to those who, like me, must know that the liberties 
 of the tenderest pledges of their affections, and of that which is dearer 
 till, of their country, depends upon this man's advice? 
 
 " Yet let not pity for us be unmixed ; he has afforded the consolation 
 of hope. His harangue has been heard ; it will be reported — I trust 
 faithfully reported ; and if it be but read in England, we may venture 
 to hope that there may remain just so much good sense in England as to 
 induce the conviction of the folly and the danger of conducting the gov- 
 ernment of a brave and long-enduring people by the counsels of so 
 tasteless and talentless an adviser. 
 
 "See what an imitative animal man is! The sound of ruffian — ruf- 
 fian — ruffian, had scarcely died on the attorney- general's lips, when you 
 find the word honored with all the permanency of print, in one of his 
 pensioned and well-paid, but ill-read, newspapers. Here is the first line 
 in the Dublin Journal of this day: 'The ruffian who writes for the Free- 
 man's Journal. 1 Here is an apt scholar; he profits well by the attorney- 
 
 s 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. • 611 
 
 general's tuition. The pupil is worthy of the master; the master is just 
 suited to the pupil. 
 
 " I now dismiss the style and measure of the attorney-general's dis- 
 course, and I require your attention to its matter. That matter I must 
 divide — although, with him there was no division — into two unequal 
 portions. The first, as it was by far the greater, portion of his discourse, 
 shall be that which was altogether inapplicable to the purposes of this 
 prosecution. The second, and infinitely the smaller, portion of his 
 speech is that which related to the subject-matter of the indictment 
 which you are to try. He has touched upon and disfigured a great vari- 
 ety of topics. I shall follow him at my good leisure through them. He 
 has invited me to a wide field of discussion. I accept his challenge 
 with alacrity and with pleasure. 
 
 " This extraneous part of his discourse, which I mean first to discuss, 
 was distinguished by two leading features. The first consisted of a dull 
 and reproving sermon, with which he treated my colleagues and myself 
 for the manner in which we thought fit to conduct this defence. He 
 talked of the melancholy exhibition of four hours wasted, as he said, in 
 frivolous debate, and he obscurely hinted at something like incorrectness 
 of professional conduct, He has not ventured to speak out, but I will. 
 I shall say nothing for myself, but for my colleagues — my inferiors in 
 professional standing, but infinitely my superiors in every talent and in 
 every acquirement — my colleagues, whom 1 boast as my friends, not in 
 the routine language of the bar, but in the sincerity of my esteem and 
 affection ; for my learned and upright colleagues, I treat the unfounded 
 insinuation with the most contemptuous scorn ! 
 
 "All I shall expose is the utter inattention to the fact, which, in 
 small things as :n great, seems to mark the attorney-general's career. 
 He talks of four hours. Why, it was past one before the last of you 
 were digged together by the sheriff, and the attorney-general rose to 
 address you before three. How he could contrive to squeeze four hours 
 into that interval, it is for him to explain ; nor should I notice it, but 
 that it is the particular prerogative of dulness to be accurate in the 
 detail of minor facts, so that the attorney-general is without an excuse 
 when he departs from them, and when for four hours you have had not 
 quite two. Take this also with you, that we assert our uncontrollable 
 
612 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 right to employ them as we have done ; and as to his advice, we neither 
 respect nor will we receive it ; but we can afford cheerfully to pardon the 
 vain presumption that made him offer us counsel. 
 
 " For the rest, he may be assured that Ave will never imitate his 
 example. We will never volunteer to mingle our politics, whatever 
 they may be, with our forensic duties. I made this the rigid rule of 
 my professional conduct; and if I shall appear to depart from this 
 rule now, I bid you recollect that I am compelled to follow the attor- 
 ney-general into grounds which, if he had been wise, he would have 
 avoided. 
 
 "Yes," I am compelled to follow him into the discussion of his con- 
 duct towards the Catholics. He has poured out the full vial of his own 
 praise on that conduct — praise in which, I can safely assure him, he has 
 not a single unpaid rival. It is a topic upon which no unbribed man, 
 except himself, dwells. I admit the disinterestedness with which he 
 praises himself, and I do not envy him his delight, but he ought to know, 
 if he sees or hears a word of that kind from any other man, that that 
 man receives or expects compensation for his task, and really deserves 
 money for his labor and invention. 
 
 " My lord, upon the Catholic subject, I commence with one assertion 
 of the attorney-general, which I trust I misunderstood. He talked, as 
 I collected him, of the Catholics having imbibed principles of a seditious, 
 treasonable and revolutionary nature. He seemed to me most distinctly 
 to charge us with treason. There is no relying on his words for his 
 meaning — I know there is not. On a former occasion, I took down a 
 repetition of this charge full seventeen times on my brief, and yet, after- 
 wards, it turned out that he never intended to make any such charge ; 
 that, he forgot he had ever used those words, and he disclaimed the idea 
 they naturally convey. It is clear, therefore, that upon this subject he 
 knows not what he says ; and that these phrases are the mere flowers 
 of his rhetoric, but quite innocent of any meaning ! 
 
 "Upon this account I pass him by; I go beyond him, and I content 
 myself with proclaiming those charges, whosoever may make them, to 
 be false and base calumnies. It is impossible to refute such charges in 
 the language of dignity or temper. But if any man dares to charge the 
 Catholic body, or the Catholic Board, or any individuals of that Board. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 613 
 
 with sedition or treason, I do here, I shall always, in this court, in the 
 city, in the field, brand him as an infamous and profligate liar! 
 
 "Pardon the phrase, but there is no other suitable to the occasion. 
 But he is- a profligate liar who so asserts, because he must know that 
 the whole tenor of our conduct confutes the assertion. What is it we 
 seek?" 
 
 Chief-Justice. "What, Mr. O'Connell, can this have to do with the 
 question which the jury are to try?" 
 
 Mr. O'Connell. " You heard the attorney-general traduce and calumniate 
 us ; you heard him with patience and with temper; listen now to our vindi- 
 cation. 
 
 "I ask, what is it we seek? What is it we incessantly and, if you 
 please, clamorously petition for ? Why, to be allowed to partake of the 
 benefits of the constitution. We look to the participation in the consti- 
 tution as our greatest political blessing. If we desired to destroy it, 
 would we seek to share it ? If we wished to overturn it, would we exert 
 ourselves, through calumny and in peril, to obtain a portion of its bless- 
 ings? Strange inconsistent voice of calumny! You charge us with 
 intemperance in our exertions for a participation in the constitution, and 
 you charge us at the same time, almost in the same sentence, with a 
 design to overturn that constitution. The dupes of your hypocrisy may 
 believe you; but, base calumniators, you do not, you cannot, believe 
 yourselves. 
 
 "The attorney-general — this ' wisest and best of men, 1 as his colleague, 
 the solicitor-general, called him in his presence — the attorney-general 
 next boasted of his triumph over pope and Popery ; ' I put down the Cath- 
 olic Committee ; I will put down, at my own good time, the Catholic Board.' 
 This boast is partly historical, partly prophetical. He was wrong in his 
 history; he is quite mistaken in his prophecy. He did not put down 
 the Catholic Committee; we gave up that name the moment that it was 
 confessedly avowed that this sapient attorney-general's polemico-legal 
 controversy dwindled into a mere dispute about words. He told us that 
 in the English language 'pretence' means 'purpose.' Had it been 
 French, and not English, we might have been inclined to respect his 
 judgment, but in point of English we venture to differ from him ; we 
 told him 'purpose,' good Mr. Attorney-General, is just the reverse of 
 
'pretence.' The quarrel grew warm and animated; we appealed to 
 common sense, to the grammar and to the dictionary. Common sense, 
 grammar and the dictionary decided in our favor. He brought his appeal 
 to this court; your lordship, and your brethren, unanimously decided 
 that, in point of law — mark, mark, gentlemen of the jury, the sublime 
 wisdom of law ! — the court decided that, in point of law, 'pretence ' does 
 mean ' purpose V 
 
 " Fully contented with this very reasonable and more satisfactory de- 
 cision, there still remained a matter of fact between us : the attorney- 
 general charged us with being representatives. We denied all repre- 
 sentation. He had two witnesses to prove the fact for him ; they swore 
 to it one way at one trial, and directly the other way at the next. An 
 honorable, intelligent and enlightened jury disbelieved those witnesses 
 at the first trial" {Dr. Sheridan's). " Matters were better managed at the 
 second trial" {Mr. Kirivan's); "the jury were better arranged, I speak 
 delicately, gentlemen ; the jury were better arranged, as the witnesses 
 were better informed, and, accordingly, there was one verdict for us on 
 the representative question, and one verdict against us. 
 
 "You know the jury that found for us; you know that it was Sir 
 Charles Saxton's Castle-list jury that found against us. Well, the con- 
 sequence was, that, thus encouraged, Mr. Attorney-G-eneral proceeded to 
 force. We abhorred tumult, and were weary of litigation ; we new- 
 modelled the agents and managers of the Catholic petitions ; we formed 
 an assembly, respecting which there could not be a shadow of pretext 
 for calling it a representative body. We disclaimed representation; and 
 we rendered it impossible, even for the virulence of the most malignant 
 law-officer living, to employ the Convention Act against us. That, even 
 upon the attorney-general's own construction, requires representation as 
 an ingredient in the offence it prohibits. He cannot possibly call us 
 representatives; Ave are the individual servants of the public, whose 
 business we do gratuitously but zealously. Our cause has advanced 
 even from his persecution; and this he calls putting down the Catholic 
 Committee ! 
 
 "Next, he glorifies himself in his prospect of putting clown the 
 Catholic Board. For the present, he, indeed, tells you that, much as he 
 hates the Papists, it is unnecessary for him to crush our Board, because 
 

 ■ 
 

THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 015 
 
 we injure our own cause so much. He says that we are very criminal, 
 but we are so foolish that our folly servos as a compensation for our 
 wickedness. We are very wicked and very mischievous, but then Ave 
 are such foolish little criminals that we deserve his indulgence. Thus 
 he tolerates offences because of their being committed sillily ; and, 
 indeed, we give him so much pleasure and gratification, by the injury 
 we do our own cause, that he is spared the superfluous labor of impeding 
 our petition by his prosecutions, fines, or imprisonments. 
 
 " He expresses the very idea of the Eoman Domitian, of whom some 
 of you possibly may have read : he amused his days in torturing men; 
 his evenings he relaxed in the humble cruelty of impaling flies. A 
 courtier caught a fly for his imperial amusement: 'Fool!' said the em- 
 peror, ' fool, to give thyself the trouble of torturing an animal that was 
 about to burn itself to death in the candle!' Such is the spirit of the 
 attorney-general's commentary on our Board. Oh, rare attorney-general! 
 Oh, best and wisest of men ! ! ! 
 
 "But, to be serious. Let me pledge myself to you that he imposes 
 on you when he threatens to crush the Catholic Board. Illegal violence 
 may do it ; force may effectuate it ; but your hopes and his will be de- 
 feated, if he attempts it by any course of law. I am, if not a lawyer, at 
 least a barrister. On this subject I ought to know something; and I 
 do not hesitate to contradict the attorney-general on this point, and to 
 proclaim to you and to the country that the Catholic Board is perfectly 
 a legal assembly; that it not only does not violate the law, but that it 
 is entitled to the protection of the law, and, in the very proudest tone 
 of firmness, I hurl defiance at the attorney-general. 
 
 " I defy him to allege a law or a statute, or even a proclamation, that 
 is violated by the Catholic Board. Xo, gentlemen, no; his religious 
 prejudices — if the absence of every charity can be called anything 
 religious — his religious prejudices really obscure his reason ; his bigoted 
 intolerance has totally darkened his understanding, and he mistakes the 
 plainest facts and misquotes the clearest law, in the ardor and vehemence 
 of his rancor. I disdain his moderation ; I scorn his forbearance ; I tell 
 him he knows not the law, if he thinks as he says ; and if he thinks so, 
 I tell him to his beard, that he is not honest in not having sooner prose- 
 cuted us, and I challenge him to that prosecution. 
 
616 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 
 
 "It is strange, it is melancholy, to reflect on the miserable and mis- 
 taken pride that must inflate him to talk as he does of the Catholic 
 Board. The Catholic Board is composed of men — I include not myself; 
 of course, I always except myself — every way his superiors, in birth, in 
 fortune, in talents, in rank. What ! is he to talk of the Catholic Board 
 lightly? At their head is the earl of Fingal, a nobleman whose exalted 
 rank stoops beneath the superior station of his virtues, whom even the 
 venal minions of power must respect. We are engaged, patiently and 
 perseveringly engaged, in a struggle, through the open channels of the 
 constitution, for our liberties. The son of the ancient earl whom I have 
 mentioned cannot, in his native land, attain any of the honorable distinc- 
 tions of the state ; and yet Mr. Attorney-General knows that they are open 
 to every son of every bigoted and intemperate stranger that may settle 
 amongst us. 
 
 "But this system cannot last; he may insult, he may calumniate, he 
 may prosecute, but the Catholic cause is on its majestic march; its 
 progress is rapid and obvious ; it is cheered in its advance, and aided 
 by all that is dignified and dispassionate, by everything that is patriotic, 
 by all the honor, all the integrity of the empire; and its success is just 
 as certain as the return of to-morrow's sun and the close of to-morrow's 
 eve. 
 
 " We toill, we must, soon be emancipated, in despite of the attorney- 
 general, aided as he is by his august allies, the aldermen of Skinner's 
 alley. In despite of the attorney-general and the aldermen of Skinner's 
 alley, our emancipation is certain, and not distant. 
 
 " I have no difficulty in perceiving the motive of the attorney-general 
 in devoting so much of his medley oration to the Catholic question, and 
 to the expression of his bitter hatred to us, and of his determination to 
 ruin our hopes. It had, to be sure, no connection with the cause, but it 
 had a direct and natural connection with you. He has been, all his life, 
 reckoned a man of consummate cunning and dexterity ; and whilst one 
 wonders that he has so much exposed himself upon those prosecutions, 
 and accounts for it by the proverbial blindness of religious zeal, it is 
 still easy to discover much of his native cunning and dexterity. Gen- 
 tlemen, he thinks he knows his men — he knows you. Many of you 
 signed the no-Popery petition ; he heard one of you boast of it ; he 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 617 
 
 knows you would not have been summoned on this jury if you had en- 
 tertained liberal sentiments ; he knows all this, and, therefore, it is that 
 he, with the artifice and cunning of an experienced nisi prius advocate, 
 endeavors to win your confidence and command your affections by the 
 display of his congenial illiberality and bigotry. 
 
 " You are all, of course, Protestants. See what a compliment he 
 pays to your religion and his own when he endeavors thus to procure a 
 verdict on your oaths ; when he endeavors to seduce you to what, if you 
 were so seduced, would be perjury, by indulging your prejudices and 
 flattering you by the coincidence of his sentiments and wishes. Will 
 he succeed, gentlemen ? Will you allow him to draw you into a perjury 
 out of zeal for your religion ? And will you violate the pledge you have 
 given to your God to do justice, in order to gratify your anxiety for the 
 ascendency of what you believe to be his church ? Gentlemen, reflect 
 on the strange and monstrous inconsistency of this conduct, and do not 
 commit, if you can avoid it, the pious crime of violating your solemn 
 oaths, in aid of the pious designs of the attorney-general against Popery. 
 
 " Oh, gentlemen, it is not in any lightness of heart I thus address 
 you ; it is rather in bitterness and sorrow. You did not expect flattery 
 from me, and my client was little disposed to offer it to you. Besides, 
 of what avail would it be to flatter, if you came here predetermined, and 
 it is too plain that you are not selected for this jury from any notion of 
 your impartiality ? 
 
 "But when I talk to you of your oaths and of your religion, I would 
 full fain I could impress you with a respect for both the one and the 
 other. I, who do not flatter, tell you that, though I do not join with you 
 in belief, I have the most unfeigned respect for the form of Christian 
 faith which you profess. Would that its substance, not its forms and 
 temporal advantages, were deeply impressed on your minds ! Then 
 should I not address you in the cheerless and hopeless despondency that 
 crowds on my mind, and drives me to taunt you with the air of ridicule 
 I do. Gentlemen, I sincerely respect and venerate your religion, but I 
 despise and I now apprehend your prejudices, in the same proportion as 
 the attorney-general has cultivated them. In plain truth, every religion 
 is good — every religion is true to him who, in his due caution and con- 
 science, believes it. There is but one bad religion — that of a man who 
 
618 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 professes a faith which he does not believe ; but the good religion may 
 be, and often is, corrupted by the wretched and wicked prejudices which 
 admit a difference of opinion as a cause of hatred. 
 
 "The attorney-general, defective in argument, weak in his cause, 
 has artfully roused your prejudices at his side. I have, on the contrary, 
 met your prejudices boldly. If your verdict shall be for me, you will be 
 certain that it has been produced by nothing but unwilling conviction, 
 resulting from sober and satisfied judgment. If your verdict be bestowed 
 upon the artifices of the attorney-general, you may happen to be right; 
 but do you not see the danger of its being produced by an admixture of 
 passion and prejudice with your reason? How difficult is it to separate 
 prejudice from reason, when they run in the same direction! If you be 
 men of conscience, then I call on you to listen to me, that your con- 
 sciences may be safe, and your reason alone be the guardian of your oath 
 and the sole monitor of your decision." 
 
 O'Connell now proceeds to the subject of the indictment: "Mr. 
 Magee is charged with publishing a libel in his paper called the Dublin 
 Evening Post. . . . Gentlemen, this is not a libel on Charles Lennox, 
 duke of Richmond, in his private or individual capacity. It does not 
 interfere with the privacy of his domestic life. . . . Towards the man 
 there is not the least taint of malignity; nay, the thing is still stronger. 
 Of Charles, duke of Richmond, personally, and as disconnected with the 
 administration of public affairs, it speaks in terms of civility and even 
 respect. . . . 
 
 "The duke is here in this libel, my lords — in this libel, gentlemen 
 of the jury, the duke of Richmond is called an honorable man and a 
 respectable soldier. Could more nattering expressions be invented? . . . 
 It" (the jJiiblication) "does not involve any reproach against the duke of 
 Richmond in any other than in his public and official character. . . . 
 The word seditious is, indeed, used as a kind of make-weight in the 
 introductory part of the indictment. But mark! and recollect that this 
 is not an indictment for sedition. It is not, then, for private slander, 
 nor for any offence against the constitution, that Mr. Magee now stands 
 arraigned before vou. 
 
 " In the third place, gentlemen, there is this singular feature in this 
 case — namely, that this libel, as the prosecutor calls it, is not charged in 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 619 
 
 this indictment to lie 'false.' . . . This I believe to be the first instance 
 in which the allegation of falsehood has been omitted. To what is this 
 omission to be attributed ? Is it that an experiment is to be made how 
 much farther the doctrine of the criminality of truth can be drawn ? 
 Does the prosecutor wish to make another bad precedent ? . . . Attend 
 to the case, and yon will find yon are not to try Mr. Magee for sedition 
 which may endanger the state, or for private defamation which may 
 press sorely upon the heart and blast the prospects of a private family, 
 and that the subject-matter for your decision is not characterized as 
 false or described as untrue. . . . The case is with you ; it belongs to 
 you exclusively to decide it. His lordship may advise, but he cannot 
 control your decision, and it belongs to you alone to say whether or not, 
 upon the entire matter, you conceive it to be evidence of guilt and de- 
 serving of punishment. The statute law gives or recognizes this your 
 right, and, therefore, imposes this on you as your duty. . . . The solicitor- 
 general cannot now venture to promulgate the slavish doctrine which he 
 addressed to Dr. Sheridan's jury, when he told them 'not to presume to 
 differ from the court in matter of law.' The law and the fact are here 
 the same — namely, the guilty or innocent design of the publication. . . . 
 The verdict which is required from a jury in any criminal case has 
 nothing special in it ; it is not the finding the fact in the affirmative or 
 negative; it is not, as in Scotland, that the charge is proved or not 
 proved. jNTo; the jury is to say whether the prisoner be guilty or not; 
 and could a juror find a true verdict, who declared a man guilty upon 
 evidence of some act, perhaps praiseworthy, but clearly void of evil 
 design or bad consequences? . . . No judge can dictate to a jury ; no 
 jury ought to allow itself to be dictated to. 
 
 " If the solicitor-general's doctrine were established, see what op- 
 pressive consequences might result." [Here he adroitly introduces an- 
 other darkly-shaded portrait of Attorney- General Saurin.) "At some 
 future period, some man may attain the first place on the bench, by the 
 reputation which is so easily acquired by a certain degree of church- 
 wardening piety, added to a great gravity and maidenly decorum of 
 manners. Such a man may reach the bench — for I am putting a mere 
 imaginary case ; he may be a man without passions, and therefore with- 
 out vices; he may, my lord, be a man superfluously rich, and, therefore, 
 

 
 620 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 not to be bribed with money, but rendered partial by his bigotry and 
 corrupted by his prejudices. Such a man, inflated by flattery and 
 bloated in his dignity, may hereafter use that character for sanctity, 
 which has served to promote him, as a sword to hew down the strug- 
 gling liberties of his country; such a judge may interfere before trial! 
 and at the trial be a partisan ! 
 
 ''Gentlemen, should an honest jury, could an honest jury (if an 
 honest jury were again found), listen with safety to the dictates of such 
 a judge? . . . It cannot be controverted, that in the present instance, 
 that of an alleged libel, the decision of all law and fact belongs to you." 
 
 The orator next proceeds to make some observations on the law of 
 libel. He goes into its history. He shows how, by means of the doc- 
 trine of construction, it came to pass, in the course of time, that "a law 
 made to punish false rumors 'was equally applicable to the true." At con- 
 siderable length he enters into the history of the infamous tribunal of 
 the Star-chamber and its infamous proceedings. He tells how, to aid 
 its tyrannous vigilance over "the new enemy to prejudice and oppression, 
 the press," it adopted the civil code — not, indeed, the good principles of 
 that famous code, such as that which allowed truth to be a defence 
 against a charge of libel (these were all rejected), but its bad principles. 
 I give the conclusion of his observations on the Star-chamber: 
 
 "The Star-chamber was soon after abolished. It was suppressed by 
 the hatred and vengeance of an outraged people, and it has since, and 
 until our days, lived only in the recollection of abhorrence and contempt. 
 But Ave have fallen upon bad days and evil times, and in our days we 
 have seen a lawyer, long of the prostrate and degraded bar of England, 
 presume to suggest an high eulogium on the Star-chamber, and regret its 
 downfall; and he has done this in a book dedicated, by permission, to 
 Lord Ellenborough " {chief-justice of England). "This is, perhaps, an 
 ominous circumstance; and as Star-chamber punishments have been 
 revived — as two years' imprisonment has become familiar — I know not 
 how soon the useless lumber of even well-selected juries may be abol- 
 ished and a new Star-chamber created. 
 
 " From the Star-chamber, gentlemen, the prevention and punishment 
 of libels descended to the courts of common law, and with the power 
 they seem to have inherited much of the spirit of that tribunal. Ser- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 621 
 
 vility at the bar and profligacy on the bench have not been •wanting to 
 aid every construction unfavorable to freedom, and at length it is taken 
 as granted and as clear law, that truth or falsehood are quite immaterial 
 circumstances, constituting no part of either guilt or innocence. 
 
 "I would wish to examine this revolting doctrine, and, in doing so, 
 I am proud to tell you that it has no other foundation than in the oft- 
 repeated assertions of lawyers and judges." 
 
 He declares it as his opinion that its authority is solely based on the 
 dicta of judges and writers — overbearing judges and servile lawyers. 
 He feels it an agreeable duty to express this opinion. 
 
 " I have no professional rank, or station, or talents to give it import- 
 ance, but it is an honest and conscientious opinion, and it is this : that 
 in the discussion of public subjects and of the administration of public 
 men, truth is a duty and not a crime. 
 
 " You can, at least, understand my description of the liberty of the 
 press ; that of the attorney-general is as unintelligible as contradictory. 
 He tells you, in a very odd and quaint phrase, that the liberty of the 
 press consists in there being no previous restraint upon the tongue or 
 the pen. How any previous restraint could be imposed on the tongue 
 it is for the wisest of men to tell you, unless, indeed, he resorts to Dr. 
 Lad's prescription with respect to the toothache eradication. ... If the 
 crime of libel be undefined, or uncertain, or capricious, then, instead 
 of the absence of restraint before publication being an advantage, it is 
 an injury; instead of its being a blessing, it is a curse — it is nothing 
 more than a pitfall and snare for the unwary; this liberty of the press 
 is only an opportunity and a temptation offered by the law to the com- 
 mission of crime — it is a trap laid to catch men for punishment. . . . 
 Indeed, to such a wild extent of caprice has Lord Ellenborough carried 
 the doctrine of crime in libel, that he appears to have gravely ruled that 
 it was a crime to call one lord ' a stout-built special pleader,' although, 
 in point of fact, that lord was stout-built, and had been very many years 
 a special pleader. And that it was a crime to call another lord 'a 
 sheep-feeder from Cambridgeshire,' although that lord was right glad 
 to have a few sheep in that county. These are the extravagant vagaries 
 of the Crown lawyers and prerogative judges." He tells them the only 
 way they can arrive at "any rational rule," is "to adopt his descrip- 
 
022 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 tion. Reason and justice equally recognize it, and genuine law is much 
 more closely connected with reason and justice than some persons will 
 avow." 
 
 The libel "is a discussion upon the administration of public men." 
 Magee, instead of being prosecuted, would have been sure to make a 
 fortune by government patronage, if he had changed his tune ; " if he 
 went over to the other side and praised the duke of Richmond ; if he 
 had sufficient gravity to talk, without a smile, of the sorrow of the 
 people of Ireland at his grace's departure; if he had a visage suffi- 
 ciently lugubrious to say so, without laughing, to cry out ' mournfully, 
 oh! mournfully!' for the departure of the duke of Richmond; if at a 
 period when the people of Ireland, from Magherafelt to Dingledecouch, 
 are rejoicing at that departure, Mr. Magee could put on a solemn coun- 
 tenance and pick up a grave and narcotic accent, and have the resolu- 
 tion to assert the sorrow of the people for losing so sweet and civil a 
 lord-lieutenant — why, in that case, gentlemen, you know the conse- 
 quences. They are obvious. . . , Recollect that the attorney-general 
 told you that the press was the protection of the people against the 
 government. Good Heaven ! gentlemen, how can it protect the people 
 against the government, if it be a crime to say of that government that 
 it has committed errors, displays little talent and has no striking fea- 
 tures ? Did the prosecutor mock you when he talked of the protection 
 the press afforded the people ? . . . Here is a watchman, . . . and the 
 first thing that is done to this watchman is to knock him down and bring 
 him to a dungeon for announcing the clanger that he is bound to dis- 
 close. I agree with the attorney-general, the press is a protection, but 
 it is not in its silence or in its voice of flattery." 
 
 O'Connell asserts that he is entitled to the verdict of the jury upon 
 the first and second paragraphs of the alleged libel, the latter of which 
 ended by saying, the people of Ireland "must find themselves at a loss 
 to discover any striking feature in his grace's administration that makes 
 it superior to the worst of his predecessors." The orator proceeds thus: 
 
 "He" (the attorney-general), "indeed, passed on to the next sentence 
 with an air of triumph, with the apparent certainty of its producing a 
 conviction. I meet him upon it; I read it boldly; I will discuss it with 
 you manfully. It is this : 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONKELL. G2c 
 
 " 'They insulted, they oppressed, they murdered, and they deceived.' 
 
 "The attorney-general told us, rather ludicrously, that they — mean- 
 ing the duke's predecessors — included, of course, himself. How a man 
 could be included amongst his predecessors, it would be difficult to dis- 
 cover. It seems to be that mode of expression which would indicate 
 that the attorney-general, notwithstanding his foreign descent, has im- 
 bibed some of the language of the native Irish. But our blunders arise 
 not like this, from a confusion of idea ; they are generally caused by too 
 great condensation of thought; they are, indeed, frequently of the head, 
 but never, never of the heart. Would I could say so much for the attor- 
 ney-general ! His blunder is not to be attributed to his cool and cautious 
 head ; it sprung, I much fear, from the misguided bitterness of the 
 bigotry of his heart." 
 
 O'Connell then proceeds to show, by a long historic review, quoting 
 chielly the Protestant historian, Dr. Leland, the tyrannous rule and 
 butcheries of preceding viceroys. He says : " Until I shall see the pub- 
 lishers of Leland and of Hume brought to your bar, I defy you to con- 
 vict my client." He then talks of "the commission to inquire into 
 defective titles" to property, during Strafford's administration, in the 
 reign of Charles the First, when the bestowal "of four shillings in the 
 pound" on the lord chief-justice and the lord chief-baron made it the 
 interest of those great legal functionaries to increase the king's revenue 
 by deciding against the holders of landed property. He quotes from 
 Strafford's letters that viceroy's account of his iniquitous machinery and 
 proceedings, and continues his address in these words: 
 
 "Thus, gentlemen of the jury, all was ready for the mockery of law 
 and justice, called a trial. 
 
 " 1S t jw, let me take any one of you ; let me place him here, where 
 Mr. Magee stands ; let him have his property at stake ; let it be of less 
 value, I pray you, than a compensation for two years' imprisonment; it 
 will, however, be of sufficient value to interest and rouse all your agony 
 and anxiety. If you were so placed here, you would see before you the 
 well-paid attorney-general, perhaps malignantly delighted to pour his 
 rancor upon you; on the bench would sit the corrupt and partisan judge, 
 and before you, on that seat which you now occupy, would be placed the 
 packed and predetermined jury. 
 
 40 
 
624 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCOXNELL. 
 
 "I beg, sir, to know what would be your feelings, your honor [/minor?], 
 your rage. Would you not compare the attorney-general to the gambler 
 who played with a loaded die ? And then you would hear him talk, in 
 solemn and monotonous tones, of his conscience ! Oh ! his conscience, 
 gentlemen of the jury ! 
 
 "But the times are altered. The press, the press, gentlemen, has 
 effectuated a salutary revolution ; a commission of defective titles would 
 no longer be tolerated ; the judges can no longer be bribed with money, 
 and juries can no longer be — I must not say it. Yes, they can — you 
 know, we all know — they can be still inquired out, and "packed," as the 
 technical phrase is. But you, who are not packed, you, who have been 
 fairly selected, will see that the language of the publication before us 
 is mildness itself compared with that which the truth of history requires, 
 compared with that which history has already used. 
 
 " I proceed with this alleged libel. The next sentence is this : 
 
 "'The profligate, unprincipled Westmoreland.' I throw down the 
 paper and address myself in particular to some of you. There are, I 
 see, amongst you some of our Bible distributors, and of our suppressors 
 of vice. Distributors of Bibles, suppressors of vice, what call you prof- 
 ligacy ? . . . Suppose the peerage was exposed to sale — set up at open 
 auction; it was at that time a judicial office; suppose that its price, 
 the exact price, of this judicial office was accurately ascertained by daily 
 experience — would you call that profligacy? If pensions were multi- 
 plied beyond bounds and beyond example; if places were augmented 
 until invention was exhausted, and then were subdivided and split into 
 halves, so that two might take the emoluments of each, and no person 
 do the duty ; if these acts were resorted to in order to corrupt your rep- 
 resentatives, would you, gentle suppressors of vice, call that profligacy? 
 
 " If the father of children selected in the open day his adulterous 
 paramour; if the wedded mother of children displayed her crime un- 
 blushingly ; if the assent of the titled or untitled wittol to his own 
 shame was purchased with the people's money ; if this scene, if these 
 were enacted in the open- day, would you call that profligacy, sweet dis- 
 tributors of Bibles? The women of Ireland have all been beauteous 
 to a proverb ; they were, without an exception, chaste beyond the terse- 
 ness of a proverb to express; they are still as chaste r.s in former days, 
 
but the depraved example of a depraved court has furnished some ex- 
 ceptions, and the action for criminal conversation, before the time of 
 Westmoreland unknown, has since become more familiar to our courts 
 of justice. 
 
 " Call you the sad example which produced those exceptions, call 
 you that profligacy, suppressors of vice and Bible distributors? The 
 vices of the poor are within the reach of control ; to suppress them, you 
 can call in aid the churchwarden and the constable; the justice of the 
 peace will readily aid you, for he is a gentleman ; the Court of Sessions 
 will punish those vices for you by line, by imprisonment, and, if you are 
 urgent, by whipping. But, suppressors of vice, who shall aid you to 
 suppress the vices of the great? Are you sincere, or are you, to use 
 your own phraseology, whitewashed tombs — painted charnel-houses? 
 Be ye hypocrites? If you are not, if you be sincere — and, oh, how I 
 wish that you were ! — if you be sincere, I will steadily require to know 
 of you, what aid you expect to suppress the vices of the rich and great ? 
 Who will assist you to suppress those vices ? The churchwarden ? why 
 he, I believe, handed them into the best pew in one of 3-our cathedrals, 
 f hat they might lovingly hear divine service together ! The constable ? 
 Absurd! The justice of the peace? No, upon his honor! As to the 
 Court of Sessions, you cannot expect it to interfere ; and my lords the 
 judges are really so busy at the assizes in hurrying the grand-juries 
 through the presentments that there is no leisure to look after the scan- 
 dalous faults of the great. Who, then, sincere and candid suppressors 
 of vice, can aid you? The press; the press alone talks of the profligacy 
 of the great, and, at least, shames into decency those whom it may fail 
 to correct. The press is your, but your only, only assistant. Go, then, 
 men of conscience, men of religion, go then, and convict John Magee, 
 because he published that Westmoreland was profligate and unprincipled 
 as a lord-lieutenant ; do convict, and then return to your distribution of 
 Bibles and to your attacks upon the recreations of the poor, under the 
 name of vices ! 
 
 " Do, convict the only aid which virtue has, and distribute youi 
 Bibles that you may have the name of being religious. Upon your sin- 
 cerity depends my client's prospect of a verdict. Does he lean upon a 
 broken reed ? 
 
G2G THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 " I pass on from the sanctified portion of the jury which I have lat- 
 terly addressed, and I call the attention of you all to the next member 
 of the sentence: 
 
 <: 'The cold-hearted and cruel Camden.' 
 
 " Here I have your prejudices all armed against me. In the admin- 
 istration of Camden your faction was cherished and triumphant. Will 
 you prevent him from being called cold and cruel ? Alas ! to-day. why 
 have I not men to address who would listen to me for the sake of im- 
 partial justice ! But even with you the case is too powerful to allow me 
 to despair. 
 
 "Well, I do say, the cold and cruel Camden. Why, on one circuit, 
 during his administration, there were one hundred individuals tried 
 before one judge. Of these, ninety-eight were capitally convicted, and 
 ninety-seven hanged I I understand one escaped; but he was a soldier 
 who murdered a peasant, or something of that trivial nature. Ninety- 
 seven victims in one circuit! ! 
 
 " In the mean time, it was necessary, for the purposes of the union, 
 that the flame of rebellion should be fed; . . . the rebellion was no* 
 then ripe enough. ... In the mean time the soldiery were turned in at 
 free quarters amongst the wives and daughters of the peasantry. 
 
 " Have you heard of Abercrombie, the valiant and the good — he who, 
 mortallv wounded, neglected his wound until victory was ascertained ; 
 he who allowed his life's stream to flow unnoticed because his country's 
 battle was in suspense; he who died the martyr of victory; he who 
 commenced the career of glory on the land, and taught French inso- 
 lence" [what follows is, of course, a hit at Saurin), "than which there is 
 nothing so permanent — even transplanted, it exhibits itself to the third 
 and fourth generation. He taught French insolence that the British 
 and Irish soldier was as much his superior by land as the sailor was 
 confessedly by sea; he, in short, who commenced that career which has 
 since placed the Irish Wellington on the highest pinnacle of glory. 
 Abercrombie and Moore were in Ireland under Camden. Moore, too, 
 lias since fallen at the moment of triumph — Moore, the best of sons, of 
 brothers, of friends, of men ; the soldier and the scholar ; the soul of 
 reason and the heart of pity — Moore has, in documents of which you 
 may plead ignorance, left his opinions upon record with respect to the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONKELL." G21 
 
 cruelty of Camden's administration. But you all have heard of Aber- 
 erombie's proclamation — for it amounted to that; he proclaimed that 
 cruelty in terms the most unequivocal ; he stated to the soldiery and to 
 the nation that the conduct of the Camden administration had rendered 
 'the soldiery formidable to all but the enemy.' 
 
 "Was there no cruelty in thus degrading the British soldier? And 
 say, was not the process by which that degradation was effectuated 
 cruelty? Do, then, contradict Abercrombie, upon your oaths, if you 
 dare ; but, by doing so, it is not my client alone you will convict ; you 
 will also convict yourselves of the foul crime of perjury. 
 
 "I now come to the third branch of this sentence; and here I have 
 an easy task. All, gentlemen, that is said of the artificer and superin- 
 tendent of the union is this : ' the artful and treacherous Cornwallis.' 
 Is it necessary to prove that the union was effectuated by artifice and 
 treachery? For my part, it makes my blood boil when 1 think of the 
 unhappy period which was contrived and seized on to carry it into effect; 
 one year sooner, and it would have made a revolution— one year later, 
 and it would have been for ever impossible to carry it. The moment 
 was artfully and treacherously seized on, and our country, that was a 
 nation for countless ages, has dwindled into a province, and her name 
 and her glory are extinct for ever. . . . 
 
 "Indeed, Mr. Magee deserves no verdict from any Irish jury who can 
 hesitate to think that the contriver of the union is treated with too much 
 lenity in this sentence; he fears your disapprobation for speaking with 
 so little animosity of the artificer of the union. 
 
 "There was one piece of treachery committed at that period, at which 
 both you and I equally rejoice ; it was the breach of faith towards the 
 leading Catholics. The written promises made them at that period have 
 been since printed; I rejoice with you that they were not fuliilled. 
 When the Catholic trafficked for his own advantage upon his country's 
 miseries, he deserved to be deceived. For this mockery I thank the 
 Cornwallis administration. I rejoice, also, that my first introduction to the 
 stage of public life was in opposition to that measure. 
 
 " In humble and obscure distance I followed the footsteps of my 
 present adversaries." Here, referring to an anti-union newspaper that 
 was under the control of his present opponents, he says: "If their 
 
628 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 editor should be gravely denied, I shall only reply, ' Oh, cease your fun 
 ning.' " This is a hit at Solicitor-General Bushe, who, at the time of 
 the union, published a pamphlet, full of wit and talent, bearing as its 
 title the words quoted by O'Connell. The orator proceeds : 
 
 "The charge of being a Jacobin was at that time made against the 
 present attorney-general — him, plain William Saurin — in the very terms, 
 and with just as much truth, as he now applies it to my client. His reply 
 shall serve for that of Mr. Magee; I take it from the Anti-Union of the 
 22d March, 1800 : 
 
 " ' To the charge of Jacobin, Mr. Saurin said he knew not what it 
 meant, as applied to him, except it was an opposition to the ivill of the 
 British minister.'' 
 
 '•So says Mr. Magee. But, gentlemen, my eye lights upon another 
 passage of Mr. Saurin's, in the same speech from which I have quoted 
 the above ; it was in these words : 
 
 " ' Mr. Saurin admitted that debates might sometimes produce agi- 
 tations, but that was the price necessarily paid for liberty.' 
 
 " Oh, Iioav I thank this good Jew for the word ! Yes, agitation is, 
 as Mr. Saurin well remarked, the price necessarily paid for liberty. We 
 have paid the price, gentlemen, and the honest man refuses to give us 
 the goods." (Mnch laughing.) 
 
 " Now, gentlemen, of this Mr. Saurin, then an agitator, I beg leave 
 to read the opinion upon this union, the author of which we have only 
 called artful and treacherous. From this speech of the 13th March, 
 1800, I select these passages : 
 
 " ' Mr. Saurin said he felt it his duty to the Crown, to the country 
 and to his family to warn the minister of the dreadful consequences of 
 persevering in a measure which the people of Ireland almost unanimously 
 disliked.'' And again : 
 
 " ' He, for one, would assert the principles of the glorious revolution, 
 and boldly declare in the face of the nation, that when the sovereign 
 power dissolved the compact that existed between the government and 
 the people, that moment the right of resistance accrues. 
 
 " ' Whether it would be prudent in the people to avail themselves of 
 that right, would be another question. But if a legislative union were 
 forced on the countrv against the will of its inhabitants, it would be a 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 629 
 
 nullity, and resistance to it would be a struggle against usurpation, and 
 not a resistance against law.' 
 
 " May I be permitted just to observe, how much more violent this 
 agitator of the year 1800 than we poor and timid agitators of the year 
 1813 ! When did we talk of resistance being a question of prudence ? 
 Shame upon the men who call us intemperate, and yet remember their 
 own violence ! 
 
 "But, gentlemen, is the attorney-general at liberty to change the 
 nature of things with his own official and professional prospects ? I am 
 ready to admit that he receives thousands of pounds by the year of the 
 public moneys, in his office of attorney-general — thousands from the 
 Crown solicitor — thousands, for doing little work, from the custom- 
 house; but does all this public booty, with which he is loaded, alter the 
 nature of things, or prevent that from being a deceitful measure, brought 
 about by artful and treacherous means, against which Mr. Saurin, in 
 1800, preached the holy doctrine of insurrection, sounded the tocsin of 
 resistance, and summoned the people of the land to battle against it as 
 against usurpation ? 
 
 " In 1800, he absolves the subjects from their allegiance, if the usur- 
 pation, styled the union, will be carried ; and he, this identical agitator, 
 in 1813, indicts a man, and calls him a ruffian, for speaking of the con- 
 trivers of the union, not as usurpers, but as artful, treacherous men! 
 Gentlemen, pity the situation in which he has placed himself; and pray 
 do not think of inflicting punishment upon my client for his extreme 
 moderation. 
 
 "It has been coarsely urged, and it will, I know, be urged in the 
 splendid misrepresentations with which the solicitor-general" (Bns/ie) 
 "can so well distort the argument he is unable to meet — it will, I knew, 
 be urged by him that, having established the right to use this last para- 
 graph, having proved that the predecessors of the duke were oppressors 
 and murderers, and profligate and treacherous, the libel is only aggra- 
 vated thereby, as the first paragraph compares and combines the duke 
 of Richmond with the Avorst of his predecessors. 
 
 "This is a most fallacious assertion; and here it is that I could 
 wish I had to address a dispassionate and an enlightened jury. 
 You arc not — you know you are not — of the selection of my client. 
 
G30 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 Had lie the poor privilege of the sheep-stealer, there are, at least, ten 
 of you who should never have been on his jury. . . . How easily could 
 I show them that there is no comparison, no attempt at similitude. On 
 the contrary, the object of the writer is clearly to make a contrast. Grey 
 murdered, but he was an able statesman. . . . So of Strafford; he was 
 an eminent oppressor, but he was also eminently useful to his royal 
 master. 
 
 "As to the duke of Richmond, the contrast is intended to be com- 
 plete — he has neither great crimes nor great virtues. He did not murder 
 like Essex and Grey, but he did not render any splendid services. In 
 short, his administration has been directly the reverse of these. It has 
 been marked by errors, and not crimes. It has not displayed talents as 
 they did, and it has no striking features as they had." 
 
 He next maintains that the attorney-general feels the weakness of 
 this part of his case, that "to inflame the passions and mislead the un- 
 derstandings" of the jury, he unwarrantably states that the alleged libel 
 calls the duke of Richmond a murderer. He also dwells on the fact 
 that " the attorney-general talked with a gloating pleasure of the mis- 
 eries poor Watty Cox endures in jail — miseries that seem to give poig- 
 nancy and zest to the enjoyments of his prosecutor. I will make him 
 happy; let him return from this court to his luxuries, and when he 
 finds himself at his table, surrounded with every delicacy and every 
 profusion, remember that his prisoner, Walter Cox, is starving. I envy 
 him not this relish. . . . And next, the attorney-general makes a beau- 
 tiful culogium on Magna Charta. There we agree. I should, indeed, 
 prefer seeing the principles of that great charter called into practical 
 effect to hearing any palinode, however beautiful, said or sung on its 
 merits. 
 
 "The next topic of the attorney-general's triumphant abuse was the 
 book entitled 'The Statement of the Penal Laws.' He called it a con- 
 victed book. He exulted that the publisher" (Mr. Hugh Fitzpatrick) 
 "was in prison; he traduced the author" (Counsellor Scully), "and he 
 distorted and misrepresented the spirit and meaning of that book. As 
 to the publisher, he is, I admit, in prison. The attorney-general has 
 had the pleasure of tearing a respectable citizen, of irreproachable cha- 
 racter and conduct, from his wife and little children, who were rendered 
 
comfortable by his honest, persevering industry, and lie lias immured 
 him in a dungeon. I only congratulate him on his victory. 
 
 ■• Is to the author, he is just the reverse of what the attorney-general 
 ivould wish him to be: he is a man of fortune; he is an able lawyer, 
 a professional scholar, an accomplished gentleman, a sincere friend to 
 his country, which he has ornamented and served. As to the book, it 
 is really ludicrous to an extreme degree of comicality to call it a con- 
 victed booh. There are about four hundred pages in the work ; it con- 
 tains an elaborate, unexaggerated and, I think, softened detail of the 
 penal laws." O'Connell adds that it must have irritated the attorney- 
 general. "It produced a powerful sensation among the entire party to 
 which he belongs." All the attempted answers, he pays, "paid for out 
 of the public money," failed totally; also, "this book was much the more 
 provoking for being true." Referring to "a paltry note" in it, "contain- 
 ing eight lines and a half, and three marks of admiration," he goes on 
 thus: 
 
 " My lords, I address your lordships particularly on the three notes 
 of admiration, because they formed a prominent ground in your lord- 
 ship's learned argument, when you decided that the passage was a libel 
 per ee." (This axis in Hinjli F it :qxd rick's case, February, 1812.) "Yes, 
 gentlemen, admire again, 1 pray you, the solidity and brilliancy of our 
 law, in which three marks of admiration are of wonderful efficacy in 
 sending a man to prison. But, with the exception of the note of eight 
 and a half lines, the book has borne the severest criticism of fact and of 
 law. It has detied, and continues to defy, the present attorney-general 
 and his well-assorted juries; and, as to the note which he indicted, it 
 contained only a remark on the execution of a man who, whether inno- 
 cent or guilty, was tried in such a manner that a gentleman of the Irish 
 bar, his counsel" [Mr. Burrowes Campbell), "threw up his brief in dis- 
 gust; and when the judge who presided at the trial ordered the counsel 
 to remain and defend Barry, that counsel swore, in this court, that he 
 rejected the judge's mandate with contempt. 
 
 " What a mighty triumph was the conviction proved against this 
 note on Barry's case ! And may one be permitted mournfully to ask, 
 whether the indignation, which might have produced indiscretion in 
 speaking of Barry's fate, was a very culpable quality in a feeling mind, 
 
prone to detest the horrors with which human blood is sometimes shed, 
 under the forms and mockery of trial?" 
 
 Speaking of the failures of the answers to Mr. Scully's book, he adds: 
 "May such, in every age, be the fruits of every prosecutor of free dis- 
 cussion and of the assertion of political truth !" He also refers again 
 to the attorney-general's "delight at the misery to which that unfortu- 
 nate man" (Cox) "is reduced." After touching on a variety of topics, 
 he continues in this stjde : 
 
 "And now see what it is the attorney-general prohibits. He insists 
 upon punishing Mr. Magee ; first, because he accuses his administration 
 of 'errors;' secondly, because he charges them with not being distin- 
 guished for 'talents;' thirdly, because he cannot discover their 'striking 
 features;' and, fourthly, because he discusses 'an abstract principle!' 
 
 " This is quite intelligible — this is quite tangible. I begin to under- 
 stand what the attorney- general means by the liberty of the press ; it. 
 means a prohibition of printing anything except praise. . . . Thus, the 
 forbidden subjects are errors, talents, striking features and principles. 
 Neither the theory of the government nor its practices are to be dis- 
 cussed. You may, indeed, praise them; you may call the attorney- 
 general 'the best and wisest of men;' you may call his lordship the most 
 learned and impartial of all possible chief-justices ; aou may, if you have 
 powers of visage sufficient, call the lord-lieutenant the best of all imagin- 
 able governors. That, gentlemen, is the boasted liberty of the press ! the 
 liberty that exists in Constantinople — the liberty of applying the most 
 fulsome and unfounded flattery, but not one word of censure and reproof. 
 
 " Here is an idol worthy of the veneration of the attorney-general. 
 Yes, he talked of his veneration for the liberty of the press ; lie also 
 talked of its being a protection to the people against the government. 
 Protection ! . . . against what ? . . . Did he not mock you ? . . . Yes. 
 To his inconsistencies and contradictions he calls on you to sacrifice your 
 consciences; and because you are no-Popery men, and distributors of 
 Bibles, and aldermen of Skinner's alley, and Protestant petitioners, he 
 requires of you to brand your souls with perjury. You cannot escape 
 it; it is, it must be, perjury to find a verdict for a man who gravely 
 admits that the liberty of the press is recognized by law, and that it is 
 a venerable object, and yet calls for your verdict upon the ground that 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. G33 
 
 there is no such thing in existence as that which he has admitted that 
 the law recognizes and that he himself venerates." 
 
 He quotes another passage of the alleged libel: "'Although his 
 grace does not appear to know what are the qualities necessary for a 
 judge in Canada, or for an aide-de-camp in waiting at a court, he surely 
 cannot be ignorant what arc requisites for a lord-lieutenant.' " On this 
 passage O'Connell thus comments : 
 
 "This appears to be a very innocent sentence; yet the attorney-gen- 
 eral, the venerator of . . . the liberty of the press, tells you that it is a 
 gross libel to impute so much ignorance to his grace. As to the aide- 
 de-camp, gentlemen, whether he be selected for the brilliancy of his 
 spurs, the polish of his boots or the precise angle of his cocked hat, are 
 grave considerations which I refer to you. Decide upon these atrocities" 
 [there is some obscurity of expression here), " I pray you. But as to the 
 judge in Canada, it cannot be any reproach to his grace to be ignorant 
 of his qualifications. The old French law prevails in Canada, and 
 there is not a lawyer at the Irish bar, except, perhaps, the attorney- 
 general, who is sufficiently acquainted with that law to know how far 
 any man may be tit for the station of judge in Canada." 
 
 Passing several paragraphs, I come to O'Connell's comment on the 
 word "intemperate," in the alleged libel. Let it be remembered that 
 Richmond was one of our convivial viceroys : 
 
 "I need not detain you long on the expression 'intemperate;' . . . 
 it is not, as the attorney-general suggested, an accusation of indulging 
 beyond due bounds in the pleasures of the table or of the bottle ; it does 
 not allude, as the attorney-general says, to midnight orgies or to morn- 
 ing revels. I admit an allusion of that kind would savor of libel. . . . 
 But the intemperance here spoken of is mere political intemperance ; it 
 is that violence which every man of a fervid disposition feels in support 
 of his political opinions." He adds, that "the more pure and honest" 
 men are, the more likely they are to give way to this ardor, and "the 
 more justifiable in doing so." 
 
 After some other remarks, he asks: "Besides, gentlemen, what is your 
 liberty of the press worth, if it be worthy of a dungeon to assert that the 
 public credulity has been played upon? The liberty of the press would 
 be less than a dream, a shadow, if every such phrase be a libel." 
 
The alleged libel said that Richmond would not vary "from the uni- 
 form conduct observed by most of his predecessors, first preaching to 
 the confidence of the people, then playing upon their Credulity." And 
 again: "His grace commenced his reign by flatten*, he continued it in 
 folly, he accompanied it with violence, and he will conclude it with false- 
 hood." O'Connell comments on these passages at great length; he 
 shows how former viceroys broke pledges to the Catholics, and then 
 bursts into the following eloquent strain: "And is this prophecy, this 
 prediction, a Crime? Is it a libel to prophesy? See what topics this 
 sage venerator of the liberty of the press, the attorney-general, would 
 fain prohibit. First, he tells you that the crimes of the predecessors 
 of the duke must not be mentioned; and thus he forbids the history of 
 past events. Secondly, he informs you that no allusion is to be made 
 to the errors, follies or even the striking features of the present gov- 
 ernors; and thus he forbids the detail of the occurrences of the present 
 day. And, thirdly, he declares that no conjecture shall be made upon 
 what is likely to occur hereafter ; and thus he forbids all attempts to 
 anticipate future acts. 
 
 "It comes simply to this: he talks of venerating the liberties of the 
 press, and yet he restrains that press from discussing past history, 
 present story and future probabilities ; he prohibits the past, the 
 present and the future; ancient records, modern truth and prophecy 
 are all within the capacious range of his punishments. Is there any- 
 thing else? Would this venerator of the liberty of the press go farther? 
 Yes, gentlemen, having forbidden all matter of history, past and 
 present, and all prediction of the future, he generously throws in ah- 
 stract principles; and, as he has told you that his prisons shall contain 
 every person who speaks of what was, or what is, or what will be. he 
 likewise consigns to the same fate every person who treats of the theory 
 or principles of government. And yet he dares to talk of the liberty of 
 the press! Can you be his dupes? Will you be his victims? Where 
 is the conscience — where is the indignant spirit of insulted reason 
 amongst you? Has party feeling extinguished in your breasts every 
 glow of virtue, every spark of manhood? 
 
 " If there be any warmth about yon, if you are not clay-cold to all 
 but party feeling, I would, with the air and in the tone of triumph, call 
 
TIIE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. G3"> 
 
 you to the consideration of the remaining paragraph which lias been 
 spread on tlie lengthened indictment before yon. I divide it into two 
 branches, and shall do no more with the one than to repeat it. I read 
 it for you already; I must read it again: 'Had he remained as he 
 first came over, or what he afterwards professed to be, he would have 
 retained his reputation for honest, open hostility, defending his politieal 
 principles with firmness, perhaps with warmth, but without rancor; 
 the supporter and not the tool of an administration; a mistaken poli- 
 tician, perhaps, but an honorable man and a respectable soldier.' 
 
 "Would to God I had to address another jury ! Would to God I had 
 reason and judgment to address, and I could entertain no apprehension 
 from passion or prejudice! Here should I then take my stand, and 
 require of that unprejudiced jury, whether this sentence does not de- 
 monstrate the complete absence of private malice or personal hostility. 
 Does not this sentence prove a kindly disposition towards the individual, 
 mixing and mingling with that discussion which freedom sanctions and 
 requires respecting his political conduct? Contrast this sentence with 
 the prosecutor's accusation of private malignity, and decide between 
 Mr. Magee and his calumniators.*' 
 
 The foregoing passage, in my opinion, shows the originality and 
 daring, the Greatness, in a word, of O'Connell as on advocate, in a very 
 conspicuous light. If he were a pleader of commonplace intellect, of 
 vulgar soul, he would assuredly, at this point at least, have tried, with 
 this Ascendency jury, the ordinary conventional bar-cajolery. But 
 O'Conncll's clear and rapid vision saw that such a course, with such a 
 jury, would not afford th ' smallest promise or glimpse of success. His 
 only chance, and that but a slight one, was to try and take them by 
 storm. Hence his fierce taunts, his scornful defiance, his wondrous and 
 unprecedented boldness, his tempestuous vehemence all through the 
 oration. 
 
 He denounces the viceroy's interference with the purity of elections 
 as " highly unconstitutional and highly criminal ; . . . first, as a peer, 
 the law prohibits his interference; secondly, as representative of the 
 Crown, his interference in elections is an usurpation of the people's 
 rights ; it is, in substance and effect, high treason against the people, 
 and its mischiefs are not the less by reason of there being no punish- 
 
G3G THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCmXELL. 
 
 ment affixed by tlie law to this treason. . . . "Will they" {the law-officers 
 of the Crown) "attempt to deny the interference of the duke of Rich- 
 mond in the late elections? . . . He who uses the influence of the 
 executive to control the choice of the representatives of the people vio- 
 lates the first principles of the constitution, is guilty of political sacri- 
 lege, and profanes the very sanctuary of the people's rights and liberties ; 
 and if he should not be called a partisan, it is only because some harsher 
 and more appropriate term ought to be applied to his delinquency. 
 
 " I will recall to your mind an instance of the violation of the con- 
 stitution, which will illustrate the situation of my client, and the pro- 
 tection which, for your own sakes, you owe him. When, in 1687, King 
 James removed several Protestant rectors in Ireland from their churches, 
 against law and justice, and illegally and unconstitutionally placed 
 Roman Catholic clergymen in their stead, would any of you be content 
 that he should be simply called a partisan ? No, gentlemen, my client 
 and I, Catholic and Protestant though we be, agree perfectly in this, 
 that partisan would have been too mild a name for him, and that he 
 should have been branded as a violator of law, as an enemy to the con- 
 stitution, and as a crafty tyrant who sought to gratify the prejudices of 
 one part of his subjects that he might trample upon the liberties of all. 
 And what, I would fain learn, could you think of the attorney-general 
 who prosecuted, or of the judge who condemned, or of the jury who con- 
 victed, a printer for publishing to the world this tyranny, this gross 
 violation of law and justice? But how would your indignation be 
 roused if James had been only called a partisan, and for calling him a 
 partisan a Popish jury had been packed, a Popish judge had been se- 
 lected, and the printer, who, you will admit, deserved applause and 
 reward, met condemnation and punishment ! 
 
 "Of you, of you, shall this story be told if you convict Mr. Magee. 
 The duke has interfered in elections ; he has violated the liberties of the 
 subject; he has profaned the very temple of the constitution; and he 
 who has said that, in so doing, he was a partisan, from your hands 
 expects punishment. 
 
 " Compare the kindred offences : James deprived the Protestant 
 rectors of their livings ; he did not persecute, nor did he interfere with 
 their religion — for tithes, and oblations, and glebes, and church-lands. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 037 
 
 though solid appendages to any church, arc no part of the Protestant 
 religion. The Protestant religion would. I presume — and, for the honor 
 ofjiuman nature, I sincerely hope — continue its influence over the human 
 mind without the aid of those extrinsic advantages. Its pastors would, 
 I trust and believe, have remained true to their charge, without the ad- 
 ventitious benefits of temporal rewards, and, like the Roman Catholic 
 Church, it might have shown forth a glorious example of firmness in 
 religion, setting persecution at defiance. James did not attack the 
 Protestant religion — I repeat it ; he only attacked the revenues of the 
 Protestant Church ; he violated the law and the constitution, in depriv- 
 ing men of their property by his individual authority, to which they 
 had precisely the same right with that by which he wore his crown. 
 But is not the controlling the election of members of Parliament a more 
 dangerous violation of the constitution? Does it not corrupt the very 
 sources of legislation and convert the guardians of the state into its 
 plunderers? The one was a direct and undisguised crime, capable of 
 being redressed in the ordinary course of the law, and producing resist- 
 ance by its open. and plain violation of right and of law; the other dis- 
 guises itself in so many shapes, is patronized by so many high examples, 
 and is followed by such perfect security, that it becomes the first duty 
 of every man, who possesses any reverence for the constitution, or any 
 attachment to liberty, to lend all his efforts to detect, and, if possible, 
 to punish it, . . . What gentler phrase, what lady-like expression, should 
 my client use? The constitution is sought to be violated, and he calls 
 the author of that violation a frightful partisan. Really, gentlemen, the 
 fastidiousness which would reject this expression would be better em- 
 ployed in preventing or punishing crime than in dragging to a dungeon 
 the man who has the manliness to adhere to truth and to use it. . . . 
 But what protection can it" [the press) "afford, if you convict in this 
 instance? for, by doing so, you will decide that nothing ought to be said 
 against that want of honesty, or of attention, or of understanding" {in 
 the administration). "The more necessary will the protection of the press 
 become, the more unsafe will it be to publish the truth ; and in the 
 exact proportion in which the press might be useful, will it become 
 liable to punishment. In short, according to the attorney-general's doc- 
 trine, when the press is 'best employed and wanted most,' it will be the 
 
G38 THE EIFE OP DANIEL 0'COXXELL. 
 
 most dangerous to use it. And thus, the move corrupt :md profligate 
 any administration may be, the more clearly can the public prosecutor 
 ascertain the sacrifice of his selected victim. And call you this protec- 
 tion? Is this a protector, who must be disarmed the moment danger 
 threatens, and is bound a prisoner the instant the light has commenced ? 
 
 . . . " Has the attorney-general succeeded ? Has he procured a jury 
 so fitted to his object as to be ready to bury in oblivion every fault and 
 every crime, every error and every imperfection of public men, past, 
 present and future, and who shall, in addition, silence any dissertation 
 on the theory or principle of legislation ? Do, gentlemen, go this length 
 •with the prosecutor, and then venture on your oalhs — I charge you to 
 venture to talk to your families of the venerable liberty of the press-- 
 the protection of the people against the vices of the government." 
 
 The alleged libel contained, O'Connell admitted, "severe strictures 
 upon the alleged indelicacy in the chief-justice issuing a ministerial war- 
 rant, in a case which was afterwards to come before him judicially, and 
 upon the manner in which the jury was attempted to be put together in 
 Dr. Sheridan's case, and in which a jury was better arranged in the case 
 of Mr. Kirwan. Indeed, the attorney-general seemed much delighted with 
 these topics; he again burst out into an enraptured encomium upon him- 
 self; and, as it were, inspired by his subject, he rose to the dignity of a 
 classical quotation, when he exclaimed, l Me, me adsum, que feci' (I, I am 
 present, who did if). He forgot to add the still more appropriate re- 
 mainder of the sentence, ' Mca fraus omnis' {'Mine all thefravd'). 
 
 "Yes, gentlemen, he has avowed, with more manliness than dis- 
 cretion, that he was the contriver of all those measures. "With respect to 
 the warrant which his lordship issued, in the stead of the ordinary jus- 
 tices of the peace, ... I shall say nothing at present. An obvious del- 
 icacy restrains me. . . . But I would not have it understood that I have 
 formed no opinion on the subject, Yes, I have ... a strong and decided 
 opinion. . . . But I must say that the attorney-general has thrown new 
 light on this business; ... I thought it" (the warrant) "was the spon- 
 taneous act of his lordship. . . . In this respect he has set me right, . . . 
 and although the consequences to be deduced from it are not pleasing to 
 any man, loving, as I do, the purity of justice, yet I most heartily thank 
 the attorney-general for the fact — the important fact. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 639 
 
 " His second avowal relates to Dr. Sheridan. It really is comfortable 
 to know how much of the indecent scene exhibited upon his trial be- 
 longed to the attorney-general. He candidly tells us that the obtrusion 
 of the police-magistrate, Sirr" [the notorious major of ' '98), "as an assist- 
 ant to the crown-solicitor, was the act c*' the king's attorney-general. 
 'Adsum, qui feci,'' said he. Thus he avows that he procured an Orange- 
 man — I do not exactly understand what is meant by an Orangeman ; some 
 of you could, easily tell me — that he caused this Orangeman to stand in 
 open court, next to the solicitor for the Crown, with his written paper, 
 suggesting who were fit jurors for his purpose, and who should be put 
 by. Gentlemen, he avows that this profligate scene was acted in the 
 open court by his directions. . . . Yes, such men as these" [John Lind- 
 say, a liberal Protestant, and John Roche, a respectable Catholic merchant) 
 "were set aside by the attorney-general's aide-de-camp, the salaried 
 justice of the police office." 
 
 O'Connell next asserts that "the attorney-general has also avowed his 
 share" in packing the jury that convicted Mr. Kirwan. "It is delightful," 
 O'Connell says, "to understand the entire machinery," and "the reason 
 why Sir Charles Saxton was not examined on the part of the Crown. . . . 
 He would now, you plainly see, have traced the arrangement to the 
 attorney-general, and the array must have been quashed. Thus, in the 
 boasting humor of this attorney-general, he has brought home to himself 
 personally, that which Ave attributed to him only in his official capacity, 
 and he has convicted the man of that which we charged only upon the 
 office. . . . He would not have made this, I must say, disgraceful 
 avowal, unless he were influenced by an adequate motive. I can easily 
 tell you what that motive was. He knew your prejudices; he knew 
 your antipathy — alas ! your interested antipathy — to the Catholics, and, 
 therefore, in order to induce you to convict a Protestant of a libel for a 
 publication innocent, if not useful, in itself, in order to procure that con- 
 viction from your party feelings and your prejudices which he despaired 
 of obtaining from your judgments, he vaunts himself to you as the 
 mighty destroyer of the hopes of Popish petitioners— as a man capable 
 of every act within, as out of the profession, to prevent or impede 
 any relief to the Papists. In short, he wishes to show himself to 
 you as an active partisan at your side ; and, upon those merits, he who 
 
 41 
 
640 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 knows you best, claims your verdict — a verdict which must be given in 
 on your oaths and attested by and in the name of the God of the 
 Christians. 
 
 ." For my part, I frankly avow that I shudder at these scenes ; I can- 
 not, without horror, view this interfering and intermeddling with judges 
 and juries, and my abhorrence must be augmented when I find it avowed 
 that the actors in all these sad exhibitions were the mere puppets of the 
 attorney-general, moved by his wires and performing under his control. 
 It is in vain to look for safety to person or property whilst this system 
 is allowed to pervade our courts; the very fountain of justice maybe 
 corrupted at its source, and those waters, which should confer health 
 and vigor throughout the land, can then diffuse nought but mephitic 
 and pestilential vapors to disgust and destroy. If honesty, if justice be 
 silent, yet prudence ought to check these practices. We live in a new 
 era — a melancholy era, in which perfidy and profligacy are sanctioned 
 by high authority; the base violation of plighted faith, the deep stain 
 of dishonor, infidelity in love, treachery in friendship, the abandonment 
 of every principle, and the adoption of every frivolity and of every vice 
 that can excite hatred combined with ridicule — all, all this, and more, 
 may be seen around us. And yet it is believed, it is expected, that this 
 system is fated to be eternal. Gentlemen, we shall all weep the insane 
 delusion ; and in the terrific moments of alteration you know not, you 
 cannot know, how soon or how bitterly the ingredients of your own 
 poisoned chalice may be commended to your own lips." 
 
 He next speaks of the exclusion of Catholics from the jury. He 
 says : " My heart feels a species of relief when I recollect that not one 
 single Roman Catholic has been found suited to the attorney- general's 
 purpose." If he could have found one fit for his purpose, how gladly 
 he would have placed him on the jury with great "affectation of libe- 
 rality." In cases of private property there are always many Catholics. 
 "Why are Catholics excluded from these state-juries? Who shall ven- 
 ture to avow the reason ? Oh for the partisan indiscretion that would 
 blindly avow the reason ! It is, in truth, a high compliment, which 
 persecution, in spite of itself, pays to independent integrity. 
 
 " It is, in fact, a compliment. It is intended for a reproach, for a 
 libel. It is meant to insinuate that such a man, for example, as Randal 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 641 
 
 McDonnell, the pride and boast of commerce, . . . would refuse to do 
 justice, upon his oath, to the Crown, and perjure himself in a state-trial, 
 because he is a Roman Catholic. You, even you, would be shocked, if any 
 man were so audacious as to assert, in words, so foul a libel, so false a 
 calumny; and yet what docs the conduct of the attorney-general amount 
 to ? . . . Just such a libel — to precisely such a calumny. He acts a part 
 which he would not venture to speak, and endeavors silently to inflict a 
 censure which no man could be found so devoid of shame as to assert in 
 words. And here, gentlemen, is a libel for which there is no punish- 
 ment; here is a profligate calumny, for which the law furnishes no 
 redress. He can continue to calumniate us by his rejection ; see whe- 
 ther he does not offer you a greater insult by his selection. Lay your 
 hands to your hearts, and in private communion with yourselves ask 
 the reason why you have been sought for and selected for this jury. 
 Will you discover that you have been selected because of admitted 
 impartiality? 
 
 "Would to God you could make that discovery! It would be one on 
 which my client might build the certain expectation of a triumphant 
 acquittal." 
 
 Towards the close of this tremendous speech, O'Connell becomes ab- 
 solutely superb. I shall give the concluding portion with scarcely any 
 curtailment. The reader should bear in mind that this is O'Connell's 
 forensic masterpiece — indeed, one of the greatest forensic speeches ever 
 delivered. One of the reasons w T hy the immortal speech of Demosthenes 
 on the Crown must be considered superior to this noble defence of Magee 
 is its superior finish. Lord Macaulay, if I remember rightly, in one of 
 his essays, calls the masterpiece of Demosthenes the most finished of 
 human compositions. Besides, though the subject of O'Connell's oration 
 be one of great dignity, being associated with the wrongs of an ancient 
 race, yet the theme of the oration on the Crown is still more elevated 
 (indeed, it is probable no speech ever had greater dignity of subject), 
 being the events of the most critical period of the history of Athens, and 
 involving a review of the entire political career of the orator himself — 
 for, though ostensibly a defence of his friend Ctesiphon, this speech was 
 virtually a defence of himself. His own fate was involved in the suc- 
 cess of his defence of Ctesiphon. If Ctesiphon had been condemned, 
 
642 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Demosthenes would forthwith have been prosecuted too, and without the 
 smallest chance of escaping banishment. 
 
 I proceed to give the concluding portion of O'Connell's speech : 
 
 "Let me transport you from the heat and fury of domestic politics; 
 let me place you in a foreign land. You are Protestants ; with your 
 good leave, you shall, for a moment, be Portuguese ; and Portuguese is 
 now an honorable name, for right well have the people of Portugal fought 
 for their country against the foreign invader. . . . 
 
 " In the mean time I must place you in Portugal. Let us suppose 
 for an instant that the Protestant religion is that of the people of Por- 
 tugal, the Catholic that of the government ; that the house of Braganza 
 has not reigned, but that Portugal is still governed by the viceroy of a 
 foreign nation, from whom no kindess, no favor has ever flowed, and from 
 whom justice has rarely been obtained, and upon those unfrequent occa- 
 sions not conceded generously, but extorted by force, or wrung from dis- 
 tress by terror and apprehension in a stinted measure and ungracious 
 manner. You Protestants shall form, not, as we do in Ireland, nine- 
 teiiths. but some lesser number — you shall be only four-fifths of the 
 population ; and all the persecution which you have yourselves practised 
 here upon Papists, whilst you, at the same time, accused the Papists of 
 the crime of being persecutors, shall glow around ; your native land 
 shall be to you the country of strangers ; you shall be aliens in the soil 
 that gave you birth, and whilst every foreigner may, in the land of your 
 forefathers, attain rank, station, emolument, honors, you alone shall be 
 excluded, and you shall be excluded for no other reason but a conscien- 
 tious abhorrence to the religion of your ancestors. 
 
 "Only think, gentlemen, of the scandalous injustice of punishing 
 you because you are Protestants. With what scorn, with what con- 
 tempt, do you not listen to the stale pretences, to the miserable excuses, 
 by which, under the name of state reasons and political arguments, your 
 exclusion and degradation are sought to be justified. Your reply is 
 ready: 'Perform your iniquity; men of crimes,' you exclaim, 'be unjust; 
 punish us for our fidelity and honest adherence to truth, but insult us 
 not by supposing that your reasoning can impose upon a single indi- 
 vidual either of us or of yourselves.' In this situation let me give you 
 a viceroy; he shall be a man who may be styled, by some person dis- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 643 
 
 posed to exaggerate beyond bounds his merits, and to flatter him more 
 than enough, 'an honorable man and a respectable soldier,' but, in point 
 of fact, he shall be of that little-minded class of beings who are suited 
 to be the playthings of knaves — one of those men who imagine they 
 govern a nation, whilst, in reality, they are but the instruments upon 
 which the crafty play with safety and with profit. Take such a man for 
 your viceroy, Protestant Portuguese. We shall begin with making his 
 tour from Traz-os-Montes to the kingdom of Algarve — as one amongst us 
 should say, from the Giants' Causeway to the kingdom of Kerry. Upon 
 his tour he shall affect great candor and good-will to the poor suffering 
 Protestants. The bloody anniversaries of the inquisitorial triumphs of 
 former days shall be for a season abandoned, and over our inherent hos- 
 tility the garb of hypocrisy shall, for a season, be thrown. Enmity to 
 the Protestants shall become, for a moment, less apparent, but it will be 
 only the more odious for the transitory disguise. 
 
 "The delusion of the hour having served its purpose, your viceroy 
 shows himself in his native colors ; he selects for office, and prefers for 
 his pension-list, the men miserable in intellect, if they be but virulent 
 against the Protestants — to rail against the Protestant religion, to turn 
 its holiest rites into ridicule, to slander the individual Protestants are 
 the surest, the only means to obtain his favor and patronage. He selects 
 from his Popish bigots some being more canine than human" (probably 
 this satirizes the notorious Jack Giffard), "who, not having talents to sell, 
 brings to the market of bigotry his impudence — who, with no quality 
 under heaven but gross, vulgar, acrimonious, disgustful and shameless 
 abuse of Protestantism to recommend him, shall be promoted to some 
 accountant-generalship, and shall riot in the spoils of the people he tra- 
 duces, as it were, to crown with insult the severest injuries. This viceroy 
 selects for his favorite privy-councillor" [the orator now sketches the noto- 
 rious Paddy Duigenan) " some learned doctor, half latoyer, half divine 
 and entire bride, distinguished by the unblushing repetition of calumnies 
 against the Protestants. This man has asserted that Protestants are 
 perjurers and murderers in principle — that they keep no faith with 
 Papists, but hold it lawful and meritorious to violate every engagement, 
 and commit every atrocity towards any person who happens to differ 
 with Protestants in religious belief. This man raves thus, in public. 
 
644 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 against the Protestants, and has turned his ravings into large personal 
 emoluments. But whilst he is the oracle of minor bigots, he does not 
 believe himself; he has selected for the partner of his tenderest joys, 
 of his most ecstatic moments, he has chosen for the intended mother of 
 his children, for the sweetener and solace of his every care, a Protestant, 
 gentlemen of the jury. 
 
 "Next to the vile instruments of bigotry, his accountant-general and 
 privy-councillor, we will place his acts. The Protestants of Portugal shall 
 be exposed to insult and slaughter; an Orange party — a party of Popish 
 Orangemen — shall be supposed to exist; they shall have liberty to slaugh- 
 ter the unarmed and defenceless Protestants, and as they sit peaceably at 
 their firesides. They shall be let loose in some Portuguese district, called 
 Monaghan ; they shall cover the streets of some Portuguese town of Belfast 
 with human gore; and in the metropolis of Lisbon the Protestant widow 
 shall have her harmless child murdered in the noonday, and his blood 
 shall have flowed unrequited, because his assassin was very loyal when 
 he was drunk, and had an irresistible propensity to signalize his loyalty 
 by killing Protestants. Behold, gentlemen, this viceroy depriving of com- 
 mand and staying the promotion of every military man who shall dare 
 to think Protestants men, or who shall presume to suggest that they 
 ought not to be prosecuted. Behold this viceroy promoting and reward- 
 ing the men who insulted and attempted to degrade the first of your 
 Protestant nobility. Behold him in public, the man I have described. 
 
 " In his personal concerns he receives an enormous revenue from the 
 people he thus misgoverns. See in his management of that revenue a 
 parsimony at which even his enemies blush. See the paltry sum of a 
 single joe refused to any Protestant charity, whilst his bounty is un- 
 known even at the Popish institutions for benevolent purposes. See 
 the most wasteful expenditure of the public money — every job patron- 
 ized, every profligacy encouraged. See the resources of Portugal dimin- 
 ished. See her discords and her internal feuds increased ; and, lastly, 
 behold the course of justice perverted and corrupted. 
 
 " It is thus, gentlemen : the Protestant Portuguese seek to obtain 
 relief by humble petition and supplication. There can be no crime, 
 surely, for a Protestant — oppressed because he follows a religion which 
 is, in his opinion, true — to endeavor to obtain relief by mildly represent- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 645 
 
 ing to his Popish oppressors that it is the right of every man to worship 
 the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience ; to state re- 
 spectfully to the governing powers that it is unjust and may be highly 
 impolitic to punish men merely because they do not profess Popery, 
 which they do not believe ; and to submit, with all humility, that to lay 
 the burdens of the state equally, and distribute its benefits partially, is 
 not justice, but, although sanctioned by the pretence of religious zeal, 
 is, in truth, iniquity, and palpably criminal. Well, gentlemen, for daring 
 thus to remonstrate, the Protestants are persecuted. The first step in 
 the persecution is to pervert the plain meaning of the Portuguese lan- 
 guage, and a law, prohibiting any disguise in apparel, shall be applied 
 to the ordinary dress of the individual ; it reminds one of pretence and 
 pxirpose. 
 
 "To carry on these prosecutions, the viceroy chooses for his first 
 inquisitor the descendant" {lie comes doivn once more on Saurin; indeed, 
 the inveteracy with which he pursues unlucky Saurin is amusing) "of some 
 Popish refugee — some man with an hereditary hatred to Protestants ; he 
 is not the son of an Irishman, this refugee inquisitor — no, for the fact 
 is notorious, that the Irish refugee Papists were ever distinguished for 
 their liberality, as well as for their gallantry in the field and talent in the 
 cabinet. This inquisitor shall be, gentlemen, a descendant from one of 
 those English Papists who were the dupes or contrivers of the Gunpow- 
 der Plot! With such a chief-inquisitor, can you conceive anything more 
 calculated to rouse you to agony than the solemn mockery of your trial ? 
 The chief-inquisitor begins by influencing the judges out of court; he 
 proceeds to inquire out fit men for his interior tribunal, which, for 
 brevity, we will call a jury. He selects his juries from the most violent of 
 the Popish Orangemen of the city, and procures a conviction against law 
 and common sense, and without evidence. Have you followed me, gen- 
 tlemen ? Do you enter into the feelings of Protestants thus insulted, 
 thus oppressed, thus persecuted — their enemies and traducers promoted, 
 and encouraged, and richly rewarded ; their friends discountenanced and 
 displaced ; their persons unprotected, and their characters assailed by 
 hired calumniators; their blood shed with impunity; their revenues, 
 parsimoniously spared to accumulate for the individual, wastefully 
 squandered for the state ; the emblems of discord, the war-cry of dis- 
 
(546 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 union, sanctioned by the highest authority, and Justice herself converted 
 from an impartial arbitrator into a frightful partisan ? 
 
 "Yes, gentlemen, place yourselves as Protestants under such a per- 
 secution; behold before you this chief inquisitor, with his prejudiced 
 tribunal — this gambler with a loaded die — and now say what are your 
 feelings, what are your sensations of disgust, abhorrence, affright ? But 
 if, at such a moment, some ardent and enthusiastic Papist" (the reader 
 should bear in mind that Magee was a Protestant), "regardless of his inter- 
 ests, and roused by the crimes that were thus committed against you, 
 should describe, in measured and cautious and cold language, scenes of 
 oppression and iniquity ; if he were to describe them, not as I have done, 
 but in feeble and mild language, and simply state the facts for your 
 benefit and the instruction of the public ; if this liberal Papist, for this, 
 were dragged to the Inquisition, as for a crime, and menaced with a 
 dungeon for years — good and gracious God ! how would you revolt at 
 and abominate the men who could consign him to that dungeon ! With 
 what an eye of contempt, and hatred, and despair, would you not look 
 at the packed and profligate tribunal which could direct punishment 
 against him Avho deserved rewards ! What pity would you not feel for 
 the advocate who, heavily and without hope, labored in his defence ! and 
 with what agonized and frenzied despair would you not look to the 
 future destinies of a land in which perjury was organized and from AAhich 
 humanity and justice had been for ever banished ! 
 
 "With this picture of yourselves in Portugal come home to us in 
 Ireland say, is that a crime, when applied to Protestants, which is a 
 virtue and a merit when applied to Papists? Behold how we suffer 
 here; and then reflect that it is. principally by reason of your prejudices 
 against us that the attorney-general hopes for your verdict. The good 
 man has talked of his impartiality; he will suppress, he says, the licen- 
 tiousness of the press. I have, I hope, shown you the right of my client 
 to discuss the public subjects which he has discussed in the manner they 
 are treated of in the publication before you ; yet he is prosecuted. Let 
 me read for you a paragraph which the attorney-general has not prose- 
 cuted — which he has refused to prosecute : 
 
 "'Ballybay, July 4, 1813. A meeting of the Orange lodges was 
 agreed on, in consequence of the manner in which the Catholics wished 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 647 
 
 to have persecuted the loyalists in this county last year, when they even 
 murdered some of them for no other reason than their being yeomen and 
 Protestants.'' 
 
 "And, again: 
 
 " ' It was at Ballybay that the Catholics murdered one Hughes, a yeo- 
 man sergeant, for being a Protestant, as ivas given in evidence at the assizes 
 by a Catholic ivitness.'' 
 
 "I have read this passage from the Hibernian Journal of the 7th 
 of this month. I know not whether you can hear, unmoved, a paragraph 
 which makes my blood boil to read, but I shall only tell you that the 
 attorney-general refused to prosecute this libeller. Gentlemen, there 
 have been several murders committed in the county of Monaghan, in 
 which Ballybay lies. The persons killed happened to be Roman Cath- 
 olics ; their murderers are Orangemen. Several of the persons accused 
 of these murders are to be tried at the ensuing assizes. The agent 
 applied to me personally, with this newspaper; he stated that the ob- 
 vious intention was to create a prejudice upon the approaching trials 
 favorable to the murderers and against the prosecutors. He stated what 
 you — even you — -will easily believe, that there never was a falsehood more 
 flagitiously destitute of truth than the entire paragraph. I advised him, 
 gentlemen, to wait on the attorney-general in the most respectful manner 
 possible; to show him this paragraph, then request to be allowed to 
 satisfy him as to the utter falsehood of the assertions which this para- 
 graph contained, which could be more easily done, as the judges who 
 went that circuit could prove part of it to be false ; and I directed him 
 to entreat that the attorney-general, when fully satisfied of the falsehood, 
 would prosecute the publisher of this, which, I think, I may call an 
 atrocious libel. 
 
 " Gentlemen, the attorney-general was accordingly waited on ; he 
 was respectfully requested to prosecute upon the terms of having the 
 falsehood of these assertions first proved to him. I need not tell you he 
 refused. These are not the libellers he prosecutes. Gentlemen, this not 
 being a libel on any individual, no private individual can prosecute for 
 it ; and the attorney-general turns his press loose on the Catholics of the 
 county of Monaghan, whilst he virulently assails Mr. Magee for what 
 must be admitted to be comparatively mild and inoffensive. 
 
648 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 " No, gentlemen, he does not prosecute this libel. On the contrary, 
 this paper is paid enormous sums of the public money. There are no 
 less than five proclamations in the paper containing this libel ; and it 
 was proved in my presence, in a court of justice, that, besides the proc- 
 lamations and public advertisements, the two proprietors of the paper 
 had each a pension of four hundred pounds per annum, for supporting 
 government, as it was called. Since that period, one of those propri- 
 etors has got an office worth, at least, eight hundred pounds a year; and 
 the son of the other, a place of upwards of four hundred pounds per 
 annum : so that, as it is likely that the original pensions continue, here 
 may be an annual income of two thousand pounds paid for this paper, 
 besides the thousands of pounds annually which the insertion of the 
 proclamations and public advertisements cost. It is a paper of the very 
 lowest and most paltry scale of talent, and its circulation is, fortunately, 
 very limited ; but it receives several thousands of pounds of the money 
 of the men whom it foully and falsely calumniates. 
 
 "Would I could see the man who pays this proclamation-money and 
 these pensions at the Castle" — [here O'Connell turned round to where 
 Secretary Peel or Peele, as he then spelled his name, sat) — " would I could 
 see the man who, against the fact, asserted that the proclamations were 
 inserted in all the papers save in those whose proprietors were convicted 
 of a libel. I would ask him whether this be a paper that ought to 
 receive the money of the Irish people? whether this be the legitimate use 
 of the public purse ? And when you find this calumniator salaried and 
 rewarded, where is the impartiality, the justice or even the decency of 
 prosecuting Mr. Magee for a libel, merely because he has not praised 
 public men, and has discussed public affairs in the spirit of freedom and 
 of the constitution? Contrast the situation of Mr. Magee with the pro- 
 prietor of the Hibernian Journal: the one is prosecuted with all the 
 weight and influence of the Crown, the other pensioned by the minis- 
 ters of the Crown ; the one dragged to your bar for the sober discussion 
 of political topics, the other hired to disseminate the most horrid cal- 
 umnies ! Let the attorney-general now boast of his impartiality ; can 
 you credit him on your oaths ? Let him talk of his veneration for the 
 liberty of the press; can you believe him in your consciences? Let him 
 call the press the protection of the people against the government. Yes, 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 049 
 
 gentlemen, believe him when he says so. Let the press be the protec- 
 tion of the people ; he admits that it ought to be so. Will you find a 
 verdict for him that shall contradict the only assertion upon which he 
 and I, however, are both agreed ? 
 
 " Gentlemen, the attorney-general is bound by this admission. It is 
 a part of his case, and he is the prosecutor here ; it is a part of the 
 evidence before you, for he is the prosecutor. Then, gentlemen, it is 
 your duty to act upon that evidence, and to allow the press to afford 
 some protection to the people. 
 
 " Is there amongst you any one friend to freedom ? Is there amongst 
 you one man who esteems equal and impartial justice, who values the 
 people's rights as the foundation of private happiness, and who con- 
 siders life as no boon without liberty ? Is there amongst you one friend 
 to the constitution? one man who hates oppression? If there be, 
 Mr. Magee appeals to his kindred mind, and confidently expects an 
 acquittal. 
 
 "There are amongst you men of great religious zeal, of much public 
 piety. Are you sincere? Do you believe what you profess? With all 
 this zeal, with all this piety, is there any conscience amongst you? Is 
 there any terror of violating your oaths? Be ye hypocrites, or does 
 genuine religion inspire ye ? If you be sincere, if you have conscience, 
 if your oaths can control your interests, then Mr. Magee confidently 
 expects an acquittal. 
 
 " If amongst you there be cherished one ray of pure religion, if 
 amongst you there glow a single spark of liberty, if I have alarmed 
 religion or roused the spirit of freedom in one breast amongst you, Mr. 
 Magee is safe, and his country is served ; but if there be none, if you be 
 slaves and hypocrites, he will await your verdict, and despise it!" 
 
 Such was the powerful speech in defence of Magee. But slaves and 
 hypocrites the poor bigoted creatures on that well-packed jury proved 
 themselves, for they found Magee guilty. The writer of the so-called 
 libel was Counsellor Denis Scully, the author of that celebrated State- 
 ment of the Penal Laivs so virulently assailed by Saurin in his opening- 
 speech against Magee. The famous "witchery resolutions" were also 
 supposed to be Mr. Scully's composition. Though this gentleman is, by 
 ;ome, accused of having had a tendency to recommend intemperate 
 
650 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O JONNELL. 
 
 measures, he was undoubtedly a man able in council, being endowed 
 with a weighty and statesmanlike mind. 
 
 The noble, defiant spirit of O'Connell's defence produced an effect, 
 both on friends and enemies, at the present hour hardly to be conceived. 
 I shall say more on this head by and by. At present I shall only refer 
 to the resolutions passed at two great meetings. At a vast popular 
 assemblage held in Cork, on the 30th of August, 1813, a resolution of 
 "grateful thanks" was passed — in spite of the miserable opposition of 
 two poor slavish creatures, named Moylan and McSweeny, who basely 
 called him a "convicted libeller!" — to that "invaluable Irishman, John 
 Magee, Esq., proprietor of the Dublin Evening Post, for his undeviating 
 support" of the Catholic cause. Another resolution was passed at this 
 meeting expressive of admiration for "the worth of that great and good 
 Irishman, the strong pillar of our cause and the pride of our land, Coun- 
 sellor O'Connell." The same miserable creatures, who opposed the reso- 
 lution of gratitude to Magee, vainly resisted this expression of admiration 
 for O'Connell. But "the Kilkenny resolutions," passed at a Catholic 
 meeting held in that city, were even more emphatic in their hostility to 
 the government and their approval of Magee and O'Connell. Speaking 
 of a suggestion made by some of the Catholic leaders about this time, 
 that the Catholics of Ireland should apply to Spain for sympathy and 
 interference in their behalf, the Irishmen present at the Kilkenny meet- 
 ing resolved that "the measure of applying to the Spanish Cortes met 
 our most decided approbation. If we suffer, at least let England be put 
 to shame." They then congratulated their countrymen on the approach- 
 ing deliverance of Ireland from the "intolerant administration of the 
 duke of Richmond." They also resolved, "that O'Connell is eminently 
 entitled to our gratitude and applause" for various services, but partic- 
 ularly for "his intrepid development of the crimes and treasons of the 
 Orangemen, and finally the dignified, eloquent and unparalleled oration 
 which he pronounced on the 27th July, in defence of the virtuous and 
 patriotic John Magee." They held that oration to be of inestimable 
 value, calculated to control the partialities of judges, to shame the big- 
 otry of a packed jury, and to rebuke "the vain and vulgar law-officer 
 who shall hereafter invade a free press or vilify an injured nation." 
 
 These resolutions created a great excitement amongst all parties. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 051 
 
 On the 19th of November, the oft-prosecuted John Magee (I have not 
 space to enumerate all the legal persecutions to which he was subjected 
 by the unscrupulous law-officers of the Crown) was brought up in cus- 
 tody to plead in the King's Bench to a fresh indictment for publishing 
 these "Kilkenny resolutions," which, while complimenting him and his 
 counsel, assailed the duke of Richmond. O'Connell made a motion in 
 court that Magee, who had entered his plea of "not guilty," should be 
 allowed to "traverse in prox.," in the usual way. Although Justice Day 
 suggested to Saurin the fitness of acceding to what O'Connell requested, 
 that vindictive Crown official resisted the motion with all his might. 
 He said: "My lord, I certainly will not consent. If counsel for the 
 traverser can show that, in point of law, he has the right, I shall bow 
 with submission; but if not, I consider it most material, as well to the 
 public justice of this country as to the administration of the law, that the 
 trial be proceeded on as speedily as possible." On Wednesday, the 24th 
 of November, however, O'Connell succeeded in persuading even the 
 hostile bench with which he had to deal to order the trial on the fresh 
 charge to stand over to Monday, the 31st of January, 1814. But Magee 
 was not to escape; for, meantime, affidavits in mitigation on the one 
 side, and aggravation on the other, of the impending sentence, were 
 brought forward. On Saturday, the 27th of November, 1813, O'Connell 
 spoke vehemently against the attorney-general's motion in aggravation 
 of sentence, on account of the publication by Magee of a report of the 
 recent trial. The attorney-general, in pressing his motion, had referred 
 in strong terms to the whole course of the defence of Magee, particularly 
 urging, in aggravation of sentence, that gentleman's approval of O'Con- 
 nell's speech. Saurin had also done his best to enlist the personal feel- 
 ings of Lord Downes, the chief-justice, by calling his attention to the 
 thinly-veiled charges made by our hero against him. In his reply to the 
 attorney-general O'Connell surpasses even himself in fierce and defiant 
 scorn. 
 
 "I am sure, my lords" — thus he begins— "that every gentleman 
 present will sympathize in the emotions I now experience. I am sure 
 no gentleman can avoid feeling the deepest interest in a situation in 
 which it is extremely difficult to check the strongest resentment, but 
 quite impossible to give that resentment utterance in the severity of 
 
G52 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 language suited to its cause and provocation. Yet even here do I yield 
 in nothing to the attorney-general. I deny, in the strongest terms, 
 his unfounded and absurd claim to superiority. I am his equal, at least, 
 in birth, his equal in fortune, his equal, certainly, in education, and as 
 to talent, I should not add that, but there is little vanity in claiming 
 equality. And thus meeting him on the firm footing of undoubted 
 equality, I do rejoice, my lords, I do most sincerely rejoice, that the 
 attorney-general has prudently treasured up his resentment since July 
 last, and ventured to address me in this court in the unhandsome lan- 
 guage he has used ; because my profound respect for this temple of the 
 law enables me here to overcome the infirmity of my nature, and to 
 listen with patience to an attack which, had it been made elsewhere, 
 would have met merited chastisement !" 
 
 Justice Daly. " Eh ! what is that you say?" 
 
 Justice Osborne, with much apparent emotion. "I at once declare, 1 
 will not sit here to listen to such a speech as I have seen reported. 
 Take care of what you say, sir!" 
 
 Mr. O'Connell. "My lord, what I say is, that I am delighted at the 
 prudence of the attorney-general, in having made that foul assault upon 
 mc here, and not elsewhere, because my profound respect for the bench 
 overcomes now those feelings which, elsewhere, would lead me to do 
 what I should regret — to break the peace in chastising him." 
 
 Justice Daly. "Chastising! The attorney-general! If a criminal 
 information were applied for on that word, we should be bound to 
 grant it." 
 
 Mr. 0' Council. "I meant, my lords, that elsewhere, thus assailed, I 
 should be carried away by my feelings to do that which 1 should regret — 
 to go beyond the law, to inflict corporal punishment for that offence 
 which I am here ready, out of consideration for the court, to pardon." 
 
 Justice Osborne. " I will take the opinion of the court whether you 
 shall not be committed." 
 
 Chief-Justice (Lord Doivnes). "If you pursue that line of language, 
 we must call upon some other of the counsel at the same side to 
 proceed." 
 
 Justice Day. "Now, Mr. O'Connell, do not you perceive that, while 
 vou talk of suppressing those feelings, you are actually indulging them ? 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 653 
 
 The attorney- general could not mean you offence in the line of argument 
 he pursued to enhance the punishment, in every way, of your client. It 
 is unnecessary for you to throw off, or to repel, aspersions that are not 
 made on you." 
 
 Mr. O'Connell. "My lord, I thank you; I sincerely thank you. It 
 relieves my mind from a load of imputation, when I hear such high au- 
 thority as that of your lordship kindly declaring that it did not apply to 
 me. And yet, my lord, what did the attorney-general mean when he 
 called a question a senseless and shameless question? What did he 
 mean when he, he, my lord, talked of low and vulgar mind ? What did 
 he mean when he imputed to the advocate participation in the crime of 
 the client? This he distinctly charged me with. All I require from the 
 court is the same liberty to reply with which the attorney-general has 
 been indulged in attack. All I ask is, to be suffered to answer and 
 repel the calumnies with which I have been assailed." 
 
 Justice Daly. "You shall have the same liberty that he had, but the 
 court did not understand him to have made any personal attack upon 
 you." 
 
 Justice Osborne. "We did not understand that the attorney-general 
 meant you Avhen he talkerl of a participator in the crime of your client." 
 
 Attorney -General, " I did not, my lords, I certainly did not, mean the 
 gentleman. To state that I did would be to misrepresent my meaning, 
 which had nothing to do with him." 
 
 Mr. OConnell. "Well, my lords, be it so. I rejoice, however, that 
 this charge is thus publicly disavowed, and disavowed in the presence 
 of those who heard his words originally, and who have heard me repel 
 any attack made upon me. I rejoice to find that your lordships have 
 interposed your opinion that no personal attack has been made upon 
 me, and thus have rendered unnecessary any further comment on what 
 had ilowed from the attorney-general. I am, therefore, enabled at once 
 to go into the discussion of the merits of my client's case. 
 
 "And now let me first solemnly and seriously protest against the 
 manner in which the attorney-general seeks to aggravate the punishment. 
 It is by introducing into the affidavit of the attorney for the prosecution 
 passages from the speech of counsel at the trial. There, perhaps, are 
 times in which it may be desired by him, as it certainly is safe for him, 
 
654 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 to make bad precedents ; but against this precedent I enter my earnest, 
 my honest, my independent protest. My protest may, for the present, 
 be disregarded, but it will accompany the precedent in future times, and 
 if not destroy, perhaps mitigate, its evil effects. I therefore do protest 
 against it, on behalf of the bar and on behalf of the public. 
 
 " What! is the bar of Ireland to be thus degraded, that it shall be per- 
 mitted to the inferior branches of the profession, to every attorney in the 
 hall, to drag into affidavits the names of counsel and their discourses for 
 their clients? If it be permitted against a defendant in a criminal case, 
 it must be equally, or rather more liberally, allowed to civil suits. There 
 will, in future, be no motion for a new trial without introducing the name 
 of counsel, and his exertions for his client, and perhaps his politics — 
 perchance his religion. We shall be subject to a commentary upon the 
 oath of attorneys. The debate on motions will not be what the plead- 
 ings state, or what the witnesses swore, or what law was laid down by the 
 judge, but the discussion will turn upon the speech of the counsel, what 
 it was he said, what he thought. A meaning will be affixed, by an 
 attorney's swearing, upon every sentence of the counsel, and he shall 
 not dare to describe crime or to portray criminality, lest the general 
 description of offence may be transmuted by the oath of an attorney into' r 
 [a libel on ( ? )] "particular and powerful individuals ; and whilst he ought 
 to have mind at complete liberty to look for all the topics to serve the cause 
 of his clients and to confute the arguments of his adversary, he will in 
 future be fettered and encumbered by the dread of exposing himself to 
 the imputations of the adverse attorney and the compliments o( the 
 bench. I do not think any gentleman ought to condescend to advocate 
 a cause under such circumstances, or that he could continue high-minded 
 and worthy of his rank in society, if he were to submit to such degra- 
 dation. 
 
 "Against this practice now, for the first time, attempted to be intro- 
 duced, against the first but mighty stride to lessen the dignity of an 
 honorable profession, I proclaim my distinct, unequivocal and solemn 
 dissent. But the privileges of the bar, however interesting to a numer- 
 ous and respectable class of men, sink into insignificance when con- 
 trasted with the rights of the public. The public have a right to the 
 free, unbiassed and unintimidated exertions of the profession. If the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 655 
 
 bar be controlled, if tlic bar be subjugated, if the profane hand of (he 
 attorney-general may drag Use barrister from the high station of respon- 
 sibility in which he is at present placed, and cali ' censure on the 
 client ihv the conduct of the barrister, then indeed will ii: bo quite sa 
 for power to oppress and to plunder the inhabitants of the land. In vain 
 shall the subject look for a manly advocate, if he is to be exposed to the 
 insolent mockery of a trial of himself in the shape of an attack upon 
 his client. How arc the powerful to be resisted? How are the great to 
 be opposed when they menace injustice? Certainly not by the advocate 
 who fears that, whilst he endeavors to serve his client, he shall injure 
 himself; certainly not by the barrister who has reason to apprehend that 
 his language, being distorted in an attorney's affidavit, will expose him 
 to censure from those to whom he cannot reply. 
 
 "It is the first interest of the public that the bar shall be left free. 
 No inconvenience can result from this freedom, because it is always sub- 
 ject to the discretion of the judge who presides at the trial. He has it 
 in his power to stop any proceeding inconsistent with propriety; but if 
 Ik; does not interfere at the trial, when the advocate could defend him- 
 self and assert his right, what authority has been found to warrant an 
 appeal to a future court, in order to punish that which ought not to have 
 been prevented ? In short, the public are deeply interested in our inde- 
 pendence ; their properties, their lives, their honors are entrusted to us, 
 and if we, to whom such a guardianship is confided, be degraded, how 
 can we afford protection to others? Lessened in our own esteem, habit- 
 uated to insult, we shall dwindle in talent as in character; and, if the 
 talent may remain, it will be simply useless to the oppressed, greatly 
 serviceable to the oppressor. For the public, therefore, who may easily 
 be enslaved if the bar be debased, 1 again enter my solemn protest 
 against this bad precedent. 
 
 " For myself, I have scarce a word to say ; talents I do not possess, 
 but I never will yield the freedom of thought and of language — I never 
 will barter or abandon the independence of the profession. It may injure 
 me; I know it will injure me, and I care not; but as long as I belong 
 to the Irish bar, I will be found open, decided, manly, independent — 
 unawed by the threats or frowns of power, holding in sovereign con- 
 tempt the vile solicitations of venality, and determined to do my duty 
 
 42 
 
in despite of every risk, personal and public— the enemy of every op- 
 pression and fraud, the unalterable friend to freedom. I have a fault — 
 1 know it well — in the eyes of the attorney-general. The spirit that 
 invented the Inquisition exists in human nature; that there was an 
 Inquisition proves the existence in nature of an inquisitorial spirit. 
 Nature is not calumniated when she is charged with all the atrocity of 
 bigotry in design and action; and towards me that design has an object 
 that is easily understood. To check the Popish advocate may, in the 
 eyes of the attorney-general, be a work equally pious and prudent, but 
 the proudest feelings of contempt may defeat his intention and place me 
 above the reach of malevolence. 
 
 " From myself and from this strange precedent, I come to the case 
 of my client." O'Connell then goes into an elaborate argument against 
 the attorney-general's motion in aggravation of sentence, quoting and 
 analyzing cases to show "that nothing is a libel, or can become the sub- 
 ject-matter of a criminal prosecution as such, which occurs in the course 
 of proceeding in a court of justice." He dwells upon various other par- 
 ticulars, insisting strongly that the severest portions of his defence of 
 Magee had been necessarily introduced in reply to the extraneous topics 
 indulged in by the attorney-general. The conclusion of his speech is 
 bold and vigorous ; he proudly reiterates his scorn and defiance of his 
 antagonist Saurin : 
 
 " The avowal and approbation of Mr. Magee are referable only to the 
 topics of defence, and not to the matters contained in the affidavit to 
 aggravate the punishment. To his defence no objection has been stated; 
 and beyond what is purely his defence" {viz., the portion of O'CmineWs 
 speech called forth by SaurirCs "extravagant attack" on the Irish Catholics), 
 "he ought not, in any view of his case, be made responsible. 
 
 "I recapitulate, for Mr. Magee, his publication of the trial is no 
 crime — no offence cognizable by any public tribunal ; it is an act to 
 which the law declares that no punishment is attachable. Besides, here 
 it is sought to make him answer for what could be the fault, if fault at 
 all. only of his counsel. And, good God ! what a precedent will be 
 established if you do so ; if you punish him for that which the zeal of 
 his counsel urged, perhaps indiscreetly — I would concede, for argument's 
 sake, improperly! But not for this ought the client to be punished. 
 
And then any approbation given by him is confined expressly to the 
 'topics of defence;' so that, upon any view of this subject, he cannot 
 be confounded with his counsel. In short, the object, the plain object, 
 of the present proceedings is, under pretence of seeking punishment on 
 the client, to attack the counsel. Your lordships have said that nothing 
 personal to me was meant by the attorney-general ; but welcome should 
 any attack he may choose to make on me be, so you, my lords, spare 
 the client, innocent, at least, of this default. I put his case, in this 
 respect, on your sense of right and common justice. 
 
 "I conclude by conjuring the court not to make this a precedent 
 that may serve to palliate the acts o e future and, perhaps, bad times. 
 I admit, I freely admit, the Utopian perfection of the present period ; 
 we have everything in the best possible state. I admit the perfection 
 of the bench ; I concede that there cannot be better times, and that we 
 have the best of all possible prosecutors ; I am one of those who allow 
 that the thimrs that be could not be better; but there have been hereto- 
 fore bad times, and bad times may come again; there have been partial, 
 corrupt, intemperate, ignorant and profligate judges; the bench has 
 been disgraced by a Bilknap, a Tressilian, a Jeffries, a Scroggs and an 
 Alleybown. For the present there is no danger, but, at some future 
 period, such men may arise again, and if they do, see what an advan- 
 tage they will derive from the precedent of this clay, should it receive 
 your lordships 7 sanction. 
 
 "At such a period, it will not be difficult to find a suitable attorney- 
 general — some creature narrow-minded, mean, calumnious, of inveterate 
 bigotry and dastard disposition — who shall prosecute with virulence and 
 malignity and delight in punishment. Such a man will, with prudent 
 care of himself, receive merited and contemptuous retort ; he will safely 
 treasure up his resentment for four months; his virulence will for a 
 season be checked by his prudence, until, at some safe opportunity, it 
 will explode by the force of the fermentation of its own putrefaction, 
 and throw forth its filthy and disgusting stores to blacken those whom 
 he would not venture directly to attack. Such a man will, with shame- 
 loss falsehood, bring sweeping charges against the population of the 
 land, and afterwards meanly retract and deny them ; without a particle 
 of manliness or manhood, he will talk of bluster, and bravado, and 
 
G58 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COSTNELL. 
 
 courage, and he will talk of those falsely, and where a reply would not 
 be permitted. 
 
 "If such times arrive, my lords, the advocate of the accused will be 
 sure not to meet what I should meet from your lordships this day, were 
 I so attacked; he will not meet sympathy and equal liberty of speech. 
 No, my lords, the advocate of the accused will then be interrupted and 
 threatened by the bench, lest he should wipe oft* the disgrace of his 
 adversary — the foul and false calumnies that have been poured in on 
 him. The advocate then will not be listened to with the patience and 
 impartiality with which, in case of a similar attack, your lordships 
 would listen to me. The then attorney-general may indulge the bigoted 
 virulence and the dastard malignity of an ancient and irritated female 
 whose feelings evaporate in words, and such judges as I have described 
 will give him all the protection he requires ; and, although at present 
 such a dereliction of every decency which belongs to gentlemen would 
 not be permitted, and would rouse your indignation, yet, in such bad 
 times as I have described, the foul and dastard assailant would be sure, 
 in court and beyond it, to receive the full protection of the bench, whilst 
 the object of his attack would be certain of meeting imprisonment and 
 line, were he to attempt to reply suitably. 
 
 " My lords, you who would act so differently — you, who feel with me 
 the atrocity of such a proceeding — you, my lords, will not sanction the 
 attempt that has been made this day to convert the speech of counsel 
 against the client, lest by doing so you should afford materials for the 
 success of any future attorney-general, as I have endeavored to trace to 
 yon. Before I sit down, I have only to add that I know the reply of the 
 solicitor-general" (Bushe) "will, as usual, be replete with talent, but I 
 also know it will be conducted with the propriety of a gentleman, for 
 he is a gentleman — an Irish gentleman; but, great as his talents are, 
 they cannot, upon the present document, injure my client. With respect 
 to his colleague, the attorney-general, I have only to say, that whatever 
 relates to him in my speech at the trial, was imperatively called for by 
 his conduct there. As to him, I have no apology to make. With respect 
 to him, I should repeat my former assertions. With respect to him, I 
 retract nothing; I repent nothing; I never will make him any conces- 
 sions. I do now, as I did then, repel every imputation. I do now, as i 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. G59 
 
 did then, despise and treat with perfect contempt every false calumny 
 that malignity could invent or dastard atrocity utter whilst it considered 
 itself in safety." 
 
 After the close of O'Connell's speech an incident occurred which, to 
 say the least, was not very creditable to Magee. It was neither more 
 nor less than the repudiation of our hero by that gentleman. However, 
 some allowance, it will be thought by some, should be made for Magee. 
 He had been a mark for continual persecution by the government. He 
 had suffered greatly. His appearance, when brought up on the 18th of 
 November to plead to the fresh indictment for publishing the " Kilkenny 
 resolutions," was much remarked on by the spectators in court. It was 
 evident that his confinement for so many months had impaired his 
 health. Probably his spirit had more or less given way along with his 
 physical energy. John O'Connell, in speaking of Magee's persecution, 
 says, that his condition "might have induced some feeling of mercy in 
 the breast even of an ordinarily hard-hearted man. But they were 
 tigers that managed Irish affairs then, and nothing but hunting their 
 victims down to the death could allay their savage appetites." What a 
 pity that John O'Connell was always so abjectly submissive to English 
 "tigers" ! 
 
 All this, if it does not excuse, may at least in some degree palliate, 
 Magee's partial surrender. Mr. Wallace, as counsel for the prisoner, 
 requested to be heard before the solicitor-general's reply. He then de- 
 livered a long and able argument to show that Magee was not to be held 
 responsible for his counsel's speech, and that, even if he were, his adop- 
 tion of it by the publication in his paper and as a pamphlet should be 
 held as a separate offence, separately to be adjudicated upon, and not 
 to be taken, without a new trial, as an aggravation of the former offence. 
 In the course of this address Mr. Wallace observed: "I am solicitous to 
 avoid, in any degree, implicating the case of my client, Mr. John Magee, 
 with the merit or the demerit of his counsel's speech. 
 
 " If my learned colleague have fallen into any error or impropriety 
 in the speech which he delivered, he has the manliness and candor, I am 
 confident, to avow it, and to take upon himself the responsibility." 
 
 Mr. O'Connell. "I do not admit that I have been guilty of any im- 
 propriety." 
 
G60 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Mr. Wallace. " I am misunderstood, if it be supposed that I mean to 
 charge any impropriety upon Mr. O'Connell. I say only that if such 
 impropriety had been committed," etc. 
 
 In spite of this retractation, Wallace — who, no doubt, was a merito- 
 rious man, of grave and solid intellect, self-educated and self-raised, and 
 who, in the present instance, was probably only discharging a duty im- 
 posed on him by his client — Wallace, I say, in the subsequent portion 
 of his speech, suffered himself to be betrayed into unbecoming, or even 
 rough, remarks towards O'Connell. He uttered such expressions as 
 "the sins and crimes of counsel," "abuse of the forensic robe," etc. He 
 even went so far as to call on the bench to punish O'Connell for his 
 speech, and not Magee. 
 
 Unquestionably, this would have been pleasant to the law-officers of 
 the Crown; and some of the judges would have been willing to gratify 
 them. But they all shrank from .exercising the somewhat doubtful 
 power of the court against a man so determined and formidable as 
 O'Connell — a man prepared for every difficulty, full of resources, and 
 from whom not the smallest submission was to be expected. Besides, 
 even in their corrupted bosoms, lurked a consciousness that, even in the 
 most vehement and violent parts of his oration, he had only hurled at 
 the tools of power the thunders of truth and justice. In fine, while the 
 abettors of the atrocious system which mocked government in Ireland, 
 •and which O'Connell mercilessly stripped naked in his speech and held 
 up to public scorn, would have liked to see him humbled and punished, 
 if not absolutely disbar'd, they were all "fearful," as John O'Connell 
 says, quoting a homely but expressive proverb, "of 'catching a Tartar.' " 
 
 The solicitor-general — the brilliant and accomplished Bushe — accord- 
 ingly, refused to draw the distinction, argued for by Mr. Wallace, between 
 counsel and client, and, compensating himself by some abuse of Magee 
 for yielding to the necessity of letting Dan alone, he called for the rigor 
 of the court against the unfortunate victim of government persecution, 
 for his original offence and its aggravation — his adoption, by a printed 
 avowal in his own paper, of the terrible philippic of his advocate. 
 
 The bench imitated Mr. Solicitor-General. Lord Chief-Justice Downes, 
 indeed, was funny without intending it, for he gave vent to certain ex- 
 pressions of burlesque penitence for not having himself stopped the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 661 
 
 impetuous onslaught of O'Connell, which, if not edifying, were certain!}' 
 highly amusing. 
 
 Old Justice Day, in delivering judgment (it may be remembered I 
 have already given O'Connell's description of this venerable judicial 
 noodle), was, as might be expected, still more comical. He had brass 
 and command of facial muscle enough to praise the chief-justice and 
 the jury. He even carried his eulogium on the court so far as to call it 
 "a sober, unirn passioned and dignified tribunal!" This to the partisan 
 judges of the Union period, incompetent, or corrupt and prejudiced, or 
 all combined. 
 
 I shall now give the severe sentence passed on the unfortunate 
 Magee by Justice Day, who, on this occasion, showed a harshness foreign 
 to his nature ; for, whatever his faults and weaknesses may have been, 
 this old gentleman was by no means deficient in humanity. Probably 
 he was overruled by his brother judges. The memory of John Magee 
 would be entitled to greater respect and sympathy, if he had shown 
 more manliness and spirit in standing by O'Connell's glorious defence 
 of him. However, he suffered greatly for the cause of his Catholic 
 countrymen, and so deserves some gratitude. It has been already inti- 
 mated that Magee was a Protestant. Now for the sentence : 
 
 "The sentence of the court is, That you, John Magee, do pay a fine 
 of £500 to His Majesty; that you be imprisoned for the space of two 
 years in Newgate, to be computed from the day of conviction, and that 
 you do find security for your good behavior for seven years, yourself in 
 the sum of £1000 and two sureties in the sum of £500 each, and that 
 you be further imprisoned until such fine be paid and such security 
 given!" 
 
 In spite of this conviction and sentence of Magee, the victory in the 
 whole contest, viewed broadly, remained with O'Connell. It was not 
 against Magee alone that the prosecution was directed ; the whole 
 Catholic body and their cause were virulently arraigned by Saurin. 
 O'Connell's splendid oration, then, is not narrowly to be viewed as the 
 mere technical defence of Magee, but as the glowing, impassioned vindi- 
 cation of a persecuted creed and a trampled race. It was even more, 
 for, turning the tables on the government, he made his speech a terrible 
 impeachment, a burning, scathing denunciation of all their tyrannous 
 
GG2 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 oppressions and wrong-doing. Corruption, bigotry, intolerance, faction. 
 power itself trembled. The down-trodden and persecuted took heart 
 and hope, and openly exulted. I have given these proceedings at great, 
 and, as it may seem to some, disproportionate length, because, by so 
 doing, T give the reader ample materials and means to form a concep- 
 tion of O'Connell's might as an orator and a popular tribune. No mere 
 description suffices to give the reader any adequate idea of what he was 
 in his hour of popularity and pride. It is absolutely necessary for the 
 biographer to bring O'Connell on the stage in person. His own words, 
 and as far as possible his acts, must be reproduced. In reading his 
 speech, too, the reader must not go over it in a cold and critical spirit, 
 looking for the instances of clumsily-constructed sentences, the want of 
 elegance and finish, and the verbal inaccuracies to be found even in his 
 best speeches. This great oration for Magec is, indeed, at least to my 
 judgment, freer from faults than most of his other speeches. While 
 portions of it cannot bear the test of microscopic criticism, other parts 
 seem to me to show signs of unusual labor. But still, to appreciate it 
 justly, we must try, by the aid of imagination, to bring our minds into 
 something like the state of feeling that animated those who listened to 
 him, or at least those who read him, in 1813. Then we may have some 
 faint idea of the triumphant feelings of the Catholics and liberal or 
 national Protestants. Then we shall be able to understand the mingled 
 rage and dismay which seized and smote the hearts of the Castle and 
 the Ascendency faction. Eichmond, Peele and Saurin were devoured by 
 wrath. Both the aristocratic and popular sections of the Ascendency 
 faction were furious. But they were delirious with fear as well as rage. 
 Jack Giffard said in the corporation on the day of the trial: "The 
 Protestants of the metropolis are frightened." While O'Connell was 
 thundering oat his terrible invectives, the grave and plausible and 
 decorous Saurin appeared at first amazed at O'Connell's audacity. To 
 be told to his face, with scarcely any disguise, that he was a liar and a 
 slanderer, and the rest of it — was it not incredible? All his pride 
 failed to sustain him. It was too agonizing to be forced to listen to 
 such a torrent of denunciation before his friends, before his own sons 
 even. The commander-in-chief, Secretary Peele and other high govern- 
 ment functionaries, present in the court, vainly tried to comfort him 
 

FATHER TOM MAGUIRE. 
 
with their sympathy and their attentions. His dark, French-looking 
 face Hushed and pale by turns, his clammy brow, and his restless person 
 confessed the agitation and anguish of his mind. Probably another 
 reason, in addition to the severity of the so-called libel, for the extreme 
 vindictiveness of the prosecution was the fact that an article had 
 appeared in the Post, while Magee lay in prison, taunting the viceroy 
 with the manner in which lie prided himself on his illegitimate descent 
 from King Charles the Second, and his French mistress, the duchess of 
 Portsmouth. One passage in this article said that the duke had evi- 
 dently adopted the "opinion that it is a prouder and a better thing to 
 be a rich man's bastard than a poor man's heir." Another passage 
 said: "The Catholics are no more justly chargeable with the crime and 
 bigotry of a coward king, than you could be justly chargeable with the 
 compound turpitude of a perjured English tyrant and a prurient Gallic 
 
 w ." The antipathy of the Irish people fastened several nicknames 
 
 on this duke of Richmond. They called him the "duke of Poteen." 
 This satirized his convivial propensities and the carousals at the Castle, 
 where he emulated Rutland and Townshend of Bacchanalian memory. 
 The people also styled him the "marshal of Mogherow," Mogherow 
 being the scene of an Orange riot, of which he was said not to have 
 disapproved. These nicknames live in the squibs of the day : 
 
 "This is the marshal from Mogherow — 
 The duke of Poteen, whom nothing can cow! 
 Determined to batter the Catholic Board, 
 With its fifty thousand grievances stored." 
 
 Magee's trial was published in book form. The preface, written by 
 Counsellor Denis Scully, contains this true and significant sentence : 
 "The English nobility is English. The Scottish nobility is Scotch. 
 The Irish nobility is not Irish." This brief sentence contains the secret 
 of many of the calamities of the Irish people, and of much that darkens 
 Irish history. Ten thousand copies of the book were sold the day it 
 was published — a circulation that would be remarkable even in the 
 present age of miraculous printing and publication. It was translated 
 into French and Spanish. In Spain, indeed, an extraordinary value 
 seems to have been set upon it, for it is stated that every member of 
 the Cortes was presented with a copy. O'Connell, now so illustrious 
 
GG4 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 at home and abroad as a papular advocate, could afford to laugh at the 
 ridiculous abuse of the hireling press of the government. He could 
 smile when the Patriot unmeaningly compared him to "a bandy-legged 
 dancing-master," when the Dublin Journal styled him "a ruffian," when 
 another journalist challenged him to fight him "hilt to hilt," and when 
 a fourth prated about "the hereditary atrocities and recent bold crimi- 
 nalities of the Popish faction." • All this ribaldry and raving passed 
 away as idle breath. The weapons of his foes, however venomously 
 barbed and directed, dropped harmless from his panoply of genius nnd 
 patriotism, or were consumed by his flaming sword of eloquence. I 
 repeat, in Magee's case O'Connell was morally and virtually the victor. 
 Richmond, Peele and Saurin had, indeed, by a sentence probably illegal, 
 cast Magee into prison, but in doing so they had disgraced and dam- 
 aged themselves and British rule. 
 
 John Mitchel, in his ''Last Conquest of Ireland [perhaps]" has the 
 following vivid description of O'Connell as an advocate: " It would be 
 Ions; to tell you the series of legal battles he fought in the Four Courts 
 and at county assizes. His tone and manner were always defiant and 
 contemptuous. If he knew the judges were predetermined and the 
 jury well and truly packed, he condescended to argue no points of law; 
 but launched out into denunciation of the whole system of law and 
 government in Ireland ; informed the jurors that they knew they Avere 
 packed; charged the judges with having advised and urged on the 
 prosecution which they pretended to try ; in short, set his client and his 
 client's case at one side as a minor and collateral affair; took all Ireland 
 for his client, and often. made judges, sheriffs and juries feel that they 
 were the real criminals on trial. 
 
 " It is easy to understand that this conduct, if it did not save his 
 clients, inspirited the people. All Ireland was proud of him, and felt 
 that he had been sent as their deliverer." 
 
 Elsewhere Mr. Mitchel speaks of the "rough and rasping tongue" 
 with which O'Connell used to denounce " all kinds of injustice and big- 
 otry, packed juries, church-rates — in short, the most cherished princi- 
 ples and practices of 'our glorious constitution in church and state.' " 
 
 The reader has now some just notion of O'Conncll's gigantic might 
 as a popular advocate. Other cases of a political complexion, in which 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. GG5 
 
 he had previously gained increase of reputation, might be not unprofit- 
 al'ly dwelt upon, if I had space to spare. In 1811, the government 
 prosecuted for libel the notorious Watty Cox, proprietor of The Irish or 
 Watty Cox's Magazine, a periodical, to use the words of John O'Connell, 
 "of a strange rollicking character." O'Connell, as I have already inti- 
 mated, spoke in mitigation of punishment. However, poor Watty, who 
 was then a sharp thorn in the side of government, was found guilty on 
 two indictments, sentenced to the pillory and to imprisonment. Com- 
 paratively recent revelations have proved that, later, Watty made terms 
 with the government and was muzzled by a secret pension. 
 
 At a meeting of the gentlemen of the bar, on Saturday, May 30, 
 1812, O'Connell spoke in vindication of the privileges of the bar against 
 the usurpations of the benchers of the King's Inns. A Mr. Verner 
 Moore, a barrister, "had published, in the newspapers, a statement pur- 
 porting to detail a transaction, which he asserted to have occurred at the 
 last assizes of Omagh." For the publication of this statement of a 
 matter in which Mr. Moore had been interested, and for the truth of 
 which he had pledged himself, the benchers had summoned him before 
 them, had passed a vote of the severest censure on him, which they had 
 further directed should be read in all the courts on the first day of the 
 term following their proceedings. O'Connell delivered an able argument 
 calling in question their authority, which will be found in his son's un- 
 satisfactory collection of his speeches, and which will repay the curiosity 
 of the minute historical student. He concludes it by moving "that a 
 committee, consisting of three of the gentlemen of the bar, be appointed to 
 ascertain the authority of the benchers either to censure or disbar a bar- 
 rister." It appears that the benchers, so far from yielding any redress in 
 this matter, were even so arrogant as not to give the slightest acknowledg- 
 ment of having received the bar remonstrance. In this speech O'Connell 
 paid a tribute to the private worth of Thomas Addis Emmet, who, along 
 with Arthur O'Connor, had been disbarred in 1799 for connection with 
 the "treasons" of the "United Irishmen." O'Connell said that "those 
 who knew him were bound to say that a more worthy gentleman in 
 private life never lived." He also spoke of his having "had once the 
 pleasure to be personally acquainted" with him. 
 
 O'Connell and Mr. Finlav. a Protestant barrister whose name has 
 
P>66 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 already been honorably mentioned in this work (indeed, I may here add 
 that be was one of Magee's counsel), appeared, on Monday, the 19th of Oc- 
 tober, 1812, as counsel for the prosecutors in the matter of some charges 
 made by a large number of citizens of Dublin against the city police 
 magistrates, which were investigated by two commissioners appointed 
 by government — Mr. Sergeant Moore (Arthur Moore, afterwards a judge) 
 and Mr. Disney. A crowd attended, anxious to hear the case, which 
 was of considerable interest to the citizens. To the astonishment of all 
 present, the two government commissioners announced that they had 
 resolved not to permit the interference of counsel. Against this arbitrary 
 decision O'Connell spoke with his accustomed boldness. He insisted 
 "on the regularity of interference of counsel," denied by Commissioner 
 Moore. He dwelt on "the heinous charges'' against the magistrates, 
 which, he said, "should be sifted to the bottom." If the accused Avere 
 innocent, the exertions of a barrister could do them no harm ; if they 
 were guilty, "the exertions of an honest and zealous barrister were 
 peculiarly needed to point out the extent of their delinquency. . . . 
 Besides, it was to be recollected that those parties themselves enjoyed 
 the advantage of legal aid. There were no less than six of the accused 
 who were themselves capable of performing the duty he had undertaken." 
 He solemnly protested "against the foul play of not allowing the benefits 
 of legal aid upon the one side as upon the other." He would stay there 
 till the commissioners ordered "him to walk out of court." He was 
 "the retained counsel of the memorialists, and if he were to be disbarred, 
 he could not, of course, help it. but this he would most certainly do. . . . 
 If the court should decide against him, he would instantly throw up his 
 brief and advise his clients not to attempt going one step farther. . . . 
 
 "Without legal aid this inquiry would be fruitless." It was a most 
 important one, deeply concerning " the citizens of Dublin in their lives, 
 liberties and properties." The magistrates were accused of gross mal- 
 administration of justice. "Curious instances of imposition would be 
 exposed to view — penalties inflicted sometimes with ludicrous whim- 
 sicality, sometimes with inveterate cruelty. 
 
 "He, therefore, claimed to be heard as a barrister — he claimed to be 
 heard as a householder, as a citizen of Dublin." In the courts of law, 
 "high and low, of every degree," in the House of Commons itself, the 
 
assistance of barristers was admitted. "How, then, by what authority, 
 and according to what maxims of expediency or justice, could that court, 
 and that court alone, reject?" Neither the energy of O'Counell, nor the 
 able argument by which Mr. Finlay supported him, availed to move 
 Sergeant Moore and Mr. Disney from their dogged purpose. 
 
 I pass by O'Connell's able legal argument in the case of Taafe (the 
 eccentric '98 hero, cf whom some whimsical anecdotes have already been 
 narrated in this work) and others against the chief-justice of the King's 
 Bench for alleged false imprisonment. As counsel for Taafe, O'Connell 
 was on this occasion pitted against one of those distinguished brothers, 
 the two Pennefathers, who became, in after days, the one chief-justice 
 of the Queen's Bench, the other a baron of the Exchequer. The Dublin 
 Freeman's Journal of Saturday, November the 1-lth, 1812, speaking of 
 O'Connell's speech of the previous day. says: "Mr. O'Connell appeared 
 in court this day to make his reply to the arguments of Mr. Pcnnel'ather, 
 as delivered on Tuesday last. The court was excessively crowded, and 
 it may with truth be said that no person, who came for the purpose of 
 enjoying a display of forensic powers, went away disappointed." After 
 many adjournments and hearings, judgment was finally given "against 
 the Catholics." 
 
 I shall conclude this chapter with some notice of one more case, in 
 which our hero won credit, and which possesses considerable interest; 
 1 refer to that of Hugh Fitzpatrick. The reader has no doubt already 
 gleaned some particulars of this case from O'Connell's defence of Magee. 
 Hugh Fitzpatrick was the printer and publisher of Scully's "Statement 
 of the Penal Laws." He had been for a great number of years in busi- 
 ness. He was an excellent citizen, well-informed, and irreproachable in 
 his moral character. All this, however, was powerless to save him from 
 government persecution. The following note was appended to a passage 
 in Counsellor Scully's valuable work : "At the summer assizes, Kilkenny, 
 1810, one Barry was convicted of a capital offence, for which he was 
 afterwards executed. This man's case was truly tragical. He was 
 wholly innocent; was a respectable Catholic farmer in the county Water- 
 ford, in good circumstances. His innocence was clearly established in 
 the interval between his conviction and execution ; yet he was hanged, 
 publicly avowing his innocence. There were some shocking circum- 
 
 
668 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 stances attending this case, which the duke of Bichmond's administra- 
 tion may yet be invited to explain to Parliament," 
 
 This passage Attorney-General Saurin pounced on and prosecuted. 
 His opening address was vindictive to a degree. He abused the alleged 
 libel in furious language. Indeed, he fell foul of the entire "Statement 
 of the Penal Laws." This audacious book had no "regard to truth and 
 decency." It calumniated the administration of justice under even- 
 successive lord-lieutenant. It was full of "libels," ay, of "infamous" 
 libels; it was "a tissue of libels the most shocking and mischievous 
 that could be invented." It was an "abomination"; it was full of 
 "Jesuitical art" ; "it was a call upon the people to break out into civil 
 and religious Avar." One of Saurin's statements was undoubtedly true — 
 that wherein he told the jury that the note referring to the victim of 
 judicial murder, Barry, was "sufficient to inflame the Catholic mind to 
 madness." He was dreadfully indignant at having, the night before, 
 been "served with a Crown summons, on the part of the defendant, to 
 attend as a witness in this case, together with the Eight Honorable Lord 
 Norbury, Sir Charles Saxton and "William Gregory, Esq., requiring him 
 to produce and give in evidence the affidavits" of several parties "and 
 all other papers relating to Philip Barry, who was tried for highway 
 robbery and executed for the same, as he should answer the Contrary at 
 his peril." Those, he insisted, who advised this proceeding well knew 
 that the judges would not permit the Court of King's Bench to be con- 
 verted "into a Court of Parliament to try the King's government on the 
 arraignment of the publisher of an infamous libel ; ... it belonged to 
 his office alone to put the subject on his defence for an imputed crime. 
 It is not for the libeller to arrogate that privilege." Not content with 
 his onslaught on the book and its publisher, the attorney-general 
 resolved, before he sat down, to have a fling at the author, who, he well 
 knew, was Counsellor Scully, then sitting in court. As the scene now 
 becomes dramatic, I give the concluding passage of Saurin's address 
 without curtailment : 
 
 "I shall say very little more upon the subject; but I cannot avoid 
 taking notice that this work — 'The Statement of the Penal Laws' — is 
 reported to be the production of a banister. I have no authority or 
 evidence to warrant me to say it is so. I would to God I had the au- 
 
thority to say it is not so! But if it be the work of a barrister, I must 
 take leave to say that I am sorry for it; because I should be sorry that 
 there should be a barrister such a disgrace to his profession as the author 
 of this mischievous and malignant libel. If he be a barrister, I trust 
 he will learn, from the verdict of that jury and the judgment of the 
 court, to appreciate the magnitude of the crime of which he has been 
 guilty. Sheltered as he may be, under the anonymous character in 
 which he has issued forth his poison to the public, from the sentence 
 of the law, he will yet stand convicted in the mind of every honest man, 
 who loves the constitution and peace of the country, as a great criminal 
 and malefactor, and the remainder of his life cannot be so well employed 
 as in making the best atonement possible for this violation of the law 
 and the wicked attempt which he has made to disturb the peace and 
 happiness of the country." 
 
 "My lords," said Counsellor Scully, rising in the court, "I have an 
 observation to make on this subject. If the attorney-general will un- 
 dertake to put the truth of the 'Statement' into a proper course of 
 candid investigation, I can inform him who the author is ; and I throw 
 out this challenge to him." 
 
 "I did presume and had anticipated," cried the attorney-general, 
 "that such an attempt would be made, and I am now confirmed in my 
 opinion. The gentleman knows right well, as he takes the matter upon 
 himself, how and where to bring the acts of the government into ques- 
 tion. ... I am here prosecuting a libel, and would not stoop, even if 
 the law would permit, in suc^ a case to defend the government on the 
 arraignment of the libellous author of 'The Statement of the Penal 
 Code.' " 
 
 "When the government officials had concluded their case, the cele- 
 brated Peter Burrowes (a Protestant advocate) spoke ably for the defence. 
 He pronounced a panegyric on Scully's book. He admitted the warmth 
 of some passages. "But no man," said he. "whose mind is not heated 
 with prejudice upon this subject, can examine the book without feeling 
 a sympathy with the author. ... I never knew a cold-hearted man do 
 a noble act. This work is written with the ardor and spirit of a man 
 N'ho felt what he described, and the intent and bearing of the entire 
 work is to be taken into consideration. . . . The object of the write] 
 
(J7U THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 was a condemnation of the Penal Code. ... It is not calculated so 
 much to alarm as to make an impression on the Protestant heart favor- 
 able to the Catholic cause — relying upon and appealing to the benignity 
 of their nature and their enlightened feelings. It is not imputed to any 
 individual that he is influenced by an unjust, oppressive or illiberal 
 spirit; but the author complains that the anti-Catholic code of laws 
 created and prolongs a hostile disposition ; that they constitute an 
 engine of power which is not to be trusted with s.f'ety to any body 
 of men; that this power, being founded on jealousy and distrust, will 
 probably be exercised with harshness in whatever hands it may be 
 placed. Is not this a fair consideration of the subject? Does it reflect 
 upon the Protestant creed — the Protestant people?" Mr. Burrowes 
 dwelt at some length on the case of Barry, the victim of British justice 
 referred to in the "libellous" note. He confidently asserted the illegal- 
 ity of his conviction, and maintained that the note "alluded to the noble 
 judge" (Norbury), who tried Barry. The object of the Crown lawyers 
 was to show that it vilified the duke of Eichmond. 
 
 As he (Burrowes) sat down, a barrister, named Burrowes Campbell, 
 who had been the unfortunate Barry's counsel, was called and examined 
 by O'Connell. I shall give this examination in full, because it is a won- 
 derfully striking illustration of what the administration of justice, under 
 British rule, was in those evil times. 
 
 "Do you recollect anything of a person of the name of Barry, who 
 was tried in Kilkenny in the year 1810?" "I do." 
 
 "You grounded your application to postpone the trial of the unfor- 
 tunate Barry on the affidavit?" (The reader will hear presently the nature 
 of this affidavit.) 
 
 "My first application," replied Mr. Burrowes Campbell, "was made 
 on the first day of the assizes, not on that affidavit, but on the grounds 
 of which the judge had judicial cognizance — namely, the short time that 
 the prisoner was in the county" (Kilkenny), "having been transmitted to 
 take his trial from the last assize town" (Clonmel), "and the impractica- 
 bility of procuring his witnesses on such short notice. The learned 
 judge said he would not grant the motion; the trial must go on." 
 
 "Was there any opposition made by the persons conducting the 
 prosecution to the postponement you required?" 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 071 
 
 " None whatever. Lord Xorbury asked was there sufficient business 
 to employ the court that day exclusive of Barry's case; and on being 
 informed that there was, he consented to postpone the case to the morrow 
 only! 1 then drew Barry's affidavit, and moved upon it." 
 
 " Did any magistrate of the name of Elliott interfere ?" 
 
 "Yes; he was sitting in the bar-box when one of the bar mentioned 
 to me that he (Mr. Elliott) knew three of the parties mentioned in the 
 affidavit. I asked Mr. Elliott, in open court, if these parties resided at 
 the distance stated, and he said they did. I therefore moved a post- 
 ponement, to enable my client to procure their attendance, but the judge 
 thought proper to refuse the motion." 
 
 "What passed afterward?" demanded O'Connell. 
 
 " Some things," replied Mr. Campbell, "which I do not wish to repeat, 
 and therefore request you will not ask me, if not material to do so." 
 
 "However unpleasant, sir," rejoined O'Connell, "it maybe to you to 
 answer or me to ask, my duty compels me to request an answer." 
 
 " I told the judge that I would not go through the mockery of a trial, 
 when I knew the man had not his witnesses, and that if the trial were 
 called on, his lordship should defend the man himself. I accordingly 
 threw up my brief and left the court." "Anything more?" 
 
 " Yes ; I received an authoritative mandate to attend the trial, which, 
 however, I contemptuously rejected." 
 
 "From whom did you receive it?" "From the judge." 
 
 " On what grounds did the judge refuse the application by affidavit?" 
 
 "He said he had communication with the magistrates, and that if a 
 trial was to be postponed upon an affidavit so complete and' profes- 
 sionally drawn as that I offered, the business could not be proceeded 
 with, as prisoners would only have to employ counsel to draw an affidavit 
 when they wished to put off their trials. / asked his lordship ivhat he 
 ivould have said if the affidavit had been defective." 
 
 " Did you, after the conviction of this unfortunate man, make any 
 application, on his behalf, to the judge who tried him, in order to obtain 
 mercy?" 
 
 "After the conviction I wrote a respectful letter to Lord Norbury, en- 
 closing the voluntary affidavits of those persons who were to have been 
 Barry's witnesses, in which they swore that he was in their company, at 
 
 43 
 
a distance of forty-five miles, when the robbery was committed ! To this I 
 never received any answer except a verbal one, which I cannot take 
 upon me to say had been sent by his lordship. I then applied to the 
 attorney-general; " 
 
 "Did yon mention the circumstance to any person?" 
 
 " I did. I talked publicly of it in the hall of the Four Courts, and 
 told it to everybody I met." 
 
 " In speaking of it, did you represent it as an ordinary occurrence or 
 otherwise?" (Here the witness shook his head.) 
 
 Mr. Justice Day observed that the shake of the head was a sufficient 
 intimation of Ids sentiments. 
 
 Mr. Campbell answered: "I looked upon it as otherwise, and thought 
 the judge's conduct in refusing to postpone the trial as contrary to law." 
 
 Mr. O'Connell here concluded the direct examination. Mr. Solicitor- 
 General Bushe cross-examined Mr. Burrowes Campbell. He elicited 
 scarcely any new particular. I give one question and answer : 
 
 Solicitor-General. " Did you ever represent that pardon was refused 
 to this convict because he was a Roman Catholic?" 
 
 Mr. Burrowes Campbell. " Never. Though I sincerely love the Roman 
 Catholics, and hope for their emancipation, yet I don't know that they 
 are so badly treated as that," 
 
 Mr. 0' 'Council [re-examining the witness). "Not so bad! No; they 
 are not all hanged! You have been asked whether you made the appli- 
 cation to the judge and to the attorney-general on the same grounds as 
 those stated in the former affidavit. Were there any other grounds?" 
 
 Mr." Campbell. "I made it on the grounds of two affidavits — the one 
 made by James Rodgers and three other persons named in the affidavit 
 sworn to postpone the trial, stating that on the day charged in the 
 indictment the convict, Patrick Barry, was in their company at Kilcnn- 
 non, at the distance of forty or fifty miles from the place where the 
 alleged robbery was committed, and that they never heard of his being 
 accused of the robbery till after his trial. I sent the affidavits, with the 
 memorial, to Mr. Saurin {attorney-general). I never imputed any cen- 
 sure to the duke of Richmond, but to another and a different person. 
 I mentioned the circumstance to every gentleman of the bar with whom 
 I was acquainted." 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 673 
 
 Mr. Justice Day. "In what manner did yon speak of it?" 
 
 Mr. Campbell. "I always spoke of it as a most shocking event." 
 
 Mr. Q'ConneM, "Yon had no doubt it was a shocking circumstance?" 
 
 Mr. Campbell. " It was a most shocking circumstance." 
 
 Mr. Justice Day. " You say there was nothing imputable to the gov- 
 erni>.ent?" 
 
 Mr. Campbell, "Certainly not— that I know." 
 
 Mr. CConncll, "Are you of opinion that the conduct of the judge 
 was a fit subject for Parliamentary inquiry?" 
 
 Mr. Campbell " I am ; and I did at the time think so, and repeatedly 
 said so." 
 
 Mr. 0' Council. "Did you not, by your letter to the attorney-general, 
 offer to attend him, and give every further explanation concerning this 
 illegal transaction, and did the attorney-general eve: send to or call upon 
 you ?" 
 
 Mr. Campbell. "1 did make such an offer; and I never heard further 
 from the attorney-general." 
 
 Mr. O'Connell. " Pray, Mr. Campbell, was not this melancholy trans- 
 action a matter of public notoriety, and in everybody's mouth long before 
 the publication of the ' Statement of the Penal Laws ' ? " 
 
 Mr. Campbell, "Oh, very long. I spoke of it publicly in November 
 term, 1810. The 'Statement' was not published, as I believe, until 
 May, 1812." Mr. Campbell then withdrew. 
 
 The foregoing scene, taken by itself, throws a clearer light on the 
 real nature of British rule in Ireland than all the distorted pictures and 
 sophistical disquisitions — in other words, cdl the historical writings, as 
 far as they relate to Ireland — of that erudite master of mystification, the 
 thrice paradoxical James Anthony Fronde. 
 
 It is unnecessary to say much more of Fitzpatrick's trial. O'Connell, 
 when the court refused to allow him to speak to evidence, displayed his 
 usual readiness and ingenuity by getting out, in a few words, the clever 
 argument he had intended to use, pointing out a manifest flaw in the 
 pleadings on the Crown side. The solicitor-general next replied, and then 
 the chief-justice charged. As might be expected, the "jury, exclusively 
 Protestant, in a city where many Catholics of wealth and rank might 
 easily be found" — to use the words Peter Burrowes had addressed to 
 
G74 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 them in his speech for the defence — speedily found the prisoner guilty. 
 Finally, Mr. Burro wes objected to Lord Downes' charge. "The learned 
 judge," he said, "ought not to have directed the finding of the aver- 
 ments." 
 
 When the court sat next day, February the 11th, 1813, in pursuance 
 of the objection started by Mr. Burrowes, O'Connell rose to make an 
 application to set aside the verdict on the ground of misdirection by the 
 judge, and as being against law and evidence. He had hardly com- 
 menced when Saurin entered the court and called on Mi". Fitzpatrick to 
 appear in person. Fitzpatrick immediately presented himself, upon 
 which the inveterate attorney-general, like an odious bloodhound of the 
 law as he was, moved that he should then stand committed. O'Connell, 
 "quick as powder to the linstock," darts out a retort "that such a 
 motion on the part of the right honorable attorney-general was just 
 what had been expected." The court, however, complied with Saurin's 
 motion, and ordered that Fitzpatrick should stand committed. 
 
 O'Connell then entered upon a long and able legal argument. When 
 he had concluded, the chief-justice said "that Mr. O'Connell had made 
 much more of the argument than in the beginning he thought could he 
 done." Still he refused the motion. A suggestion was then made that 
 it should remain over till the next term ; and, finally, Fitzpatrick was, 
 for the present, let out on bail, himself in one thousand and two others 
 in five hundred pounds each. O'Connell solaced himself with a parting 
 fling at the judges: "You were already offered," quoth he, "to have 
 that requisition complied with upon fair terms. The bail shall be 
 immediately prod i \ ced . ' ' 
 
 On Friday, the 28th May, 1813, Hugh Fitzpatrick's counsel vainly 
 moved for an arrest of judgment. He was ordered into the custody of 
 the sheriff. An application that he might be suffered to remain out on 
 his heavy recognizance until Monday was refused. A single day way 
 then begged for, in order to give him an opportunity of framing an affi- 
 davit in mitigation of punishment. Even this was refused by the Crown. 
 
 Next day, Fitzpatrick put in an affidavit in mitigation of punish- 
 ment. It was read by the officer of the court, What though it called 
 attention to his blameless, nay meritorious, life; what though it spoke 
 of his advanced years, his impaired health, his large family, young and 
 
helpless, his sickly wife, whose existence was precarious, and whose 
 strength was wholly unequal to the task of attending to his business 
 and household; what of all this? Did he expect to soften the heart of 
 Saurin? That sanctimonious bigot vented his bitterness in remarks on 
 the wickedness of the libel. He urged with asperity that, as Fitzpatrick 
 refused to give up the author of the "libel," the court could not take 
 any notice of the plea in mitigation of sentence. 
 
 Accordingly, Hugh Fitzpatrick was sentenced to pay a tine of two 
 hundred pounds and to be confined within the dreary and noisome walls 
 of Newgate for eighteen months. Reader, think on this punishment! 
 Think on the alleged offence. Remember that few books have ever been 
 printed, that have done more service to the cause of trampled human 
 beings, than Scully's " Statement of the Penal Laws." Bear in mind 
 the nature of unfortunate Barry's case, and the conduct of Norbury, 
 which the "libellous" note held up to merited execration. 
 
 When the eighteen months of his incarceration had slowly passed 
 over, Hugh Fitzpatrick came forth from prison an all but ruined 
 man — gray-haired, old before his time, harassed with anxieties. Ten 
 thousand pounds, it is said — the provision accumulated for his children 
 — had melted away from him. What wonder that he was soon smitten 
 by a stroke of paralysis? From this he never entirely recovered. To 
 complete his misfortunes, his business, formerly so extensive, which, in 
 consequence of the broken health of his excellent wife — who, I may 
 observe, is represented to have been a woman of intellect and energy — 
 had dwindled away more and more, every week and every month, during 
 the lapse of his imprisonment, now finally passed out of his hands. He 
 appears to have borne all his trials with uncomplaining fortitude. 
 
 A word more about the Magee* case. O'Connell made another motion 
 
 * As the Magee case was one of the most memorable of the Irish state-trials, the reader may 
 feel some curiosity to have a list of the names of the judges and jury ; also the names of the counsel 
 on both sides. The judges were, the chief-justice, Lord Downes, and Justices Day, Daly and Os- 
 borne. The counsel for the Crown were, Attorney-General Saurin, Solicitor-General Bushe, Ser- 
 geants Moore, Ball and McMahon. The counsel for the defendant were, Messrs. O'Connell, Wal- 
 lace, Hamilton, Finlay and Charles Phillips, afterwards so famous for his somewhat too ornate and 
 high-flown eloquence. O'Connell's four colleagues, it may be observed, were Protestants. The 
 Orange packed jury consisted of, Leland Crosthwaite, Thomas Andrews, Bladen Swiney, Richard 
 Palmer, Thomas Rochibrt, Alexander Montgomery, Martin Keene, Benjamin Darley, William 
 Watson, William Walsh, Richard Cooke and Edward Clibborne. 
 
676 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 to set aside the verdict, He sustained it with a powerful legal argument, 
 but it was vain to dream of moving the men on the bench. Before 
 commencing another chapter, I think I may boldly assert that, without 
 any farther research, the sketches of state- prosecutions, and especially 
 the copious extracts from O'Connell's forensic efforts, which make up the 
 present long one, go pretty far to supply materials for a complete refuta- 
 tion of the plausible and ingenious misrepresentations, regarding the rela- 
 tions between England and Ireland, woven by the cunning brain of that 
 arch-sophist and outrageous enemy of the Irish race, James Anthony 
 Fronde. 
 
 Indeed, I flatter myself that refutations of Fronde's peculiar views 
 may be found in many portions of this work.* 
 
 * The books from which I have chiefly drawn the materials of the foregoing chapter are, " The 
 Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P., edited, with Historical Notices, etc.," by his son, John 
 O'Connell, Esq.; "The History of Ireland from the Treaty of Limerick to the Present Time," by 
 John Mitchel; "The Last Conquest of Ireland (perhaps)," by John Mitchel; "The Life and Times 
 of Daniel O'Connell, with Sketches of his Contemporaries, Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Parliament 
 street ;" etc. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 siow progress of the cause of emancipation — napoleon's apfkoachixg downfall — 
 England's prosperity Ireland's bane — Grattan's bill and Canning's clauses — 
 Failure of the bill — Its repudiation by the majority of the Irish Catholics — 
 Vote of thanks to the Irish prelates — The aristocratic section of the Irish 
 Catholics opposed to the vote; Counsellor Bellew and his brother Sir Edward 
 — Corruption of the former — O'Connell "demolishes" his antagonists — Misunder- 
 standing between O'Connell and Lord Fingal on the subject of the regent's 
 pledge — O'Connell ridicules Lord Kenyon — Enthusiastic reception of Dr. Mil- 
 ner's name at a Catholic meeting in Dublin — The English Catholics generally 
 in favor of the veto — O'Connell champions the cause of Carmine, princess of 
 Wales — His noble sentiments on the subject of repeal — He lashes the Orange- 
 men — Ludicrous instance of English calumny against Ireland — Profligacy of the 
 jury system — Address to Henry Grattan — O'Connell tries to get up a movement 
 for the promotion of Irish manufactures — Brings forward a vote of thanks to 
 the Presbyterian Synod — His spirit of tolerance — Lord Whitworth succeeds 
 Richmond — Meetings and dissens:ons in Cork — O'Connell chaired — English insults 
 to Dr. Milner — Death of Lieutenant O'Connell — More of the veto question — 
 Presentation of plate voted to O'Connell; Mr. Finlay's address — O'Connell 
 creates a sensation by going to a blble meeting — baron fletcher's charge 10 
 the grand-jury of the county' wexford — proposed application for sympathy to 
 the Spanish Cortes — O'Connell's opinion of Maynooth — An American privateer 
 off Dublin — O'Connell's great professional success — The parson and the girl 
 who sold the curious eggs. 
 
 l&l^irAVING told the story of O'Connell's rise to forensic fame and 
 r fpTb political leadership at considerable length, having also given a 
 $w&egs! profusion of specimens of his eloquence both at public meet- 
 >£* ings and at the bar, I shall condense the events of his life 
 \$ during several years following Magee's trial — in the course of which 
 the Catholic cause, owing to many unfavorable circumstances, made little 
 progress — into a comparatively small compass. I shall pass over with 
 but slight notice many powerful speeches of O'Connell, full of deep 
 interest for the minute student of his biography and of Irish history, in 
 which he displayed at least as much ability as he did in most of those to 
 which the reader's attention has been already called. As I proceed in 
 my narrative, the causes of the slow progress of Catholic emancipation 
 will be made manifest. Perhaps not the least of these was the reviving 
 
 677 
 
678 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. 
 
 power of England. The imperial star of the great Napoleon was now 
 fast falling from the heavens. He had lost in the year 1812 a mighty 
 army amid the snows of Russia. In 1813 another splendid host, after 
 the most brilliant efforts and tremendous victories, had been shattered 
 and all but annihilated during the closing months of the campaign 
 especially in the gigantic struggle at Leipzig. Everywhere the French 
 eagles were being driven back on old France. The old Castilian fierce- 
 ness against invaders was in a blaze. Already the bones of near five hun- 
 dred thousand Frenchmen were whitening on the hills of Spain. In all 
 quarters disaster was making dim the lustre of French renown. England 
 was at the head of the victorious coalition of the uprisen powers of 
 Europe. "England's difficulty is always Ireland's opportunity." Eng- 
 land's prosperity and glory are invariably Ireland's ignominy and bane! 
 
 It is necessary, however, that I should first give a rapid revieAv of 
 several other events that filled the year 1813 besides the state-prosecu- 
 tions noticed in the last chapter. Of these the most important was the 
 introduction into Parliament of Grattan's relief bill. It was a very im- 
 perfect measure. Catholics, indeed, were to sit in Parliament, to possess 
 corporate rights and to be eligible for civil and military offices. Cath- 
 olics, however, were not to be eligible for the offices of lord-lieutenant 
 or lord-chancellor. But the bill was worse than imperfect; it was insult- 
 ing to Catholics. As a security to the Protestants, the Catholics were 
 to swallow a new comprehensive oath abjuring the alleged power of the 
 pope to depose or put to death monarchs, abjuring obedience to his 
 temporal power, the infallibility of the pope as an article of faith, and 
 the principle that no faith should be kept with heretics. They were 
 further to swear that they would support the Protestant succession, and 
 the existing state of property; that they would discover all treasons 
 within their cognizance; that they would net attempt to injure the 
 state or overthrow the Protestant Church ; that, unless they were con- 
 vinced of his loyalty, they (laymen and clergy) would not nominate or 
 elect any Catholic bishop or vicar apostolic. 
 
 But even this was not the worst. In addition to the security of the 
 oath, certain clauses, suggested by Sir John Hippesley, that inveterate 
 stickler for the veto, were proposed by Canning and Castlereagh. Tlies^ 
 are known as "the Canning clauses." Five commissioners were to con- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 079 
 
 stitute a board to examine into and certify to the loyalty of all candi- 
 dates for bishoprics. The same commissioners, together with two Roman 
 Catholic bishops, the lord-chancellor and one of the secretaries of state, 
 were to exercise surveillance over all balls or briefs received from Rome, 
 with the proviso that they should not betray the secrets of the Catholic 
 Church. When at last an amendment was proposed, striking out the 
 clause that gave the Catholics the privilege of sitting and voting in 
 Parliament, the bill was withdrawn and finally lost. (See, for fuller 
 particulars, Grattan's speech, May 11, 1813.) 
 
 While this bill was in progress, Grattan advocated it with his usual 
 power. But all his eloquence failed to recommend it to his countrymen. 
 The Irish Catholics were thrown into the greatest commotion. Clergy 
 and people, almost unanimously, rejected emancipation on such terms. 
 The insidious "Canning clauses," the tendency of which was to subject 
 the Catholic hierarchy and clergy to state control, kindled especial indig- 
 nation. The aristocratic section, indeed, of the Irish Catholics were 
 favorable to the bill. Lord Trimleston bewailed its loss. I may also 
 observe that "the English Catholics" (to nse the words of Mr. Mitchel), 
 "not having any national interest at stake in the matter, were quite 
 favorable to the project, and used their utmost endeavors to have it 
 accepted at Rome, and recommended from thence. English influence 
 was then very strong at Rome. The pope was a prisoner in France; 
 and it was to the coalition of European sovereigns against Bonaparte 
 that the court of Rome looked for its re-establishment." We shall 
 presently see a strange effect of this English influence. Meanwhile, 
 the captivity of Pius the Seventh, apparently placing him under the 
 control of the French emperor, was used by the vetoists as an argument 
 in favor of the concession of "securities" to the British government. 
 
 While the bill was pending, various Catholic meetings took place in 
 Dublin, and various speeches were delivered by O'Connell, for the most 
 part bearing reference to the bill, as being for the time the all-absorbing 
 topic of interest. I shall briefly notice some of those meetings and 
 harangues. 
 
 On the 29th of May, 1813, our hero read in the Catholic Board the 
 unanimous repudiation by the Irish Catholic prelates of the proposed 
 religious "securities." He then delivered a speech of considerable 
 
680 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 length, characterized by his usual power, in which he treated with 
 scorn the commission contemplated by the bill. He assumed that Peel, 
 whom he nicknamed "Orange Peel," and called "a raw youth, squeezed 
 out the workings of I know not what factory in England" (Peel's fattier, 
 old Sir Robert, ivas a successful cotton-spinner), and sent over to Ireland 
 "before he got rid of the foppery of perfumed handkerchiefs" — he 
 assumed that Peel, Lord Manners, the chancellor, "the duke of Rich- 
 mond's privy councillor, the Right Honorable Doctor Duigenan! . . . 
 that religious bulldog particularly fitted for worrying Popish bishops," 
 William Saurin and Jack Giffard, would be the live commissioners. He 
 ended by moving a vote of thanks to the "Catholic prelates in Ireland 
 for their ever-vigilant and zealous attention to the interests of the Cath- 
 olic Church in Ireland." 
 
 To this Anthony Strong Hussey moved, as an amendment, that the 
 bishops should simply be thanked for their communication. That pri- 
 vately-pensioned aristocrat, the stiff and solemn Counsellor Bellew, sup- 
 ported Hussey's motion in an able, but discreditable speech. His 
 brother, Sir Edward Bellew, took the same side in a theological dis- 
 course. O'Connell replied. He said of Bellew's oration that "it was a 
 speech of much talent and much labor and preparation." Quoth Bel- 
 lew, " I spoke extempore." O'Connell retorts : " We shall see whether 
 this extempore effort of the learned gentleman will appear in the news- 
 papers to-morrow in the precise words in which it was uttered this day." 
 He next sets his audience laughing at Messrs. Hussev and Bagot. The 
 former, being of "an economical turn of mind," is "stingy and niggard" 
 of praise; the latter, Dan says, "told us that he had made a speech but 
 a fortnight ago which we did not understand, and he has now added an- 
 other which is unintelligible; . . . and so . . . he concludes most logic- 
 ally that the bishops were wrong, and that he and Mr. Hussey are right." 
 Sir Edward Bellew's "learned and lengthened distinction between essen- 
 tial and non-essential discipline" is now ridiculed. Presently he says, 
 "And now I address myself to the learned brother of the theological 
 baronet," Counsellor Bellew, it appears, had asked attention because 
 he so seldom addressed the audience. " It reminds me," says O'Connell, 
 "of the prayer of the English officer before battle: 'Great Lord,' said 
 he, 'during the forty years I have lived I never troubled you before with 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 681 
 
 ;i single prayer. I have, therefore, a right that you should grant me one 
 request, and do just as I desire, fortius once!'" After causing great 
 laughter, O'Connell asks the assembly to listen to him unravelling "the 
 spider-web" of Bellow's sophistry, on grounds different from that gentle- 
 man's claim — namely, because he [O'Connell) constantly "attended to 
 the varying posture of their affairs." 
 
 Mr. Bellow was one of the first Catholics called to the bar after the 
 relaxation of the penal prohibition. His aristocratic birth and connec- 
 tions gave him great advantages. At one time he had the lion's share 
 of the Catholic business. He was six years receiving a secret pension 
 from government before his corruption became known. The English 
 reformers got at the list of private pensioners ; among them O'Connell 
 read the name of Bellew. From that moment O'Connell had only to 
 say, "I thank God I am not a pensioner," in order to cover Bellew with 
 confusion, silence his opposition and set the audience against him. This 
 was the more mortifying to Counsellor Bellew on account of his punc- 
 tilious disposition. His favorite motto was, "Touch my honor, touch 
 my eye." It is stated, however, that this did not prevent him from 
 accepting an additional pension of £200 per annum — perhaps the reward 
 of his vicious speech — shortly after the meeting I have just noticed. 
 
 At a meeting of the Catholic Board on the 29th of May, 1813, 
 O'Connell spoke at considerable length on the subject of the prince- 
 regent's pledges with respect to Catholic emancipation. O'Connell 
 asserted that he had heard Lord Fingal state, in Fitzpatrick's shop, that 
 the regent had made him a verbal pledge in favor of emancipation, in 
 presence of "Lord Clifden and the late Lord Petre;" which Lord Fingal 
 had immediately after committed to paper. O'Connell added that when 
 Lord Fingal had made this statement "there were three or four others 
 present, one of whom was his" [O'ConneWs) "respected friend, Major 
 Bryan," and that the statement "could not have been intended for any 
 secresy." O'Connell concluded by moving that the earl of Fingal be 
 requested to communicate to the Board the contents of the paper con- 
 taining the prince's declaration. Major Bryan then bore testimony to 
 the accuracy of O'Connell's statement. Sir Francis Goold, he said, was 
 also presBiit when Lord Fingal related the circumstance. Mr. Bagot 
 expressed an opinion that "Lord Fingal would not consent to the request 
 
682 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 that was about to be made to him — nay, he had authority for avowing 
 the fact. Why should he, then, be placed in an invidious and disagree- 
 able position?" Mr. Bagot also "deprecated a warfare with the first 
 magistrate of these realms, who could do service, and might do injury. 
 Some gentlemen seemed to consider such a warfare useful to the cause 
 of Ireland." 
 
 O'Connell replied to Mr. Bagot. He showed that, while the Cath- 
 olics were full of " praises of the regent and full of their hopes from him, 
 calling him their early friend, their best and proudest hope, it was then, 
 even then, in the full tide of their warm affections, that they had been 
 met by a state-prosecution. ... It was then that the common police- 
 justices were sent to arrest the noble earl at their head." It was long 
 after this prosecution that "the 'unworthy witchery' was mourned." 
 The prince's favorites, too, "the god-like Perceval" and Lord Yarmouth, 
 were their enemies. O'Connell then moved that the earl of Donough- 
 more be requested to present their petition to the House of Lords. He 
 next criticised severely Grattan's bill, a bill drawn up by three Protest- 
 ant lawyers — Messrs. Wallace, Burton and Burrowes; "not a single 
 Catholic consulted upon it." He praised Grattan's "more than human" 
 eloquence. Grattan was himself incapable of deception, "but the very 
 generosity and nobleness of his mind exposes him to the delusions of 
 others." O'Connell protests strongly against the course pursued, and 
 sneers at Canning as "a powerful framer of jests" and at Castlereagh 
 "the speech ing man." 
 
 The application made by the secretary of the Board to Loud Fingal, 
 in consequence of O'Connell's motion, produced no good effect; indeed, 
 it only caused unpleasantness — assertions on one side and denials on 
 the other. Lord Fingal considered "that conversations between indi- 
 viduals, of whatever rank, were not fit subjects of public discussion. 
 The pledge referred to was not in his possession." In short, there was 
 a deal of unprofitable "fending and proving" — O'Connell and Major 
 Bryan on the one part, Lords Fingal and Clifden and Sir Francis Goold 
 on the other. At this distance of time, the dispute is not, if it ever were, 
 a matter of great interest; still less is it a matter of importance. 
 
 On the 13th of June, at an aggregate meeling in Fishamble Street 
 Theatre, when O'Connell mentioned the name of Dr. Milner, the bishop 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 083 
 
 of Castaballa, the journals of the day tell us he was interrupted by 
 acclamations. Every voice greeted the distinguished English prelate's 
 name. Clapping of hands and heating of feet continued for several 
 minutes, renewed at three successive intervals. The distinct resolution 
 in Dr. Milner's favor, on account of his co-operation with the Prelates 
 of Ireland in opposing the ecclesiastical regulations of G rattan's bill, 
 when moved at a later period of the proceedings, drew down thunders 
 of applause. The whole assembly rose, as if moved by a single soul. 
 The men uncovered and waved their hats; "the ladies, too, came for- 
 ward and by courtesies signified their participation in the general feel- 
 ing.'' When the burst of enthusiasm at the first announcement of Dr. 
 Milner's name had subsided, O'Connell spoke on the position of the 
 Catholic cause. He laughed the relief bill and the proposed " securi- 
 ties" to scorn, insisted that Grattan was "mistaken," gave expression to 
 the repugnance he felt towards Canning, who, he said, only atTected to be 
 their friend "because, since his conduct to his colleague, Castlereagh, he 
 has found it difficult to obtain a niche in any administration. - ' Canning 
 and Castlereagh had fought a duel, in which the former had been 
 wounded. Of Castlereagh, he asked, "Does not Grattan know that Lord 
 Castlereagh first dyed his country in blood and then sold her?" Immedi- 
 ately after this he observed. "Ireland, in the connection with England, 
 has but too constantly shared the fate of the prodigal's dog— I mean no 
 personal allusion" (a luiujh) — "she has been kicked in the insolence of 
 prosperity, and she has borne all the famine and distress of adversity." 
 He next traces the history of the penal laws, after which he vigorously 
 denounces "the Orange banditti," entering at large into their history 
 and pointing out "the horrors" of their system. Lord Kenyon and 
 Lord Yarmouth he abuses as their patrons ; "the first" he styles "an 
 insane religionist of the Welsh jumper sect, who, bounding in the air, 
 imagines he can lay hold of a limb of the Deity, like Macbeth snatch- 
 ing at the air-drawn dagger of his fancy. He would be simply ridicu- 
 lous, but for the mischievous malignity of his holy piety, which desires 
 to convert Papists from their errors through the instrumentality of dag- 
 gers of steel." Of Lord Yarmouth, O'Connell adds, " If I could, I would 
 not disgust myself with the description." This speech, in which, as 
 might be expected, he also lashes unsparingly the bigots — Nicholl, Scott, 
 
684 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Duigenan and Giffard — was greeted at its close with warm and general 
 applause. 
 
 At this meeting O'Connell rose to speak a second and even a third 
 and fourth time. In his second address he complains that the Board is 
 £3000 in debt, and proposes that a fund be raised, "to counteract the 
 effects of Orange persecution and to meet the expenses of the petitions." 
 It was to move the vote of thanks to Dr. Milner that he rose the third 
 time. "That venerable prelate," said O'Connell, "has been expelled by 
 the paltry club calling itself the ' Catholic Board of England.' " He 
 adds that, the very same day, "they thanked the master of the Flogging 
 and Torturing Club in Dublin, my Lord Castlereagh." The resolution 
 in honor of the bishop of Castaballa was passed by acclamation. 
 
 I have already mentioned, in the present work, that Dr. Milner was 
 originally in favor of the veto, though subsequently he became one of its 
 most vehement antagonists. This change of sentiment on his part won 
 him little favor with the aristocratic section of the Irish Catholics. 
 With the English Catholics he became absolutely unpopular. These 
 last, indeed, were, for the most part, all along favorable to the veto. It 
 is even said that in 1791, in their anxiety to be speedily emancipated, 
 they had entertained some design of making themselves independent of 
 the Holy See and styling themselves Catholic Dissenters. Mr. Plowden, 
 the Catholic historian, writes thus: "The views of the English Catholics 
 went far beyond those of the vetoists of Ireland — namely, to shake off 
 their dependence upon the see of Rome, and establish national bishops 
 not drawing their jurisdiction from the Christian primate; and this in 
 accordance with the Jansenistical doctrines of Utrecht, and in the 
 manner of the reformed English bishops from the time of Henry the 
 Eighth downwards." 
 
 At this meeting O'Connell also moved an address to the persecuted 
 Caroline, the unhappy wife of the prince-regent. O'Connell made a 
 warm speech in her favor. To the end of her life he was one of her 
 most strenuous defenders. On the present occasion he lashed himself 
 into a perfect state of chivalrous excitement, and declared himself ready 
 to take the field in behalf of her daughter, the Princess Charlotte, in 
 case the duke of York and the Orangemen should attempt to interfere 
 with her right to the succession. " I am against the duke," says Dan. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 683 
 
 "and for the princess." Again: "If they shall attempt to alter the 
 succession, I will tight against the traitors and for the young princess, 
 at your head or by your side." If this burst of knight-errantry should 
 fail to provoke the reader to smile, at least he will not refuse the meed 
 of laughter to the following sharp, but humorous, hit at the prince- 
 regent and his antiquated charmer, the marchioness of Hertford : " The 
 fashion of cutting the throats of wives is gone by. Henry the Eighth, the 
 English apostle of the Reformation, had a speedy method of getting rid 
 of a disagreeable wife. He it was that first discovered the errors of the 
 Church of Rome in the fair face of a young lady.* In the present day. 
 it is said, that the crimes of the Catholics have been detected in the 
 bloated visage of an ancient matron. The taste of Henry was more 
 correct, but not more laudable." A slight passing notice is enough to 
 devote to this passage of O'Connell's life. Of course, it is quite outside 
 the scope of this biography to pronounce any opinion whatever as to the 
 guilt or innocence of the unfortunate princess of Wales. I may just 
 remark that, even if she were guilty, the conduct of that worthless, 
 faithless Sybarite, her husband, was so execrable as to deprive him of 
 all title to public sympathy, and still leave the unhappy lady, of the two, 
 the greater object of interest. 
 
 On the 29th of June, 1813, O'Connell made a long speech, chiefly on 
 the subject of "the repeal of the union." Some of the sentiments to 
 which he gave expression on this occasion are worthy of record and 
 remembrance. "Next," says he, "your enemies accuse me of a desire 
 for the independence of Ireland. I admit the charge, and let them make 
 the most of it. I have seen Ireland a kingdom; I reproach myself with 
 having lived to behold her a province. Yes, I confess it — I will ever be 
 candid upon the subject — I have an ulterior object — the repeal of the 
 
 UNION, AND TUE RESTORATION TO OLD IRELAND OF HER INDEPENDENCE." Loild 
 
 acclamations followed these words, which lasted for several minutes. 
 
 Again he says: "I would sacrifice my existence to restore to Ireland 
 her independent legislature; but I do not desire to restore precisely such 
 
 * The above passage reminds one of Gray the poet's gallant couplet on Henry the Eighth and 
 Anna Boleyn: 
 
 "When Love could teach a monarch to be wise, 
 And gospel light first dawned from Boleyn's eyes." 
 
G86 THE LIFE OF DANIEL 0'COXNELL. 
 
 a parliament as she had before. No; the act of restoration necessarily 
 implies a reformation. . . . 
 
 " Desiring as I do the repeal of the union, I rejoice to see how our 
 enemies promote that great object. Yes, they promote its inevitable 
 success by their very hostility to Ireland ; they delay the liberties of the 
 Catholic, but they compensate us most anqily, because they advance the resto- 
 ration of Ireland. By leaving one cause of agitation, they have created 
 and they will embody and give shape and form to a public mind and a 
 public spirit. . . . 
 
 " I repeat it; the delay of emancipation I bear with pleasure, because 
 in that delay is included the only prospect of obtaining my great, my 
 ultimate object — the legislative independence of my native land.' 1 '' 
 
 In this oration he again lashes the Orangemen. There is consider- 
 able characteristic humor in the following onslaught on Lord Keuyon. 
 This Lord Kenyon was the celebrated lawyer's son : 
 
 "To descend from the nation to an individual. Can anything be 
 more beastly stupid than the conduct of Lord Kenyon, who is now 
 organizing Orange lodges? Why does not the animal see that the prin- 
 ciple of religious exclusion might have prevented him from being a lord? 
 that he has escaped into sinecure places, property and a peerage by the 
 accident of his father's creed ? For example : if his father, who was a 
 common writing-clerk to an attorney, if he by accident had been a 
 Papist, the present Lord Kenyon, instead of being a peer, would, most 
 probably, have been a private soldier or a peasant, or, at the utmost, by 
 a timely conversion from the errors of Popery, he might have arrived at 
 the dignity of being the first preacher and highest bouncer of some 
 society of Welsh 'jumpers." (Laughter.) "Yes; my Lord Kenyon, if 
 he had a particle of understanding, would feel that his Orange exertions 
 expose the upstart only to the contempt of a people whom lie may 
 oppress, but of whom he would not dare personally to insult the lowest 
 individual." 
 
 The following gives a most amusing instance of the monstrous lies 
 and calumnies indulged in, at the expense of Ireland, by the unprinci- 
 pled and utterly unscrupulous press of England, especially — (though, am 
 I right in saying especially? Have English journalists indeed learned 
 to be one whit more veracious in their dealings with Ireland at this 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. GS7 
 
 hour? What of the Saturday Review, Times, Pall-Matt Gazette, etc. etc.?) 
 — especially, I was about to say, in the earlier portion of the present 
 century : 
 
 "The no-Popery cry commenced last year in the very centre of the 
 cloth manufactory. It commenced with the dealers in cloth at Ponte- 
 fraet, in Yorkshire ; and I need only appeal to the Leeds newspaper for 
 the absurd virulence with which persecution is advocated in that town. 
 
 "Why, in that very paper, I read about a fortnight ago an account 
 of a fresh rebellion in Ireland — nay, in Dublin ! ! As none of you heard 
 of it, let me inform you that it actually took place." (Load laughter.) 
 " I forget the day, but that is not material. It took place in Exchequer 
 street. The Nottingham regiment covered itself with glory ! They 
 fought the Popish rebels for two hours ; the rebels ascended the houses, 
 fired out of the windows, threw brickbats and large stones from the 
 roofs! Two regiments of horse, three regiments of foot, the Flying 
 Artillery from Island Bridge, and the regiment of artillery from Chapel- 
 ixod, all shared in the honor of the day ! and, at length, the main body 
 of the rebels retired to the Wicklow Mountains, and the residue of them 
 went to bed in town. Fortunately no person was killed or wounded, and 
 tranquillity was restored by a miracle. 
 
 " Do you imagine I jest with you ? No ; I solemnly assure you that 
 the stoiy is gravely told in the Leeds newspaper. Some of the London 
 journals have copied it, even to the scrap of bad Latin with which 
 Yorkshire dulncss has adorned it ; and there is not a maker of Avoollen 
 cloth at Leeds that would not swear to the truth of every sentence, and 
 every word of it!" 
 
 Does it not seem almost incredible that human impudence, or human 
 stupidity, or bigoted credulity, or all combined, could have concocted 
 such a monstrous fabrication? Of a surety, if truth be oftentimes 
 stranger than fiction, fiction sometimes docs outrun truth. 
 
 O'Connell towards the close of this speech gave some illustrations 
 of "the profligacy that is induced by the present state of the law in the 
 mode of selecting juries." He reminded his audience how Catholics 
 were carefully excluded; how "envenomed bigots" were gathered to- 
 gether "to pronounce a verdict of conviction by anticipation." He 
 proposes that a second petition should be sent "to the legislature, to 
 
 44 
 
688 THE LIFE OF DANIEL 0"COXXELL. 
 
 take into consideration the judicial system in Ireland — the administra- 
 tion of law amongst us." They must he prepared to prove, "in theii 
 details." the facts stated in their petitions; how all a certain bank- 
 director wanted from government was, "that when they should have a 
 Papist to try they should put him on the jury! and he was put on a 
 Papist's jury!" (here the audience cried, "Shame!" and weM they might) ; 
 how a "Mr. Warner was entitled, by the courtesy usually adopted by 
 the" (Dublin) "corporation, to be sheriff;" how, because he would not 
 pledge himself against the Catholics, when called on to do so by Jack 
 Giffard, he was rejected ; how Messrs. Morgan and Studdart were in- 
 stantly appointed because of their bitter hostility to Catholics. He 
 laments that " Castlereagh, Dr. Black and the regium donvm have con- 
 verted the Presbyterians into Orangemen." If he ever spoke slightingly 
 of Grattan, he is prepared "to read his recantation." He adds, "Grat- 
 tan, if he be mistaken, must ever be beloved by, and a pride to, every 
 Irish heart." He concludes by moving a resolution respecting Irish 
 manufactures, and also that for forwarding a second Catholic petition. 
 
 On the 10th of July he supports Mr. Mahon, in his objection to some 
 letters of Sir Francis Goold and Mr. James O'Gorman, said to contain 
 "attacks upon individuals," being publicly read. "A person in India," 
 says Dan, "might thus assail" any gentlemen. "The individuals thus 
 attacked would have no opportunity of righting themselves by inflicting 
 that chastisement, which an unfounded and insolent letter might merit." 
 This sentiment was applauded. 
 
 During the same month we find him making some speeches bearing 
 reference to an address to Henry Grattan, brought forward by Mr. Mc- 
 Donnell. Of course, O'Connell, while disapproving of Grattan's bill, 
 had the highest veneration for the illustrious patriot himself. Accord- 
 ingly, when the address was so altered that, while being in the highest 
 degree complimentary to Grattan, it could not be said to express the 
 smallest approval of the "securities" of his "Eelief" bill, its adoption 
 was eagerly seconded by O'Connell. The difference of opinion on the 
 subject of this bill was now unhappily widening fast into an absolute 
 breach between the aristocratic and popular sections of the Board. 
 Those especially, who had taken a prominent part in opposing the vote 
 of thanks to the Catholic bishops, were nursing their dudgeon and sulkily 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. GS9 
 
 keeping aloof from the meetings of the Board. In one of his speeches 
 on the address to Grattan, O'Connell said, "Let us, then, concur in the 
 two leading features of this address — eternal gratitude to Grattan; 
 fidelity, unalterable fidelity, to our country." 
 
 About the same time, we find O'Connell bringing forward resolutions 
 for the encouragement of Irish manufactures : " 1st. That no member 
 be allowed to speak or vote at the Board, after the 1st of August, who 
 shall not be clothed in Irish manufacture. 
 
 "2d. That the ladies of Ireland be entreated to encourage the wear 
 of their native manufacture, and not to introduce any other. 
 
 " 3d. That a committee of seven be appointed, for the purpose of 
 calling upon the Protestant gentlemen of the country to form 'An asso- 
 ciation, for the encouragement of consumption of Irish manufactures.' " 
 
 The resolutions were all received with loud applause ; they passed 
 by acclamation. The following gentlemen were named the committee 
 of seven : Mr. O'Connell, Mr. Richard O'Gorman, Dr. Sheridan, E. Cox, 
 Esq., Counsellor O'Gorman, Counsellor Finn and R. O'Bryan, Esq. 
 
 This movement, however, like many similar ones attempted since, in 
 the end came to nothing. In truth, to attempt creating a system of 
 Irish manufactures, while Ireland is under the hoof of England, seems 
 to me, if I may use an old, vulgar phrase, " like putting the car before 
 the horse." English capitalists can always, when it suits them, afford 
 to combine and pour in goods for little or nothing to crush Irish rivals. 
 Such branches of manufactures, indeed, as don't interfere with the 
 English manufacturers, may possibly thrive more or less in Ireland, even 
 in her existing state. Yet I remember, some score of years ago, even a 
 poor match manufactory in Dublin, which one might have imagined 
 hardly worth interfering with, deliberately and pitilessly crushed by a 
 combination of English competitors. Two or three boxes of English 
 matches might for a time be had in Dublin for the "ridiculously small 
 price" of one half-penny. As soon as ever the poor Irish " greenhorns " 
 were "victimized," English matches rose again. In short, if the Irish 
 people want to establish Irish manufactures on any large scale, let them 
 first win their national independence. 
 
 In this same month of July, O'Connell brought forward a motion 
 that the Board should agree to a vote of thanks to "that very important 
 
G90 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 bod) 7 the" (Presbyterian) "synod of Ulster, for the late vole of the mem- 
 bers composing it in favor of religious liberty." The reporters of the 
 Post and Freeman tell us that lie prefaced his motion with a speech 
 characterized by "his wonted eloquence." His sentiments, on this occa- 
 sion^ at all events breathed his usual spirit of religious toleration. After 
 noticing the bigoted efforts of some of the cleray of the Established 
 Church, he uttered words to the following effect: "He was" willing to 
 hope, notwithstanding all that could be done, their efforts, and the efforts 
 of those who set them in motion, would prove ineffectual, that every 
 odious distinction would be obliterated, and that every man in this 
 country would be ambitious for one title, and one title only, that of 
 Irishman !" Loud cheering responded to this sentiment. 
 
 He concluded by saying, " Union and harmony were the great and 
 healing balsams which he wished and hoped to see applied to the wounds 
 of his country." 
 
 On the 27th of August, 1813, the duke of Richmond left Ireland. I 
 need not say thai, he was little regretted. There is a village called Rich- 
 mond, outside the city of Dublin, at the left side of Ballybough Bridge. 
 During Richmond's viceroy alty the populace at public meetings, while 
 waiting for the commencement, or during the intervals, of the proceedings, 
 were wont to amuse themselves by proposing " Three groans for the left 
 side of Ballybough Bridge!" This masked insult to the unpopular viceroy 
 would invariably elicit hearty explosions of laughter. Richmond was 
 succeeded by an astute and wily diplomatist, Lord Whitworth. This 
 nobleman was the English ambassador with whom Napoleon had a 
 rather violent scene shortly before the rupture of the Peace of Amiens. 
 His aim, on becoming lord-lieutenant of Ireland, was, at least, twofold — 
 to corrupt the Dublin press and break up the Catholic Board. The first 
 pint of his task was not very difficult. The sum of £10,500 purchased 
 the souls and — much more valuable to Whitworth — the pens of the 
 proprietors of the Gazette, Dublin Journal, Hibernian Journal, Patriot, 
 and Correspondent. During Lord Whitworth's administration govern- 
 ment pamphleteers had "a good time of it," also. How "His Excel- 
 lency" prospered in his machinations against the Catholic Board will 
 be seen. 
 
 Soon after he landed in Dublin, violent dissensions broke out amonp; 
 
THE LTFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. C91 
 
 the Catholics at a public meeting in Cork, on the 30th August, 1813. 
 In the chapter on the trial of John Magee, I have already taken some 
 notice of these disgraceful proceedings. Some of the members of the 
 Cork board were inclined to concede the veto to the Crown; others not. 
 At this meeting, held on the 30th of August, at the Lancastrian school, 
 a gentleman — John G-alway of Lota — who had voted, at the General 
 Board in Dublin, in opposition to the motion of thanks to the prelates 
 for their resistance to the veto, was moved to the chair by Mr. James 
 Roche, one of the opposite party, probably from motives of conciliation. 
 But a general outcry arose against Mr. Galway. He persisted in keep- 
 ing his place; the mass of the meeting persisted in their refusal to 
 accept him as chairman. Some attempts were next made to appoint 
 another chairman. As these were unsuccessful, the confusion now be- 
 came "worse confounded." Counsellor McDonnell, Mr. Roche and other 
 members of the board considered among themselves for some minutes, 
 with the consent of the meeting, Mr. Roche promising, amid loud cheers, 
 that the reasonable wishes of the people should be complied with. Mr. 
 Barry of Barry's Lodge, one of the board, then called out in a loud 
 voice, "Will you suffer the proceedings of the day to go on?" Some 
 voices from the crowd exclaim, " No ; not until you have another chair- 
 man." On this the board retire abruptly; their secession excites vio- 
 lent agitation and disgust. Counsellor McDonnell entreats the assembly 
 to maintain order. While they are busy about the appointment of an- 
 other chairman our hero appears upon the troubled scene. He is greeted 
 with acclamations and blessings — in a word, with an uncontrollable 
 uproar of patriotic exultation — and conducted to the chair. Presently, 
 however — having talked the meeting into good-humor and a desire for 
 reunion — he goes out for the purpose of seeing the board. Meanwhile, 
 the heat and pressure in the room become insupportable. Besides, several 
 thousands outside, who cannot get in, clamor for adjournment. Accord- 
 ingly, by a unanimous vote, the meeting adjourns to a large open plain, 
 adjoining the school-room. Counsellor O'Leary now takes the chair; 
 order prevails. 
 
 Several Protestant gentlemen being observed at a distance, a desire 
 was expressed to accommodate them, when one of them, Counsellor 
 Dennis, approached the chair, and explained, as "the mouthpiece" of 
 
 Liz 
 
692 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 the others, that while his friends and himself felt "warm and ardent" 
 feelings of sympathy with "the glorious and just" cause of the Cath- 
 olics, they did not like identifying themselves with either section, while 
 lamentable divisions prevailed among the Catholic body. "No," said 
 Mr. Dennis; "those steady and long-tried friends to your cause — 
 Stowell, Beamish, Crawford — will not attach themselves to any party, 
 but go with the unanimous voice of the Irish Catholics." 
 
 After some further proceedings had taken place (Counsellor McDonnell 
 had delivered a speech explanatory of some of the causes of misunder- 
 standing between the two sections), O'Connell returned. He proposed, 
 in the interests of harmony, that they should at once send a deputation 
 of ten to the seceders to "commune with them upon the present differ- 
 ences." This was agreed to, and the Board received the deputation in a 
 bed-chamber, whither they had retired from the hootings of the populace. 
 After two hours' delay O'Connell returned. He said : " There had been 
 an unanimous agreement come to on resolutions perfectly without qualifi- 
 cation of any kind, and unequivocally demanding ' Simple Repeal,' as it 
 was phrased, that is, the unconditional abrogation of the penal code." 
 He announced also that "the Board, obedient to the manifestations of 
 popular feeling that day witnessed, would now consider their office at 
 an end;" but would offer themselves "for re-election as members of a 
 Board" to consist of sixty-eight members, double the number of the last. 
 He in conclusion, begged them to forgive the repentant members of the 
 Board and admit Mr. Galway to preside over the meeting. "Will you 
 refuse forgiveness to persons repenting their errors?" ""No," responded 
 the crowd, now in a most amiable mood, "we forgive them and may 
 heaven forgive them !" Dan thanked the assembly with great effusion, 
 he compared Galway to the prodigal child. 
 
 "While O'Connell was still speaking, the seceders made their appear- 
 ance. Mr. Galway at once addressed the meeting, congratulating them 
 on their prospects of unanimity. Twelve resolutions had been agreed 
 to by all. "Any beyond that number should be dealt with as mere 
 individual suggestions open to discussion and opposition." The resolu- 
 tions were then read. It was proposed to add the names of over thirty 
 gentlemen to the existing Board (we find the name of O'Connell's uncle, 
 " old Hunting-cap," among the number). Most of the resolutions were 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 693 
 
 unopposed ; but when three, which contained expressions of gratitude 
 and glowing thanks to the right reverend Dr. Milner, John Magee and 
 Daniel O'Connell, were brought forward, a Mr. B. Moylan advanced to 
 propose an amendment. This is the part of the proceedings to which I 
 referred toward the close of the chapter about Magee's trial. Moylan 
 accused Dr. Milner of "tergiversation," called Mr. Magee "a convicted 
 libeller," and expressed disapproval of O'Connell's "public conduct." 
 One Eugene McSweeny of Mary street, Cork, played the pitiful part of 
 his seconder. 
 
 After a generous remonstrance from Mr. Dennis, the Protestant bar- 
 rister already noticed, against Moylan's application of such unworthy 
 epithets to Mr. Magee, coupled with an appeal to the audience to "feel 
 as Irishmen should feel, to love in their hearts the hero who gloriously 
 falls in a great public cause," O'Connell came forward : he warmly 
 defended Dr. Milner, who, it may here be mentioned, on more than one 
 occasion, in the course of this year, 1813, had been grossly insulted hv 
 the leading English Catholics on account of his successful opposition to 
 the Veto and to Grattan's relief bill. They had disavowed his writings 
 in his presence, had resolved that his Brief Memorial had their marked 
 disapproval. To mortify him further, they had passed a vote of thanks 
 to their literary champion, Charles Butler, when Dr. Milner had told 
 them that that gentleman was one of "the false brethren," alluded to 
 in this production. They had even gone so far as to expel him "from 
 the private Board or select committee, appointed by the general Board 
 of British Catholics." Against this he had protested, "as having acted, " 
 to quote the closing words of his protest, "in behalf of thirty bishops 
 and of more than five millions of Catholics, whose religious business I 
 am authorized to transact," Sir John Hippesly is said to have been 
 guilty on this occasion of an atrocious insult to the learned and venera- 
 ble prelate. Indeed the conduct of the aristocratic Englishmen present 
 had resembled nothing so much as that of an uncouth and shameless 
 mob. They had pursued the old man as, with calm dignity, he was- 
 retiring from the room, with outrageous hissings and hootings and shout- 
 ings. Well might Dr. Husenbeth, the biographer of Dr. Milner, exclaim : 
 " A more disgraceful proceeding is hardly to be found in the history of 
 the Church." Probably Dr. Milner's sympathy and co-operation with 
 
B94 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 O'Connell, whom he greatly admired, and the Irish Catholics, had added 
 bitterness to the hostile feelings of his Catholic countrymen. After their 
 cowardly achievement, they had gone about London for several days, 
 boasting with an insane exultation of the ignoble deed they had done. 
 
 I pass over other insults perpetrated against Dr. Milner by the 
 English Catholics, of a piece with the strange conduct I have just de- 
 scribed, and return to O'Connell's speech. After defending Dr. Mil- 
 ner and heaping scorn on his enemies, after sneering at those "erudite 
 politicians" — those "modest, meek, humble and enlightened independ- 
 ents," "those two youths," Moylan and McSweeny, who, when "the pop- 
 ulation of Ireland declare against all vetoism, under all and every shape 
 and form," come forward " for provisional securities "—he next expresses 
 his hot indignation at Moylan's application of the epithet "convicted 
 libeller" to John Magee. He tells the audience to sustain and cheer 
 that persecuted journalist by a vote of thanks. In conclusion, he says : 
 "I will go ox, and the more I am maligned, the more will I be pleased, 
 and hope for the prospect of success ; nor will I ever doubt myself, until 
 I shall hear those wretched hirelings of corruption teem forth odious 
 praises to me ! Then doubt me, but not till then. 
 
 " Externally and internally I will tight the enemies of us all. . . . 
 But adopt not this exaggerated praise offered to me here to-day ; it is 
 not possible I could, or any man could, be deserving of it. I give up 
 this point to Mr. Moylan ; I make Mr. Moylan a present of this motion, 
 and let him give us the rest." (Loud and fjcrsistent cries of "No, no; 
 we will not, we will notl") 
 
 "Then, beforehand, I thank you, sincerely and honestly I thank you; 
 it encourages, it cheers me on. I here want language to express my 
 feelings. / wiU stand by you while I lire; I icill never forsake poor 
 Ireland^ 
 
 When the enthusiastic acclamations that almost drowned O'Connell's 
 closing, words had, after the lapse of some minutes, ceased, James Roche 
 seconded O'Connell's protest against Moylan's amendment. Major Tor- 
 rens, a liberal and enlightened Protestant, then made some excellent ob- 
 servations. He derided the notions of those who pretended that dangers 
 would result from the admission of Catholics to Parliament, He dwelt 
 on the fact that English liberty had grown up daring the Catholic ages. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. G9o 
 
 After Major Torrens had concluded, no less a person than Remmy Shee- 
 han, subsequently a convert to " the Church by law established," and pro- 
 prietor and editor of the Dublin Evening Mail, for so many years the able, 
 but bigoted, organ of the Ascendency faction (I believe it exists still), came 
 forward. Perhaps this was his first appearance on the stage of politics. 
 He proclaimed himself "a member of that body which Counsellor O'Con- 
 nell styled 'independent, because nobody would depend upon them.'" 
 He then said he was aware of O'Connell's authority — "the unfounded 
 assertions of the Mercantile Chronicle." At this point, he and his audi- 
 ence beginning to get on bad terms, he told them he wouldn't be put 
 down till morning. " 1 say again, the unfounded assertions of the Chron- 
 icle." As this brought down on his devoted head an uproar of popular 
 rage and clamor, he told his hearers that "he was a very young man," and 
 that "he never before addressed a public meeting." He then repeated 
 that the "statements in the Chronicle about the independents were un- 
 founded and slanderous." Here a downright tempest of hooting, hissing 
 and disapprobation of all sorts burst upon the unlucky oratorical debutant. 
 His grim resolution not to "go home till morning" speedily evaporated ; 
 he ingloriously cut short his harangue, merely saying, "As the meeting 
 will not suffer me to speak, I shall retire." Exit Remmy — at least for 
 a season. I may as well add, however, that, some years ago, Remmy 
 departed this life, if not in the odor of sanctity, at least, like many an- 
 other renegade before and probably since, in the bosom of the ancient 
 Church he had deserted " for filthy lucre." 
 
 Counsellor McDonnell and James N". Mahon also addressed the meet- 
 ing. After the latter gentleman, another remarkable man in his day, 
 very unlike the redoubtable Remigius, however, arose to speak — the 
 Rev. Dr. England, subsequently Roman Catholic bishop of Charleston, 
 South Carolina. He denied indignantly some charges of exercising 
 undue influence over the people and packing meetings, that had been 
 made against the clergy of Cork, and himself especially. Fagan, in his 
 life of O'Connell, asserts that "the principal mover in the whole of this 
 democratic insurrection against aristocratic pretension in Cork was 
 the celebrated Dr. England. He was a man of great powers of mind, 
 amazing intellectual energy, possessing, too, a masculine eloquence, 
 and a stern, unflinching determination, well suited to a popular leader. 
 
GOG THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 He had all the qualities that contribute to the influence, and are neces- 
 sary to the office, of an agitator. No literary labor was too great for 
 him ; no opposition was too powerful. He was from the first a decided 
 anti-yetoist, Indeed, we may affirm, he was the guiding genius of the 
 anti-Quarantotti movement" (we shall hear more of Monsignor Quarantotti 
 shortly). "He was, at the time we write of, editor of the Cork Mercan- 
 tile Chronicle, an honest, well-conducted paper, the downfall of which is 
 a lasting stigma on the patriotism of the South. He worked up the 
 movement against the local Catholic Board, and at last forced the mem- 
 bers to publish their proceedings. ... It was the prevailing opinion of 
 that day that Dr. England was the author of the celebrated letter which, 
 under the signature of ' One of the Populace,' was published in the 
 Evening Post, and for which an action was brought against the unfortu- 
 nate John Magee by one of the ' Protesters,' Mr. Coppinger. The action 
 was tried in Cork, and is to this day memorable in that city, from the 
 cutting sarcasms against the 'property-the-standard-of-opinion' gen- 
 tlemen, uttered by Magee's counsel in one of the most telling speeches 
 ever pronounced in a court of justice. The writer was a boy at the 
 time, but he well recollects being at the trial; and he has now in his 
 mind's eye Harry Dcane Grady, amidst the profoundest silence, giving 
 expression to those biting sentences that are, even to this day, repeated 
 by the descendants of that generation." 
 
 I shall presently refer again to the letter here spoken of, which John 
 O'Connell, differing from Fagan, attributes to his illustrious father. Pe- 
 verting, for a moment, to the meeting of the 30th of August, when the 
 speaking terminated, Moylan's amendment to Counsellor McDonnell's 
 three resolutions was put, with the following result, according to the 
 calculations of the newspapers of the day: For the amendment, 0; for 
 the votes of thanks to the Bight Rev. Dr. Milner, John Magee and 
 O'Connell, 10,000. Majority indisputable. 
 
 After this, nothing would satisfy the excited assemblage but to chair 
 our hero. A crowd of gentlemen got round him, and, in spite of his 
 entreaties and resistance, forced him into a chair. He was borne, amid 
 the loudest and most enthusiastic huzzas, on the shoulders of his devoted 
 people, through Hanover street, part of South Main street, along Tuekey 
 street, and into the grand parade. By this time the crowd had swelled, 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 607 
 
 it is said, to about twenty thousand people. The whole city was aroused. 
 The crowd halted at Lallan the hatter's, on the parade, where O'Connel] 
 lodged. From a window of the house he warmly thanked the admiring 
 thousands, recommending them to attend carefully to the registrations. 
 
 From all this hubbub the extent of the discord created by the angrily- 
 vexed veto question may be estimated. Nor did the dissensions speedily 
 cease. The clergy were abused by the vetoists. They published a reply. 
 A large number of vetoists signed a protest against the meeting of the 
 30th of August. They held a meeting, too, at the Bush tavern, and 
 passed a resolution, which was. as it were, a regular firebrand in the then 
 excited state of Irish feeling: " Resolved, that adopting the wise prin- 
 ciple of the constitution by which property is made the standard of 
 opinion, we found it impossible at the late aggregate meeting, amidst 
 the tumult of the lowest populace — ignorant by necessity and misled 
 by design — to ascertain the sense of the Catholics of this city and 
 county." 
 
 O'Connell delivered another speech at the Cork Catholic Board on the 
 3d of September, in which he expressed regret at the conduct of " the 
 Protesters." He showed how they were earning contempt and putting 
 themselves in the position of men "righting against their country." He 
 hoped, however, that the seceders would return to their duty. He also 
 advocated the use of Irish manufactures. With reference to this part of 
 his speech, his son John remarks justly enough: "This was one of the 
 many occasions in Mr. O'Connell's life, when he labored in the good 
 cause of the deserving, hard-working and most skilful artisans of Ire- 
 land. We shall have, unfortunately, to note the failure of several such 
 efforts — as all such must fail, till the vitality of industry be restored 
 with the money and rich consumers of the country, by the repeal of the 
 emaciating Act of Union." I shall quote one passage from this speech 
 of the 3d of September. " 'But,' say those who clamor for those securities, 
 ' if the present Pope died, Bonaparte would undoubtedly raise to the 
 papal chair his uncle, Cardinal Fesch.' Be it so. He was willing to 
 meet them upon every fair ground. They say, if Cardinal Fesch was 
 the Pope, he would be the creature of Bonaparte, and subject to his 
 control; and having the nomination of the Catholic bishops of Ireland, 
 he would only appoint such men to that dignity as would be disaffected 
 
(398 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 to the British government, and who would best suit the views of Bona- 
 parte. 
 
 "Cardinal Feseh ! who is in disgrace with his nephew, and in exile 
 because he opposed, and would not sanction, his marriage with his present 
 wife!" 
 
 O'Connell denied that such a man would "disgrace the papal chair"' 
 "by submitting to the will" of his nephew. 
 
 How far the intrigues of the diplomatic viceroy, Lord Whitworth, 
 contributed to all this commotion it is not easy to say. He seems at 
 first to have so far succeeded in throwing dust even into the eyes of 
 the conductors of the Evening Post as to induce them, shortly after his 
 accession to the Viceregal dignity, to compliment him on his reply to 
 an address from Trinity College. However, the Post, directed by Denis 
 Scully, in the main fought the battle of truth and right in those days. 
 On the 23d of September, a respectable meeting, held at Cavan, passed 
 a vote of thanks to Magee and O'Connell. Eneas McDonnell, earlier in 
 the same month, had written to Dr. Milner, transmitting to him the 
 resolutions passed in his favor by the Catholics of Cork. To this the 
 venerable prelate had returned a gracious reply, in which he gave some 
 interesting and curious particulars of the disgraceful insolence with 
 which the aristocratic Catholics of England, ay, and even some mem- 
 bers of the English Catholic clergy, had treated him. 
 
 But the unfortunate Magee, however he may have been gratified 
 and comforted in his sore trials by the sympathy and approval of his 
 countrymen, was still harassed by prosecutions. The extract 1 have 
 given from Fagan refers to the action taken against him by Mr. William 
 Coppinger for a letter signed "One of the Populace," and attributed by 
 some to Dr. England, by others to our hero. As the letter is amusing 
 (it ridicules Coppinger and the resolution passed by the "Protesters,'' 
 affirming that the constitution makes property " the standard of opinion"), 
 I shall give a few extracts from it, 
 
 "They state two things evidently false: first, that there is a prin- 
 ciple in the constitution by which property is made the standard of 
 opinion. Property is a good standard of contractors; but it is no more 
 the standard of opinion than it is the standard of law or of Latin. . . . 
 Why, whom do you think those men that declared that property is the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 690 
 
 standard of opinion took as their second chairman? A friend of mine, 
 poor as I am, Mr. William Coppinger, better known by the name of 
 'Jamaica!' I was quite sure, sir, that they picked out the second 
 richest man amongst them as the standard of their opinion, and as 
 their second chairman. You cannot think how pleased I was. Now, 
 thought I, the five pounds he owes me these three years will be paid. 
 Off I ran to his assignees; for, sir, I was kept out of my honest earn- 
 ings by his being made a bankrupt. Off I ran to his assignees. ' Gen- 
 tlemen,' said I, 'pay the live pounds that Mr. Coppinger owes me. He 
 has got some great estate — he has certainly got a great property. "Prop- 
 erty is the standard of opinion." Here it is down in the newspapers, 
 signed "William Coppinger." My debt is a fair debt, and honestly due 
 — and so pay it.' You may judge of my surprise when the assignees 
 quietly replied that my debt was certainly a fair one, and that if 1 went 
 to the expense of employing an attorney and moving it regularly, they 
 would pay me a dividend as well as the other creditors. 1 asked what 
 the dividend would be. The assignees solemnly assured me they expected 
 in another year to be able to make a dividend of two-pence in the pound, 
 and that I should certainly get a tenpenny bit for my live pounds. But 
 to return. They" [the protesters) "say, secondly, that we are the lowest 
 of the populace — 'ignorant by necessity and misled by design.' How 
 could you say such a thing, Dan Donovan — you, who are a miller? 
 What were you, my dear Dan? You were also, in your day, a liberty- 
 and-equality boy; and this is not the doctrine you preached to ns at the 
 mill. Indeed, indeed, Dan, it does not become you to be an aristocrat. 
 To be sure, no great reliance can be placed on the accuracy of men who 
 have belied the constitution ; for, I believe, there was never anything 
 so untrue as to say that the constitution measures a man's opinion by 
 the weight of his purse. Was there ever anything so silly printed? 
 Why, if it were true, no rich man could be in point of fact a blockhead ; 
 there could be no wealthy fool ! Or, I suppose a rich man who talked 
 foolishly might be indicted before the recorder for violating a principle 
 of the constitution. 'Your property, sir,' the recorder would say to the 
 convicted dunce, ' your property is made the standard of opinion, and 
 you have, in contempt of the wisdom which belongs to property, been 
 convicted of having talked nonsense; and. therefore, you are to be im- 
 
700 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 prisoned six months at hard labor, to teach you the great principle 
 of our constitution — that property is the standard of opinion.' Dear 
 Mr. Magee, I should like to see some of our 'protesters' tried at sessions 
 under this statute. It is called, I believe, the statute for adjusting the 
 standard of opinion by the exact amount of the wealth of each indi- 
 vidual." 
 
 During the autumn of this year various other Catholic meetings were 
 held in Ireland, at which resolutions, approving of O'Connell's opposition 
 to the veto and his conduct at the trial of Magee, were passed. 
 
 At the successful storming of St. Sebastian, in Spain, on the 31st 
 of August, O'Connell lost a near relative — the brave Lieutenant John 
 O'Connell, of the -13d Regiment. At the siege of Badajos, this gallant 
 young man had volunteered on the forlorn hope and been severely 
 wounded. At St. Sebastian, he sought the post of danger, where he 
 fell combating bravely. 
 
 In November we find the veto question still sowing dissensions among 
 the popular party. Doubtless some of those, who first threw down this 
 apple of discord, intended mischief. Burke understood well the machi- 
 nations of the enemies of the Irish people. "You will have a schism," 
 says he, "and I am greatly mistaken if this is not intended and system- 
 atically pursued." The Board, alarmed at the progress which this veto 
 or "securities" question seemed to have made in England, and the ap- 
 parent acquiescence in it of the English Catholics, had pledged them- 
 selves not to entertain any question of the kind without the previous 
 knowledge and approbation of the prelates. Lord Donoughniore and 
 Grattan refused to continue in communication with the Catholic Board 
 on this basis, that no "securities" should be introduced into any future 
 bill without previous approval of the bishops. They accused the Board 
 of a design of dictating to parliament. On the 20th of November 
 O'Connell maintained that Lord Donoughniore and Grattan were mis- 
 taken. He denied that the Board had any desire to dictate. So far 
 from that being the case, they had even given up the intention of sub- 
 mitting a draft of a bill (though that, he argued, would not involve any 
 dictation), confining themselves to mere suggestions: "Who," he asked, 
 " spoke of dictation when Mr. Charles Butler, last year, prepared the 
 frame of a bill? . . . Who spoke of dictation when Mr. Grattan pro- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 701 
 
 cured the frame of a bill to be prepared by Mr. Burrowes, by Mr. Burton 
 and Mr. Wallace?" O'Connell also asks "whether it, be the Irish 
 popish touch that pollutes the deed?" 
 
 On the 27th, O'Connell carried a motion "for a committee to prepare 
 answers to the letters of Donoughmore and Grattan." On the 1st of 
 December we find his friends in the Board rallying round him affection- 
 ately to defend him against the numerous attacks made on him at this 
 time by the open enemies and the weak or false friends of Ireland. Mr. 
 0' Gorman brought the matter forward and spoke of his "transcendent 
 desert." Nicholas Mahon agreed with Mr. O'Gorman ; he thought it was 
 the duty of the Catholics to repel the attacks upon O'Connell "by some 
 lasting memorial, which he could hand down to his latest posterity." He 
 also styled O'Connell "the best and dearest friend of his country." Mr. 
 Plunket considered that every Catholic was bound to support the un- 
 daunted, incorruptible and inflexible supporter of the Catholic cause. 
 Though not a member of the Board, he came that day to declare his 
 determination to support him at the hazard of his life and fortune. 
 O'Connell was the first of Irishmen and the most beloved. It would be 
 wonderful were it otherwise. He had labored to expose, at the risk of 
 his person and fortune, the errors and corruptions of the enemies of 
 Ireland. He had created an unconquerable spirit in the country. His 
 object had been to rally men of all persuasions, parties and habits under 
 one title, that of Irishmen. The Board, he (Mr. Plunket) thought, should 
 manifest by a resolution their conviction of his merits. Mr. O'Connor 
 (the chairman) regretted that it should be deemed necessary to delay 
 such a measure. Mr. Scully dwelt on O'Connell's claims to the gratitude 
 of Ireland, and the failure of all malignant efforts to injure him in his 
 profession. O'Connell did more business than any lawyer, without a silk 
 gown, had ever before succeeded in doing, yet he found more time, than 
 almost any other man, to devote to the public good and for acts of private 
 benevolence. Of course Mr. Scully approved of the notice respecting the 
 testimonial of the feeling of the Board to him. Mr. Scully referred to 
 the alleged secession of the aristocratic members of the Board, and. at 
 considerable length, drew a picture of the disagreeable position, in which 
 the individuals, who were said to have seceded, must, according to hie 
 idea, find themselves placed. 
 
702 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNKJUu 
 
 O'Connell replied to these kind and flattering speeches with warm 
 and grateful emotion: "When first he had volunteered as the advocate 
 of his country's rights, he did conceive that he had embarked in the 
 service of an insolvent ingratitude." This was a mistake; his reward 
 had been great, though "all he would lay claim to was good intention." 
 He thanked Mr. Plunket for his kind words; but, "in any personal con- 
 troversy, .he required neither aid nor seconding. ... If his professional 
 career were stopped by any conspiracy, he should not be astonished tit 
 it." He spoke of his enemies in his usual defiant style. 
 
 On the 11th of December, at the Shakespeare Gallery, Exchequei 
 street, the Board voted a service of plate, value one thousand guineas, 
 to O'Connell, "as a small tribute of gratitude " for his intrepidity, ability 
 and perseverance in asserting the rights and vindicating the "character 
 of his Catholic fellow-countrymen." Viscount Netterville, the Lord 
 Ffrench, N". P. 0' Gorman, Owen O'Connor (the chairman of the meet- 
 ing), George Bryan, Henry Edmond Taafe, Nicholas Mahon and Randal 
 McDonnell, Esqs. (Edward Hay was secretary to the meeting), were 
 appointed as a committee to carry the vote into effect. The service of 
 plate was shortly after presented to O'Connell. At this meeting of the 
 11 th, his friend, Counsellor Finlay, delivered an address, which, while it 
 contained an eloquent panegyric on our hero, reflected severely on Saurin. 
 I regret that the limited space remaining at my disposal will not suffer 
 me to give of it more than the concluding sentence: "But if he, like 
 many others, should be fated to endure the ingratitude of the country, 
 if he should be placed in the midst of useless friends and implacable 
 enemies, if his enemies should gratify their purposes against him — 
 
 " ' Then is the stately column broke, 
 The beacon-light is quenched in smoke, 
 The trumpet's silver sound is still, 
 The warder silent on the hill.' " 
 
 1 think it only fair to add the remark which the late John O'Connell 
 thought proper to append to this: "This passage, with its poetic quo- 
 tation, was cited last in the declining days of the Repeal Association, 
 some months after Daniel O'Connell's death, by poor, poor 'Tom Steele!' 
 The effect was then most thrilling; what the effect would be if now 
 cited in a popular assembly, and whether the prediction it embodies 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 703 
 
 would be held to have come true, it is not for the editor of these speeches 
 to say." It will be seen, from this extract, that John O'Connell's sen- 
 tences cannot be praised as admirable models either of style or gram- 
 matical structure. 
 
 On the 18th of December, O'Connell eloquently thanked the Board 
 for the new proof they had given him of their appreciation of his zeal 
 and services. Among other things he said : " Even your applause will 
 n< it. because it cannot, increase the devotion with which I have conse- 
 crate] my existence to Ireland. I have already devoted all the faculties 
 of my soul to the pursuit of the liberties of my country, and, humble as my 
 capabilities are, I had already given them all to my native land." Their 
 gift is too munificent; still he is "glad that it was introduced, because 
 it elicited those proofs of friendship ; and I am grateful to my enemies, 
 who gave occasion for an exhibition of the feeling which is this day 
 witnessed here. . . . The man who dedicates himself to the cause of his 
 country must calculate on meeting the hostility and calumny of her 
 enemies — the envy and false-heartedness even of her friends. He must 
 reckon on the hatred and active malignity of every idolater of bigotry, 
 of every minion of power, of every agent of corruption. But that is 
 little ; he will have to encounter the hollow and treacherous support of 
 pretended friends — of those interested friends respecting whom he will 
 in vain exclaim, ' God protect me from my friends ! I can guard myself 
 from my enemies.' . . . 
 
 "You have, then, done wisely to grant that precious recompense to 
 one so little deserving as myself, because you have thereby held out a 
 prospect to higher minds of what they may expect from you. You have 
 fanned the flame of pure patriotism, and I trust enlisted in your service 
 the juvenile patriots of the land with talents superior — oh ! beyond com- 
 parison — to my pretensions." {Here O'Connell turned to Richard Lalor 
 Sliiel, then quite a yonncj man, who sat near him.) 
 
 " And he and others will be roused to serve and adorn their widowed 
 country. Of your traducer [Saurin, no doxdtt) I shall say nothing. You 
 have refuted his calumnies. . . . 
 
 " I have heretofore loved my country for herself — I am now her bribed 
 servant, and no master can possibly tempt me to neglect, forsake or betray 
 her interests!" 
 
704 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 I think it right to quote his son's remark on this sentence. "Fort} 
 years" (as well as I remember, John O'Connell ivrote this in '53 or '54) — 
 "Forty years have elapsed since this protestation; nearly seven since 
 the death of him who made it. Let Ireland now calmly review his life 
 and acts, and say, Did he not keep his word ?" 
 
 At this meeting of the 18th, letters from Grattan and Lord Donough- 
 more, in reply to the address of the Board, were read. If the tone 
 of the writers was still somewhat captious and supercilious, it was so 
 far lowered that they expressed willingness to receive, as suggestions, 
 the statement of Catholic opinion which they had before condemned 
 .as dictation. The consideration of these letters was postponed. It is 
 melancholy to find our Irish bard, Thomas Moore, so far seduced by the 
 fascinations of the English aristocratic circles in which he spent so much 
 of his time, as to employ his brilliant pen, about this period, in advocating 
 the concession of the right of veto to the Crown. In spite of the veil 
 thrown over the attack, we can see that he hits at O'Connell and Scully 
 in such expressions as the following : " Those orators and authors who 
 live but by flattering your prejudices," and "This is the measure, which 
 the wrong-headed politicians amongst you, in contempt of their spiritual 
 guides, have branded as impious, deadly and apostatical." He labors 
 hard to prove that the concession of the veto is hardly worth disputing 
 about, and opposition to it frivolous or even foolish. 
 
 About this period O'Connell undertook a very amusing and quixotic 
 adventure. The Kildare street society of Dublin, founded in the year 
 1811, was in the receipt of an annual parliamentary grant of £6000 per 
 annum for the education of the poor. The society, however, insisted that 
 the Bible should be read in all the schools aided by them. Of course the 
 Catholics refused to countenance or comply with this regulation. Thus 
 the facilities for acquiring education were grievously diminished in the 
 case of the poorer Catholics. Some persons protested against this usurpa- 
 tion by the bigots of the right to make Catholic education to a great 
 degree impracticable. A few enlightened Protestants expressed their 
 dislike of the proselytizing system of the society, and vainly sought its 
 abolition. O'Connell conceived the rather chimerical idea of boldly 
 entering into one of their queer assemblages, of braving in their den 
 the various tribes of fanatics — Cooperites and others — in short, ilio 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 705 
 
 dense array of saints, male and female, sure to be "gathered together" 
 under the evangelical banner of this Kildare street society — and giving 
 them, in his customary outspoken style, a piece of his mind. His brain 
 had not long been big with this generous idea, ere he set about putting 
 it in practice. In short, he coolly entered the hostile camp alone, and 
 commenced arguing the point with the astonished saints. With great 
 tact and skill, he went over the usual topics of argument advanced by 
 Catholic theologians against the reading of the Scriptures, especially 
 without properly authorized notes and comments, by the young and the 
 ignorant. Were the minds of such persons in a fit condition to under- 
 stand the perplexing doctrinal difficulties of St. Paul, or to read and 
 interpret aright the bewildering visions of futurity and the profound and 
 awful obscurities of the mysterious Apocalypse ? Were the glowing pic- 
 tures and narratives of vice, side by side with divine truths, suited alike 
 for every eye and ear ? No doubt he asked his strange auditory ques- 
 tions someAvhat to this effect. It is not surprising that, while he was 
 thus addressing these holy ones of the New Jerusalem, they would, from 
 time to time, show considerable tendency to become restive. However, 
 the more cultured members of this assembly of the saints, the pious 
 Sergeant Lefroy and others [this Lefroy aftenvards became successively 
 baron of the Exchequer and lord chief -justice of the Queen's Bench; he was 
 "the purple old Branswicker" who passed, sentence on John Mitchel), begged 
 that a patient hearing should be given to Mr. O'Connell. But before 
 long our whimsical Daniel went such extreme lengths as to utterly wear 
 out the patience of the saints. He told them they had no right, in the 
 exercise of the trust committed to their charge, to gratify their pecu- 
 liar whims and crotchets by making indiscriminate Bible-reading the 
 condition of their help to schools. He even told them plainly to their 
 faces that, in making Scripture-reading compulsory, " proselytism must 
 be their object." No sooner had he shot forth this bitter shaft, than 
 the reign of Babel seemed to have recommenced. The light of theolog- 
 ical animosity gleamed in the eyes of the saints, male and female. They 
 roared, they raved, they gesticulated, they hissed. Even angelic sisters 
 — not to speak irreverently — wore for some minutes the expression of very 
 she-devils. There was Miss Saurin, the pious attorney-general's sister, 
 high in the hierarchy of female divines and devotees, brimful of sacred 
 
706 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 wrath. The faces of the crowd showed all the colors of the rainbow. 
 Divine fury made them red and pale by turns. Some of the atrabilious 
 sectaries displayed on their severe, if not sour, physiognomies, varieties 
 of black and yellow that might, indeed, be a somewhat agreeable sight 
 to an eccentric connoisseur in colors. At last, the sanctimonious Lefroy 
 got up, like the serious character to whom Virgil compares Neptune 
 stilling the turbulent winds, and the rising of "this pillar of state," and 
 Church too, at once restored silence. The learned sergeant speedily 
 lashed himself into an exhilarating condition of holy fervor; he even 
 worked his spirit up to a pitch of prophetic exaltation, quite sufficient 
 to take the legs from under his audience (he had no need to beguile 
 their brains from them), in his advocacy of universal Bible-reading. 
 Before he sat down he had doubtless in his mind's eye a clear and near 
 vision of the rapidly-approaching downfall of Popery, the burning up 
 of the mystic Babylon and Antichrist, the man of sin, on the one hand, 
 and on the other, of the streaming glories of the holy of holies prepared 
 for the reception of the saints. It is to be presumed that the learned 
 and pious sergeant's divine rhapsody caused the aspect of the meeting 
 to become once more as amiable-looking as the nature of saints — espe- 
 cially nineteenth-century saints — admitted of. As O'Connell, however, 
 returned to the charge a second time, quite fresh and as full as ever of 
 controversial coinbativeness, their equanimity was short-lived. He dwelt 
 on the infinite hubbub and confusion of contending sects, all appealing 
 to Holy "Writ as the standard by which they regulated their opinions. 
 Even in the days of the apostles, Christians were to be found " wresting 
 the Scriptures to their destruction." He adduced the enormities that 
 took place during the revolt, of the Anabaptists of Minister, in Germany, 
 in the sixteenth century. He asked, Would it be rational to get up a 
 society to diffuse among ignorant people cheap editions of Blackstone 
 and Coke, in order to promote respect and obedience to the laws? These 
 books would either remain unread or be read to a pernicious purpose. 
 lie maintained that such a result was still more likely to happen in the 
 t.*ase of the Bible. 
 
 As might be expected, the saints now became more frantic than 
 ever, and tinally shouted O'Connell clown. It does not appear that any 
 practical result flowed from this most eccentric adventure of O'Connell's. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL 0'CONXELL. 707 
 
 which, undoubtedly, was conceived and executed in a truly Cervantic 
 spirit. 
 
 As I am on the subject of the saints, I may as well here quote an 
 amusing resolution, said to have been innocently passed, about this time, 
 by one of these pious societies: •'Resolved, that to prevent mirepresent- 
 ation, all the important objects of the society were in future to be car- 
 ried into effect by a committee, to consist of twelve gentlemen and as 
 many ladies, with liberty to increase their numbei^s." 
 
 "Major Muskerry," a talented literary contributor to Mr. Mitchel's 
 New York Citizen, in the agreeable short biography of O'Connell which 
 he wrote for that journal, and from which I have quoted already, thus 
 notices this odd exploit of our hero's: "At another time, he went alone 
 to a meeting of the Kildare street society, and argued the matter stoutly, 
 but very good-humoredly, against the men and women there assembled. 
 He actually fancied they could be touched by a show of kindly feeling 
 and moderation. None but a nature innately frank and generous could 
 have made such a Quixotic attempt — for he found how Quixotic it was 
 when they began to hiss him." 
 
 While O'Connell was at Limerick in the August of this year, he 
 became one of the principals in a curious affair of honor. While profes- 
 sionally engaged in the county court-house of the city, a dispute arose 
 between him and Counsellor Magrath. It grew very hot, and finally 
 they exchanged cards. The place of rendezvous was a field quite close 
 to the old windmill, as famous in Limerick for such meetings as "the 
 Fifteen Acres" was in Dublin. Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman acted as 
 O'Conneirs friend on this occasion. A Mr. Bennett performed the same 
 kind office for Magrath. After alighting from the carriages, the parties 
 arranged themselves in separate groups, waiting, while Mr. Bennett 
 was performing his allotted task of measuring the ground. At last, 
 O'Connell and Magrath were placed, and only waited for the word of 
 command to fire. Just at this point in the proceedings a number of 
 their mutual friends arrived on the field of battle, fully determined on 
 interfering to prevent the encounter. A lengthened conversation took 
 place between the seconds and the new-comers. It was proposed that 
 Magrath, standing on his ground, pistol in hand, should state aloud that 
 he was sorry the altercation had taken place. Before this was exactly 
 
708 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O' CORNELL. 
 
 agreed to, a Mr. Leader begged that, inasmuch as it was notorious that 
 O'Connell had no bad feeling whatever towards Magrath, he, too, stand- 
 ing on his ground, "marking-iron" in hand, should declare that he was 
 going to light with a man for whom he felt no ill-will. A long pause 
 followed this proposal ; but finally, after much animated conversation 
 and argument between friends and seconds, and after earnest en- 
 treaties from the well-wishers of both parties, Nicholas Purcell 0' Gor- 
 man was brought to agree to the arrangement. Then the principals 
 once' more stepped forward and resumed their places, still holding the 
 loaded weapons in their hands. Magrath, elevating his voice, declared 
 manfully that he regretted the occurrence of the quarrel. Our hero, in 
 a similar loud tone, affirmed that he entertained no unfriendly feeling 
 towards his antagonist. Advancing together, the two opponents met. 
 and warmly shook hands amidst the joyful shouts of all the spectators. 
 The two immediately got into the same carriage, and chatted together 
 in a pleasant, friendly manner as they drove into "the city of the vio- 
 lated treaty." As both gentlemen were extraordinary favorites with 
 those who knew them (everybody, of course, knew Dan), a great interest 
 and anxiety were felt in Limerick while the unpleasant affair was pend- 
 ing, and congratulations, the most sincere, were expressed at its pacilic 
 and hearty termination. 
 
 I regret very much that want of space will prevent me from giving 
 here extracts at any length from an extraordinary and public-spirited 
 charge, delivered by Baron Fletcher, an Irish judge of exceptional integ- 
 rity, and good-will towards the poor oppressed peasantry, to the grand-jury 
 of the county Wexford, in this year, 1813. This charge astonished every- 
 body. Doubtless, its bold and honest truths frightened the Irish Dead- 
 locks from their propriety, and caused the wrong-doers of the Ascendency 
 faction to howl and gnash their teeth in vicious and vindictive wrath. 
 It is a discourse that every student of Irish history should read. All 
 parts of it are deeply interesting; some perfectly applicable to the Irish 
 abuses and grievances of the present hour. He begins by scouting the 
 wicked reports of imaginary conspiracies got up to injure the people; 
 he then denounces the Orange society, expressing disapproval of the 
 Ribbonmen also. He goes deeply into the evils of the land system — 
 the tenures at will, the ruinous competition. He shows that the wretched 
 
THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'COXNELL. 709 
 
 renant has no interest in making improvements, inasmuch as he can 
 reap no benefit from them. He asks: "What, then, is the wretched 
 peasant to do? Chased from the spot where he had first drawn his 
 breath, where he had first seen the light of heaven, incapable of pro- 
 curing any other means of existence, vexed with those exactions I have 
 enumerated, and harassed by the payment of tithes, can we be surprised 
 that a peasant of unenlightened mind, of uneducated habits, should 
 rush upon the perpetration of crimes followed by the punishment of the 
 rope and the gibbet? 
 
 "Nothing, as the peasantry imagine, remains for them, thus ha- 
 rassed and thus destitute, but with strong hand to deter the stranger 
 from intruding upon their farms, and to extort from the weakness and 
 terror of their landlords (from whose gratitude or good-feelings they had 
 failed to win it) a kind of preference for their ancient tenantry." One 
 passage like this gives more real insight into the causes of Ireland's 
 misery, the true case of Ireland before the world, and the just require- 
 ments of Ireland, than all the tomes of vicious and unscrupulous 
 sophistry a Fronde could write in a lifetime. 
 
 Baron Fletcher next touches on the jury laws. He points out the 
 system of fraud and peculation that prevailed owing to the abuse of the 
 county presentment code. Even in the present day grand-juries are, in 
 some instances, chiefly in the hands of the Ascendency faction. After 
 speaking of other deep-rooted causes of immorality, he dwells at consid- 
 erable length on the evils of absenteeism. In the course of these obser- 
 vations he notices the ignorance of the English about Irish affairs. He 
 says that they, "generally speaking, know about as much of the Irish 
 as they do of the Hindoos." An English traveller is "handed about" 
 among those who have "an interest in concealing from him the true 
 state of the country ; he passes from squire to squire, . . . all bus} r in 
 pouring falsehood into his ears touching the disturbed state of the coun- 
 try and the vicious habits of the people." He returns to England "with 
 his prejudices doubled," " in a kind of moral despair of the welfare of 
 such a wicked race, having made up his mind that nothing ought to be 
 done for this lawless, degraded country." The judge adds, he would not 
 wonder to see a revival of " the obsolete ignorance and prejudices of a 
 Harrington, who, in his ' Oceana,' calls the people of Ireland an untam- 
 
able race, declaring that they ought to be exterminated and the country 
 colonized by Jews." Thus would the commerce of England be extended. 
 He expatiates on the neglect of the tenantry. In England landlords 
 rebuild the dilapidated cottages of their tenantry. Nothing is done for 
 the rack-rented, pauperized Irish tenant- at-will. What interest, then, 
 has he in making improvements? How could he make them? 
 
 The good judge exposes fearlessly the jobbing system throughout the 
 country and the abuse of law and justice by the Ascendency magistracy. 
 Speaking of the mischiefs flowing from their misconduct, he says, "One 
 is occasioned by an excessive eagerness to crowd the jails with prisoners 
 and to swell the calendars with crimes." Among the irregularities pre- 
 vailing, he notices unjust tines and vague committals. One remedy 
 required for Ireland is "the equal and impartial administration of jus- 
 tice." With respect to the personnel of the magistracy, he says: "The 
 needy adventurer, the hunter for preferment, the intemperate zealot, the 
 trader in false loyalty, the jobbers of absentees — if any of these various 
 denominations of individuals are now to be found, their names should 
 be expunged from the commission" of the peace. Good parsons, liberal 
 to their Catholic neighbors, feeding them when hungry and clothing 
 them when naked, he thinks would be "splendid acquisitions to the 
 magistracy." But parsons of another class, who, "perusing the Old 
 Testament with more attention than the New, and, admiring the glories 
 of Joshua the son of Nun, fancied they perceived in the Catholics the 
 Canaanites of old, and, at the head of militia and armed yeomanry, 
 wished to conquer from them the promised glebe," such men should not 
 be suffered to "remain in the commission." The whole of this remark- 
 able charge is worthy of attentive study by any one, who desires to 
 gain a thorough knowledge of some of the chief grievances of the peas- 
 antry in the days of O'Connell. Much of it is applicable to the present 
 hour. 
 
 I may as well, in the present chapter, give a curious resolution in 
 favor of an appeal by the Catholics of Ireland to the Cortes of Spain, 
 which Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman moved in the Board on the 29th of 
 June, 1813. Both he and O'Connell said that precedents in abundance 
 might be found " to sanction such a proceeding." Here is the resolution : 
 "Resolved, that it be an instruction to the Catholic Board to consider of 
 
SilPllllI! 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 \ 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 711 
 
 the constitutional fitness and propriety of sending an earnest and press- 
 ing memorial to the Spanish Cortes, stating to them the enslaved and 
 depressed state of their fellow-Catholics in Ireland with respect to their 
 exclusion, on the score of religion, from the benefits of the British con- 
 stitution, and imploring their favorable intercession with their ally, our 
 most gracious sovereign." Against this appeal to Spain, the royal duke 
 of Sussex, who, though a son of George the Third, was a supporter of 
 the Catholic cause, strongly objected. O'Connell argued against his 
 objections. At the same time, nothing ever came of O'Gorman's reso- 
 lution. In the same month the London Courier assailed the Board, com- 
 plaining that, instead of confining its attention to the question of eman- 
 cipation, it took cognizance of every other public event of importance and 
 withdrew the confidence of the people from their Parliamentary repre- 
 sentatives to itself, "a body unknown to the constitution." I should 
 have mentioned, when speaking of Grattan's bill, that Dr. Troy, the 
 Catholic archbishop of Dublin, described the inquisitorial commission 
 of five lay lords which that bill proposed to establish as "a kind of lay 
 eldership unknown to our Church government." O'Connell much about 
 the same time spoke slightingly of the royal college of Maynooth ; he 
 points out "the silence of Irish genius which has been remarked within" 
 that Catholic college that nestles under the wing of the British govern- 
 ment. He explains it thus : " The incubus of jealous and rival intol- 
 erance sits upon its walls, and genius, taste and talent fly from the sad 
 dormitory where sleeps the spirit of dulness." He adds: "The bigot 
 may rule in Trinity College, but still there is no conflicting principle of 
 hostile jealousy in its rulers, and. therefore, Irish genius is not smothered 
 there as in Maynooth." 
 
 In 1813 several atrocities were perpetrated by the Orangemen. In 
 the city of Armagh, on the 12th of July, a band of Orange linen-weavers 
 were guilty of a shameful deed of vandalism. The venerable cross of 
 St. Patrick, curiously sculpture! with prelates and canonized virgins of 
 the olden times and other interesting figures, was attacked and hurled 
 to the earth by these wretched barbarians. The pedestal was blown up 
 with gunpowder, and the shaft of this relic of antiquity, which had stood 
 in the market-place of Armagh for seven hundred years, was converted 
 into a trough for swine. 
 
712 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 In the same month a party of the same banditti were carousing in a 
 tavern in Belfast, ' Suddenly they heard the crashing of glass in front 
 of the house. Upstarting, these savage revelers rushed into the street 
 and fired at random. Three victims fell; one. named Hugh Graham, 
 shot dead on the spot, a second mortally wounded, a third wounded in 
 the thigh. This last had his leg amputated. The Orangemen were 
 tried and acquitted; some Catholics, however, were convicted and 
 punished. 
 
 In Dublin, too, the animosity between the Orangemen and the Catho- 
 lics displayed itself. On the 12th of July, in the morning, the Orange- 
 men decorated with gaudy flags and ribbons the statue of King William 
 in College Green, parading round it with shouts and discharges of fire- 
 arms, at the same time placing shamrocks, as the emblem of the national 
 party, under the hoof of the sculptured war-horse. In the evening the 
 Catholics had their turn. They pelted the statue with mud and filth, 
 till its aspect, grim and foul, became utterly offensive to the sight of the 
 passers-by. O'Connell spoke frequently against the Orangemen this 
 year. On the 31st of December he made a motion on the subject of 
 illegal societies. An address was prepared by the Board, cautioning 
 the people against such organizations. In his speech on this occasion, 
 O'Connell enumerates the different illegal societies that had arisen in 
 Ireland: '"White Boys' and 'Right Boys,' 'Caravats' and 'Shanavests,' 
 'Threshers' and 'Carders,' 'Hearts of Steel,' 'Pccp-o'-day Boys,' 'De- 
 fenders,' 'Orangemen' and ' Ribbonmcn,' and, above and different from 
 all, 'United Irishmen.'" The "cause and character" of the first six 
 " were to be traced to the oppressions of tithe-jobbers and land-jobbers." 
 Of the remainder, with the exception of "the United Irishmen," he 
 says, " the cause and character were easily discerned in religious ani- 
 mosity and rancor." As to the United Irishmen, they tried " to em- 
 brace all sects," and among them were "men who, however mistaken, 
 may be admitted, now that the storm has long since ceased, to have 
 been actuated by pure, though erroneous, love for Ireland." In this 
 speech he strenuously denounces the Orangemen, whom he accuses of 
 having originally meditated the complete extermination of the Catholics, 
 and of whose history, ceremonies and fanaticism he gives some curious 
 particulars; but, while he shows a natural hostility to this ferocious 
 
body, lie also strongly discourages the secret organization which had 
 risen in opposition to them — the well-known society of Ribbonmen. 
 
 Tins year the second war between America and England was raging. 
 The American brig Argus was capturing numbers of English merchant- 
 men in the Channel, even striking terror into the citizens of Dublin. 
 At last, oft' Tnscar Rock, she encountered the Pelican, a British man-of- 
 war. Alter a desperate tight of forty-live minutes, maintained against 
 overwhelming odds, the Argus struck her flag. Her captain's leg was 
 carried off by a cannon-ball. His officers and crew suffered severely. 
 This occurrence may have recalled to O'Connell's mind,«the incident of 
 his childhood, when he saw the deserters from Paul Jones' vessel. 
 
 Meanwhile O'Connell's professional career was successful beyond 
 example. In the autumn assizes of 1813, at Limerick, O'Connell had a 
 brief in every one of twenty-six cases that were tried in the record 
 court, an.l a brief also in every case on the criminal side. At Tralee 
 and Eunis he was equally successful. We have already seen him politi- 
 cally triumphant in Cork this year, Avhere the opposition between the 
 two "wings," so to speak, of the Catholic party ran higher than in any 
 other locality. Fagan tells us that the local Catholic Board there "con- 
 sisted of the Catholic aristocracy and merchants of the city and neigh- 
 borhood. Its proceedings were neither open to the public nor the press. 
 The people were not admitted, and the Board, as a matter of course, 
 was very genteel and very unpopular." O'Connell revolutionized all 
 this. But his professional triumphs in "the beautiful city" were even 
 still more splendid. His brief-bag was plethoric beyond that of any 
 other "gentleman of the long robe." The great "counsellor" was an 
 object of interest to curious gazers, and saluted with popular acclaim 
 wherever he appeared. To anticipate a little, his son John, speaking 
 in his second volume of the year 1817, has the following passage: "We 
 have not alluded to Mr. O'Connell's professional career as yet in this 
 volume, as no reports, except of the most meagre and scanty descrip- 
 tion, are to be found of his bar speeches during the interval it embraces. 
 His advance in the profession was great, and his income, term after 
 term and circuit after circuit, greatly increasing, with a rapidity entirely 
 unprecedented. Unfortunately, however, for this work, the reports of 
 many and many a powerful law argument, and many an effective address 
 
to juries, arc so meagre and imperfect that it would be only a waste of 
 the reader's time to give them in the present collection. Such of his 
 forensic efforts, however, as have been recorded with any appearance of 
 accuracy or due care, will, as heretofore, be found in our pages." John 
 O'Connell fulfills this promise by giving only two additional " forensic 
 efforts" in his unfinished and every way unsatisfactory collection of his 
 father's speeches. 
 
 I shall close this chapter with a slight notice of an odd case, in 
 which our hero appeared as the champion of a poor girl against a well- 
 to-do oppressor. On the 25th of May, 1813, he moved, in the Court of 
 Common Pleas, for a conditional order against the Rev. William Hamil- 
 ton for illegal and oppressive conduct as a magistrate of the county of 
 Tipperary : " The facts of the case," said he, addressing the judges, " are 
 really curious, and would be merely ludicrous but for the sufferings 
 inflicted on my client. The affidavits stated that a peasant girl, named 
 Hennessev, had a hen which laid — not golden esirs — but eggs strangely 
 
 v ' g i^ c CO O • 
 
 marked with red lines and figures. She, on the 21st April, 1813. 
 brought her hen and eggs to the town of Roscrea, near which she lived, 
 and of which the defendant was the Protestant curate. It appeared by 
 the result that she brought her eggs to a bad market, though at fiist 
 she had some reason to think differently; for the curiosity excited by 
 those eggs attracted some attention to the owner — and as she was the 
 child of parents who were miserably poor, her wardrobe was in such a 
 state that she might almost literally be said to be clothed in nakedness. 
 My lords, a small subscription to buy her a petticoat was suggested by 
 the person who makes the present affidavit, himself a working weaver 
 of the town, James Murphy— and the sum of fifteen shillings was 
 speedily collected. It was a little fortune to the poor creatine — she 
 kissed her hen, thanked her benefactors, and with a light heart started 
 on her return home. But diis aliter visum (to the gods it seemed otherwise, 
 fitting). At the moment two constables arrived with a warrant signed 
 by the Reverend William Hamilton. This warrant charged her with 
 the strange offence of a foul imposition. It would appear as if it were 
 issued in some wretched jest arising from the sound not the sense. But 
 it proved no joke to the girl, for she was arrested. Her hen, her eggs, 
 and her fifteen shillings were taken into custody and carried before L',> 
 
THE LIFE OF DAX1EL OCOXXELL. 715 
 
 worship. lie was not at leisure to try the case that day. The girl was 
 committed to Bridewell, where she lay a close prisoner for twenty-foui 
 hours, when his reverend worship was pleased to dispose of the matter. 
 Without the mockery of any trial, he proceeded at once to sentence. 
 lie sentenced the girl to perpetual banishment from Roscrea. lie senl 
 her out of the town guarded by three constables, and with positive 
 injunctions never to set foot in it again. He decapitated her hen with 
 his own sacred hands. He broke the eggs and confiscated the fifteen 
 shillings. When the girl returned to her home — the fowl dead, the eggs 
 broken, and the fifteen shillings in his reverence's pocket — one would 
 suppose justice quite satisfied. But no, his worship discovered that 
 Murphy had collected the offending money ; he was therefore to be 
 punished. He was, indeed, first tried — but under what law think you? 
 Why, literally, my lords, under the statute of good manners. Yes, 
 under that act, wherever it is to be found, was Murphy tried, convicted 
 and sentenced. He was committed to Bridewell, where he lay for three 
 days. The committal states 'that he was charged on oath with having 
 assisted in a foul imposition on public credulity — contrary to good 
 manners.' These are the words of the committal; and he was ordered 
 to be detained until he should give security — 'for his good behavior.' 
 Such is the ridiculous warrant on which an humble man has been 
 deprived of his liberty for three days. Such are the details given of 
 the vexatious proceedings of the reverend magistrate. It was to be 
 hoped that those details would turn out to be imaginary; but they are 
 sworn to — -positively sworn to, and require investigation — the more espe- 
 cially as motives of a highly culpable nature were attributed — he (Mr. 
 O'Connell) hoped untruly attributed — to the gentleman. He was charged 
 on oath with having been actuated by malice toward this wretched girl 
 because she was a Catholic. It was sworn that his object was to estab- 
 lish some charge of superstition against her, upon no better ground 
 than this, that one of those eggs had a mark on it nearly resembling a 
 
 cross." 
 
 The court granted the rule applied for; but Parson Hamilton, shamed 
 by this terrible exposure, managed to compromise the ugly business pri- 
 vately, making compensation to the poor girl whom he had so grossly 
 injured. 
 
71G THE LIFE OF DANIEL 0' CORNELL. 
 
 This was not the only odd exploit by which this eccentric parson 
 distinguished himself. On the 17th of August, 1841, our hero, return- 
 ing to Dublin from a Repeal meeting at Drogheda, as usual, beguiled the 
 weariness of the way with pleasant conversation. He told some divert- 
 ing stories of queer parsons to his friend Mr. Daunt. " He laughed 
 heartily,'' that gentleman, in his "Personal Recollections of O'Connell," 
 informs us, '.'at the detection of the Rev. Mr. Crampton in the act of 
 throwing stones at his own windows — the reverend gentleman having 
 complained of attacks upon his house, and procured the attendance of 
 a party of police to protect him from the aggressions of the Popish con- 
 spirators. Two of the police, who were placed on this duty, detected 
 Mr. Crampton, at night, throwing stones at the windows. The reverend 
 gentleman's explanation was that he did so in order to test the vigilance 
 of his guard. But if he had not been caught in the fact, we probably 
 should never have heard a single word of this 'ingenious device.' " 
 
 After laughing over the Rev. Mr. Crampton's exploit, which may be 
 looked on as a sort of human counterpart of some of the sly tricks of 
 'Reynard the Fox," in the old mediaeval fable of that name, O'Connell 
 told Mr. Daunt a still more cunning and far-fetched contrivance of that 
 edifying parson and precious justice of the peace, the thrice reverend hen- 
 decapitating Hamilton. "These parsons," quoth our hero, "occasionally 
 do very curious things. Several years ago, a parson at Roscrea, named 
 Hamilton, dressed up a figure to represent himself, and seated it at table, 
 with a pair of candles before it, and a Bible, which the pseudo-parson 
 seemed to be intently studying. He then stole out, and tired through the 
 window at the figure. It was a famous case of Popish atrocity — a pious 
 and exemplary clergyman, studying the sacred Word of God, brutally 
 tired at by a Popish assassin ! He tried to get a man named Egan con- 
 victed of the crime, but having the temerity to appear as a witness 
 himself, it came out, upon cross-examination, that the reverend divine 
 was entitled to the sole and undivided glory of the transaction." 
 
 Mr. O'Neill Daunt refers his readers to another amusing work of his 
 — " Ireland and her Agitators" — to which this biography has also been 
 indebted, for full details of this singular transaction, which, he says, 
 were furnished to him by a member of the Egan family. 
 
 It was in the same conversation about comical parsons that O'Con- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 717 
 
 nell told Mr. Daunt the story, already given in this biography, of the 
 action taken by a Miss Fitzgerald against a Parson Hawkesworth for 
 
 breach of promise of marriage.* 
 
 * The books from which 1 have drawn the materials of the foregoing chapter arc. Pagan s 
 "Life of O'Connell ;" O'Neill Daunt's "Personal Recollections of O'C'onnell;" John Mitchel's 
 " History of Ireland ;" "Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell, &c, Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Par- 
 liament street;" "The Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P.. edited, with Historical Notices 
 etc.," by his son, John O'Connell, Esq. ; " Grattau's Speeches;" " Life of the Right Kevcread Jofca 
 lliluer, D. D.," by Dr. Husenbuth ; Plowden. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Chequered fortunes op O'Connell axd the Catholic cause ix 1S13 — Catholic meet- 
 ings THROUGHOUT IRELAND — BITTERNESS AND FURY OF THE GOVERNMENT PRESS AGAINST 
 O'CONNELL — O'Co.NNELl's DAUNTLESS AXD DEFIANT BEARING IN THE TEETn OF ADVERSE 
 CIRCUMSTANCES — LUDICROUS ANECDOTE OF A TAILOR — PRESEXTATIOX OF A SPLENDID SILVER 
 CUP TO O'CONNELL BY THE MANUFACTURERS OF THE DUBLIN LIBERTIES — FALLEN CONDI- 
 TION OF THE LIBERTIES — TlIE RUIN OF THE CATHOLIC BOARD COMMENCES WITH ARISTO- 
 CRATIC secession — The breach between Henry Grattan axd O'Coxnell grows 
 wider — Government reporters at Catholic meetings — The " Knockloftiness " of 
 
 THE EARL OF DonOUGIIMORE's LETTER — O'CONNELL ROUTS A " PACKED " MEETING OF THE 
 BECEDKBS; LUDICROUS CONSTERNATION OF THE ARISTOCRATS AT O'CONNELL's SUDDEN AP- 
 PARITION AMONG THEM — TlIE FAMOUS RESCRIPT OF QuARANTOTTI — DlSMAY AND SUBSE- 
 QUENT INDIGNATION AND HIGH SPIRIT OF THE CATHOLICS — BOLD ATTITUDE OF O'CONNELL 
 AND THE CLERGY AXD PEOPLE — TlIE TOPE DISAVOWS QuARANTOTTI — UNPLEASANT AFFAIR 
 
 of Major Bryan — A stage-struck agitator — Strange characters and queer duels 
 — The vote of censure ox Dr. Dromgoole — Lord Whitworth suppresses the Cath- 
 olic Board by proclamation — Noble conduct of John PuiLroT Curran. 
 
 wolpMlIS vear, 1813, the events of which we have been relating, was 
 a very chequered one for O'Connell and the Catholic cause. 
 We see him, as it advances, at one moment the defiant orator, 
 the triumphant idol of the people, at another moment furiously 
 P$f assailed by the rancorous pens of a venal and thoroughly unprin- 
 cipled press — the Dublin Journal, the London Courier, the Correspondent, 
 the Hibernian Journal (this was one of the most virulent and pertina- 
 cious of his assailants), and the Patriot (called so on the lucus a non 
 lucendo principle), all yelling, as it were, at him and the Board, in full 
 chorus. Already he begins to be, what he later in life so often styled 
 himself, "the best abused man in the world." These papers encouraged 
 the Catholic aristocracy in their unworthy secession from the Catholic 
 Board, caused chiefly by the mischievous veto controversy. O'Connell 
 is called a fool, is accused of delaying emancipation by his opposition to 
 the " securities," is accused of setting the whole Protestant interest in 
 array against the Catholic cause. Old supporters appear to be falling 
 off or becoming lukewarm; the breach "between him and the illustrious 
 m 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 71 ( J 
 
 Grattan becomes wider; Lord Donoiighmore, too, grows cold, is inclined 
 to advise a policy of inaction. O'Connell is described in a burlesque style 
 by the Hibernian Journal as '-Poor O'Connell . . . this Catholic hero 
 . . . this Irish chieftain . . lectured by the attorney-general;" "blub- 
 bering;"' "shedding tears in the most flaglioolouglily ludicrous abun- 
 dance." 
 
 The Board, too, is at one time spreading its influence by the exer- 
 tions of O'Connell and his able and eloquent associates — Scully, Finlay, 
 Charles Philips and others — over counties where it had little influence 
 before ; at another weakened by aristocratic secession and menaced 
 with dissolution by the government. Such was the chequered history 
 of O'Connell and the Irish Catholic Board through the year 1813; and 
 it must be admitted that the outlook at the commencement of 1814 was 
 gloomy enough. In short, the new year advanced without any smile of 
 promise to their cause. 
 
 O'Connell, however, was not a man to be daunted. He had faith in 
 the goodness of his cause; in his friends, who, as we have seen, had 
 generously rallied around him to sustain him with their sympathy and 
 approval; but, above all, he had strong faith in himself. He knew that 
 he had within him the energy and power sooner or later to compel Vic- 
 tory to do his bidding, as Ariel obeyed Prospero. His spirit remained 
 proud and high; his bearing was still defiant and aggressive. No doubt 
 his enemies deemed all this insolent and provoking to a degree; but 
 what could they do, poor devils ? Chafe as they might, they had finally 
 to "grin and bear it." The brilliant Shiel, in his animated sketch of 
 O'Connell, tells us: "The admirers of King William have no mercy for 
 a man who, in his seditious moods, is so provoking as to tell the world 
 that their idol was 'a Dutch adventurer.' Then his intolerable success 
 in a profession where many a staunch Protestant is condemned to starve; 
 and his fashionable house in Merrion Square; and, a greater eye-sore 
 still, his dashing revolutionary equipage, green carriage, green liveries, 
 and turbulent Popish steeds prancing over a Protestant pavement, to 
 the terror of Protestant passengers, these, and other provocations of 
 equal publicity, have exposed this learned culprit to the deep detesta- 
 tion of a numerous class of His Majesty's hating subjects in Ireland; 
 and the feeling is duly communicated to the public : the loyal press of 
 
720 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL, 
 
 Dublin teems with the most astounding imputations upon his character 
 and motives." Mr. Mitchel remarks amusingly on this: ''The provoca- 
 tion of the 'Popish horses prancing over a Protestant pavement' was 
 more serious than it may now appear, for the pavement was strictly 
 Protestant, and so were the street-lamps. No Catholic, though lie might 
 drive a coach-and-four, could be admitted upon any paving or lighting 
 board in that sacred stronghold of the Ascendency, the corporation of 
 Dublin." Mr. Mitchel appends an amusing story as an illustrative note 
 to this passage: "It was at the height of the Catholic agitation that a 
 town councillor, who was a tailor, said, at a corporation dinner : ' My 
 lord, these Papists may get their emancipation, they may sit in Parlia- 
 ment, they may preside upon the bench, a Papist may become lord- 
 chancellor or privy-councillor, but never, never shall one of them set foot 
 in the ancient and loyal Guild of Tailors.' " 
 
 One of those, instances of a people's love and appreciation, which 
 are like gleams of warm sunshine amid the gloom and trials that, 
 more or less, frown across the path of every man who devotes himself 
 to an arduous struggle in vindication of the rights of a downtrodden 
 people, occurred to cheer O'Connell amid the somewhat discouraging 
 events that heralded in the year 1814. On the 14th of the January of 
 that year, the manufacturers of the liberty of the city of Dublin pre- 
 sented a handsome silver cup, the cunning workmanship of one Mullan 
 of College Green, to our hero. On the obverse was an appropriate 
 inscription; on the reverse were grouped a haip and broken chain, a 
 scroll and a pen, a book and a lamp, a caducous and a scale of justice, 
 also a shield emblazoned with the armorial bearings of O'Connell. 
 O'Connell received the deputation from the manufacturers in his study. 
 His two boys, Maurice and Morgan, stood beside him and shook hands 
 with the Dublin artisans. The address to our hero, signed J. Talbot 
 and C. Dowdal, speaking of the gift and givers, contained these and 
 other words: "It is but the widow's mite; yet they [the givers) hope 
 not less acceptable, as it overflows with their affections." They wished 
 him long life also. O'Connell replied with grateful warmth ; he told 
 them that their country was "widowed, too," that the independence of 
 '82 gave Ireland manufactures and freedom ; that independence alone 
 could revive both. "My gratitude to the manufacturers," said he, "will 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 721 
 
 be best evinced, if I can awake the people of Ireland to hope for a 
 repeal of the union !" We learn from his son that, in addition to what 
 he said in his more formal reply, "he declared, in allusion to their sub- 
 sisting custom of toast-giving, that no toast should ever be drunk out 
 of it, save 'the repeal of the union.' ' John O'Connell adds truly enough, 
 in bis clumsy, long-winded style, that "It is a melancholy thing to 
 reflect upon, that, low and poverty-stricken as was the condition of that 
 extensive district, entitled 'The Liberty' of Dublin city, it has long- 
 since fallen much lower, and, indeed, declined into utter ruin. The 
 time is many a year ago gone by, when such a presentation could be 
 repeated as that which we record ; and ' The Liberty ' which, during the 
 Irish Parliament, was the focus of active and most remunerative manu- 
 facturing employment of various descriptions, is now, and has for a long 
 time been known only as the focus of the last and uttermost wretched- 
 ness and helpless destitution." 
 
 The secession of the aristocracy, somewhat before this period, was 
 the commencement of the ruin of the Catholic Board. This secession 
 was chiefly occasioned by the misunderstandings on the vexatious ques- 
 tion of the veto. Lords Fingal and Trimleston, and other aristocratic 
 Catholics, Avere eager supporters of Grattan's bill. They shared in the 
 indignation which that great Irishman felt at the opposition which 
 O'Connell and his followers gave to "the securities" in every shape and 
 form. G rattan and Lord Donoughmore being on bad terms with the 
 Board, the breach between the two sections of the Catholic party was 
 sure to grow still wider. On the 8th of January, on the motion of 
 O'Connell, the letters of Lord Donoughmore and Mr. Grattan, already 
 referred to, were read. They did not contribute to the production of a 
 better feeling. O'Connell made a nervous speech, in which he expressed 
 something very like indignation at both letters. He was especially sore 
 about that of Grattan. "What securities did he (Grattan) ever speak of 
 in the Irish Parliament?" O'Connell manfully denied that the Catholics 
 had any natural " inferiority " to their Protestant countrymen. At the 
 elose of this meeting, the eccentric Barney Coile pointed out to O'Con- 
 nell a person, apart from the other reporters, taking notes of the proceed- 
 ings. All eyes were speedily turned in the direction of the stranger, 
 who admitted that he was employed by the police authorities, and said 
 
 I L 
 i i 
 
"that he acted solely by the command of his superiors, and sincerely 
 hoped he should not be held to have thereby forfeited the regard of 
 others." O'Connell said, "That was all perfectly fair," and promised 
 to have at the next meeting a desk or table large enough to accommo- 
 date as many as the police should think fit to send. On this conduct 
 of our hero his son thus observes: "Thirty or forty times at least, during 
 the course of his agitation, similar occasions have arisen for similar 
 steps on his part — greatly to the disappointment and discomfiture of 
 the authorities he showed such readiness to oblige." Sometimes Eng- 
 lishmen, who would be sent over to watch the proceedings of the Catho- 
 lics, would arrive in Ireland with the full conviction that they were 
 doomed never to escape alive out of that turbulent land. of cut-throats; 
 they would surely be assassinated by some members of the terrible con- 
 federacy, over which the lightest word of the arch-rebel O'Connell was 
 law. Gradually they would come to see that it was possible for an 
 Englishman to preserve a whole skin in Ireland; and if they had a 
 more than usual share of candor, they would finally confess that they 
 had been fools. 
 
 It was in this year, 1814, that O'Connell delivered that speech, in 
 which he made the amusing use of Esop's fable of the wolves and sheep 
 to overthrow Counsellor Stephen Woulfe's able argument in farpr of the 
 veto, that I have already referred to in Chapter the Twelfth. Mr. Daunt 
 says (1 think rightly) that this incident occurred at a meeting at 
 Limerick; John O'Connell states that it took place at Clare. Be this 
 as it ma}', in this speech O'Connell again referred to the course pursued 
 by Lord Donoughmore and Mr. Grattan. He says that Mr. AVoulfe 
 brings an "indictment," in which there are "four counts" against the 
 Board. "It charges the Board, . . . Thirdly, with having made an 
 unnecessary and virulent attack on Lord Donoughmore and Mr. Grattan; 
 
 and — 
 
 " Fourthly, with having been guilty of a pun. (Lcuujhtcr.) . . . This 
 has the merit of comicality. ... A public body accused of a joke! a 
 public body charged with being miserably witty! Oh, most wise, most 
 sapient, accusers! . . . He, Mr. Lawless, talked of the 'Knockloftiness' 
 of the style of a certain letter." Knocklofty is the name of Lord 
 Donoughmore's place. O'Connell adds, immediately after, that Mr. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 723 
 
 Lawless borrowed tins "'unfortunate witticism' from ' The Belfast 
 Magazine' and retailed it to the Board at second-hand.'' O'Connell con- 
 cludes this speech in these words — "and in that sacred cause" {that of 
 "unqualified emancipation") "let the watchword be unanimity for old 
 Ireland !" 
 
 The following entertaining passage from the " Eeminiscenccs of a 
 Silent Agitator," by Thomas Kennedy, published in the Irish Monthly 
 Magazine, a periodical defunct many years since, gives a vivid picture 
 of some of the proceedings of the aristocratic seceders from the Catholic 
 Board in or about the period I am now writing of: 
 
 " The time at length came when the maturing strength of the second 
 order grew so obnoxious to the fastidious tastes of the Corinthians that 
 a secession from the democratic conventions was resolved on ; and the 
 Catholic aristocracy formed itself into a Praetorian band under the title 
 of Seceders. Their secretary was Le Chevalier 'De McCarthy, brother 
 to the count of the same name,' who derives his patent of nobility — 
 like the knights who were slain by the princess Busty Fusty in 
 O'Keefe's farce — from the 'Holy Roman Empire;' and their hall of 
 assembly was the drawing-room in the mansion of a nobleman (Lord 
 Trimleston) — a most appropriate place for the means and ends they 
 possessed and entertained. Circulars were directed to those belonging 
 to the Catholic body who were considered entitled to the private entree 
 of Lord Trimleston's saloon; and some meetings were held by those 
 political exclusives, where speeches were delivered and resolutions 
 passed without subjecting the eloquent declaimers to those occasional 
 interruptions, which in mixed assemblies are rudely offered, expressive 
 of applause. Too polite to be personal in their allusions to the political 
 opponents of the cause, they Avere also too refined in their selection of 
 language to be either spirited or independent in their sentiments; and 
 when they touched upon the feeling of the civil degradation which they 
 were enduring, it was calculated more to excite compassion for their 
 privations than applause for the indignant sense of wrong they should 
 have displayed. The proceedings of the Seceders would have passed 
 away like any other drawing-room amusements, commencing with 
 politics and ending with a promenade, were it not that they took upon 
 themselves to act for the people, and to assume a sort of dictation in 
 
724 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 tlieir cause. This was not to be endured, and at their next meeting 
 the uninvited O'Connell was resolved to appear — 
 
 " ' In their own halls I'll brave them.' 
 
 "The Seeeders appointed a committee to prepare an address to the 
 priuee-regent, and also agreed on a petition to Parliament, in the spring 
 of the year 1814; all which transactions emanated from Lord Trim- 
 leston's drawing-room. At the latter end of March, a circular was issued 
 by Le Chevalier De McCarthy, their secretary of state, to those who 
 were supposed to sanction the secession, inviting them to attend, for the 
 purpose of ' hearing the report of the committee appointed to prepare 
 the address to his royal highness the prince-regent, and to receive a 
 communication from the earl of Donoughmore.' The chevalier also 
 requested that 'you would be so good as to mention this, with my com- 
 pliments, to those of your acquaintance who have signed the petition 
 adopted on the 23d February.' All those who still adhered to the Cath- 
 olic Board (the model of the association) were passed over, and the 
 seeders imagined that, as the meeting was to take place in the man- 
 sion of a nobleman, no tribune of the people would dare to intrude 
 upon their privacy or present himself at the portals uninvited. Wrapped 
 in all the conhdence of security from such a visitation, the members of 
 this Aulic Council assembled to deliberate upon their snail-pace progress 
 and to prepare their forces for their inoffensive warfare. In the midst 
 of their proceedings, a loud knock at the hall-door startled the slumber- 
 ing echoes in Trimleston House and attracted the attention of its draw- 
 ing-room convention. The noble president looked embarrassed ; the 
 hectic of a moment passed over his cheek, but did not tarry. The 
 knock was both loud and long, and terminated in a climax of sound : a 
 general presentiment seemed to pervade the assembly that there was 
 but one person who would have the audacity to demand admittance in 
 that manner. The chevalier, more courageous than the rest, rose from 
 his place at the table and went to reconnoitre from a position on the 
 staircase, and returned with a hurried step to his seat, whispering t<> 
 those who were immediately around him something which did not seem 
 to relieve their suspense. The chevalier had scarcely taken his pen into 
 his hand when the door opened and O'Connell advanced to the table. 
 
TIIE LTFE OF DAMEL OXOXXELL. 72") 
 
 It would require a lengthened report to convey an idea of the debate 
 which ensued; or perhaps the pencil of a Hogarth could best describe 
 the effect of the scene — the expression of impatience and vexation which 
 lowered on the brows of his auditors, contrasted with the look of scorn- 
 ful rebuke which he cast upon them, one and all — the haughty tone with 
 which lie interrogated them, why they dared to take upon themselves to 
 act for the Catholic people of Ireland, and to exclude from their meet- 
 ings those belonging to that people who were their superiors in every 
 attribute. Dismayed and humiliated, the Seceders never after ventured 
 to assemble ; and whether his royal highness received the contemplated 
 address, or whether the earl of Donoughmore's epistle was replied to, 
 are matters I have not been able to ascertain. As a body, they were 
 as effectually dissolved as the Council of Five Hundred was — with this 
 difference, that moral influence alone completed in the one case what 
 the direction of military force achieved in the other. The next step the 
 Seceders took was to secede from a secession, and, as the Irish watchman 
 once said to a nocturnal disturber, 'Disperse yourself' each retired within 
 the glittering shell of his title or his opulence, and, like snails, they left 
 no memorial but the slime of their proceedings to record them." 
 
 The writer of the foregoing lively sketch is not quite correct in say- 
 ing that the meeting at Lord Trimleston's was the last effort on the part 
 of the Seceders or vctoists to speak in the name of the people of Ireland. 
 I shall, before long, have to notice a similar packed meeting of this 
 clique, in which, it appears to me, they presumed to, or at least would 
 fain have, put themselves forward as speaking in the name of Catholic 
 Ireland. But, first, it is necessary to give a concise account of the 
 celebrated rescript of Monsignor Quarantotti. 
 
 It was with an indescribable horror that O'Connell and his Catholic 
 countrymen read in an English paper, on May the 3d, the following an- 
 nouncement: "We have just heard from unquestionable authority that 
 the first act of the pope, on his re-establishment at Boine, was to pass 
 in full consistory, with the cardinals unanimously agreeing, an arrange- 
 ment giving to the British Crown the desired security respecting the 
 nomination of Catholic bishops." 
 
 At once the belief spread like wildfire that not merely the prelates, 
 who had been appointed to administer ecclesiastical affairs at Kome 
 
72G THE LIFE OF DANIEL 0'COXXELL. 
 
 while the pope was a prisoner in the hands of Napoleon, had given 
 their approval to the "securities" of Grattan's bill of the preceding 
 year, but that Pius the Seventh himself had assented to them also. 
 This appeared the more probable, as His Holiness was naturally grateful 
 to the allied powers, England included, which, by turning the tide of 
 conquest and invasion against the great emperor after his disastrous 
 retreat from Leipzig, in 1813, had brought about the pontiff's release 
 from captivity. All the apprehensions, however, of the Irish Catholics 
 seemed to be fully justified, when, on the 5th of May, 1814, the copy of 
 a letter, bearing the signature of "Monsignor Quarantotti, vice-prefect 
 of Koine," appeared in the Dublin Evening Post. While those, who were 
 hostile or indifferent to the freedom of the Catholic Church in Ireland 
 from the corrupting intluences of the British Crown, were satisfied, if not 
 exulting, the real friends both of Catholic and Irish liberty were stricken 
 with dismay; for Quarantotti's rescript expressed entire approval, not 
 merely of Grattan's bill, but of Canning's clauses. The Catholics, ac- 
 cording to this precious document, ought "to receive and embrace the 
 bill with a grateful spirit." 
 
 It may be as well to give some passages from this memorable docu- 
 ment. It was addressed to "The Right Rev. William Povnter," vicar 
 apostolic of the London district. Of this prelate, who, so far from being 
 an opponent to the veto, had remained pitifully silent while the learned 
 and admirable Dr. Milner was brutally insulted in his ^presence by the 
 English vetoists, O'Connell humorously said, that "he was a poor crea- 
 ture, who should be called Spaniel, instead of Poynter." This was cer- 
 tainly hard hitting at the English Catholic primate; but then our un- 
 compromising Dan was no respecter of persons, and he seldom troubled 
 himself with measuring his words very scrupulously. Returning to the 
 rescript, it says : 
 
 "As to the desire of the government to be informed of the loyalty 
 of those who are promoted to the dignity of bishop or dean, and to be 
 assured that they possess those qualifications which belong to a faithful 
 subject ; as to the intention, also, of forming a board for the ascertain- 
 ment of those points, by inquiring into the character of those who shall 
 be presented, and reporting thereon to the king, according to the tenor 
 of your lordship's letter; and, finally, as to the determination of govern- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'C'OXNELL. 727 
 
 ment to have none admitted to those dignities who either are not nat- 
 ural-born subjects, or who have not been residents in the kingdom for 
 four years preceding, — as all these provisions regard matters that are 
 merely political, they are entitled to all indulgence. It is better, indeed, 
 that the prelates of our Church should be acceptable to the king, in order 
 that they may exercise their ministry with his full concurrence, and also 
 that there may be no doubts of their integrity, even with those who are 
 not in the bosom of the Church; for 'it behoveth a bishop' (as the 
 apostle teaches, 1 Tim. iii. 7) 'even to have a good witness from those 
 who are not of the Church.' Upon these principles we, in virtue of the 
 authority entrusted to us, grant permission that those who are elected to 
 and proposed for bishoprics and deaneries by the clergy may be admitted 
 or rejected by the king, according to the law proposed. When, therefore, 
 the clergy shall have, according to the usual custom, elected those whom 
 they shall judge most worthy in the Lord to possess those dignities, the 
 metropolitan of the province In Ireland, or the senior vicar-apostolic of 
 England and Scotland, shall give notice of the election, that the king's 
 approbation or dissent may be had thereupon. If the candidates be 
 rejected, others shall be proposed who may be acceptable to the king; 
 but if approved of, the metropolitan or vicar-apostolic, as above, shall 
 send the documents to the Sacred Congregation here, the members 
 whereof, having duly weighed the merits of each, shall take measures 
 for the attainment of canonical institution from His Holiness. I per- 
 ceive, also, that another duty is ass'i.ned to the board above mentioned — 
 namely, that they are charged to inspect all letters written by the eccle- 
 siastical power to any of the British clergy, and examine carefully 
 whether they contain anything which may be injurious to the govern- 
 ment or anywise disturb the public tranquillity. Inasmuch as a com- 
 munication on ecclesiastical or spiritual affairs with the head of the 
 Church is not forbidden, and as the inspection of the board relates to 
 political subjects only, this also must be submitted to. It is right that 
 the government should not have cause to entertain any suspicion with 
 regard to the communication between us. What we write will bear the 
 eyes of the world, for we intermeddle not with matters of a political 
 nature, but are occupied about- those things which the divine and the 
 ecclesiastical law, and the good order of the Church, appear to require. 
 
728 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Those matters only are to be kept under the seal of silence which per- 
 tain to the jurisdiction of conscience within us; and of this it appears 
 to me sufficient care has been taken in the chaises of the law alluded to. 
 We are perfectly convinced that so wise a government as that of Great 
 Britain, while it studies to provide for the public security, does not on 
 that account wish to compel the Catholics to desert their religion, but 
 would rather be pleased that they should be careful observers of it ; for 
 our holy and truly divine religion is most favorable to public authority, 
 is the best support of thrones, and the most powerful teacher both of 
 loyalty and patriotism." 
 
 Such was the famous Rescript of Monsignor Quarantotti that created 
 the most astounding hubbub all through Catholic Ireland. Indignation, 
 the most furious, soon took the place of the feelings of dismay, which, 
 on the first arrival of the news, had struck a chill to the heart of every 
 Catholic, who was also a true Irishman. Priests and people were alike 
 raging against " 'Mr. Forty-eight,' as the irrepressible tendency to jest- 
 ing" (I am borrowing the words of John O'Connell), "in the Irish Catho- 
 lic, had already christened him [Quarantotti). in allusion to a wild story 
 about the derivation of his patronymic, said to have been from the 
 number of a lucky lottery-ticket that had made his father's fortune." 
 He was represented, in the caricatures of the day, as bending under a 
 huge hamper, which he was bringing into the presence of His Holiness. 
 The hamper was crammed with the mitres of Irish bishops, huddled 
 together confusedly; while George the Third, with covetous eye, was 
 standing in a comer eagerly stretching forth his hands to grasp the 
 mitres. Irish priests, who remembered having seen Quarantotti at 
 Rome in their student days, described him as a dunce. As the English 
 papers took care to represent him as a cardinal, the fact that he was 
 only a prelate was dwelt on in Ireland with some satisfaction. At a 
 later period, indeed, he received a cardinal's hat ; but in mean time the 
 Irish were glad in any way to lower his pretensions. 
 
 Nothing could equal the disgust and rage with which Irishmen, both 
 lay and clerical, read the praises of the English government in this 
 rescript. Thomas Kenned)", in his "Reminiscences of a Silent Agi- 
 tator," says: "One of the proudest and most gratifying recollections of 
 the agitators is connected with the dignified resistance which the Irish 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 729 
 
 Catholic Church gave to the interference of the papal throne." I shall 
 give some extracts, which John 0*Connell quotes from the letter of "An 
 Irish Priest," in order to show the spirit in which Quarantotti's rescript 
 was at once met, This letter appeared in the Dublin Evening Pod the 
 day after that document had been given. 
 
 "The ferment spread like wildfire through every gradation of society, 
 and the very lowest order of people felt its influence. Some cursed — 
 others moaned — all complained. Early this morning my old servant- 
 maid, without waiting for any commands of mine, accosted me abruptly 
 with these words: 'Oh, sir! what shall we do? Is it — can it be true 
 that the pope has turned Orangeman T 
 
 " I must beg to correct two material mistakes of yours. . . . The 
 document is not from His Holiness Pius the Seventh. . , . Nor is there 
 a word to indicate any sort of consent or approbation from him or any 
 one of his cardinals. Quarantotti refers to no authority but his own. . . . 
 A clerk to the Congregation of the Propaganda presumes to decide on a 
 subject of the greatest magnitude, and which would require the delibera- 
 tion not only of the whole Congregation and of the pope himself, with 
 his whole College of Cardinals, but of an entire (Ecumenical Council. 
 Nay, as it appertains to local discipline, that (Ecumenical Council itself 
 could not compel us to submit — much less an understrapper of the 
 Propaganda." The " Irish Priest" then amuses himself with some criti- 
 cism on the LatiniUj of the rescript. He also finds fault with the channel 
 through which Quarantotti thought proper to make so important an 
 announcement — through an English vicar apostolic, instead of, at all 
 events, addressing it to the ancient and regularly constituted hierarchy 
 of Ireland. He concludes by saying : " Every attempt to weaken the 
 Catholic Church shall in the end prove fruitless ; and as long as the 
 shamrock shall adorn our island, so long shall the faith delivered to us 
 by St. Patrick prevail; in despite of kings, parliaments, Orangemen 
 and Quarantottis." 
 
 Meanwhile the opinion began to spread that this odious rescript had 
 been issued by this preposterous Quarantotti solely on his own respon- 
 sibility. It seemed possible even that the pope had been completely 
 ignorant of the whole transaction, which it has since been stated was 
 the result of the secret intrigues of Lord William Bentinck in Rome. 
 
730 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 The document was dated the 16th of February, while the liberation of 
 His Holiness from his French captivity did not take place till the 2d 
 of April. No wonder, then, that the resentment against the presump- 
 tuous prelate and the resistance to his audacious rescript grew stronger 
 each day. 
 
 On the 12th of May, at a meeting of the parish priests and other 
 clergymen of the archdiocese of Dublin, held in Bridge Street Chapel, 
 the following resolutions were adopted, as a duty the clergy present 
 owed "to God and to their flocks:" 
 
 "Resolved, that we consider the document or rescript, signed 'Quar- 
 antotti,' as non-obligatory upon the Catholic Church in Ireland, particu- 
 larly as it wants those authoritative marks whereby the mandates of 
 the Holy See are known and recognized, and esjycciallg the signature of the 
 ■pope. 
 
 "That we consider the granting to an anti-Catholic government any 
 power, either direct or indirect, with regard to the appointment and nom- 
 ination of the Catholic bishops in Ireland, as at all times inexpedient. 
 
 "That, circumstanced as we are in this country, Ave consider the 
 granting of such a power not only inexpedient, but highly detrimental 
 to the best and dearest interests of religion, and pregnant with incalcu- 
 lable mischief to the cause of Catholicity in Ireland. 
 
 "That such arrangements of domestic nominations can be made 
 among the clergy of Ireland as will preclude that foreign influence 
 against which those securities, so destructive to religion, are called for 
 by the Parliament." 
 
 The clergy then respectfully call on their "venerable archbishop," in 
 conjunction with the other Irish prelates, to remonstrate "with His 
 Holiness and the sacred College of Cardinals" against "this document," 
 and to represent the evils which "the adoption of the principles laid 
 down" in it would "inevitably" bring on the Catholic Church in Ire- 
 land. The signatures of all the priests " at that moment in the city of 
 Dublin," some of which (those, for instance, of Dr. Blake, subsequently 
 bishop of Dromore, who presided over the meeting, Father Walter 
 Myler, Father Yore, etc.) were familiar names in Dublin up to a com- 
 paratively recent date, were appended to these resolutions. 
 
 Meanwhile the columns of all the Catholic and liberal journals, with 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL OX'OXXELL. 701 
 
 (according to John O'Connell) but one exception, were flaming with (lie 
 widespread and still-increasing indignation. This expression of Hie 
 public fury by the newspapers was sanctioned by numerous letters 
 from ecclesiastics, full of strong denunciations of unfortunate Quaran- 
 totti. Dr. Coppinger, bishop of Cleyne, writing to the Dublin Evening 
 Post of May the 14th, styles "Mr. Quarantotti's decree" a "very mis- 
 chievous document," and adds, "In common with every real friend to the 
 integrity of (he Catholic religion in Ireland, I read it with feelings of 
 disgust and indignation." Dr. Barry, the then bishop of Dromore, was 
 equally strong against it; and, a few days later, the Right Rev. Dr. 
 O'Shaughnessy wrote : " The result of this pernicious document, if acted 
 upon, would be fatal to the Catholic religion; therefore I hasten to pro- 
 test against it, and while I have breath in my body Mill continue to do 
 so." The Limerick Evening Post, on the 9th of May, argued that if 
 Canning's clauses, "approved of at Rome," became the law of the land, 
 Burke's observation would be fulfilled: "The influence of the Crown 
 has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." This Lim- 
 erick journal asks, on the same supposition, "How stand the libeities 
 of the Protestant, the Presbyterian, and the sectary of every description 
 throughout Ireland? How stand the civil liberties of the Catholics 
 themselves? Very badly, we are sure." 
 
 At a meeting of the Board, held at Fitzpatrick's, in Capel street, 
 (the Board was now in debt; probably Fitzpatrick gave them the place 
 of meeting free of charge), O'Connell called the rescript "The attempt 
 made by the slaves of Rome to instruct the Irish Roman Catholics upon 
 the manner of their emancipation." He also, at this meeting, made 
 the following bold and emphatic declaration : " I would as soon receive 
 my politics from Constantinople as from Rome. For the head of my 
 Church I have the highest respect, but in the present case I put the- 
 ology — of which I know nothing, and desire to know nothing — out of 
 my consideration wholly. It is on the ground of its danger to civil 
 liberty that I objected to the late bill. It would have the effect, if passed 
 into a law, of placing in the hands of the minister a new and extensive 
 source of patronage; and, for that reason, I would rather the Catholics 
 should remain for ever without emancipation than that they should 
 receive it upon such terms!" Tie disapproved of the idea of an address 
 
732 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 to Lord Whitworth, and moved that a committee should be appointed to 
 prepare resolutions for an aggregate meeting. This motion was carried 
 unanimously. 
 
 Accordingly, on the 19th of May, at the Fanning Repository, Ste- 
 phen's Green (an inconvenient place), this aggregate meeting of the 
 Catholics took place. Thomas Wyse, Jim., Esq., took the chair. This 
 gentleman was subsequently distinguished for his eloquence and for the 
 authorship of the " History of the Catholic Association." After eman- 
 cipation, he was for some years member for Waterford city. Finally, 
 created Sir Thomas Wise, he became British ambassador at Athens. 
 His sentiments on religious matters were not merely tolerant, but 
 occasionally what some might deem a trifle too comprehensive ; at least, 
 on one occasion, he exclaimed, at a public meeting attended by persons 
 of various sects, "Ah! sure we've all of the same religion." Sir Thomas 
 had the honor of being husband to a niece of the great Napoleon. As 
 the lady, however, had some share of the arbitrary temper of her impe- 
 rial uncle, it may be doubted whether Sir Thomas's domestic felicity 
 was at all proportionate to the honor he derived from so illustrious an 
 alliance. 
 
 The sentiments uttered at this meeting were, exceedingly bold. " How 
 dare Quarantotti dictate to the people of Ireland?" exclaimed O'Connell. 
 " We disclaim his authority to interfere in making us accept of an act 
 of Parliament. He desires us to be grateful for it. How dare he talk 
 of gratitude to us? By his orders we are to accept it as beggars — like 
 aliens, with our hats in our hands and a submissive bend of the body! 
 Never will we obey such orders; we will as much allow his right to inter- 
 fere with the act of Parliament as we will allow the king or the king's 
 ministers to interfere with the appointment of the prelates of the Catholic 
 religion in Ireland." John O'Connell tells us that the speech delivered 
 by his father on this occasion was very imperfectly reported. " It had 
 three chief points: first, a protest against the recent steps taken in 
 favor of the veto; next, a vindication of the conduct of" the clergy of 
 Dublin, and "an expression of confidence that the hierarchy would soon 
 fulminate against it" (the veto or rescript) ; " and finally, a contemptuous 
 and indignant comment upon some peculiarly bigoted and peculiarly 
 absurd anti-Catholic resolutions of several county grand -juries." Talk- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 73.) 
 
 ing of those of the Deny mid Wicklow grand-juries, our liero says: 
 " Let them be treated as Lord Avon more once treated a barrister, who 
 had been two hours speaking for a rich man against a widow and two 
 orphans. When he had done, his lordship's reply was, 'I know you 
 well, Moll Doyle!' Let our answer be, ' I know you well, Moll Doyle!' " 
 [Laughter.) He then speaks of the grand-juries of Antrim. Armagh and 
 Wexford. Apparently, the magnates of the last county had accused the 
 Board of treason or sedition, or both. I shall give O'ConnelFs remarks 
 on this charge without comment. He sneers at the inconsistency, bad 
 grammar and ignorance of the " sweet county Wexford gentlemen," and 
 then says : " Can any one point out an instance of treason or sedition 
 in this country since the first formation of the Catholic Board, or a 
 single person who was brought to trial, or even accused? Oh! yes, 
 there were three. Two of the unfortunate persons were detected by the 
 Catholic Board ; they were handed over to the government, who did not 
 choose to prosecute. You all, no doubt, remember what I allude to — 
 Paddy McKew's plot. The other Avas a man in Limerick, whom I my- 
 self prosecuted for swearing a person to support the French on their 
 landing in Ireland; but the grand-jury ignored the bills, and let the 
 gentleman at large." O'Connell concluded by moving certain resolu- 
 tions, which were carried unanimously. His son gives what he calls 
 "the pith and marrow" of these resolutions: 
 
 "Resolved, that we deem it a duty to ourselves and to our country 
 solemnly and distinctly to declare, that any decree, mandate, rescript or 
 decision tvhatsoever of any foreign power or authority, religious or civil, 
 ought not, and cannot of right, assume any dominion or control over the 
 jiolitical concerns of the Catholics of Ireland. 
 
 " Resolved, that the venerable and venerated the Catholic priests of 
 the archdiocese of Dublin have deserved our most marked and cordial 
 gratitude, as well for the uniform tenor of their sanctified lives, as in 
 particular for the holy zecd and cdacrity with which, at the present period 
 of general alarm and consternation, they have consoled the people of 
 Ireland, by the public declaration of their sentiments respecting the 
 mischievous document signed B. Qnarantotti, and disposed them to await 
 with confidence the decision of our revered prelates at the approaching 
 synod. 
 
" Resolved, that we do most earnestly and respectfully beseech our 
 revered prelates to take into consideration, at the approaching synod, the 
 propriety of for ever precluding any public danger either of ministerial 
 or foreign influence in the appointment of our prelates." 
 
 Other speakers besides O'Connell took a conspicuous part in the 
 proceedings at this meeting. Dr. Dromgoole, though at this time the 
 relations between him and the majority of the members of the Board 
 were of a somewhat unpleasant nature, rose to announce "that he had 
 authority for stating that the sanction of their venerable archbishop, 
 Dr. Troy, had been attached to the resolutions of their parish priests." 
 The learned doctor's announcement was received with acclamations by 
 the crowded assembly. Catholic respectability and Catholic talent were 
 never better represented than at this meeting. More charming still, the 
 presence of a number of beautiful women, full of the enthusiasm of the 
 hour, added to the interest of the scene. What wonder if the ardor of 
 the speakers was all aglow! The spirit and animation of the meeting 
 were at their highest when Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman exclaimed, "If 
 the pope himself, with all his cardinals in full council, issued a bull to 
 the effect of the rescript, I should not obey." Shouts of applause thun- 
 dered from every quarter of the room. "I suppose I should thereby 
 cease to be a Catholic," resumed O'Gorman. "No, no!" eagerly inter- 
 rupted Dr. Dromgoole. "I am glad," O'Gorman added, "that I may 
 resist the pope and council, and still be a member of the Catholic 
 Church!" 
 
 All was unanimity. The learned Clinche and his rival, the equally 
 learned Dromgoole, spoke at considerable length, but this day all rivalry 
 between them was buried, save an emulation of zeal against the pre- 
 sumptuous rescript of Quarantotfi. Besides the Catholic orators, Prot- 
 estant advocates of the Catholic cause were listened to with applause — 
 the able Counsellor Finlay, the more eloquent Charles Philips. 
 
 But the excitement against Quarantotti did not terminate with this 
 meeting. The Catholic bishops of Ireland agreed to the following pro- 
 test on the 27th of May, after a conference of two days at Maynooth : 
 
 "Resolved, that a congratulatory letter be addressed to His Holiness 
 Pius the Seventh, on .his .happy liberation from captivity. 
 
 " Resolved, that having taken into our mature consideration the late 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 rescript of the vice-prefect of the Propaganda, we are fully convinced 
 
 that it is not mandatory. 
 
 •• Resolved, that we do now open a communication with the Holy 
 on the subject of this document; raid that, for this purpose, two pr 
 he forthwith deputed to convey our unanimous and well-known senti- 
 ments to the chief pastor, from whose wisdom, zeal and tried magna- 
 nimity we have reason to expect such decision as will give general 
 satisfaction. 
 
 "Resolved, that the two last resolutions be respectfully communicated 
 to the right honorable the earl of Donoughmore, and to the Eight Hon. 
 Henry Grattan, with an earnest entreaty that, when the question of 
 Catholic emancipation shall be discussed in Parliament, they will exert 
 their powerful talents in excluding from the bill, intended for our relief, 
 those clauses which we have already deprecated as severely penal to us 
 and highly injurious to our religion." 
 
 John O'Connell, after quoting these resolutions, adds, that "the 
 unsatisfactory correspondence between the Catholic Board and Lord 
 Donoughmore and Mr. Grattan continued in the same mixed style of 
 eompliuien: and remonstrance until early in June, when, without warn- 
 ing to those who had entrusted him with the Catholic petition to the 
 lower House, and without consultation with any one, Mr. Grattan, when 
 presenting the petition, announced that it was not his intention to bring- 
 forward the Catholic claims that session." 
 
 The Catholic Board were about to consider this unexpected event, 
 when an occurrence still more startling, of which I shall take notice 
 before I bring this chapter to a conclusion, stopped or prevented their 
 deliberations. 
 
 Not long after the events just related, Cardinal Gonsalvi arrived in 
 London on a secret mission. His Eminence made the following declara- 
 tion to the Right Rev. Dr. Moylan, bishop of Cork : " Until I came to 
 England, 1 assure you, I never heard of Quarantotti's rescript, I en- 
 tirely disapprove of it, and shall use all my influence, on my return to 
 Rome, to prevent its being sanctioned by His Holiness, should such a 
 thing be in contemplation." Yet, at a subsequent period, O'Connell so 
 far distrusted this Cardinal Gonsalvi, whose "terrible superhuman'' 
 eyes, whose "rich robes and diamond buckles,'' whose "tine figure and 
 
countenance and magnificent costume," whose French phrases, worthy 
 of a native, "epigrammatic and well-turned," are so graphically described 
 by Lady Morgan, in her "Book of the Boudoir," as to accuse him of 
 having "betrayed or sold" the Irish Catholic Church at Vienna for 
 "eleven thousand guineas." In truth, for a long period after this affair 
 of Quarantotti the majority of the Catholics of Ireland were kept in a 
 state of continual suspense and anxiety. The aristocratic section were 
 supposed to be constantly intriguing in favor of the veto, while the pop- 
 ular party, assisted by the clergy and hierarchy, vigorously contended 
 against it. Spirited declarations from the hierarchy in favor of the 
 independence of the Church, from time to time, elicited the gratitude of 
 the people. Dr. Murray, the coadjutor archbishop of Dublin, was sent 
 to Rome as bearer of a strong remonstrance from the prelates. But the 
 influence of England in the city of the pontiffs was, at the time, so strong 
 as to prevent any regard from being paid to it, and Dr. Murray had to 
 return without having advanced the object of his mission. At a meet- 
 ing of the prelates the following energetic resolution, amongst others, was 
 adopted : " Though we sincerely venerate the supreme pontiff as visible 
 head of the Church, we do not conceive that our apprehensions for the 
 safety of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland can or ought to be 
 removed by any determination of His Holiness, adopted, or intended to 
 be adopted, not only without our concurrence, but in direct opposition 
 to our repeated resolutions and the very energetic memorial presented 
 on our behalf, and so ably supported by our deputy, the Most Rev. Dr. 
 Murray, who, in that quality, was more competent to inform His Holi- 
 ness of the real state and interests of the Roman Catholic Church in 
 Ireland than any other with whom he is said to have consulted." Mr. 
 Mitchel tells us that "this last phrase meant the emissaries of the Eng- 
 lish Catholics, then busy at Rome;" and he adds, that "the English 
 Catholics have been at all times as zealous and resolute to keep Ireland 
 subject to English dominion in all respects, as any : no-Popery' Briton 
 or Orange grand-master could be." Bearing with him the resolutions 
 of the prelates, Dr. Murray returned to Rome, accompanied by Hie bishop 
 of Cork. Meanwhile the excitement and the spirit of resistance to all 
 attempts to fetter the independence of the Irish national Chinch, nc 
 matter from what quarter they might arise, remained as strong and 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 73/ 
 
 stubborn as ever. All through the struggle O'Connell was the guiding 
 spirit of the people. 
 
 I may here mention that another mission on behalf of the Catholics 
 — that of the Rev. Richard Hayes, an able Franciscan, a native of the 
 ancient town of Wexford — towards the close of 1815, was likewise un- 
 successful. He was even accused of a want of due respect to the pontiff, 
 arrested, and finally ordered to leave Rome. The remonstrances of the 
 Irish Catholics only drew down on them "from the pontiff a fatherly 
 rebuke." To an)' one who has only been accustomed to the tone and 
 feeling prevalent among a large portion of our Irish Catholics during the 
 last four and twenty years, it must be perfectly astounding to read for 
 the first time of the spirit and boldness shown, in the first quarter of the 
 present century, by the vast majority of the Catholics of Ireland in 
 their resistance to the veto and the rescript of Quarantotti, no matter 
 by whom sanctioned. 
 
 It was small consolation to the people of Ireland, in the depressed 
 condition of their cause during the days I am speaking of, to hear that 
 Quarantotti's presumptuous action had been disavowed, and that he had 
 oven been frequently reprimanded by His Holiness and the cardinal 
 secretary of the Propaganda (Cardinal Litta) for his rescript. Father 
 Hayes, writing of him in one of his letters from Rome to the Irish Cath- 
 olics, says, "He is an aged and weak man, and is in compassion allowed 
 still to countersign the rescripts of the Propaganda." 
 
 It is necessary that I should now go back somewhat in order to give 
 the reader some account of two unpleasant occurrences, that caused 
 considerable trouble and annoyance to the Catholic Board some time 
 previous to the affair of Quarantotti. I allude to the circumstances, 
 that caused a slur to be cast on the manliness of Major Bryan of Jen- 
 kinstown, and to a vote of censure that was passed on the learned Dr. 
 Dromgoole. The angry disputes, that arose about these gentlemen, 
 helped to weaken still further the vigor of the Board, which, by the 
 secession of so many influential Catholics, had already been grievously 
 impaired. I shall take the case of Major Bryan first. 
 
 It will be remembered that a fresh prosecution, for publishing the 
 " Kilkenny resolutions," was hanging over John Magee at the time that 
 Judge Day passed on him the severe sentence I have already mentioned. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 The new trial took place on the 23d of February, 181-Jk The resolutions 
 were alleged to be a libel on the duke of Richmond, who was still 
 viceroy when they were published. Magee's object was to prove that 
 his paper merely reported the resolutions passed at the Black Abbey in 
 Kilkenny. For this puipose Major Bryan, who had been chairman of 
 the meeting, was placed in the witness-box. Examined for the defence, 
 he admitted that, to the best of his judgment, t/tese resolutions were 
 passed at the meeting, and that it was a thing of course to publish 
 them, but he declined to admit that he himself presided at the meeting 
 and read the resolutions to those present. Saurin took care to say to 
 him, "You cannot be called on to answer what may criminate yourself." 
 In effect, the major peremptorily declined to make himself responsible 
 for what passed at the meeting. The solicitor-general, in his reply, 
 sneered at the notion of his having been brought up for the defence. 
 If the major had ever thought of protecting Magee by devoting himself, 
 if he "ever had determined upon playing the part of Curtius, he surely 
 has not performed it this day. . . . Nothing could be more judicious or 
 Less rash than his evidence this day; it was a specimen of perfect gen- 
 eralship.'' The upshot of the matter was, that Bryan's testimony was 
 of no use to the defence, and unfortunate Magee was once more easily 
 convicted by the aid of the attorney-general's chosen jurymen, and once 
 more pains and penalties were visited on his devoted head. The fresh 
 sentence was a line of £1000, with imprisonment for six months from 
 date of expiration of his former sentence. Subsequent securities for 
 keeping the peace were to be given, in £1000 for himself, and two 
 sureties of £500 each. 
 
 Up to the time of this incident. Major Bryan had been very popular. 
 Though Watty Cox describes him as "a deformed creature,'' he was 
 generally looked on as a "dashing gentleman." He was very wealthy 
 and well-born. He was gallant and gay; supposed to be a successful 
 admirer of the beautiful actress, Miss Walstem, His mansions in town 
 and country, his equipages, his whole style of living, were superb. Hit 
 generosity and hospitality were proverbial. His patriotism, perhaps, 
 above the average. But John Magee was naturally, at this time, still 
 more popular; indeed, even independent of the strong claims which the 
 extraordinary amount of government persecution he had endured gave 
 
 s 
 
him on the public, liis agreeable qualities were calculated to make liim 
 a favorite. Hence, in spite of the attractive qualities and showy sur- 
 roundings that recommended Major Bryan to his countrymen, the tend- 
 ency of a large portion of the public sentiment "was strongly to condemn 
 his conduct on Magee's trial. In the Board this feeling soon manifested 
 itself. At the next Catholic meeting after the trial, O'Connell moved 
 Major Bryan to the chair, and his motion, thoughtlessly perhaps, was 
 carried by acclamation. A vote of thanks, also, was passed to the 
 major; but, in consequence, a violent outcry speedily arose. The press, 
 even the liberal press, assailed O'Connell with a storm of vituperation 
 for standing by his friend. Perhaps O'Connell was afraid lest Major 
 Bryan should follow the example of the other aristocratic seceders, which 
 had damaged the prestige of the Board in the popular estimation. The 
 Dublin Evening Post (not unnaturally, as having been Magee's paper) was 
 especially bitter against O'Connell for having twice moved "his gallant 
 friend" to the chair "with more than his usual giddiness and lolly.'' 
 The.Post is severe on the Board also; it calls those who voted Bryan (he 
 thanks "accomplices in his disgrace." I have hardly space to give the 
 details of the squabble that took place in the Catholic council. Lawless 
 was the leader of the onslaught on Major Bryan. He was supported by 
 O'Gorman and an eccentric northern, named Barney Code. The still 
 more eccentric Luke Plunkett of Portmarnock spoke ably in defence of 
 Major Bryan. High words passed between Lawless and Bryan. Bryan 
 talked of the "Evening Pod raising a clamor against him." Lawless 
 insinuated that the major levelled his shafts at Mr. Magee. Bryan said 
 "he levelled no shafts at Mr. Magee." Lawless retorted that "Bryan 
 did not level any shafts at Mr. Magee by name; it was entirely at the 
 liberty of the Irish press." Major Bryan tried to defend his conduct at 
 the trial by saying that, as he was not the writer of the resolutions, and 
 did not consider himself responsible for them, he had refused to answer 
 a question which he thought tended to criminate himself. Again, in a 
 state of painful agitation, when Lawless made admissions in his favor, 
 he told that gentleman that "he did not want any defence of his cha- 
 racter from him," that " he would be the defender of his own character." 
 Whereupon aquiline-visa ged Lawless, starting up again, and, no doubt, 
 glaring fiercely from underneath his shaggy brows, cries, amid loud 
 
740 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 cheering, " I mean nothing disrespectful lo Major Bryan, and I do 
 expect that he will not make any observations disrespectful to me," etc. 
 
 What is, perh aps, most noticeable in this affair, is that, in the course 
 of it, our hero was once interrupted by a storm of hisses and groans. 
 O'Gorman reproved the audience for their rudeness, and denied "their 
 right to hiss a member of the Board." O'Connell begged to differ from 
 Mr. O'Gorman entirely. He was not displeased. ]S r o doubt he liked 
 "to be cheered by his countrymen." But it was well to be admonished 
 by disapprobation. "He did not consider himself infallible ; he knew 
 his countryinen would impute his mistakes, not to the errors of his heart, 
 but of his judgment." {Great and prolonged applause.) This moderation 
 of O'Connell served him with the people, when occasionally they would 
 see him submit, with the mildness of a lamb, or a sucking-dove, or a 
 Quaker, to be roughly pulled up and called to order. 
 
 With what bland insinuation he now defends his friend ! The major, 
 it may be admitted, is not absolutely blameless. Dan regrets this as 
 much as any one; "but is he deserving of so severe a censure? Upon 
 every former occasion Major Bryan was firmly at his post, with a heart 
 sincere and a generosity that knew no bounds — as his conduct in lib- 
 erating from imprisonment that venerable patriot Mr. Todd Jones fully 
 evinced. And shall one mistake consign him to infamy? . . . Major 
 Bryan has acted from error in judgment alone; he is punished — he is 
 suffering under public opinion. Will it enrich the tribute to John Magec 
 to commix your vote with drops from the bleeding heart of a man once 
 his friend?" Finally, Counsellor McDonnell hits upon an ingenious plan 
 to patch up the quarrel between the belligerent parties. He proposes 
 the following resolution, embodying three points, about which all were 
 agreed : 
 
 " Resolved, that, although we cannot but disapprove of the conduct 
 of George Bryan, Esq., on the late trial of John Magee, Esq., neverthe- 
 less, we unhesitatingly attribute his determination on that occasion solely 
 to an error of judgment; as we have learned by uniform experience 
 that there does not belong to any community any member more pure, 
 independent, honorable and efficient than that most respectable gentle- 
 
 man." 
 
 Jack Lawless at once embraced this resolution, and the compromise 
 
it involved, with eagerness and effusion. Did not lie, "in liis introduc- 
 tory observations," declare that Major Bryan "had fallen a victim to an 
 error of judgment, and not to any mean or contemptible passion?" In 
 conclusion, he says: "I declare now that I do believe most sincerely 
 that if the true line of duty was marked out to Major Bryan, there does 
 not exist a person in this country possessing a better or more honorable 
 feeling in the cause of Irish freedom." {Loud applause.) "I therefore 
 embrace Mr. McDonnell's amendment." 
 
 In addition to the resolution about Major Bryan, Mr. Lawless pro- 
 posed the following one having reference to John Magee : 
 
 "Resolved, that the late independent proprietor of the Dublin Evening 
 Post is deserving of the warmest and sincerest sympathy of every Irish 
 heart, and that the members of the Board shall proceed forthwith to 
 take such steps as will secure to Mr. Magee full indemnification for the 
 amount of the pecuniary losses incurred by that highly esteemed gen- 
 tleman for his unconquerable fidelity to the Catholic cause." The two 
 resolutions were carried unanimously. 
 
 Some of the characters who fretted and strutted through these sin- 
 gular scenes of Major Bryan's disagreeable melodrama are worth a 
 passing notice. One of them, indeed, fretted and strutted for a time 
 on the mimic stage as well as on the actual and too-exciting stage of 
 Irish political agitation. This was the stage-struck Luke Plunket of 
 Portmarnock, a man whom some would think a fitting candidate for St. 
 Luke's, but who, in spite of some outrageous eccentricities, possessed a 
 considerable share of ability. Possessor of a moderate property, a hand- 
 somely-decorated house in the French style, and a brick-manufactory, 
 which he managed skilfully, not without reasonable profit to himself, he 
 suddenly, at a somewhat advanced period of life, astonished all his 
 friends and acquaintances by taking into his head the odd whim of be- 
 coming a player. He appeared on the boards of Fishamble Street 
 Theatre, and, by the preternatural vehemence and intensity of his act- 
 ing, would at one moment terrify his audience, while, the next, his exag- 
 gerated grotesqueness and absurdities of all sorts, especially his out- 
 landish readings, would convulse the whole house with irrepressible 
 laughter. For a while his histrionic extravagances drew crowded 
 houses. Never was the audience more dense than on the night when 
 
it was announced in the playbills that he was to sing "Scots, wha hae." 
 IIo went through this extraordinary vocal performance — a grotesque 
 ami weird chant, that could only he called singing by courtesy — arrayed 
 in Caledonian costume and brandishing, "with huge two-handed sway," 
 ■i naked sword, to the imminent peril of the terror-stricken orchestra 
 and the intense astonishment of the rest of the audience. He inspired 
 too much dismay to be ever completely ludicrous. At times his per- 
 formances gave him so much the aspect of a dangerous bedlamite that 
 the spectators would bo seized with a well-nigh uncontrollable impulse 
 to betake themselves to flight. These singular exhibitions mortified his 
 fastidious relatives to the heart's core of their spick-and-span respect- 
 ability; but all the zealous appeals of his friends, whether addressed to 
 whatever remnant of reason he had preserved or to his sense of shame, 
 failed utterly to dispel his infatuation. Even our persuasive O'Connell 
 took him in hand, but failed like the rest to cure him. At last, how- 
 ever, Counsellor Finlay skilfully contrived, one evening during one of the 
 intervals between the acts, to persuade the audience — not a large one — 
 to leave the theatre. Accordingly, when Plunket came on again, to his 
 utter amazement, he found that he had, literally speaking, only empty 
 benches to play to. Seized with a sudden disgust, he abandoned the 
 stage for ever. As Don Quixote, apart from his whimsical hallucina- 
 tions on the subject of chivalry, was full of admirable good sense and 
 sound knowledge on various subjects, so this extraordinary Luke Plunket 
 of Portmarnock, in spite of his theatrical monomania, was possessed of 
 no inconsiderable abilities. In the course of the debates that arose in 
 the Catholic Board upon Major Bryan's conduct, probably the most sen- 
 sible and judicious speech of the whole lot delivered was that spoken 
 by this half-crazy amateur of the stage. Nor was this the sole occasion 
 on which a speech of his Mas such as might not have misbecome the 
 lips of an orator of far higher reputation. 
 
 Luke Plunket had a sort of leaning towards the Catholic aristocracy, 
 lie was sometimes vexed with O'Connell's sarcasms at the expense of 
 the Seoeders. Thus, on the 8th of March, when, as a conciliatory lure, 
 the name of Lord Fingal was placed by the Board on one of the com- 
 mittees for despatch of business (a similar course was often adopted in 
 the cases of the absent noblemen), O'Connell turned to the chairman and 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 74a 
 
 demanded, in a tone of irony, " Have you any particular reason for 
 thinking that Lord Fingal will attend ? If not, it may be imposing too 
 heavy a duty on the noblemen who think proper to absent themselves 
 from the Board." 
 
 Luke Plunket at once condemned O'Connell's sarcastic allusion to 
 the absent members, who, he thought, should be rather conciliated. 
 Lawless, on the other hand, on this occasion, agreed with O'Connell. 
 He thought such a mode of appointing a committee looked like "humble 
 solicitation to the noble lords." O'Connell expressed himself in an inde- 
 pendent, uncompromising style ; he " would not sacrifice a particle of 
 the Catholic cause to bring any man back. ... I do not care," says he, 
 " who deserts the Board while the Catholic cause is safe." One espe- 
 cially bitter thing was said by our hero on this occasion : " Since Eng- 
 land has become so strong abroad, she does not want the assistance of 
 the great people of the Catholic Board — a circumstance which will, per- 
 haps, account for their absence." A savage sarcasm this, if unmerited. 
 
 Another singular character, who took part in the debate on Major 
 Bryan's affair, was Barney Coile, a square-built North of Ireland linen 
 manufacturer, who always spoke with a broad Ulster accent. He was 
 surnamed "Barney Firebrand," from his fierce temper and resolute 
 courage. He hated Orangemen, not without good reason, for they de- 
 stroyed his valuable establishment in Drogheda. After this catastrophe 
 he settled in Dublin, where he prospered and distinguished himself by 
 his hospitality. In his northern dialect, he called George Ogle to 
 account for saying that a Papist would as soon take a false oath as eat 
 "a potched egg." "I said 'poached egg,' sir," replied Ogle, quietly. 
 Hot Barney flamed up, touched Ogle with his cane and told him he was 
 horsewhipped. Of course, a duel followed. It was not easy for unruly 
 Barney to find a second. However, Fitzpatrick procured for him the 
 celebrated banister, wit, poet and, of course duellist, JS T ed Lysaght. 
 The angry duellists met near Coldblow lane, and exchanged shots four 
 times without effect. As they were returning home, Lysaght saw a 
 friend of Barney's on Leeson street bridge. Sticking his head out of 
 the carriage-window, Lysaght cried out, "I have your cock here; the 
 next time he must take the pike, for he's the devil at the pistol." 
 
 Ned Lysaght also accompanied, in the capacity of second, the in- 
 
744 THE LTFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 trepid and patriotic Todd Jones — to whom O'Connell referred as having 
 been befriended by Major Bryan — when Todd fought a duel with Sir 
 Richard Musgrave, the bigoted author of a lying and libellous -'History 
 of the Rebellion of '98." On Sir Richard's falling down wounded and 
 bleeding, Ned Lysaght put on a face of burlesque pathos and cried, in 
 a ludicrously-doleful tone, "I fear, gentlemen, his next edition will be 
 in boards." 
 
 I shall now notice, as briefly as possible, the vote of censure Avhich 
 was passed on Dr. Dromgoole. On the 13th of November, 1813, O'Con- 
 nell moved the following resolution in the Board : " Having taken into 
 consideration the general sentiment of Ireland, and the proceedings of 
 the last session of Parliament, we deem it necessary to declare, that no 
 measure for regulating the ecclesiastical discipline of the Catholic Church 
 of Ireland ought to be proposed to the legislature without having been 
 previously sanctioned by the approbation of the Catholic prelates of 
 Ireland." 
 
 His son tells us : " His object was to endeavor to smoothen the way 
 to the mistaken ' security '-men to return to Catholic agitation; and so 
 to effect a restoration of entire harmony in the Catholic body. But a 
 violent opposition having arisen to the resolution on the ground that it 
 might be interpreted as an indirect approval of some form of ' securities,' 
 Mr. O'Connell, though unconvinced of its having any such tendency, 
 withdrew it, and so had to abandon for a season the hope of restoring 
 unanimity to the popular councils." 
 
 It was Dr. Dromgoole who nipped this resolution in the bud, and I 
 think there can be little doubt that he was perfectly right in doing so. 
 He showed, in a learned and argumentative speech, well worthy of atten- 
 tive perusal, the insidious nature of the doctrine it involved — viz.. "that 
 whatever arrangement the bishops, in conjunction with Parliament, 
 should adopt, the laity would be bound to receive and obey." He 
 argued that this was virtually "to ascribe infallibility to the bishops," to 
 give them, "even in civil affairs," what was denied to a general council 
 "unless when deciding on faith and morals." Dr. Dromgoole was cer 
 tainly one of the most consistent of the auti-vetoists. In withdrawing 
 his resolution with so good a grace, O'Connell at least merited the praise 
 of magnanimity. Dr. Dromgoole did justice to our hero's motives. He 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 745 
 
 was not one of those whom the learned doctor described as " sighing for 
 the tieshpots," ready to purchase emancipation by the sacrifice of prin- 
 ciple, in order the sooner to attain the dignity of a silk gown or the 
 bench. 
 
 So far the learned doctor only proved himself wiser and more far- 
 seeing than the majority of his colleagues. But at the meeting of 
 the Board, on Wednesday, the 8th of December, 1813, in a speech of 
 solid learning, great power, and even eloquent in his own massive or 
 ponderous style, he said many things sure to be misunderstood and sure 
 to be misrepresented, consequently sure, however logically true, to pro- 
 duce mischievous effects. As usual, he was the great enemy of the veto; 
 he brought forward a motion for a positive and unqualified declaration 
 against "securities" of any description, under any circumstances that 
 could seem to suggest them ever so slightly. But what gave boundless 
 offence and created a perfect uproar, was his ridiculing the idea of Cath- 
 olics binding themselves by "an oath not to seek directly or indirectly 
 the subversion of the Protestant Church." He argued that "this would 
 be to abuse the divine command, which says, 'Go ye and teach all 
 nations.' It would be to proscribe the writings and spiritual labors of 
 a Bossuet, an Arnot, a Lingard and a Milner. . . . Even the virtues and 
 morality of a priesthood go indirectly to propagate the faith which they 
 profess." All this now seems harmless enough. Tet, if the doctor had 
 propounded the most terrible sentiments of intolerance and persecution 
 he could not have excited more horror. The only persons pleased were 
 the enemies of the Catholic cause, who thought they saw a justification 
 of all their calumnies against Catholics, of all their anticipations of evil 
 results from emancipation. No doubt the too logical doctor said other 
 things that, whether they were true or false, were, under the circum- 
 stances, highly indiscreet utterances, and which I cannot see that he 
 was under any obligation of conscience to say. Good taste forbade him, 
 while no considerations of principle, one would think, compelled him, to 
 point out the signs of decrepitude which he saw, or imagined he saw. 
 in the Church of England. Nor was it at all necessary to enter upon a 
 learned and even amusing enumeration of sundry odd sects that sprang 
 from the bosom of the Reformation — such as the Baculares, Chincidarii 
 or Fratres Hortulani [Brothers of the Garden), Sabbatarians, Condormi- 
 
746 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 entes, Weepers or Holders, Davidians, Polygamists, and Demoniacs 01 
 Diabolics. It was in vain for Dr. Droingoole, after this, "to disavow any 
 disrespect to any sect of Christians." His theology had kindled a flame 
 sure to burn him up. 
 
 One of the most remarkable features of this meeting was the first 
 appearance of Richard Lalor Shiel as a popular orator. Shiel on this 
 occasion advocated the concession of the right of veto in a brilliant 
 speech, that drew forth extraordinary compliments from O'Connell and 
 others, from the press also, and at once established his reputation as one 
 of the most eloquent public speakers of the day. Yet, in his dazzling 
 rhetoric, mixed with lofty sentiments, were many mean ones. He ac- 
 cused the agitators of having " retarded the progress of emancipation." 
 This idea O'Connell ably combated, and made light of the charges of 
 "intemperance" that had been made against the Board. Of course, 
 Shiel opposed Dr. Dromgoole. He admitted it, however, to be "an un- 
 dertaking of no small hazard to venture upon an encounter with the 
 learned doctor. He is clothed with celestial panoply, and is carefully 
 equipped with weapons from the armory of Heaven. ... I stand up to 
 meet this formidable gentleman, . . . ' infclixpuer atqueiwpar congressvs 
 Achilli?" [Unhappy boy and unequally matched ivith Achilles.) Shiel's 
 oratory, though it failed to reconcile the people to the veto, was so much 
 admired, that he was before long spoken of as " that extraordinary young- 
 man," and (with a little friendly exaggeration) as "the youngest and 
 foremost" of the orators of the day. O'Connell commenced his reply to 
 him with warm, ungrudging praise. From our hero's speech I shall 
 only give his shortly-expressed opinion of English historians: "The 
 genius of misrepresentation has presided over their historians, from the 
 splendid romance of the unbelieving Hume to the stupid and malignant 
 fictions of the credulous Musgrave." John O'Connell tells us that this 
 meeting took place "at the Shakespeare Gallery, in Exchequer (now 
 Wicklow) street — a place given for the purpose by, strange to say, one 
 of the old corporation, a good-humored, well-natured individual, of sonu*- 
 what eccentric character, named Stephenson. Lord Ffrench was in the 
 chair." 
 
 Dr. Dromgoole's speech, as I have intimated, created an extraordi- 
 narv commotion both among Protestants and Catholics. Nicholas Pur- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 cell 0' Gorman styled it "base," "offensive," "illiberal," "calumnious," 
 "bigoted," "uncharitable," "absurd," "monstrous," "unchristian-like," 
 " abhorred." On the 24th of December, another meeting of the Board 
 was held, Edward Blake of French fort in the chair. Mr. O'Gorman 
 demanded a vote of disavowal or even censure of the learned doctor. 
 He talked of "the folly and guilt of a speech which amounts to a com- 
 plete verification of all the calumnies of Sir Richard Musgrave — for 
 silence is, in this instance, acquiescence." He spoke also of Dr. Drom- 
 goole's alluding "to the improbable, nay, almost impossible, case of a 
 Catholic becoming the king of those realms." O'Connell expressed his 
 dislike of the motion, yet he voted for it. He said : "I solemnly protest 
 against it as a precedent. ... If we disavow Dr. Dromgoole's speeeh, 
 what will be the obvious consequences '( Why, that the hirelings will 
 exclaim at every sentence that sounds harsh to their ears, 'Why, this is 
 the sentiment of the Catholic Board.' It will be in vain to answer, 'No, 
 it is the sentiment but of an insignificant individual' — I allude to my 
 own case — the reply will in future be decisive: It must be the opinion 
 of the entire Board, otherwise they would disavow it, as they disavowed 
 Dr. Dromgoole. . . . 
 
 " Yet I will not divide the Board, but vote for this motion, because 
 it gives me another opportunity of reprobating bigotry and religious 
 rancor in general, and of pouring my execrations on the causes of that 
 feud which changed the inhabitants of this land from countrymen and 
 brothers, and made them aliens to each other and mortal enemies ; that 
 feud which has struck down the ancient kingdom of Ireland from her 
 rank as a nation, leaving her nothing but the name of the paltry and 
 pitiful province in which we vegetate rather than live." In a preceding 
 part of this speech he had declared that he would not give up "a single 
 hour" or "a single exertion to procure the victory of one sect over the 
 others. No, my object is of a loftier nature. / am an agitator with 
 ulterior views I I wish for liberty — real liberty." 
 
 The vote of censure passed. Dr. Dromgoole had vainly asked " for 
 a short respite of opinion." 
 
 On the 2d of March, 1814, ./Eneas McDonnell moved that this vote 
 of censure should be rescinded. He argued that it had done no good, 
 that so far from appeasing any enemy it had been looked on as "an act 
 
748 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 of pusillanimity." Dr. Sheridan seconded the motion ; he said the vote 
 of censure had been carried by surprise. Counsellor Finlay defended 
 the vote of censure in an able speech. " I know," said he. "of but one 
 great basis for toleration, and that is the broad principle that religion is 
 a matter between man and his God, and that no other man should inter- 
 fere." Luke Plunket replied forcibly to Counsellor Finlay; he main- 
 tained that the objectionable expressions were confined to a very small 
 portion of Dr. Dromgoole's speech, and that even these, when referred to 
 the whole of the text and the whole of the reasoning, were "not only 
 not illiberal, but rather calculated to serve than to injure the Protestant 
 Church." Messrs. Koche and "Walsh spoke against Dr. Dromgoole. The 
 latter made the meeting laugh heartily by his queer defence of the 
 Jumpers. He had gone to a Jumpers' meeting in Wales. At first he 
 felt inclined to laugh, but, as they were honest, he restrained himself. 
 " Their object in jumping was explained to him, and, finding their inten- 
 tions pious, his sympathies were excited, and when they j-umped, he 
 jumped too !" (Loud laughter.) "At that time he was able to jump well, 
 and as he proved the highest jumper of the sect, he was considered the 
 most highly inspired of all the Jumpers!" {Laughter.) 
 
 When Jack Lawless rose to speak, O'Connell cried out, sharply, 
 " Hear the public accuser." Lawless's repartee was equally sharp : " I 
 am sorry to be called the public accuser, but I am more sorry that there 
 should be a jmblic criminal to be accused." This was intended as a hit 
 at that resolution of O'Connell's which Dr. Dromgoole had caused to be 
 withdrawn, and which had been considered as opening a loophole to the 
 veto. When Nicholas Mahon and others complained of Lawless's retort, 
 he replied: "If the expression is disagreeable, Mr. O'Connell should 
 thank himself for it:" He then moved, as an amendment, that " the 
 Catholic Board was responsible only for its resolutions;" but he subse- 
 quently withdrew this amendment at the request of several of his 
 colleagues. 
 
 Dennis Scully spoke in favor of rescinding the resolution; but Nich- 
 olas Purcell O'Gorman spoke vehemently against Dr. Dromgoole's speech. 
 At a previous meeting O'Gorman had roundly asserted that even Ma- 
 hometans might be saved. On the strength of this liberal opinion 
 some absurd story-gabblers spread abroad the rumor that O'Gorman 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 749 
 
 was a Mahometan. Ludicrously enough (at least it so seems now), 
 Mr. 0' Gorman thought it necessary to defend himself against the impu- 
 tation: "I am not a Mahometan," he roared; "I assure the Catholic 
 Board that it is a base calumny to impute to me a belief in the Mahom- 
 etan faith. I declare, in the most unequivocal manner, that I am not, 
 and will not ever be, a Mahometan." He also said: "So popular was 
 Dr. Dromgoole with them" (the Orangemen of Derry) "that after the 
 usual toast of the 'glorious, pious and immortal memory,' they next 
 gave as a toast, 'Dr. Dromgoole, long life to him!' " (Laughter.) "The 
 speech of Dr. Dromgoole was posted on the walls of the houses. Yes, 
 so great was the zeal of the Orangemen to disseminate the speech of 
 Dr. Dromgoole, that it was sold gratis!" (Here 'Gorman's bull drew 
 forth a burst of laughter.) "The moment the speech was disclaimed, 
 the news produced an instantaneous effect on the minds of the people 
 of Derry." Mr. O'Gorman added, that his liberality towards the Ma- 
 hometans had carried him a little too far. 
 
 All this time O'Connell sat with his hat cocked on the side of his 
 head in an Irish, " devil-may-carish " style, and with a humorous look. 
 He rose, uncovered his head and delivered a speech, which bore some 
 analogy to an Irish stew ; at least its ingredients were of the most mis- 
 cellaneous description — all sorts of topics curiously associated together. 
 One thing was certain, it was a most entertaining medley. He sup- 
 ported iEneas McDonnell's motion to rescind the vote of censure ; at 
 the same time he begged to differ more or less from most of the speakers 
 on both sides. The oath, which Grattan's bill required, according to 
 O'Connell, " would hinder a Catholic priest from preaching, because his 
 sermons must be an indirect means of subverting the Protestant re- 
 ligion." It was worse than the oath devised "by their implacable 
 enemy, Dr. Duigenan," which "only bound the person who took it not 
 to substitute another in place of the Protestant religion. He was far 
 from agreeing with Mr. Scully in his approval of every expression in 
 Dr. Dromgoole's speech. What right had the learned doctor to speak 
 disrespectfully of any religion ? If he had no other proof, the manner, 
 in which Mr. Finlay resented such language, was a circumstance, which 
 convinced him that Dr. Dromgoole took an unwarrantable liberty with 
 the feelings of persons of a different communion." Still, "Mr. Scully 
 
750 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 had decided him to vote for the reversal of their former resolution. They 
 had banished Dr. Dromgoole by their vote, and he would ask, who was 
 the next person that was to be proscribed — who was to be called a 
 public criminal? Who was the obnoxious person who was to be guil- 
 lotined in public opinion, and to be cut off from society? Who was the 
 person that must next fall, when neither the soundness of his head nor 
 the integrity of his heart could protect him? He was sorry to find that 
 the greatest patriots were as ready to abuse the honest and talented 
 Catholic, who boldly repelled the calumnies of his persecutors, as the 
 veriest reptiles of the Orange faction." (Laughter.) 
 
 Barney Coile told the meeting, amid mingled hisses and applause, 
 that " they should not be led astray by the two Solomons of the Board — 
 Counsellors O'Connell and Scully — whose advice would make them lose 
 the support of their Protestant brethren." 
 
 ./Eneas McDonnell, in replying, referred to a meeting in London, 
 attended by a crowd of persons of every rank, at which he had been 
 present. At this meeting "a discussion took place as to the merits of 
 Madam Johanna Southcote, charwoman of Bath, who thought proper to 
 raise up a new religion for purposes of fraud. She maintained that she 
 was entrusted by the Almighty with a power to provide admission to 
 the seat of eternal bliss, and therefore made up seals, which she sold at 
 a shilling each; and she had actually persuaded her foolish followers 
 that no one could enter the kingdom of heaven who had not one of these 
 seals. This blasphemous wretch had further stated, that such was the 
 familiarity which existed between her and the Almighty, that she slept 
 every night with the Saviour ! * Am I then, sir, or any other gentleman, 
 to be restrained by any fastidious delicacy from expressing my abhor- 
 rence of such abominable doctrines? Certainly not. But I am told 
 that all religions are alike ; that, provided a man thinks himself right, 
 it matters not whether he professes the belief of a Christian or a Ma- 
 hometan. But I will not coincide with such liberality, because I 
 cannot agree that Christianity is altogether unnecessary for the salva- 
 tion of man, as I must suppose it to have been if I entertain such 
 opinions." Here "the pious ./Eneas" fails to see that he has entangled 
 himself in a network of fallacy. Doubtless, it may matter a deal to a 
 
 * Johanna Southcote said she was to give birth to the true Messiah. 
 
-4 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. 751 
 
 man whether he be a Christian or a Mahometan — ay, everything in the 
 universe. But then the matter chiefly concerns the individual himself, 
 and most certainly it does not concern the Catholic Board, as the Cath- 
 olic Board, at all. 
 
 "Here," says Mi-. McDonnell, "I find myself opposed by a Mahom- 
 etan and a Jumper — " 
 
 Up starts Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman, all aflame, to demand "if Mr. 
 McDonnell alluded to him as a Mahometan ?" 
 
 "I must express my surprise," responds "the pious jEneas," in a 
 good-humored, conciliatory tone, " at the serious countenance of the 
 learned gentleman. I merely meant to observe that, of the leading 
 opponents of my resolution, the one professed his respect for Mahom- 
 etanism, the other avowed his admiration of the Jumpers. These 
 gentlemen have opposed me upon principles of liberality, but I have 
 not heard any reason or argument 'to induce me to change my opinion 
 as to the necessity of rescinding the hasty and unworthy resolution 
 which I seek to rescind." yEneas McDonnell pronounced a panegyric 
 on the learned doctor ; but it was all in vain ; the Board refused to 
 rescind the resolution. 
 
 Dr. Dromgoole seems to have regarded this vote as almost tanta- 
 mount to expulsion. Ere long, the inflexible old physician and theolo- 
 gian of the schools ceased to deliver his solemn harangues at Catholic 
 meetings, leaning on his massive gold-headed cane, and, from time to 
 time, striking it on the earth to emphasize the close of each ponderous 
 period. Wyse. in his history of the Catholic Association, thus sketches 
 the quiet close of the old anti-vdoisf s career: "Dr. Dromgoole was a 
 champion of the olden times — he scorned to be deterred from the good 
 work by the disapproval of 'these men of little faith.' He persevered 
 unto the end — discharging:, even in the moment of his retreat from 
 public life, some of the Parthian shafts of long-nourished hatred which 
 he had brandished so boldly in the earlier part of his career. His latter 
 days were spent in the shadow of the Vatican. Finding few ears for 
 his truths in Ireland, he retired to Borne ; but whether to organize an 
 ' army of the faith ' or to import a second Rinuccini for the modern 
 Catholic confederacy, has not been transmitted to posterity. It was not 
 without a smile that the Irish student sometimes met him in the learned 
 
 48 
 
752 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 gardens of that capital, maturing, with his accustomed leisure of thought 
 and manner, some new project ' for the salvation of the infidels.' " 
 
 "I remember well," says another writer, "years after all discussion 
 upon the veto had subsided, when I was in Paris on a visit at the house 
 of a friend of the doctor's and my own, he suddenly dropped in, just 
 after his arrival from Eome. I had not seen him for a considerable time, 
 but I had scarcely asked him how he was, when he reverted to the veto. 
 A debate was immediately opened on the subject. Some Irish gentle- 
 men dropped casually in ; they all took their share in the argument ; 
 the eloquence of the different disputants became inflamed. The win- 
 dows towards the streets had been left unhappily open ; a crowd of 
 Frenchmen collected outside, and the other inhabitants of the house 
 gathered at the doors to hear the discussion. It was only after the 
 doctor, who was still under the influence of vetophobia, had taken his 
 leave, that I perceived the absurdity of the incident, A volume of ' Gil 
 Bias' was on the table where we happened to have assembled, and by 
 accident I lighted on the passage in which he describes the Irish dis- 
 putants at Salamanca: l Je rencontrois quelquefois des figures Hibernoises. 
 IlfaUoit nous voir dispute)*, etc.'* We are a strange people, and deserve 
 our reputation at the foreign universities, where it was said of the Irish 
 that they were ratione furcates' 1 (raging tvith reason). 
 
 And so the old scholastic philosopher, who, when not disturbed by 
 the veto, was one of the mildest and best-natured of men, died far away 
 from old Ireland, beneath " the shadow of the Vatican." 
 
 I shall now return to the point of my narrative from which I turned 
 back to relate the episode of Major Bryan and Dr. Dromgoole. On the 
 3d of June, 1814, the English government, now at length victorious 
 over their great imperial enemy, who, reduced to a phantom royalty in 
 the little island of Elba, seemed more an object of mockery than terror, 
 felt themselves secure enough to strike a sudden and startling blow at 
 the Catholic movement. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. O'Con- 
 nell had arrived in the Board-room. Gradually members dropped in to 
 
 * Here is the whole passage, translated by Smollet, I believe : " I sometimes met with some 
 Irisbinen, who loved disputing as well as myself, and we made rare work of it. Lord, what grim- 
 aces ! What gestures ! Fire sparkled in our eyes, and we always foamed at the mouth. Every 
 one that saw us ought to have taken us rather for madmen than philosophers." 
 
I r 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 753 
 
 the number of sixteen. As the clock strikes four, a messenger rushes 
 in in hot haste and hands our hero a viceregal proclamation. Appeal- 
 ing to the Convention Act, this document declares the Catholic Board 
 an unlawful assembly, though artifice had been employed to make it 
 appear lawful. The law, indeed, was not enforced sooner "against the 
 said assembly, in the expectation that those who had been misled by 
 such artifice would become sensible of their error," and that the Board 
 "would be discontinued without the necessity of legal interposition." 
 The viceroy, being satisfied "that the further continuance of said assem- 
 bly can only tend to serve the ends of factious and seditious persons 
 and to the violation of the public peace," cautions "all such of His 
 Majesty's- subjects as are members of the said assembly" to abstain 
 from any further attendance at or on it. If they defy the proclamation, 
 they must expect to be prosecuted. 
 
 When O'Connell had read aloud, in deep, unwavering tones, this 
 tyrannical proclamation, he declared it illegal, that it outstripped the 
 authority conferred on government by the Convention Act. If twenty- 
 three members of the Board — the number requisite for that purpose — 
 had assembled, he would have proceeded with the meeting. As that 
 number failed to arrive, those present determined to hold the next meet- 
 ing at O'Connell's house, in Merrion Square. There it was resolved to 
 abstain, for the present, from assembling the Catholic Board, but to lose 
 no time in summoning an aggregate meeting of Catholics. 
 
 This meeting assembled on the 11th of June. Spirited resolutions 
 were passed. The Board had advocated Catholic rights and proclaimed 
 Catholic wrongs "with truth and eloquent earnestness." Owing to its 
 efforts "the friends of religious freedom" had increased, "the votaries 
 of intolerance" had been "nearly silenced;" for "general calumnies 
 against the moral principles of the Catholics" had been "exploded." 
 The Board had cheered and protected the people against local oppres- 
 sions of bad magistrates and others, warned them "against the snares of 
 insidious foes," frustrated " intrigues," baffled corruption. Freedom of 
 discission had "elicited the talents, upheld the virtues and advanced 
 the fame of the country." They had placed "the great cause" of their 
 petitions " on the firm basis of universal good — the religious freedom of 
 all mankind" For these services the meeting " sincerely thanked the 
 
754 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 members of the Catholic Board and recommended them to the respect 
 and gratitude of their country." In this paragraph I have condensed 
 the substance of the resolutions passed by the aggregate meeting. 
 
 But one touching incident will render this meeting for ever interest- 
 ing and memorable, especially to the Irish people. At the commence- 
 ment of the proceedings, as O'Connell, standing in front of the platform, 
 with his arms folded across his breast, was addressing the audience, an 
 interruption at one of the small doors at the side of the altar (for the 
 meeting was held in a chapel) caused him to turn round. For a moment 
 there was silence. Then a cheer was heard from the people outside. 
 But suddenly the immortal name of Currax rang through the sacred 
 edifice. Many a stout arm was extended to help the dying patriot as 
 he feebly advanced to the front of the stage where O'Connell and the 
 other Catholic leaders stood. Tremendous acclamations shook the build- 
 ing as O'Connell sprang towards him, seized his hand and led him for- 
 ward. The excitement was almost too much for his shattered frame; he 
 sank into a chair and for a few moments covered his face with his hands. 
 An eye-witness of the scene says: "I never shall forget the sharp, pen- 
 etrating glance he threw over the assemblv, when he seemed to rally 
 from the transient debility which at first oppressed him, and the fixed 
 regard he cast upon O'Connell when he resumed his address." His ap- 
 pearance among the Catholics at the moment when everything seemed 
 to look black and menacing to their hopes, when tyrant power proscribed 
 and denounced them, when false or lukewarm friends betrayed or fell 
 off from them, not merely touched their hearts and gratified them, but 
 rekindled in their souls fresh spirit and energy. Their memories went 
 back to the dark days of '98, when, with a patriot's words of flame, the 
 dauntless advocate of the United Irishmen, in his zeal for his lost clients, 
 struggled against despair, never once shrinking before the face of threat- 
 enings or the infinite perils that gathered around. "Those," says Thomas 
 Kennedy, describing this most interesting scene, " who had heard him 
 in the days of his power, regarded him with all the hallowed feelings 
 which are associated with the memory of his exertions in the defence 
 of martyred patriotism, while others like myself, with whom those events 
 wear all the interest of times prior to our own, and whose admiration 
 of his genius was excited by the delighted perusal of his fascinating 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 755 
 
 and faultless speeches, gazed at him with mingled feelings of homage 
 and devotion." 
 
 When the business of the meeting drew to a close, one of the speakers 
 arose a second time and proposed the following resolution: "Resolved, 
 that the most cordial and grateful thanks of the Catholics of Ireland 
 are pre-eminently due and hereby given to that incorruptible patriot, 
 the Right Hon. John Philpot Curran, who has this day honored our 
 meeting with his presence, and with whose uniform exertions in the 
 cause of religious freedom we have ever seen connected the fairest and 
 proudest recollections of Catholics and Irishmen.*' This resolution was, 
 of course, carried, by acclamation. Curran, full of emotion, pressed his 
 hand on his heart and bowed his acknowledgments. 
 
 At this meeting, too, the eloquent — indeed, altogether too eloquent 
 and high-flying — Charles Phillips addressed Curran. I shall give one 
 or two sentences as a specimen of his redundant hyperbolical style. 
 After calling Curran "that paragon of Irishmen," he said, seeing him 
 show signs of agitation, "No, Curran, do not be afraid that I shall de- 
 preciate you by my admiration. I cannot rise into the region where 
 you soar ; and even if I could, the fate of Icarus forewarns me not to 
 approach the sun whose refulgence would consume me. Contemplating 
 such a man, to be just I must be silent. Panegyric in such a case is 
 poverty, and to be eloquent is to be wordless." (Loud applause.) This 
 seems to me almost frigid in its effort to be fervid. Still many of his 
 over-ornate passages were really alive with the spirit of true eloquence. 
 In this speech he tells a humorous story of Charles James Fox. Fox 
 was in debt; "the Jews called on him for repayment. 'Ah, my dear 
 friends,' says Fox, 'I admit the principle — I owe you the money; but 
 what time is this, when I am going upon business !' Just so, our friends 
 admit the principle ; they owe you emancipation — but war is no time. 
 Well, the Jews departed just as you did. They returned to the charge. 
 'What!' cries Fox; 'is this a time, when I am engaged on an appoint- 
 ment?' What say our friends? 'Is this a time, when all the world are 
 at peace?' " (Laughter.) "The Jews departed; but the end of it was, 
 that Fox with his secretary, Mr. Hare, who was as much in debt as him- 
 self, shut themselves up in garrison. The Jews surrounded his habita- 
 tion, and Fox put his head out of the window, with this question- 'Gen- 
 
756 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 tlemen, are you Fox-hunting or Hare-hunting this morning?' " (Lauglitei'.) 
 "His pleasantry mitigated the very Jews: '"Well, well, Fox, you have 
 always admitted the principle, but always protested against the time ; 
 we will give you your own time — only fix some final day for our repay- 
 ment.' 'Ah! my dear Moses,' replied Fox, 'now this is friendly; I take 
 you at your word ; I will fix a day, and as it's to be a final day, what 
 would you think of the day of judgment?' " (A laugh.) " ' That will be 
 too busy a day with us.' ' Well, well, in order to accommodate all parties, 
 let us settle it the day after.' (Laughter.) "Thus it is; between the 
 war inexpediency of Bragge Bathurst and the peace inexpediency of Mr. 
 Grattan, you may expect your emancipation bill pretty much about the 
 time that Fox appointed for the payment of his creditors." (Laughter.) 
 This was, in all probability, the last political meeting at which 
 Curran appeared. The traces of premature decay, and the signs of 
 death not very far off. w T ere visibly imprinted on his countenance. The 
 languid expression of his features, more conspicuous when he tried to 
 smile, gave melancholy warning to the hearts of his admirers. But his 
 dark and eloquent eye still blazed with his old fire of genius whenever 
 one of the orators would utter a generous sentiment. All eyes followed 
 with last glances of grief and sympathy his retreating figure, when, 
 overcome by the heat and excitement, now too much for his shattered 
 constitution, he rose, during the reading of a petition, and, taking the 
 arm of a friend, went forth. Kennedy says : "I never saw him again. 
 Soon after he went to France, and from thence to England, where he 
 closed his earthly career." I must now say farewell to this incorrupt- 
 ible patriot. He died on the 14th of October, 1817, at nine at night. 
 He had eagerly desired that his ashes should rest in his native isle, but, 
 strangely, his executors buried him in one of the vaults of Paddington 
 Church, where his remains were left for twenty years. Then, as Davis 
 says, they " were resumed by his mother earth." His second funeral 
 was public ; he now sleeps in Glasnevin Cemetery, close by Dublin.* 
 
 * Authorities of foregoing chapter: "The Select Speeches of Daniel O'Conuell, M. P., edited 
 by his son;" " History of Ireland," by John Mitchel ; Wyse's " History of the Catholic Associa- 
 tion ;" "Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell, &c, Dublin, John Mullany ;" " Historical Sketches 
 of O'Connell and his Friends," by Thomas D. Magee ; "Ireland and her Agitators," by O'Neill 
 Daunt; "Davis's Life of Curran;" Lady Morgan's "Book of the Boudoir;" "Reminiscences of a 
 Silent Agitator," by Thomas Kennedy; etc. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 The Catholic cause languishes for some years after the suppression of the Catholic 
 Board — Final overthrow of Napoleon — Meanness of England in her hour of 
 triumph — Peel and his Peelers — He creates the class of stipendiary magistrates 
 • — Fall of the war prices, and agricultural distress in Ireland — Peel's cheap 
 ejectment laws — He resists inquiry into the condition of Ireland, and renews 
 Insurrection acts — Ireland scourged by famine and typhus-fever in 1817 — Lord 
 Sidmouth's "six acts" — Massacre of Peterloo, near Manchester — Orange mas- 
 sacre of Shercock, in the county Cavan — Rapid summary of several Catholic 
 meetings — The "Catholic Divan" — Lord Fingal refuses to take the chair at an 
 aggregate meeting in Clarendon Street Chapel — The Catholic Association of 
 1815 — Dr. Murray's mission to Rome— English intrigues in Rome — O'Ccnnell and 
 Henry Grattan — Resolute opposition of the prelates, clergy and people of Ire- 
 land to the veto — Poverty and weakness of the Catholic Association — Divisions 
 in the National camp — Fatal duel between O'Connell and D'Esterre — Depart- 
 ure of Lord Whitworth from Ireland — Strange affair between O'Connell and 
 Secretary Peel — Duel between Lidwill and Sir Charles Saxton — Collision with 
 the vetoists — Efforts at conciliation — Father Hayes's letter from Rome — O'Con- 
 nell co-operates with "the friends of reform in Parliament" — JEneas McDon- 
 nell FINED AND IMPRISONED — THE RllEMISH TESTAMENT — ANSWER TO THE IRISH CaTH 
 OLICS FROM THE COURT OF ROME — DINNER TO THOMAS MoORE — DINNER TO O'CONNEI L 
 
 at Tralee — Catholic meetings — General D'Evereux — Death of Grattan — O'Con- 
 nell supports young Grattan at the Dublin election. 
 
 ^Ip^OR several years after the suppression of the Board the Catholic 
 iM^S cai,se ma d e little progress. Indeed, the general fortunes of 
 ip&'k?- Ireland became gloomier every day. England was now in her 
 vWt^* highest place of pride. In 1815, the great emperor escaped 
 ^y from Elba and made a descent on the coast of France, at the head 
 of a small, but trusty, band of his old guard. His triumphant, march 
 to Paris was one of the most electrifying achievements in all history. 
 All the armies sent against him joyfully went over to him and marched 
 "under the wings of his victorious eagles." Paris, the provinces, all 
 France, once more confessed his imperial sway, and prepared to sustain 
 their chosen chief against the banded hosts of Europe. But this suc- 
 cess was only an ephemeral gleam. At Waterloo his might went down 
 for ever before the combined armies of England and Prussia. England 
 now touched her highest point of greatness. Mean in the midst of her 
 
 757 
 
loi 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 triumph, she not merely insisted that the twice-restored Bourbons should 
 suppress the Irish legion in the service of France, engage to raise no 
 more brigades of " wild geese," but she even persecuted for a time some 
 of the gallant exiles of '98. It was small consolation to Ireland that 
 Castlereagh claimed the credit of having procured the revival of the 
 Irish ecclesiastical seminary in Paris. 
 
 England no longer feared the triumph of French principles in Ire- 
 land. The second American war had come to an end. A treaty of peace 
 with the United States had been concluded on the 24th of December, 
 1814. The British oligarchy, church and state, " the Orange Ascend- 
 ency" were now so firmly enthroned that they could afford to be inso- 
 lent and spurn the idea of anything like concession. The Catholic 
 aristocracy, more and more every day, withdrew from all participation 
 in Irish political affairs. O'Connell still swayed the democracy; but for 
 long his efforts to achieve emancipation were productive of hardly any 
 perceptible results. "The hopes of the Catholics," says Richard Lalor 
 Shiel, "fell with the peace. A long interval elapsed in which nothing 
 very important or deserving of record took place. A political lethargy 
 spread itself over the great body of the people ; the assemblies of the 
 Catholics became more unfrequent, and their language more despondent 
 and hopeless than it had ever been." Mr. Mitchel adds: "And never 
 before, for half a century, had the 'Protestant interest' shown itself so 
 aggressive and so spiteful towards the Catholic people." 
 
 Mr. Secretary Peel, during the years of his administration — a period 
 of such little hope for Ireland — signalized himself by many ingenious 
 and malignant devices for riveting more securely upon that unhappy 
 land the fetters of England's dominion. He reorganized and increased 
 the constabulary, so as to render it, under the pretence of being a civil 
 force, in reality a numerous and well-drilled military body, fully capable 
 of playing a useful auxiliary part, in conjunction with the regular army, 
 in suppressing any attempts on the part of the trampled Irish to regain 
 their lost independence. At least one small party of the constabulary 
 is stationed in every parish in Ireland. Thus a network of men, partly 
 spies, partly soldiers, covers the island. Doubtless, if a national up- 
 rising became general, these men, who, after all, are for the most part 
 sons of Irish small farmers and peasants, might be absorbed in the 
 
FATHER BURKE. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 759 
 
 popular might, unless speedily concentrated by the enemy; but, at the 
 commencement of an insurrectionary movement, they are likely to prove 
 of incalculable service to the British, in crushing the small bands of 
 peasantry assembling from various points, and in intercepting them so 
 as to prevent their junction in any great force. This unpopular corps 
 has received from the country-people the nickname of Peelers, after the 
 name of their founder or reorganize!*. 
 
 Mr. Peel also originated the class of stipendiary or police magis- 
 trates. These self-important creatures of the Castle — generally briefless 
 barristers or broken-down petty politicians — by making a pompous pre- 
 tence of legal knowledge and of possessing the confidence of those high 
 in authority, generally contrived to secure in their own hands the mis- 
 management of the local administration of justice. They were expected 
 above all things to guard against any outburst of independent feeling 
 (a sort of thing not likely often to occur) on the part of those country 
 gentlemen who were the ordinary justices of the peace. 
 
 During the war comparative prosperity had reigned in Ireland. The 
 demand for Irish agricultural produce, to supply the commissariat of 
 armies and to provision fortresses, was very great. Large contracts for 
 the provisioning of the navy were made in Cork. The consequent high 
 war-prices enabled the farmers to endure the constant rise of rents ; but 
 after the war ended, prices fell, and the peasantry began to be miser- 
 able. The population of the island was now six millions. Land being 
 the only source of a livelihood for the vast majority, the competition for 
 farms became ruinous. The surplus population of Ireland began now 
 to be spoken of. The extermination of wretched tenants-at-will com- 
 menced. Often whole town-lands were cleared "at one fell swoop." 
 Peel's cheap ejectment laws gave the landlords absolute power over the 
 fate of their miserable tenants. One, passed in 1815, gave an assistant- 
 barrister the power of decreeing, at the cost of a few shillings, the eject- 
 ment of all tenants of holdings, the rent of which was under £20. A 
 later act made the evidence of a landlord, or his agent, sufficient to 
 ascertain the amount of rent due by a tenant. For a while longer the 
 forty-shilling freeholders, who had leases and whose votes added elec- 
 tioneering influence to their landlords, were let alone. Their time of 
 
 doom, however, was yet to arrive. 
 
760 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 The crafty Peel took good care to resist Sir John Newport's motion, 
 in 1816, for a Parliamentary committee to inquire into the state of Ire- 
 land. His resistance was successful. He took good care, also, to procure 
 the renewal of the Insurrection Act in 181-1; he caused it to be main- 
 tained in force in 1815 and 1816. He who could not give a good account 
 of himself was rammed into prison. The peasant who was caught in 
 possession of a fowling-piece was transported. Peel had even meditated 
 the introduction of a bill to render illegal any aggregate meetings of Cath- 
 olics, that were not convened by a high-sheriff or certain of the magis- 
 tracy. This would virtually place Catholic meetings under the control of 
 Protestant functionaries. However, this project was let drop. Perhaps 
 Peel deemed British and "Ascendency" rule in Ireland secure enough, 
 now that the imperial-democratic might of France was down in the dust. 
 
 In truth, the condition of the peasantry was lamentable beyond de- 
 scription. The immemorial tale has to be repeated : the people of Ireland 
 wanted bread, even potatoes. In 1817 the potato crop failed. There 
 were famine and typhus-fever in the woe-stricken land. Also, there was 
 a large exportation from Ireland of grain and cattle. Poverty and suf- 
 ferings of all sorts sometimes, and not unnaturally, produced agrarian 
 crime. Then the magistrates would meet and demand the proclama- 
 tion of counties. While the peasantry were devouring weeds — boiled 
 nettles and wild kail, called in Irish prashagh — the reign of renewed 
 coercion acts and insurrection acts terrorized the land. What wonder 
 if popular political movements languished in those days of oppression ? 
 Even in England, the tyranny of the ministry crushed popular demon- 
 strations. In 1819, Lord Sidmouth carried his famous "six acts," chiefly 
 to put down "the seditious aspirations" of the English people. Penal- 
 ties were imposed by these laws for the possession of arms and for what 
 the government chose to style "blasphemous and seditious libels." On 
 the 16th of August, 1819, a body of troops massacred a number of per- 
 sons taking part in a perfectly peaceable meeting, at Peterloo, near 
 Manchester. One of the "six acts" was then passed, to prohibit, under 
 severe penalties, the assemblage of more than fifty persons at a meeting, 
 unless it were convoked by the magistrates. Mr. Mitchel calls this state 
 of things "the British 'Eeign of Terror.'" This, however, was aristo- 
 cratic, not popular, tyranny. I may add here that, in the year 1814, at 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 7G1 
 
 the fair of Shercock, in the county Cavan, the Orange banditti had perpe- 
 trated another inhuman massacre. In the open day, in different parts of 
 the town, the corpses of twenty-four men and two women had been stretched 
 in their blood. The streets of the little town had rung horribly with the 
 heart-rending and dissonant screams of mothers, widows, orphans. This 
 hideous massacre had struck a chill of horror home to O'Connell's heart. 
 
 I shall now briefly notice some of the principal Catholic meetings 
 that took place during this dreary and hopeless period. They were 
 fruitful of few or no beneficial results. 
 
 After the suppression of the Board, while the counsels of those who 
 wished to resist the illegal act of government were rejected, nothing was 
 farther from the minds of the more prudent leaders than to abandon all 
 exertion. These, however, had to contend with great difficulties. Some 
 of those who had been, hitherto, prominent in Catholic affairs w T ere 
 false, more were faint-hearted. Besides, the Parliamentary patrons of 
 the Catholics quibbled and cavilled, and sometimes reproached and 
 taunted them. At one time they affronted the public opinion of the 
 Catholic masses, at another they contemptibly coquetted for popular 
 applause. For a time the Dublin meetings consisted only of a few per- 
 sons assembled in a drawing-room of Lord Fingal's town-house. These 
 meetings — at which few were allowed to be present, and from which 
 the press was excluded — were soon nicknamed the "Catholic Divan." 
 O'Connell, however, succeeded in procuring a relaxation of this exclu- 
 siveness during the short period that the "Divan" survived his return 
 to Dublin for the winter season. On the 10th of January, 1815, one of 
 these snug little meetings, at which cake and wine used to be handed 
 around, took place. O'Connell caused a Catholic petition, drawn up by 
 Shiel, to be negatived. It praised "the generosity and liberality" of the 
 English Parliament. It made Catholics declare that, "in seeking capa- 
 bilities for constitutional distinctions, they must proportional^ come 
 within the sphere of constitutional influence and control." Shiel ad- 
 mitted that this squinted at the influence government might win by 
 distribution of patronage among Catholics. This paragraph and an- 
 other, which, Shiel allowed, he designed for the purpose of leaving 
 open a loophole for the proposal, at some future time, of "securities" 
 of some sort, were scouted by O'Connell and others. A statement in 
 
762 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 the petition that Pitt had been favorable to Catholic claims was flatly 
 contradicted. In short, as a whole, it was deemed objectionable and 
 negatived, and O'Connell and some others were requested to provide a 
 substitute. Shiel had now become a complete partisan of the aristo- 
 cratic section of the Catholics, though in the previous June, in a speech 
 at Waterford, he had spoken of them and their secession from the Board 
 in the most unflattering terms. The Catholic magnates of England 
 were highly gratified while the regime of the "Divan" lasted. They 
 thought it an indication that aristocratic influences were predominating 
 among the Irish Catholics. They began to hope that the Irish antipathy 
 to the veto would gradually die out. If this did not happen, they at 
 least expected to see a division among the Catholics of Ireland ; " and 
 that," observed one of them in conversation, "will serve the purposes 
 of the minister ; for after all, though Catholics, we must think and feel as 
 Englishmen!" 
 
 On the 17th of January another meeting took place at the Earl of 
 Fingal's. O'Connell moved a resolution, which lie said had already been 
 four times adopted by the Catholics, that they should seek "for the total 
 and unqualified repeal of the penal statutes." An altercation took place 
 at this meeting. Mr. Power of Waterford asked O'Connell, Would he 
 accede to no "ecclesiastical arrangements?" To this O'Connell said 
 emancipation should be without qualification. Power said, "Then. I 
 will not agree with your resolution." Lord Fingal said : " I agreed to 
 these meetings on the supposition of an honorable understanding be- 
 tween us that no religious subjects should be introduced, but that we 
 should confine ourselves solely to a petition for our civil immunities." 
 O'Connell said, he, too, desired "emancipation without reference to our 
 religious opinions, and without subjecting our religion to the control of a 
 Protestant Parliament." Shiel urged O'Connell to give up, for the sake 
 of union, the one word "unqualified" O'Connell, however, stood firm, 
 and the majority of the meeting supported him. 
 
 At a meeting at Fitzpatrick's, in Capel street, on the 21st, there was 
 some discussion as to the propriety of withdrawing the management of 
 the Catholic petition from the hands of Mr. Grattan and the earl of 
 Donoughmore, and transferring it to that liberal son of George the Third, 
 his royal highness the duke of Sussex, in the Lords, and to Messrs. Whit- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 763 
 
 bread, Romilly and Horner, in the Commons. Against this arrangement 
 Mr. Lidwill, a Protestant gentleman of Tipperary, a zealous friend of the 
 Catholic cause, made an effective speech. The meeting agreed to his 
 views — even those not convinced of their justness yielding out of com- 
 pliment to him. 
 
 An awkward incident occurred on Tuesday, the 24th of January, at 
 the aggregate meeting of the Catholics of Ireland held in Clarendon 
 Street Chapel. The chair had just been taken, shortly after one o'clock, 
 by a fine, venerable-looking Irish gentleman, Owen O'Connor (the O'Con- 
 nor Don, the descendant, in the collateral line, of Roderick O'Connor, 
 the last ardrigh of Ireland), when Lord Fingal appeared. The honor 
 of sitting in the chair was at once offered to his lordship. But, with 
 many polished professions of his deep sense of the honor done him, of 
 regret at being obliged to decline that honor, and of the goodness of his 
 intentions at all events, he declined to take the chair. "It was, he 
 imagined, agreed that no topic should be introduced touching on spiritual 
 matters, as the result of the mission to Rome had not yet been known." 
 When the earl became silent, there was a pause of several seconds, as 
 all thought he would yet, on reconsideration, take the chair. Mi". Mahon 
 said that he was opposed to an intermeddling with spiritual matters. 
 "But, good God!" cried he, "what has a simple demand of unqualified 
 emancipation to do with theological controversy?" Lord Fingal said 
 his mind was made up, and begged not to be pressed further. " He was 
 not wedded to any particular mode of emancipation ; . . . but he thought 
 it was agreed that nothing should be said on questions of Church disci- 
 pline until some official communication was had from Rome ; and as he 
 conceived that gentlemen did not recognize this arrangement by the 
 measures they proposed, he thought he was called upon to remain 
 neutral." 
 
 O'Connell, having heard so much, on this and former occasions, from 
 Lord Fingal "respecting a contract or compact," now begged to "dis- 
 tinctly and emphatically deny that he ever was a party to any compact, 
 which could directly or indirectly tend to sanction any alteration by 
 Parliament in our ecclesiastical concerns. He never heard that any 
 such compact existed." He remonstrated with the earl at some length, 
 requesting him, in conclusion, to take the chair. 
 
764 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Lord Fingal felt himself "distressed at being obliged to declare that 
 he would outrage his own feelings if he consented to take the chair, 
 under all the circumstances of the case. He did not presume to say he 
 was right, but he could not surmount the difficulties which his opinions 
 had thrown in his way." . The earl then moved towards the door. 
 O'Connell, standing with folded arms, looked after him with a glance 
 of regret. But when little Richard Lalor Shiel got up hastily and fol- 
 lowed the great Lord Fingal, the expression of O'Connell's face became 
 one of impish mockery. Derisively he cried out, provoking a loud burst 
 of laughter from the assemblage, "There goes the lion with his jackal!" 
 
 At this meeting, O'Connell made a second speech, which he ended 
 with these words: "We shall have the glory of achieving our liberties, 
 without forsaking the worship of our fathers." 
 
 In the early part of this year (1815) a Catholic Association was 
 formed. This was not the one which afterwards succeeded in achieving 
 emancipation ; indeed, this one proved of comparatively little account. 
 The ceremony of organization was simple ; the great object seemed to 
 be to steer clear of the penal provisions of the dread Convention Act. 
 The journals of the day tell us : " No chair was taken — no proposition 
 submitted — no instructions offered — no speech if 'cation even indulged in; 
 but every gentleman who chose entered his name in a book, which Mr. 
 Secretary Hay held open (and will continue to keep open from eleven 
 till three each day), and the rites- and solemnities of installation were 
 then complete and ended." On the 16th February, 1815, a report of a 
 committee, appointed to wait on Archbishop Murray to learn whether 
 "any arrangement of Catholic discipline in Ireland, as connected with 
 the Crown," had been heard of, was presented to the Association. Arch- 
 bishop Murray had described to the committee his proceedings in Rome 
 as the delegate of the Catholic bishops. He could not, however, "antici- 
 pate when the decision of His Holiness" [about the veto question) "could 
 be expected." Evidently there was reason to dread the intrigues of the 
 English Catholics, and perhaps those of the English cabinet, in Rome. 
 Dr. Milner had "protested against Mr. Macpherson being the English 
 agent, and also against the English Board being considered as the 
 English Catholics." 
 
 On the 16th of June in the same year, at an adjourned meeting of 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 765 
 
 the Catholics, the misunderstandings between the Catholic body, on one 
 side, and Mr. Grattan and the earl of Donoughmore, on the other, as to 
 the terms on which the Catholic petitions should be presented, were con- 
 sidered. A letter from Lord Donoughmore was deemed more or- less sat- 
 isfactory. One from Mr. Grattan was deemed quite the reverse. O'Con- 
 nell made a speech, complaining of the course pursued by Grattan. 
 Still, however, his old feeling of admiration for that great Irishman was 
 too strong to be obliterated by any sentiments of temporary vexation. 
 Towards the end of his address, he said : " I recall to mind his early 
 and his glorious struggles for Ireland. I know he raised her from degra- 
 dation and exalted her to her rank as a nation. I recollect, too, that if 
 she is now a pitiful province, Grattan struggled and fought for her whilst 
 life or hope remained. I know all this, and more, and my gratitude and 
 enthusiasm for those services will never be extinguished. 
 
 "But I know, too, that, to use his own phrase of another, 'he was 
 an oak of the forest too old to be transplanted.' " This was what Grat- 
 tan had said of Flood, referring to his having, in the evening of his life, 
 got a seat in the English House of Commons, where his success as an 
 orator was by no means brilliant. 
 
 I must pass over a remarkable speech, delivered by our hero, at a 
 meeting held in Dublin in furtherance of the restoration of Catholic 
 rights, on the 23d of February, 1815. His son tells us that, among 
 other topics handled, "the whole case against the Corn Laws is stated 
 in this speech, briefly, succinctly, powerfully." I shall scarcely pause 
 to notice, in a passing manner, several other meetings. On the 23d and 
 21th of August, in the same year, the Catholic prelates met, under the 
 presidency of the Most Rev. Dr. Oliver Kelly, and unanimously passed 
 resolutions, to some of which I have already alluded, expressive of their 
 strong conviction that concession to the Crown of England of any 
 power of interference with the appointment of the Catholic bishops 
 would be injurious, if not subversive of the Catholic religion in Ireland. 
 They also resolved that their grateful thanks were due "to the Most Rev. 
 Dr. Murray and the Right Rev. Dr. Milner, their late deputies to Rome, 
 for their zealous and able discharge of the trust reposed in them." On 
 the 29th of the same month a Catholic aggregate meeting passed reso- 
 lutions thanking the prelates for their sentiments, praising the conduct 
 
 ..J 
 
766 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O' CORNELL. 
 
 of the clergy and denying (the fourth resolution did this) that the pope 
 had, or ought to have, any temporal or civil jurisdiction within the realm 
 of Ireland. To this resolution, which of course strongly denounced the 
 veto arrangement, O'Connell spoke. In this speech he made some 
 remarks on Mr. Peel which produced odd consequences. I shall recur 
 to these expressions and their results before I conclude this chapter. 
 He also mentioned that Dr. Milner, strangely enough, had gone round 
 to the veto side again. This statement, however, was contradicted by 
 Dr. Milner; for, on the 14th of September, a letter appeared from that 
 eminent prelate, "repeating his disclaimers of vetoistical inclinations." 
 Indeed, at a meeting held on the 15th of March in the following year, 
 O'Connell took occasion to withdraw, with many expressions of profound 
 respect, all that had fallen from him, on the occasion just noticed, Avith 
 reference to the bishop of Castaballa. O'Connell declared, "that he 
 had since learned that his lordship was steadily adverse to the veto, and 
 had lately opposed it at the court of Rome with his well-known energy 
 and ability." Yet, in his former speech, O'Connell had actually quoted 
 passages, to all appearance advocating the veto, from a letter written by 
 Dr. Milner to the Irish bishops. 
 
 It would be, upon the whole, uninteresting to enter into any further 
 particulars of the history of the Catholic movement during the years 
 1815 and 1816. There were, indeed, several other meetings ; committees 
 were appointed for certain purposes ; there was a deputation to Rome 
 on the "securities" question; there were subscriptions set on foot to 
 defray the expenses of the deputation ; there was a remonstrance to His 
 Holiness Pope Pius the Seventh, drawn up by O'Connell, which, after 
 vexatious delays, it was found would not be received officially; there 
 were fresh resolutions against the veto; but from all these efforts nothing 
 definite resulted. "The year 1816," says John O'Connell, "closed with- 
 out any formal condemnation of the veto by the head of the Catholic 
 Church, and, indeed, with not a few indications of a disposition at the 
 court of Rome to treat the proposition with more tolerance than had 
 been dreamed of." 
 
 In 1816, the aspect of the Catholic cause was indeed sombre. The 
 National camp was divided once more. Early in that year, the discour- 
 aging spectacle was presented to true lovers of Ireland of two distinct 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 767 
 
 Catholic bodies holding their meetings at the same time in Dublin — the 
 Seceders at Lord Trimleston's house, and the "Catholic Association" at 
 Fitzpatrick's, in Capel street. The first determined to commit the care 
 of their petition, which offered to barter "securities" for emancipation, 
 to Mr. Grattan ; the Association resolved to entrust their petition for 
 unqualified emancipation to Sir Henry Parnell. Lord Donoughmore 
 represented both sections in the Lords. I may add, that O'Connell de- 
 nounced the Seceders vehemently for accusing the prelates of insincerity. 
 
 "Mr. O'Connell," says his son John, "always spoke of this period 
 as one of the most trying of his eventful life. By no kind of means, by 
 no manner of exertion — and he did look about for means, and did use a 
 thousand exertions — could he arouse the Catholics to action, or even to 
 a defensive position. For more than two years a moral lethargy, a faint- 
 hearted and hopeless apathy, hung over the country, and, with the excep- 
 tion of himself, scarce any one was in the field for Ireland. 
 
 " To such an extent did this helplessness and inactivity prevail, that 
 even the rent of the rooms in Capel street, tenanted by the Catholics for 
 the purposes of their meetings, was unpaid, until Mr. O'Connell put 
 hi§ hand in his own pocket for the purpose. Resigning them as too 
 expensive, he took smaller rooms in Crow street, and for a long time 
 discharged all expenses connected with them, and with all that remained 
 of the 'ivorking' of the Catholic cause. 
 
 " During this period of depression, had the fell designs of the British 
 minister against the independence of the Catholic Church in Ireland 
 been actively pushed, there is much reason to believe they would have 
 been successful. But where human help failed, Divine Providence inter- 
 posed to save us. In the high-flushed pride of her extraordinary suc- 
 cesses, England, as it were, forgot Ireland and the schemes for corrupt- 
 ing the Irish mind and heart, which had seemed so important while a 
 chance remained of foreign interference; or, if she remembered these 
 matters, the idea appeared ridiculous of going to any trouble to delude 
 and seduce a people absolutely, and, as she thought, hopelessly and 
 irremediably, beneath her feet. 
 
 "The 'veto 1 was therefore abandoned — abandoned at the moment 
 when the chances of forcing it on Ireland were strongest — abandoned 
 when the Catholicism, for which our fathers suffered and died, seemed 
 
 49 
 
768 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 past human help, and 'the gates of hell' for a moment seemed about to 
 'prevail.' " 
 
 It may be doubted whether the aristocratic Seceders did not secretly 
 view with downright complacency the suppression of the Board. Some 
 of them, at least, entertained revengeful feelings on account of the con- 
 demnation of their conduct by that body. Thomas Kennedy, who lived 
 in those days, tells us: "Their spleen arose from a double cause — oppo- 
 sition to the course adopted by the Board, and wounded pride at their 
 own discomfiture ; and a discomfiture produced by the individual whose 
 influence in that assembly was supposed to be paramount, rendered it 
 the more humiliating to themselves." 
 
 If, however, the general history of the Catholic body during the years 
 1815 and 1816 be not very striking or animating, yet one of the most 
 remarkable incidents of O'Connell's life, from a biographical point of 
 view, took place in the former of these years : I allude to his fatal duel 
 with D'Esterre, of which I shall now give the reader a full narrative. 
 
 At one of the Catholic meetings that took place in the month of Jan- 
 uary, 1815, O'Connell made use of these words: "I am convinced that 
 the Catholic cause has suffered by neglect of discussion. Had the pe- 
 tition been last year the subject of debate, we should not now see the 
 beggarly corporation of Dublin anticipating our efforts by a petition of an 
 opposite tendency. The duke of Sussex in the Lords, and Mr. Whitbread 
 in the Commons, appear to me persons worthy to be entrusted with our 
 petition." 
 
 These words were big with doom to a brave but ill-advised man. 
 At the time they were uttered, the representative of the guild of mer- 
 chants in the Dublin corporation was a gentleman named D'Esterre. 
 His small, but lithe and wiry, form was animated by an intrepid spirit. 
 He had been in earlier life an officer in the British navy. During the 
 Mutiny of the Nore his bold spirit had saved him from being hung by 
 the mutineers. The rope was already around his neck ; the menacing 
 desperadoes offered him life, if he would be one of them. " Hang away, 
 and be d — d !" was his fierce reply, and the brave defiance preserved his 
 life. This reckless partisan now determined to call 'our hero to account 
 for his application of the contemptuous epithet "beggarly" to the Dublin 
 corporation. Mr. D'Esterre's own fortunes at the time were in a despe- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 769 
 
 rate condition. He carried on the business of provision-merchant and 
 contractor, but inevitable bankruptcy was hanging over him. Possibly 
 his knowledge of the state of his own affairs caused him foolishly to 
 regard O'Connell's words as almost a personal insult; though, of course, 
 in all human probability, O'Connell never cast a thought on him while 
 he uttered them. This seems to me a not unnatural explanation of 
 D'Esterre's absurd Quixotism in making himself the champion of the 
 insulted corporation. I am quite aware that many writers have repre- 
 sented him as a mere bravo, who challenged O'Connell with the delib- 
 erate intention of killing him, expecting to repair his broken fortunes 
 by receiving from the government the wages of the bloody deed. Doubt- 
 less many mischievous enemies of O'Connell were glad to take advantage 
 of his rashness and urge him on. There is even considerable reason to 
 think that the government were willing to profit by the quarrel. They 
 would probably have eventually provided for Mr. D'Esterre if he had 
 slain our hero. Certainly, Lord Whitworth's government took no proper 
 steps to preserve the peace between him and O'Connell, though the 
 affair was talked of, and kept the whole Irish metropolis in a fever of 
 excitement for a week before the catastrophe took place. Then other 
 opponents of O'Connell had been provided for. But it is not just, in the 
 absence of conclusive evidence, to assert positively that the motives of 
 the unfortunate D'Esterre were merely those of a mercenary assassin. 
 John Mitchel says, with commendable caution: " On what precise evi- 
 dence Mr. D'Esterre was charged with undertaking the base job of a 
 mercenary assassin we have not been able to satisfy ourselves. At any 
 rate, no dishonorable practice in the conduct of the affair was ever im- 
 puted." But a truce to further speculation ; let me confine myself to a 
 narrative of the melancholy occurrence. 
 
 D'Esterre, on the 26th of January, wrote to O'Connell to know 
 whether he had really called the Dublin corporation "beggarly," as Car- 
 rick's paper had reported him to have done. O'Connell, in his reply, 
 dated the 27th, while refusing "to admit or disclaim" the expression 
 "beggarly," says: "No terms attributed to me, however reproachful, 
 can exceed the contemptuous feelings I entertain for that body, in its 
 corporate capacity ; although, doubtless, it contains many valuable per- 
 sons, whose conduct as individuals (I lament) must necessarily be con- 
 
770 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 founded in the acts of a general body. I have only to add, that this 
 letter must close our correspondence on this subject. I am, etc., etc. Daniel 
 
 O'CONNELL." 
 
 Advised to continue the correspondence, D'Esterre wrote again the 
 same day (Frftlay), but his letter was returned, unread, by James O'Con- 
 nell, who observed, in his note, "My brother did not expect that your 
 next communication would have been made in writing." 
 
 On Sunday, James O'Connell received a letter from D'Esterre, con- 
 taining disrespectful observations on himself and his brother. He sent 
 Captain O'Mullane to D'Esterre to say that when the affair with Daniel 
 was settled, he would call him to account for his conduct to himself spe- 
 cially. The captain added that Counsellor O'Connell was surprised at 
 not hearing from Mr. D'Esterre in what he conceived the proper way. 
 D'Esterre seems to have been urged to provoke O'Connell, by some 
 public deed of insult, to become the challenger. 
 
 Monday passed away. On this day Mr. Lidwill, one of the most 
 redoubtable of Irish duellists, who had remained in Dublin to act as 
 Dan's friend, went out of town. On Tuesday there was great excitement 
 through the city, for the rumor was abroad that D'Esterre was advised 
 to go to the Four Courts to inflict personal chastisement on O'Connell. 
 During these days, it is said, that some of D'Esterre's friends sat in the 
 upper windows of a draper's house, in Grafton street, hired for the pur- 
 pose, to witness their champion flog our hero. On this Tuesday, accord- 
 ing to most accounts, the belligerents failed to come into contact ; but 
 Richard 0' Gorman (father of Richard 0' Gorman, now of New York) met 
 Mr. D'Esterre, at about three o'clock p. m., on one of the quays, and re- 
 monstrated with him in these terms: "You conceive that you received 
 an offence from Mr. O'Connell ; if so, your course is to demand satisfac- 
 tion. This, I understand, you have not as yet done, but if you are now 
 resolved to do it, I undertake, on forfeiture of having a riddle made of 
 my body, to have Mr. O'Connell on his ground in half an hour." Still 
 no challenge was sent. At four, the general impression was that 
 D'Esterre was parading the streets. O'Connell walked through the city 
 with a couple of friends, but, according to the commonly received account, 
 did not encounter his antagonist. At one moment the crowd around 
 O'Connell was so dense that he had to take refuge from its pressure in 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 771 
 
 Tuthill's hotel in Dawson street, and come out through the stable-yard. 
 Even after this, he found himself begirt by an enthusiastic multitude, 
 among whom were at least five hundred gentlemen. "The man of the 
 people," thus hemmed in on all sides by his admirers, had now to take 
 refuge in a house in Exchequer street. After a time, Judge Day entered 
 to place O'Connell under arrest; he said, however, that he would be 
 satisfied if he had the guarantee of O'Connell' s honor that he would 
 proceed no farther in the business. 
 
 " It is not my duty as a duellist," said our hero, "to be the aggres- 
 sor; I therefore pledge my honor that I shall not be the aggressor- 
 further, however, I must tell you, no human consideration will induce me 
 to go." 
 
 As Judge Day was retiring, Barney Coile said: " It is very extraor- 
 dinary, Mr. Day, that a ruffian should be allowed to parade the streets 
 of Dublin during two days, in order to assault a worthy man who is the 
 father of six children, and this without any hindrance or interruption 
 from the magistrates." 
 
 " I hope, sir, you are satisfied," said Judge Day, " that the laws are 
 competent to reach all such offenders." 
 
 "By my soul," replied Barney Coile, in his broad northern accent, 
 " I am very well satisfied the laws can reach us if we transgress, but 
 during the two days he has been seeking to effect a breach of the peace, 
 the laws have not reached that fellow." The judge retired without making 
 any reply. 
 
 In Grafton street, where D'Esterre was in a shop surrounded by his 
 friends, James - O'Connell is said to have resented a provoking leer on 
 the face of one of the opposite party; but the affair came to nothing. 
 Tuesday passed over without any arrangement for a hostile meeting 
 having been come to. 
 
 But at nine o'clock on Wednesday morning, Sir Edward Stanley 
 appeared in O'Connell' s study. He commenced by seeking from our 
 hero an explanation of D'Esterre's affair. 
 
 "Sir," said O'Connell, in a decisive tone, "I will hold no conversa- 
 tion with you on that subject. My friend is Major MacNamara ; here is 
 his address. You must apply to him for whatever information you 
 desire." "Oh ! but, sir," cried the city knight, eagerly, " I only wish to 
 
772 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 say a few words in explanation." O'Connell made an imperious gesture 
 of refusal, and Sir Edward retired, evidently chagrined. 
 
 At twelve o'clock Sir Edward called on that great Milesian magnate 
 and duellist, Major MacNamara, of Doolen, in the county Clare. He 
 expressed a hope that the matter might be adjusted by an amicable 
 explanation. 
 
 "If," said Major MacNamara, "you expect an apology or explana- 
 tion from O'Connell, you must be disappointed ; he has given no offence 
 to D'Esterre, he has done him no injury; therefore I must tell you it will 
 be a waste of words and loss of time to speak further on a topic which 
 has already, and for so long a time, engaged the public attention." 
 
 " Then, sir, it is my duty to deliver you a message from Mr. D'Esterre 
 to Mr. O'Connell," said Sir Edward, coming to the point at last. 
 
 "Very well," responded the major; "it is my privilege to appoint a 
 time and place; and I fix on this afternoon at three o'clock for the meet- 
 ing, and Bishop's Court, in the county Kildare, as the place." 
 
 Sir Edward did not seem to like this celerity of action. He first 
 begged to have the affair postponed till two o'clock next day, then till 
 the next morning, both which requests the major sternly refused to 
 accede to. MacNamara was even inexorable when Stanley asked for a 
 delay till half-past four that evening. Finally, however, he yielded 
 just one brief half hour. So half-past three was the appointed time. 
 
 Major MacNamara then observed, that as the antagonists had no 
 personal quarrel or animosity, he presumed all " parties would be satis- 
 fied when each gentleman had discharged one pistol." 
 
 This moderation caused Sir Edward foolishly to assume something 
 very like a tone of bravado: "No, sir," replied he, "that will not do; if 
 they fired five-and-twenty shots each, Mr. D'Esterre will never leave the 
 ground until Mr. O'Connell makes an apology." 
 
 " Well, then, if blood be your object, blood you shall have, by G — d !" 
 replied the terrible major. 
 
 O'Connell could not have placed himself in better hands than those 
 of the major, to guide him creditably through an adventure like the 
 present. MacNamara was brave and cool ; moreover, well practiced in 
 affairs of the kind. The many stories preserved of this distinguished 
 representative of some of the highest qualities of the true Irish gentle- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 773 
 
 man of the old school, would make a most entertaining sketch. Per- 
 sonally he was one of the finest-looking men in Ireland — six feet in 
 height, bearing, it was said, considerable resemblance to George the 
 Fourth. The story is told that George once asked him (I believe a great 
 French monarch, a century before, asked some one a similar impertinent 
 question), "Was your mother ever at court?" To which the major 
 responded, to all appearance quite artlessly, "No, your Majesty, but my 
 father was!" The major's courtly manners were in full keeping with 
 his stately presence. 
 
 There was a slight fall of snow that afternoon as O'Connell and his 
 friend passed out of Dublin city on their way to Bishop's Court, The 
 Dublin Evening Post of the time gives us the following particulars : 
 " This place is about twelve miles from the city, and constitutes a por- 
 tion of Lord Ponsonby's demesne. The hour appointed was half-past 
 three o'clock. At three precisely — we can speak confidently, for we now 
 speak from personal knowledge — Mr. O'Connell, attended by his second 
 and Surgeon Macklin and a number of friends, was on the ground. 
 About four, Mr. D'Esterre, attended only by Surgeon Peele, Sir Edward 
 Stanley (his second), Mr. Piers and a Mr. D'Esterre of Limerick, ap- 
 peared. There was some conversation between the seconds as to posi- 
 tion, mode of fire, etc., which, added to other sources of delay, occupied 
 forty minutes." 
 
 Gradually, a considerable crowd of silent, anxious spectators covered 
 the ground. Sir Edward Stanley expressed some apprehension as to the 
 safety of himself and D'Esterre, should the duel prove fatal to O'Con- 
 nell. He even declared himself convinced that D'Esterre could not fight 
 in that place on that day, without danger to his friends. 
 
 Here a relation of the Liberator, named Connell O'Connell, inter- 
 posed : "This affair has been long the subject of public conversation, and 
 your friend has been the aggressor ; if you now quit the ground without 
 fighting, I must consider you as cowards and ruffians; and as to you, 
 Sir Edward, I shall call on you personally to make reparation for an 
 additional insult." 
 
 This put an end to Sir Edward's hesitation. Pistols were prepared 
 and preliminaries settled. The two seconds tossed up a coin for choice 
 of ground, which Major MacNamara won. That gentleman ably dis- 
 
774 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 charged all the offices of a skilful second. He took care to remove from 
 O'Connell's neck a white cravat and to substitute a black one. He like- 
 wise removed the large bunch of watch-seals which, in accordance with 
 the fashion of the day, dangled from our hero's watch-fob. He was 
 evidently on the alert to leave as few conspicuous objects as possible 
 that might attract the eye and guide the aim of his friend's adversary. 
 Sir Edward Stanley was clearly no match for Major MacNamara in cool- 
 ness and forethought. This gave our hero a certain advantage over his 
 antagonist. While these preliminaries were being settled, the unfortu- 
 nate D'Esterre took occasion to say that his quarrel with Mr. O'Connell 
 was not of a religious nature ; he had no animosity whatsoever to the Cath- 
 olics or their leaders. Both duellists showed the utmost coolness and cour- 
 age. The Evening Post says: "It would be injustice to Mr. D'Esterre, 
 whatever opinion we may have of the part he espoused, or rather the 
 party who stimulated him to this act, to deny that he seemed perfectly 
 self-possessed." Of our hero the same journal observes: "As to Mr. 
 O'Connell, we never saw him in better spirits or more composed ; indeed, 
 his cheerfulness was the astonishment of every spectator." O'Connell, 
 having recognized his tailor, Jeremiah McCarthy of Dawson street, among 
 the spectators, saluted him gayly, and said, with an air of jocularity, 
 " Well, Jerry, I never missed you at an aggregate meeting." 
 
 The fatal moment was fast approaching. O'Connell's friends stood 
 there in breathless anxiety. Many of them were, like himself, fine, im- 
 posing-looking men. The great duellist George Lidwill seems to have 
 got back to Dublin, for he is said to have been present ; he had the tall 
 form of a Tipperary man. Counsellor Richard Nugent Bennett, of fair 
 stature also, loaded the pistols for O'Connell. He had lent our hero 
 these pistols for the occasion. They had on their stocks the notches of 
 former duels; two men had been already killed with them. Subse- 
 quently they became the property of William Sterne Hart of Fitzwilliani 
 Square, a warm friend of O'Connell's. I may observe that Lidwell and 
 Bennett, like MacNamara, were Protestants. The most conspicuous of 
 O'Connell's Catholic friends present was Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman, a 
 man of powerful frame, and equally ready to shoot a gentleman with a 
 pistol or to drive a mob before him with a shillelah. Full of jest and 
 gayety, these bright and stalwart men had come to the field ; they were 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 775 
 
 now, however, hushed in grim and painful suspense. Another anxious 
 individual was waiting in a cottage nigh-hand to hear the result — a 
 northern priest named O'Mnllane. His devotion to O'Connell had caused 
 him to follow him afar off, that, in case of the worst, he might be at 
 hand to administer to our hero the rites of the Catholic Church. 
 
 And now, at about forty minutes past four o'clock, the two antago- 
 nists stand on the ground allotted to each. Though so many manly 
 forms stood round, O'Connell, on that occasion, might well command the 
 gazer's admiration. He was then, indeed, in his golden prime — forty 
 years of age, his figure not so stout as it afterwards became. His cos- 
 tume showed his person to advantage. He wore a broad-tailed body- 
 coat, and his trowsers were stuffed into his hessian-boots tasselled in 
 front. In short, he looked his best, though his dress was slightly soiled 
 with mire. In crossing a ditch he had slipped and fallen, an incident 
 which, to one of the ancients, might have seemed of evil omen ; but he 
 liad risen in an instant, and here he now stood waiting for the moment 
 to fire and to be fired at. 
 
 If D'Esterre wanted the commanding presence of O'Connell, still the 
 daring and energy stamped on his resolute face and visible in his light, 
 active, well-knit form, marked him out as a truly formidable antagonist 
 to be obliged to meet in mortal encounter. 
 
 When it had been finally agreed to by the seconds that the oppo- 
 nents were to take their ground with a case of pistols each, to use as 
 they might think proper, — when in short all was ready for action, Sir 
 Edward Stanley addressed Major MacNamara thus : 
 
 " Well, sir, when each has discharged his case of pistols, I hope the 
 affair will be considered as terminated, and that we leave the ground." 
 
 "Sir," replied Major MacNamara, "you may, of course, take your 
 friend from the ground when } t ou please. You, sir, are the challenger, 
 and you may retire from the ground whenever you think proper ; but I 
 shall not enter into any such condition as you propose. However, it is 
 probable that there may be no occasion to discharge the whole of a case 
 of pistols." These final words were ominous, or rather prophetic. 
 
 I shall give the story of the exchange of shots chiefly in the words 
 of the Dublin Evening Post: "The friends of both parties retired, and 
 the combatants, having a pistol in each hand, with directions to dis- 
 
776 THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 charge them at their discretion, prepared to fire. They levelled, and 
 before the lapse of a second both shots were heard. Mr. D'Esterre was 
 first, and missed." His bullet struck the ground. Mechanically,, or 
 influenced by some motive hardly to be guessed at now, the moment he 
 fired he bent his right knee and wheeled away a little, apparently ex- 
 posing his right side or even, in some degree, his back to his opponent. 
 " Mr. O'Connell' s shot followed instantaneously, and took effect in the 
 groin of his antagonist, about an inch below the hip. Mr. D'Esterre, of 
 course, fell, and both the surgeons hastened to him. They found that 
 the ball had traversed the hip, passed through the bladder, and possibly 
 touched the spine. It could not be found. There was an immense 
 effusion of blood. All parties prepared to move towards home, and 
 arrived in town before eight o'clock. We were extremely glad to per- 
 ceive that Major MacNamara and many respectable gentlemen assisted 
 in procuring the best accommodation for the wounded man. They sym- 
 pathized in his sufferings, and expressed themselves to Sir Edward 
 Stanley as extremely well pleased that a transaction, which they consid- 
 ered most uncalled for, had not terminated in the death of D'Esterre. We 
 need not describe the emotions which burst forth along the road and 
 through the town when it was ascertained that Mr. O'Connell was safe." 
 
 All authorities seem to agree that the conduct of both gentlemen on 
 the ground was perfectly brave and honorable. O'Connell, too, showed 
 his kindness of heart. To his medical attendant he had said anxiously, 
 before taking his ground, " Should any fatality happen to my opponent, 
 I entreat you to consider him as your patient ; treat him with all the 
 care you would devote to me." 
 
 Fagan, in his Life of O'Connell, tells us : " It was reported in Dublin 
 that Mr. O'Connell was shot ; and a party of dragoons were despatched 
 from Dublin for the protection of Mr. D'Esterre. On their way, the 
 officer by whom they were commanded met, on its return, the carriage 
 containing Mr. O'Connell and his brother. The officer called on the 
 postillions to stop ; whereupon Mr. James O'Connell pulled down the 
 window. The officer, addressing him, asked if they had been present at 
 the duel ; to which he replied in the affirmative. The officer then said, 
 ' Is it true Mr. O'Connell has been shot?' Mr. James O'Connell replied, 
 'No; the reverse is the fact; Mr. D'Esterre has unfortunately fallen.' 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNEL^. 777 
 
 The announcement had a visible effect upon the military; they were not 
 prepared for the intelligence, and something like consternation was ex- 
 hibited. The carriage was allowed to proceed, the military party being 
 evidently not aware who were its occupants. 
 
 " When D'Esterre fell, the spectators on the field could not refrain 
 giving expression to their feelings — they actually shouted ; and a young 
 collegian who was present, and who is now an excellent, exemplary Prot- 
 estant clergyman, was so carried away by the general feeling as to fling up 
 his hat in the air and shout, 'Huzza for O'Connell!' Very different was 
 the conduct of the three occupants of O'Connell's carriage. They displayed 
 no exultation. The moment D'Esterre fell they went off; and though 
 the place of meeting was near Naas, they were close to Dublin before a 
 single word was exchanged between them." [In what folloivs ive find a 
 discrepancy between Fagan's statement and that of the "Post" already given, 
 to the effect that, on D , Esterre's fall, "both surgeons hastened to him" and 
 found the course of the ball.) "At last O'Connell broke the silence, say- 
 ing : ' I fear he is dead, he fell so suddenly. Where do you think he 
 was hit?' 'In the head, I think,' said his medical friend. 'That can- 
 not be — I aimed low; the ball must have entered near the thigh.' This 
 will be considered a remarkable observation, when it is recollected where, 
 as was subsequently found, the wound was inflicted. It shows the per- 
 fect coolness and humanity of O'Connell. Being one of the surest shots 
 that ever fired a pistol, he could have hit his antagonist where he pleased ; 
 but his object was merely, in self-defence, to wound him in no mortal 
 part, and he aimed low with that intention." 
 
 The oil-lamps, that dimly lit the streets of Dublin in those days, 
 threw their dull gleams on the faces of an excited populace that night. 
 Although a light fall of snow was on the ground, the public ways 
 swarmed with crowds anxiously discussing the conflicting statements 
 all through the night. The sensation that stirred the whole city was 
 wonderful. Probably no event has moved Dublin so deeply since. All 
 were interested one way or the other. At first the suspense was tortur- 
 ing. When sure intelligence of O'Connell's safety arrived, the trans- 
 ports of the masses were unbounded. Still, there were varying accounts 
 of different points connected with the tragedy, so that the general excite- 
 ment showed no signs of quickly subsiding. Bonfires blazed in several 
 
778 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 streets. It was plain that if unhappy D'Esterre, in the earlier stages 
 of the quarrel, had succeeded in inflicting any absolute personal violence 
 on O'Connell, the most serious disturbances would have arisen in the 
 city. But D'Esterre was now in mortal agony. It is said that, exultant as 
 the people were, they tried to restrain the demonstrations of their delight 
 in pity for that unfortunate victim of his own rashness and unbridled 
 passions. 
 
 He, in the mean time, was past all hope — his life rapidly ebbing 
 away. As it was impossible to staunch the wound, he perished on the 
 second day after the duel from loss of blood. As he lay on his death- 
 bed, pale and sinking, his last feebly-uttered words confessed that 
 O'Connell was free from all blame in the unhappy transaction. While 
 his widow, young and beautiful, was in her first, fresh agony of grief, 
 the bailiffs entered that abode of misery. His house, his furniture, 
 nay, it is said, his corpse even, were seized in execution. He was hastily 
 buried that very night by the feeble light of lanterns. 
 
 Such was the melancholy fate of D'Esterre. A deceased brother of 
 John Cornelius O'Callaghan, in a short biography of O'Connell written 
 some time before '48, makes the following curious reflection upon his 
 character and destiny: "His contest with O'Connell has rescued 
 D'Esterre's name from that miserable obscurity which is the general 
 fate of most human beings. D'Esterre was a brave man gone astray. 
 Were Ireland a nation, like those once despicable countries which raised 
 themselves to that state, such as the United Provinces of Holland or the 
 United States of America — had Ireland a navy like these, had D'Esterre 
 commanded a ship with a crew of Irish lads in that navy, we would 
 place him alongside a ship of any other nation, far or near, and lay two 
 to one he would soon make her strike her flag. But such was not his 
 fate. He served with thousands of forgotten Irishmen as an officer in 
 the English navy." 
 
 This duelling adventure of O'Connell's added immensely to his popu- 
 larity. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a more popular man any- 
 where than he was at this period. His success in this encounter struck 
 a terror, also, into the numerous unscrupulous enemies whom his bold 
 denunciations of men and abuses had raised up against him. He was 
 now feared as a man of cool intrepidity, who was ready to back his 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 779 
 
 words with the pistol, and who moreover appeared to be an unerring 
 shot. 
 
 I shall make some further quotations from Fagan's "Life of O'Con- 
 nell" to complete the narrative of this singular episode in our hero's 
 life: 
 
 " In some respects the accounts we have given from the papers differ 
 from the version communicated to us, as the statement of one who had 
 been present during the whole transaction. For instance, the papers 
 say that the parties did not meet in the streets. The circumstances 
 detailed to us do not justify that statement. It appears that, after the 
 correspondence between the parties, Mr. O'Connell was attending his 
 professional duties at the Four Courts, and was in the act of addressing 
 the judges in some case or other, when his brother came in and inti- 
 mated to him that Mr. D'Esterre was on the quay opposite the Courts, 
 with a whip in his hand, waiting to meet him. Mr. O'Connell requested 
 his brother to wait until he had concluded his observations, and he then 
 ashed him where D'Esterre was, in order that he might proceed in that 
 direction. Having been informed, he left the court, and meeting 
 D'Esterre, the latter lifted his whip and shook it over Mr. O'Connell's 
 head. A collision was about to ensue, when the bystanders interfered, 
 and Mr. D'Esterre was forced into a shop, in order to avoid the indigna- 
 tion of the crowd. . . . 
 
 " The excitement in Dublin, when the result was known, cannot be 
 described, and, indeed, is scarcely to be credited by those who were not 
 then in the metropolis. Over seven hundred gentlemen left their cards 
 at Mr. O'Connell's the day after the occurrence. Great commiseration 
 was felt for D'Esterre's family; but it was considered that he himself 
 lost his life foolishly. He was not called on to be the corporate cham- 
 pion. We may add, that he was an officer in the navy and an eccentric 
 character. He at one time played off rather a serious joke upon his 
 friends, who resided near Cork. He wrote to them from abroad that he 
 was sentenced to be hanged for mutiny, and implored of them to use 
 every interest to save him. Lord Shannon interested himself in the 
 affair, and the greatest trouble was taken to obtain a pardon. But it 
 turned out to be a hoax practised by D'Esterre when under the influence 
 of the jolly god. Knowing his character, many even of opposite poli- 
 
780 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 tics, notwithstanding the party spirit that then prevailed, regretted the 
 issue the unfortunate gentleman provoked. 
 
 "When the carriage reached O'Connell's residence in Merrion Square, 
 he requested his brother to go immediately to Dr. Murray, the Catholic 
 coadjutor archbishop, to communicate to his lordship the melancholy 
 result, and say how deeply he deplored the occurrence. 'Heaven be 
 praised!' exclaimed his lordship, thinking for the moment only of the 
 Liberator's escape ; ' Ireland is safe ;' so highly and prophetically did he 
 even then regard the life and future services of O'Connell. On his return 
 from Dr. Murray's, Mr. James O'Connell was requested by his brother to 
 retain Mr. Richard Pennefather, now Baron Pennefather, to defend him 
 in case of need. The precaution was, however, unnecessary, as will 
 appear from the subjoined letter which, the day after the death of 
 D'Esterre, Mr. O'Connell received from Sir Edward Stanley, the friend 
 of the deceased : 
 
 " ' Royal Barracks, 4ih February, 1815. Sir : — Lest your professional 
 avocations should be interrupted by an apprehension of any proceeding 
 being in contemplation iii consequence of the late melancholy event, I 
 have the honor to inform you that there is not the most distant intention 
 of any prosecution whatever, on the part of the family or friends of the 
 late Mr. D'Esterre. I have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient, 
 humble servant, Edward Stanley.' 
 
 "To this Mr. O'Connell returned the following reply: 
 
 "' Merrion Square, 5th February, 1815. Sir: — I have the honor to 
 acknowledge the receipt of your letter of yesterday, and I beg of you to 
 accept my sincere thanks for your very polite and considerate attention. 
 It is to me a mournful consolation to meet such generous sentiments 
 from those who must be afflicted at the late unhappy event. But, 
 believe me, my regret at that event is most sincere and unaffected ; and 
 if I know my own heart, I can, with the strictest truth, assert that no 
 person can feel for the loss society has sustained in the death of Mr. 
 D'Esterre with more deep and lasting sorrow than I do. Allow me 
 again to thank you, sir, for the courtesy of your letter — a courtesy quite 
 consistent with the gentlemanly demeanor of your entire conduct in this 
 melancholy transaction. I have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient, 
 humble servant, Daniel O'Connell.' 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 781 
 
 " Thus terminated an affair which made afterwards so deep an im- 
 pression on O'Connell's mind, and influenced in so decided a manner his 
 future career. It created a lasting and universal sensation, and the 
 details at this day will be read with the deepest interest. It is a fact 
 known to many that O'Connell offered to secure a handsome annual 
 provision for Mr. D'Esterre's widow. Indeed, his words were, 'to share 
 his income with her.' But the offer was refused. He acted, however, 
 subsequently, in the noblest manner to a daughter of Mr. D'Esterre's — 
 a most accomplished lady, whose circumstances were not affluent. She 
 was allowed by him an annuity to the day of his death ; and to her 
 mother he was ever ready to afford any kindness in his power. A short 
 time previous to an assizes at Cork, having been specially retained to go 
 another circuit, pressing letters were written to him in order to induce 
 him to come down to Cork. Some important cases were to be tried there, 
 and his professional assistance was earnestly required. He declined 
 attending, but, receiving a letter from the late Rev. T. England, P. P., 
 Passage, stating that the plaintiff in one of those cases was the widow 
 of Mr. D'Esterre, and that to her and her children a favorable result was 
 of the last importance, he threw up his special briefs, his large retain- 
 ing fees, and, proceeding to Cork, acted on her behalf and succeeded in 
 obtaining a verdict." 
 
 The old saying, " It is an ill wind that blows nobody good," was sin- 
 gularly verified on this occasion. At the time of the duel, term was 
 going on, and Michael O'Loghlen (afterwards Sir Michael and master of 
 the rolls, the first Catholic judge appointed after emancipation) was 
 engaged in a most important case in the King's Bench with O'Connell. 
 When it came on, the court echoed a dozen times to the cry, "Call Daniel 
 O'Connell, Esq." But Daniel O'Connell made no reply — Avas nowhere 
 to be found. O'Loghlen told the court that his senior happened to 
 be engaged in a very unfortunate affair which prevented his ap- 
 pearance there on that day. But the judges would not listen to his 
 request for a postponement. He had to take O'Connell's place and 
 proceed. Reluctantly and diffidently, he entered the lists against some 
 of the ablest opponents the bar could produce. Gradually he gained 
 courage. His modesty and youthful appearance appealed strongly to 
 the court in his favor. The bench encouraged him. His talents sus- 
 
782 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 tamed him and astonished all present. The case lasted for several days. 
 O'Connell was still absent. The young lawyer had the opportunity of 
 making a reply, in which he surpassed his first effort. In short, he laid 
 the foundation of his subsequent fortunes. 
 
 "We may add, in dismissing this transaction," says Fagan, "that 
 Mr. D'Esterre, after he left the navy, . . . lived on the Bachelors' Walk, 
 Dublin, and on the way to the Four Courts it was necessary to pass his 
 house. For years after the fatal encounter, it was observed that when- 
 ever O'Connell passed the house he always lifted his hat, but not in a 
 manner to attract public observation ; and his lips were seen to move 
 as if in silent prayer. This continued for several years." 
 
 The liberal press were furious in their attacks on Lord Whitworth, 
 the viceroy, and his government, for their guilty connivance in the 
 course of this tragic affair. The Evening Post taunted the authorities : 
 " Major Sirr would have been better employed in putting Mr. D'Esterre 
 under arrest than in singing psalms. . . . Alderman Bradley King, who 
 is the father of a fine family, would employ himself more worthily in 
 taking measures to prevent two fathers from meeting in mortal combat, 
 than in exhorting a fiery spirit to forbear. . . . Upon the heads of the 
 corporation and the magistracy the blood of Mr. D'Esterre lie's, and upon 
 them his young widow and his infant offspring must invoke the vindic- 
 tive justice which the laws of England can so well inflict. Is this ma- 
 lignant ? If it be, the magistrates of Dublin have the remedy in their 
 own hands. They are forty in number. They make the juries. We 
 defy them!" 
 
 The Sentinel tries to criminate the lord-lieutenant directly in a series 
 of bitter letters : " The two chief features in this transaction are its ex- 
 traordinary publicity and delay. . . . Had Mr. O'Connell been assailed 
 in the street, there was every appearance that confusion and violence 
 would be the result. Had he been killed or wounded in the field, many 
 duels would have been the consequence. . . . Were all the members of 
 our system of distributive justice ignorant of that which everybody 
 knew? . . . Shall I be told that measures were taken to restrain O'Con- 
 nell? It is true; and that exertion still proves that our distributors of 
 justice had knowledge of the transaction. But when they did proceed 
 •to restrain the parties, why not restrain both? . . . My lord, the friends 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. . 783 
 
 and relatives of Mr. D'Esterre told him that he had no cause of quarrel 
 with Mr. O'Connell." The writer asks, Why was Mr. D'Esterre buried 
 suddenly in the dead of night, without a coroner's inquest? The con- 
 duct of a good government should not be liable to suspicion. "I was, 
 therefore," says the writer, "very sorry to understand that one of your 
 household, Sir Charles Vernon, your chamberlain, placed himself in a 
 situation in which he might see the violence promised to be inflicted by 
 the deceased on Mr. O'Connell. . . . Sir Charles should have hurried 
 from the scene ; he should have informed your lordship that the chief 
 Agitator was threatened with violence by a member of the corporation, 
 that the streets were filled with crowds in a very violent state of agita- 
 tion, and that, to the observation of any man of sense, personal or cor- 
 poral mischief must be the result." It was in vain that the abashed 
 faction of the government would fain have let the ugly business rest in 
 silence. They appealed, with piteous hypocrisy, to the Catholics to 
 spare the feelings of the living by abstaining from all further allusion 
 to D'Esterre. Vain, however, were their appeals, for the scandal clung 
 to them. 
 
 Lord Whitworth was recalled from his viceroyalty a few days after 
 the death of D'Esterre. He left Ireland a more discontented land even 
 than he found it. He returned to England to find equal discontent and 
 greater disorders prevailing there. 
 
 This year, 1815, was peculiarly trying to the patience and temper 
 of O'Connell. Many things, indeed, combined to irritate him. Govern- 
 ment, while abstaining from all prosecution of himself, prosecuted the 
 printers who published his speeches. Newspaper proprietors began to 
 fear to give reports of what he said. The Freeman's Journal was prose- 
 cuted for a report of a speech which he delivered in Cork, and which 
 brought odium on the Catholic cause and shocked many of its partisans. 
 O'Connell maintained that the Freeman 's report of this invective against 
 the government and the Orangemen was exaggerated. For this dis- 
 avowal of the report he was denounced as "a heartless, hollow, unprin- 
 cipled spouter." No doubt, it also vexed him to see the usual Orange 
 disturbances and acts of insults to Catholics taking place, this year, 
 both in Dublin and other parts of the island. One Bennett was em- 
 ployed to assail him in a pamphlet ; also, the eccentric Dr. Brennan, in 
 
 50 
 
784 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 his Milesian Magazine, lampooned him in some despicable doggerel 
 verses : 
 
 " The Counsellor's tall, and he's big to be sure ; 
 As in Kerry they'd say, he's the full of the door ; 
 He's a Captain Rock pleader (no dodger or dadger), 
 Who justice lugs out as a bulldog a badger." 
 
 But this specimen will suffice. Brennan also compared him to Dan 
 Donnelly the pugilist, and asserted that Donnelly was the better man. 
 All these and other annoyances, great and small, tended to make our 
 hero's temper more than ordinarily irritable. Besides, as I have already 
 said, the condition of the cause was unusually depressed ; though, even 
 after the suppression of the Board, the Catholics had retained spirit 
 enough to show their gratitude to their Protestant supporters, by giving 
 them a splendid banquet which cost £3000, and at which there were 
 seven hundred guests. At the same time the Ascendency journals were 
 busy opening their throats' in the foulest vituperation of the Catholics 
 and their cause. 
 
 O'Connell was engaged in another singular affair of honor in this same 
 year (1815), which, however, terminated less fatally than the duel with 
 unhappy D'Esterre. Indeed, in this second affair there is, perhaps, 
 a considerable element of the ridiculous. It occurred in this way: 
 The petition for Catholic emancipation, got ready by the energy of 
 O'Connell to show that he was not vanquished by the suppression of 
 the Board, signed by ten thousand Catholics, and presented by Sir John 
 Parnell in the Commons, was, in spite of many votes in favor of it, 
 rejected by a large majority. In the debate on the 30th of May, Secre- 
 tary Peel spoke against the petition and made an attack on our hero, 
 quoting several passages from his speeches and commenting on them 
 severely. 
 
 In the speech delivered by our hero on the 29th of August, to which 
 I have already referred, he retaliated on Peel. After calling him the 
 worthy champion of Orangeism, he said: "All I shall say of him, by 
 way of parenthesis, is, that I am told he has in my absence, and in a 
 place where he was privileged from any account, grossly traduced me. 
 I said, at the last meeting, in the presence of the note-takers of the 
 police, who are paid by him, that he was too prudent to attack me in 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 785 
 
 my presence. I see the same police-informers here now, and I author- 
 ize them carefully to report these my words, that Mr. Peel would not 
 dare, in my presence, or in any place where he was liable to personal 
 account, use a single expression derogatory to my interest or my honor. 
 And now I have done with the man, who is just fit to be nothing but 
 the champion of Orangeism. I have done with him, perhaps for ever." 
 
 I cannot spare space to give quite as minute an account of this 
 somewhat confused and intricate affair between our hero and Peel as I 
 have given of the duel between him and D'Esterre. 
 
 Sir Charles Saxton, on the part of Peel, called on O'Connell for an 
 explanation of his words. Peel apparently disavowed having said any- 
 thing offensive to O'Connell in Parliament; at the same time, anything 
 he saw in the reports of his speeches he "unequivocally avowed and 
 held himself responsible for." Sir Charles Saxton having stated this, 
 O'Connell said : " In that case, I consider it incumbent on me to send a 
 friend to Robert Peel." And again: "Any friend who should advise me 
 not to do so would disappoint my hopes and wishes." 
 
 Lidwill, O'Connell's friend, thought that it was Peel should send the 
 message. He considered O'Connell "the aggressor," and that his send- 
 ing a hostile message to Peel would be "an unjustifiable prodigality of 
 his own life and a wanton aggression on that of another." He even 
 "candidly acknowledged to Saxton that he had seen no report which 
 could justify Mr. O'Connell's attack on Peel." Next day Lidwill waited 
 at his hotel for Saxton till one. The latter called after he had gone out, 
 and left a note. On returning and reading Saxton's note, Lidwill at 
 once wrote to O'Connell that he expected Sir Charles every minute, that 
 he would appoint "an immediate hour" for the hostile meeting, and 
 "the first field near Celbridge, in the county Kildare," as the place. To 
 this O'Connell promptly replied : " Do just as you please," etc. 
 
 "What was O'Connell's surprise to read in the next day's (Saturday's) 
 Correspondent a letter, signed Charles Saxton, detailing the whole affair ! 
 He at once writes a sharp letter to the Freeman, denouncing "the paltry 
 trick" of getting "one day's talking at him" by the publication on Sat- 
 urday. He impeaches the accuracy of Saxton's statement. He ends 
 his hasty letter thus : " For the rest, I leave the case to the Irish public. 
 I have disavowed nothing. I have retracted nothing. I have refused 
 
786 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 the gentlemen nothing. I have only to regret that they have ultimately 
 preferred a paper war." 
 
 This stung to rage the ordinarily cold nature of Peel. He lost no 
 time in sending a hostile message to O'Connell by Colonel Brown. And 
 now the comedy commences. Mrs. O'Connell, seeing O'Connell called 
 from the dinner-table to a mysterious stranger, who, she found from the 
 servant, was an official from the Castle, was seized with sudden terror 
 for her husband's life. She privately sent to the sheriff, who came that 
 night and took our hero into custody. Here was an interruption to the 
 progress of the melodrama; and, to make matters worse, Lidwill, too, 
 was put under arrest through the skilful management of his daughter. 
 
 O'Connell writes a note of explanation to Colonel Brown, expressing 
 especial vexation at the circumstance of the arrest having taken place 
 after he had gone to bed on the night of the 4th, at the instance of Mrs. 
 O'Connell. However, he will make arrangements for the fight as soon 
 as possible. 
 
 At two o'clock that day (the 5th), as soon as our hero had got away 
 from the chief-justice, Richard Newton Bennett called on Colonel Brown. 
 They drew up an agreement that, as O'Connell "was prevented by his 
 recognizance" from giving Peel a meeting in the United Kingdom, he 
 should meet him "at the most convenient part of Europe," and would 
 make the time "convenient to Mr. Peel at any reasonable distance." 
 Ostend was the place of rendezvous appointed — the parties, as they 
 should arrive, to leave their addresses at the post-office; the parties, 
 also, on Colonel Brown's suggestion, to be bound to secresy as far as 
 convenient. The agreement was signed by Brown and Bennett. 
 
 This day was the 5th. O'Connell and Lidwill were bound in heavy 
 penalties to keep the peace. O'Connell's recognizance was £10,000; 
 while Peel and Saxton were lucky enough to escape any such restriction. 
 The sheriff stated, indeed, that he had repaired to the secretary's lodge, 
 in the Phoenix Park, with the view to arrest Peel, but that neither that 
 gentleman nor Saxton could be found. The object of seeking to arrest 
 Saxton was to prevent him from fighting Lidwill at Calais. On this 
 5th day of September, Saxton published a statement, in which he tried 
 to prove the veracity of his published account of the interviews of him- 
 self and his second, Mr. Dickinson, with Mr. Lidwill. That gentleman 
 
THE LIFE OF DANrEL O'CONNELL. 787 
 
 replied in a letter "to the people of Ireland," which concluded thus: "I 
 go to the Continent in your quarrel, for I have none of my own. I go 
 under the heart-rending circumstance of being obliged to put to the test 
 the fortitude of a dearly-beloved and affectionate child, in a delicate 
 state of health, and whose only surviving parent I am, by confiding to 
 her the truth to save the torture of doubt ; but I go on behalf of a coun- 
 try in which I drew my first breath ; I go for a people the more endeared 
 to me by their misfortunes, and for a cause to which my last words shall 
 bear evidence of my fidelity. I feel no uneasiness for my character in 
 my absence. Wherever I may be, yours shall never be tarnished in my 
 person." This affair between two English statesmen on the one side 
 and two Irish popular champions, who were by many suspected of being 
 secretly rebels, on the other, arrayed in fierce hostility the roused-up 
 feelings of the Irish, who cheered on O'Connell and Lidwill, against 
 those of the English people and the Ascendency faction in Ireland, who 
 sympathized with Peel and Saxton. The Irish patriotic journals endeav- 
 ored to give the affair the dignity of a national quarrel ; those of the 
 opposite party tried to lower it to the ordinary level of a mere personal 
 dispute. At all events, it was the subject of universal discussion and 
 wrangling for the time. Some maintained that O'Connell would equally 
 forfeit his bail by fighting a duel on the Continent or in the British 
 isles. 
 
 Expresses were sent by the authorities to Calais, Dieppe and Ostend, 
 requesting the foreign magistrates to arrest and send back to England 
 certain British subjects, who had, it was rumored, gone over to the Con- 
 tinent to fight duels. On the 6th, Peel, Brown, Dickenson and Saxton 
 sailed from Dublin for England. On the 18th, Bennett writes to Brown, 
 from London, to say that O'Connell and he are getting their passports and 
 shall proceed without delay. 
 
 But the English police were on the alert. One hundred are said to 
 have been sent to the French ports opposite the shores of England. Spe- 
 cial despatches from the Home Office ordered all the mayors to be on the 
 watch to seize O'Connell and Lidwill, whose persons were fully described. 
 Mr. Cuddihe, a Dublin citizen, who bore a remarkable likeness to O'Con- 
 nell, and who also, oddly enough, carried on the provision business on 
 Bachelors' Walk, Dublin, in the very house that had been owned by the 
 
788 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 unfortunate D'Esterre, was arrested for Dan. In Calais, the English 
 police burst into the apartment of another gentleman, who had a look 
 of our hero. On Tuesday morning, the 19th of September, at four o'clock, 
 a swarm of policemen filled the apartments of Holyland's Hotel, in the 
 Strand, where the great Agitator was stopping, and succeeded in cap- 
 turing him just as he was about to step into his chaise for Dover. They 
 said that old Sir Robert Peel, the secretary's father, had promised them 
 fifty guineas a man, if they should succeed in capturing the formidable 
 Irish chieftain. No wonder that they were in a fierce state of delight. 
 Exulting over their exploit, forty picked constables at once conveyed 
 our hero in a coach to Bow Street. He was subsequently bound in 
 recognizances in the King's Bench — himself in £5000, and two sureties 
 in £2500 each — to appear before the court when called on. 
 
 Bennett arrived at Ostend on the 22d. He at once wrote to Brown, 
 informing him of O'Connell's arrest and asking him to make an appoint- 
 ment. 
 
 A Dublin journal of the day insists that the police-magistrates could 
 as easily have secured Peel and Saxton, who were well known in every 
 town through which they passed, as strangers, like Lidwill and O'Con- 
 nell, endeavoring to conceal themselves. This paper insists that it was 
 "a regularly-organized plan to tarnish the honor of one party and ex- 
 hibit the others as men of the most ardent courage." It was "an effort 
 to bolster up the character of a man whom it was intended to preserve." 
 A Mr. Becket, too, "the friend and associate and companion in office of 
 Mr. Peel," is "the informer" who causes O'Connell to be arrested, "while 
 he suffers his friend and colleague, Mr. Peel, to pass to France without 
 making any affidavit to justify or obtain an arrest." 
 
 Lidwill arrived in Dublin on the 28th, and O'Connell on the 29th, 
 by the Holyhead packet. A short time afterwards, a gentleman on 
 horseback, who refused to dismount, announced to Sir Charles Saxton, 
 at the Lodge in the Park, that his kinsman, George Lidwill, awaited him 
 in Calais, telling Sir Charles, at the same time, that his own name was 
 Michael Lidwill. Sir Charles began to talk in a rambling style, on 
 irrelevant topics. "My commission," said Michael Lidwill, interrupting 
 him, "terminates with the delivery of the message I have just commu- 
 nicated to you." "In that case," replied Sir Charles, "I shall wait 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 789 
 
 immediately on Mr. Lidwill at Calais." The baronet set out that very- 
 evening. George Lidwill and he met at Calais. Lidwill coolly received 
 his fire, and then said: "Towards you, sir, I never felt any resentment 
 — I never considered this as a quarrel of my own. Any irritation which 
 my arrest excited in my mind has long since been obliterated. God 
 forbid I should ever retain resentment for half the period that has 
 elapsed since my arrest. I respect too sincerely those feelings I wit- 
 nessed in your anxious parent — feelings which my situation enables me 
 to understand — to raise my arm against the object of her solicitude. I 
 think it necessary to give these reasons for my conduct, lest it might be 
 imputed to a conviction in my own mind that I was in error in my 
 former proceedings. Against any such conclusion I decidedly protest." 
 Lidwill, having thus spoken, fired in the air ; he then shook hands with 
 Sir Charles, and so the affair ended. I may remark, before passing to 
 other topics, that to the end of O'Connell's life feelings of enmity sub- 
 sisted between him and Peel. 
 
 During the three or four years that followed 1815, the Catholic cause 
 seemed to be in a completely prostrate condition. Repression was the 
 order of the day. Peel and his twenty-five thousand Peelers apparently 
 had it all their own way. Still, O'Connell, from time to time, made 
 efforts to keep the spirit of freedom alive in the people's hearts. The 
 Association, in February, 1816, had spurned the "securities" petition 
 got up by the Trimleston clique. In February, 1817, we find O'Connell 
 again in collision with the vetoists. This "miserable coterie" an- 
 nounced that they would hold a "hugger-mugger" meeting, on the 
 4th of that month, at 50 Eccles street, and that, while they adhered to 
 the principle of their petition of the previous year, they would evince, 
 by their intended measure, "a desire that the general feeling of the Roman 
 Catholic body may, as far as possible, be attended to. 7 ' This amusing dis- 
 play of impudence on the part of the Seceders provoked O'Connell and 
 other leaders of the popular section to attend and upset the " hole-and- 
 corner" proceedings. In vain were they stopped in the hall by a servant- 
 boy; in vain Lord Southwell referred to a notice in the hall, confining 
 the meeting to those who, the year before, had sent the petition to Mr. 
 Grattan, and "hoped gentlemen would withdraw." But, "as the public 
 advertisement had announced no such reservation, they refused to be 
 
790 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 bound by this private arrangement." Nicholas Mahon opened fire on 
 the astounded little clique, by telling them that he was there "in the 
 assertion of his right as a Catholic, to attend to what was his individual 
 concern, as well as that of the body at large, and therefore would 
 remain." Neither would O'Connell withdraw. He "entirely denied 
 the right of any portion of the Catholic body to form themselves into a 
 privileged class, or an Orange lodge, out of which they could exclude 
 any other Catholic looking for emancipation." Besides, he said, he had 
 come in a spirit of conciliation and to make propositions for union. 
 After some consultation, a meeting was held ; but O'Connell's overtures 
 failed to produce the desired harmony of action. His advances were 
 rejected. He and his friends then withdrew; but, ere retiring, he told 
 them that he had taken away "all color or shadow of excuse" from their 
 opposition, "that they only sought for dissension and distraction," that 
 their ultimate object was "to increase the corrupt influence of the min- 
 istry, at the expense of the religion and liberty of Ireland." Finally, 
 he said, "their puny efforts for a veto were poor and impotent." 
 
 Nevertheless, a "conciliating committee" of Catholics was formed, 
 which issued a circular proposing, as an arrangement that ought to sat- 
 isfy all parties, a plan for the domestic nomination of bishops. This plan 
 resembles the system actually prevailing in Ireland, whereby, as John 
 O'Connell says, "the Catholic bishops of Ireland are selected by the pope 
 out of a list or lists forwarded to him from the prelates of the province 
 and the clergy of the vacant diocese." Dr. Kernan, bishop of Clogher, 
 had recently been elected in this way. About this period, a letter from 
 Rome, written by the Rev. Richard Hayes, stated that the hopes of the 
 vetoistical party at Rome, with Cardinal Gonsalvi at their head, had 
 been revived by the coming of "young Wyse, late of Waterford, and a 
 Counsellor Ball;" that "these youths had repeated to the cardinal, to 
 the pope, to Cardinal Litta and other officials that ' all the property, 
 education and respectability of the Catholics of Ireland were favorable 
 to the veto ; that the clergy were secretly inclined to it, but were over- 
 ruled by the mob,' etc. etc. ... It is true that Cardinal Litta now 
 abhors the veto more, if possible, than any Catholics in Ireland ; and 
 the pope is resolved to take no step without his advice ; yet you may 
 judge of the intrigue, when the miserable farce of these silly boys is 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 791 
 
 given the importance of a regular diplomatic mission." Father Hayes 
 then complains of the interruption of bis correspondence with Ireland 
 in its passage through different countries. "What a combination," he 
 exclaims, "of misfortunes — Italian villainy, French tyranny, British 
 corruption, vetoistical calumny, and, more than all, apparent Irish 
 neglect" — bave thrown their affairs into the utmost danger. Father 
 Hayes concludes by ashing to have Dr. Dromgoole and the Rev. Richard 
 McAuley sent to him as coadjutors. This letter was considered at an 
 aggregate meeting, held on March the 6th ; strong resolutions against 
 the veto were passed. On this occasion we find- Counsellor Stephen 
 Woulfe making a very honorable retractation of his own opinions in favor 
 of the veto, and sharply censuring the conduct of the Seceders. O'Con- 
 nell explains away a mistake of Mr. Woulfe's: "Domestic nomination was 
 not a new suggestion, but a return to the ancient practice of the Catholic 
 Church." Letters were addressed to Mr. Grattan, Lord Donoughmore 
 and Sir Henry Parnell, explaining the spirit of the resolutions. Grattan 
 simply wrote an acknowledgment of the receipt of that sent to him ; but 
 Lord Donoughmore expressed entire "concurrence with the sentiments of 
 the majority of the Irish nation," and "abhorrence of any arrangement" 
 that would increase the British ministers' power of corruption. Sir 
 Henry Parnell' s reply was also satisfactory. Subsequently, a motion 
 was made in the House of Commons to take into consideration the Cath- 
 olic claims. In the debate that followed, the views of the Catholics with 
 regard to the veto and its substitute, "domestic nomination," were ex- 
 plained ; but, as the war was now at an end, Irish affairs were of second- 
 ary interest to the British legislature ; and so the motion was negatived. 
 A respectful address, forwarded by the Catholics to their bishops, was 
 responded to with renewed pledges against the vexatious veto. 
 
 I may as well briefly record the fact, that in the January of this year, 
 1817, O'Connell gave all the aid in his power to an abortive attempt to 
 establish a society of " Friends of Reform in Parliament," This society 
 was composed of Protestants and Catholics. Though its members were 
 but few and its existence brief (a few meetings and dinners took place), 
 John O'Connell claims for it the merit of being the first body, since the 
 Union, in which Irishmen of different creeds "associated on something 
 like terms of equality." 
 
792 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 I can only glance in the most cursory manner at several other inci- 
 dents that occurred between the year 1815 and the close of 1820. In 
 the year 1816, ^Eneas McDonnell, who had been editor of the Cork Mer- 
 cantile Chronicle, was prosecuted for an article denouncing the malad- 
 ministration of justice. Saurin and O'Connell were again pitted against 
 each other in this case. O'Connell triumphed so far as to procure a 
 postponement of the trial; but finally McDonnell was fined £100 and 
 imprisoned for six months. That bloodhound pursuer of journalists, 
 Saurin, denounced the liberal press, particularly the Dublin Chronicle, 
 praised the Evening Post for its estrangement from the Catholic move- 
 ment, called the Catholic body a "dark confederacy" and raved about 
 "the last effort of expiring Jacobinism." Norbury, too, at the special 
 commission held in Tipperary in January, which cost the public £10,000, 
 had been furious against the Dublin Chronicle for its just attacks on the 
 public prosecutions. When foolish old Judge Day, in passing sentence 
 on McDonnell, assailed him for his bold questioning of the purity of the 
 administration of justice and his denunciation of the special commis- 
 sion, McDonnell resolutely interrupted him and said: "There is not a 
 particle of evidence to support your imputations. . . . Yes, my lords, 
 you have charged me with encouraging assassination; . . . that charge 
 is wholly unfounded. ... I am at least as incapable of entertaining such 
 a disposition as the individual who has imputed it to me." 
 
 On the 4th of December, 1817, O'Connell moved "for a committee to 
 draw up a disavowal of the very dangerous and uncharitable doctrines 
 contained in certain notes to the Rhemish Testament." They should 
 record, he said, their "abhorrence of the bigoted and intolerant doctrines 
 promulgated in that work. . . . The notes were of English growth." 
 He reminded the meeting that the work was denounced by Dr. Troy. 
 The last business of the Catholics in 1817 was to forward their remon- 
 strance to the court of Rome and to receive the report of the Rev. 
 Richard Hayes. "In June, 1818," says John O'Connell, "an answer 
 was at last received from the court of Rome and read at a meeting of 
 the Catholic Board, on Saturday, the 6th of that month." This docu- 
 ment stated the reasons why an earlier answer had not been given: 1st. 
 " The sentiments of the court of Rome had been made known to the 
 bishops," as "the more proper channel for the communication." 2d. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 793 
 
 " However sincere the assurances of respect on the part of the lay Cath- 
 olics, there were some phrases used by them, with regard to the extent 
 of the papal authority, which did not give satisfaction." The answer 
 went on to state "that the intended concession to the British govern- 
 ment was proposed in what appeared the interest of the Catholic re- 
 ligion in these countries, as emancipation, if thereby purchased, would 
 give relief to the suffering Catholic body, remove temptations to apos- 
 tacy, and also impediments to conversion from the dissenting sects." 
 The arrangement, however, was meant to be "only conditional upon the 
 previous passing of the Emancipation Act." In conclusion, this answer 
 justified the proceedings against the Rev. Richard Hayes, who, indeed, 
 even while ignorant of its contents, had, with respect to " any point in 
 which it might blame him," expressed "his entire submission and con- 
 trition," adding that he "would supplicate pardon from His Holiness." 
 Messrs. O'Connell, Lanigan, McDonnell, Scully, Howley (afterwards Ser- 
 geant Howley and assistant-barrister of Tipperary) and Woulfe were 
 appointed as a committee to consider what steps should be taken in this 
 matter. 
 
 I must notice, in passing, a grand public dinner to the Irish national 
 bard, Thomas Moore, the immortal author of the "Melodies" and "Lalla 
 Rookh," of which O'Connell was the chief promoter, and at which the 
 earl of Charlemont presided. This banquet took place on the 8th of 
 June, 1818. To the toast of "The Managing Committee," there was 
 a general cry for O'Connell to respond. His speech was broad and lib- 
 eral. It was refreshing to see men of every party at the banquet. 
 There would be more harmony "if Irishmen would recollect that there 
 were generous, kindly, brave and good men of every party." Noble 
 qualities "did in fact live and reside, as in a chosen home, in the bosoms 
 of Irishmen of every faction, sect and persuasion." [Loud cheers.) Moore 
 he styled, amid loud applause, "the sweetest poet, the best of sons and 
 the most exquisite Irishman living." In conclusion, he would like to 
 exert himself for the benefit of all Irishmen. " He was a party man, 
 to be sure ; but it was his misfortune, not his fault, to be so. He, how- 
 ever, belonged to the party of the oppressed and excluded ; and if he 
 had been born in Madrid or in Constantinople, he vowed to God he 
 would in either place be more intemperate and violent for the protection 
 
794 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 of the persecuted Protestant in the one, and of the trampled-down 
 Christian in the other." [Continued applause.) 
 
 A dinner was given to O'Connell himself at Tralee, the chief town 
 of his. native county, Kerry, on Monday, the 24th October, 1818, at the 
 Mail-Coach Hotel. Never was so great a concourse of gentry of all 
 parties seen in Kerry. The whole first floor of the hotel was thrown 
 into one. Still there was want of room for the company. About thirty 
 had to dine in one of the parlors. When — his health having been drunk 
 enthusiastically — O'Connell rose to respond, he was almost overpowered 
 by strong feelings. As usual, he expressed a generous delight at seeing 
 even a momentary union among Irishmen. "Where," he exclaimed, 
 "are intolerance, and bigotry, and religious rancor now? . . . Would to 
 God that the honest men in England . . . could see how kindly the 
 Protestant cheers the Catholic advocate, and how affectionately the 
 Catholic repays the kindness of his Protestant friends!" The applause 
 that greeted these words was vehement and long continued. "Mv 
 political creed," said our hero, "is short and simple. It consists in be- 
 lieving that all men are entitled, as of right and justice, to religious and 
 civil liberty. . . . Religion is debased and degraded by human inter- 
 ference. . . . Such are my sentiments — such are yours." Some of the 
 toasts drunk at this meeting are worth recording, such as, "Prosperity 
 to old Ireland;" "Mr. Secretary Grant and universal toleration" 
 [three times three; much cheering) ; "Civil and religious liberty to all 
 mankind;" "The cause of rational liberty all over the globe." O'Con- 
 nell proposed this one at the close of his response to his own health. 
 He also, amid great applause, in spite of their political differences, re- 
 sponded warmly when the health of his brother-Kerry man, old "Judge 
 Day, as an excellent landlord, an affectionate friend and a good man," 
 was drunk. The healths of " The Rev. Stephen Creagh Sandes and the 
 Protestants of Kerry" and "The Right Rev. Dr. Sugrue and the Roman 
 Catholic clergy of Kerry" were drunk heartily. The name of Stephen 
 Henry Rice was coupled with "the pure and impartial administration 
 of justice." [Three times three; great applause.) "Sir Samuel Romilly 
 and the persecuted Protestants of France," and "The patriots of South 
 America and a speedy and eternal extinction to the Inquisition." 
 These two toasts were drunk with acclamations ; but when " The bard 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 795 
 
 of Erin, Thomas Moore," was proposed, the enthusiasm of the company- 
 was simply indescribable. I suppose, at that convivial moment, every 
 man present would have shed the last drop of his blood on the spot for 
 Tommy, just as Dickens tells us Mrs. Todgers's boarders, at a certain 
 period of the night, on a Memorable festive occasion, would have died 
 to a man for that estimable lady. " The duke of Leinster and the resi- 
 dent nobility of Ireland;" "The earl of Charlemont, the hereditary 
 patriot of the Irish nobility;" "The glorious and immortal memory of 
 John Philpot Curran;" "Charles Philips, coupled with the independ- 
 ence of the Irish bar;" "The president and free people of North Amer- 
 ica — may they be bound in the bonds of eternal unity with these 
 countries;" "Universal benevolence;" O'ConnelFs uncle, "Old Hunting- 
 cap"; his more distinguished uncle, "Lieutenant-General Daniel Count 
 O'Connell ;" — all these and many more toasts, good, bad and indifferent, 
 were drunk rapturously, in o'erflowing glasses, on that jovial and har- 
 monious night. If, haply, "the mirth and fun grew fast and furious" 
 after "the witching hour," good-fellowship prevailed to the last. On 
 "this great night for Ireland," John- Bernard of Ballynaguard, Esq., 
 presided. The vice-president was John Stack of Ballyconry, Esq. No 
 doubt, both fulfilled their duties worthily, not without a due share of 
 Irish jollity. 
 
 At the general elections of 1818, O'Connell exerted himself to pro- 
 cure the return of the Right Hon. Maurice Fitzgerald, the knight of 
 Kerry, for that county. The knight now regretted that he had voted 
 for the ruinous and accursed Act of Union, seeing the hollowness of 
 the promises which had been made by the ministers of the Crown to 
 procure. its enactment. "I voted for the union," says the knight, "to 
 guard against the possible re-enactment of the penal laws, which was 
 contemplated; to procure the extinction of mischievous political and 
 religious distinctions among my countrymen;" also, to obtain a safer 
 support to the Protestant Church "than the present tithe-system, more 
 injurious to its clergy than even to the Catholic farmer." 
 
 A meeting of the Catholics of the parishes of St. Andrew's, St. 
 Anne's and St. Mark's was held, on the 27th of January, 1819, in 
 Townsend Street Chapel, Dublin, to express their gratitude for a credit- 
 able demonstration of the liberal Protestants of Ireland that had taken 
 
796 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 place at the Rotunda. O'Connell, in a temperate, sensible and eloquent 
 speech, proposed the resolutions. " He hailed in glowing language the 
 dawn of friendship and affection which has at length broken in upon 
 Irishmen. He gave Earl Talbot's" [Earl Talbot ivas now the viceroy) 
 "administration the praise of neutrality, at least upon the present mo 
 mentous and memorable occasion." A few weeks after (Monday, March 
 1, 1819), an aggregate meeting was held in the old chapel in Mary's 
 lane, to express, in the most marked manner, Catholic gratitude to the 
 Protestants who had come forward to petition in their behalf. The earl 
 of Fingal was in the chair. The journals of the day tell us that it was 
 "the largest and most respectable meeting of Catholics which ever took 
 place in Ireland." O'Connell especially praised the duke of Leinster; 
 "the earl of Meath, always a friend and patron of Ireland; Charlemont, 
 whose name was music to Irish ears; Grattan, whose eloquence, and 
 virtue raised Ireland into independence and liberty — the old patriot 
 Grattan, who had given Ireland all she had, and would have made her 
 all she ought to be." He said that the corporation possessing " such a 
 man as their friend Alderman McKenny at its head, could not be desti- 
 tute of virtue." Instead of the office of lord-mayor conferring dignity 
 on him, "the man has conferred dignity on the office. . . . Let Catholics 
 continue to deserve, and Protestants to reward with their good wishes 
 and confidence, and the motto of Ireland in future be ' God and our 
 
 NATIVE LAND!' " 
 
 In 1819, a General D'Evereux appeared in Dublin to raise a legion 
 (the soldiers of this legion were called the. " Patriots") to aid the re- 
 volted colonists of South America against the Spaniards. It is not 
 properly within the scope of my subject to do much more than slightly 
 refer to this movement, in which O'Connell took so great an interest as 
 to accept a commission, in a Hussar regiment of the legion, for his 
 second son, Morgan, then quite a lad. Gayly-attended military levees 
 were held at Morrison's Hotel, and public dinners given to celebrate this 
 affair and compliment the movers. At these proceedings our hero took 
 a prominent part. Nothing could exceed the popularity of this move- 
 ment for a time. Visions of the golden realms of Peru, if not Eldorado 
 itself, seized entire possession of the Irish imagination. Adventurous 
 youths were eager to procure commissions in the legion from General 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 797 
 
 D'Evereux or General Gregor McGregor, who accompanied him. Dublin 
 was on fire with military excitement. The British government showed 
 no disposition to enforce the "Foreign Enlistment Act." Young Morgan 
 O'Connell sailed for South America the following year (1820), under the 
 care and attached to the personal staff of General D'Evereux. But in 
 America disappointment and disaster awaited the Irish adventurers, 
 already half-starved on the voyage. Some, indeed, eventually won high 
 renown under the banner of Bolivar, and contributed nobly to the final 
 success of the revolution. The character of D'Evereux has naturally 
 been the subject of much controversy. Thomas Kennedy is inclined to 
 deny that he possessed genuine credentials authorizing his proceedings 
 in Dublin. He says the authorities acting under the provisional govern- 
 ment of Venezuela refused to recognize his commissions; he accuses 
 him of "dastardly flight from those who returned to call him to account 
 for his breach of all engagements." He even asserts that "a secret 
 communication" existed between him and Lord Liverpool; and that he 
 was merely employed "as the vile instrument to drain this country" (Ire- 
 land) "of those military spirits whose presence was regarded with feelings 
 of apprehension by the Liverpool administration." On the other hand, 
 O'Connell, his son Morgan, Father O'Mullane — who followed O'Connell 
 in the duel with D'Esterre and followed his son to South America — all 
 insisted on D'Evereux' s integrity from first to last. At a tumultuous 
 meeting of the enraged friends of "the Patriots," O'Connell braved a 
 tempest of hisses and hootings, while maintaining that the general was 
 a man of unsullied honor. Fagan, in his Life of O'Connell, says: "The 
 bond fide nature of D'Evereux's commission was subsequently established 
 beyond all doubt when, in 1823, he returned to Ireland in possession of 
 full power and ample means to satisfy the claims of his disappointed 
 followers." As far as a very imperfect examination of the history of 
 this singular transaction can justify me in expressing an opinion on the 
 merits of the case, I, too, am inclined to believe that D'Evereux, how- 
 ever unlucky or deceived, acted all through in good faith. Lieutenant- 
 general D'Evereux spent his latter days in Paris, highly respected. He 
 was a native of the United States, of Irish parentage. His character 
 was energetic ; his appearance martial. 
 
 In October, 1819, O'Connell wrote a letter to the Catholics of Ire- 
 
798 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 land, in which he complimented Alderman McKenny as the first lord- 
 mayor of Dublin who had presided at a meeting " calculated to promote 
 cordial conciliation." On the 24th of February, 1820, he gave it as his 
 legal opinion "that a Catholic is capable of being sub-sheriff." This 
 year the glorious patriot, Henry Grattan, died. O'Connell, forgetting 
 the breach that had so long severed them, magnanimously burying in 
 oblivion many hard things said and written by Grattan against him, 
 warmly supported, at the Royal Exchange meeting held on the 13th of 
 June, 1820, the claims of young Grattan to the representation of the 
 city of Dublin against those of Ellis, the Orangeman. He called the 
 dead patriot "the greatest man Ireland ever knew. . . . 'He watched 
 by the cradle of his country's freedom ; he followed her hearse.' His 
 life, to the very period of his latest breath, has been spent in her service, 
 and he died, I may even say, a martyr in her cause. Who shall now 
 prate to me of religious animosity? To any such I will say, 'There 
 sleeps a man, a member of the Protestant community, who died in the 
 cause of his Catholic fellow-countrymen !' . . . Let us unite to put down 
 bigotry; ... let us rally around that cause" (our country's), "and let 
 our motto be, Grattan and Ireland !" It was O'Connell, too, who origin- 
 ated the idea of the statue of Grattan, by Sir Francis Chantrey, that now 
 stands in the hail of the Royal Exchange, Dublin. On the 22d of January, 
 1822, he took a prominent part at a meeting in the Exchange to promote 
 its erection. He moved a resolution, which the wealthy Catholic sales- 
 master, Billy Murphy, seconded. On the 22d of June, 1820, at the 
 adjourned Catholic meeting held at D'Arcy's, in Essex street, O'Connell 
 made some objections to the celebrated Plunket's being entrusted with 
 their petition, on account of his extreme advocacy of the " securities." 
 At this meeting O'Connell complained of the use by the liberal Edin- 
 burgh Review of such expressions as the "harlot embraces" of the Cath- 
 olic Church. While he was speaking, some one in the body of the meet- 
 ing cried out, "Why go to them" (meaning to the English Parliament) "at 
 all ?" Probably this was one of the war party, that ever lives, in greater 
 or less force, in Ireland, ever hostile to Parliamentary action, ever long- 
 ing for the day of total separation from England by force of arms. 
 
 On the 14th of July, 1820, CL'Connell published an address in the 
 newspapers, offering himself as a' candidate for the office of recorder 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 799 
 
 However, he never obtained that office. About the same time, at a 
 public dinner at "D'Arcy's Great Room, Corn Exchange," a room famous 
 in the history of many subsequent Irish national movements, he spoke 
 touchingly of another of our glorious dead, who, " with the bayonet to 
 his breast, was true to humanity and to his clients, advocating the cause 
 of those victims he could not save." He lamented as a disgrace to Ire- 
 land (a disgrace wiped out now, however), that there was "not a stone 
 to mark the spot where sleeps John Philpot Curran ; and even in the 
 country that he loved, there is nothing, as yet, to record his name!" He 
 then gave, " The memory of John Philpot Curran." * 
 
 * The books to which I am chiefly indebted for the materials of the foregoing chapter are : 
 John Mitchel's "Continuation of McGeoghegan ;" "The Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, 
 M. P., edited, with Historical Notices, etc., by his Son, John O'Connell, Esq.;" "Life and Times 
 of Daniel O'Connell, with Sketches of his Contemporaries, Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Parliament 
 street;" Fagan's "Life of O'Connell;" Shiel's "Sketches of the Irish Bar;" etc 
 
 51 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 The Kilmainham court-house meeting; outrageous and unconstitutional proceedings 
 of the sheriff — o'connell's amusing controversy with rlchard lalor sliiel — 
 o'connell threatens to join the english radical reformers — wllliam conyng- 
 ham plunket's relief bills — o'connell opposes them — rude interruption of 
 o'connell at a catholic meeting — advances from the orange corporation to 
 the Catholics — Orange breach of faith — The visit of King George the Fourth 
 to Ireland; his enthusiastic reception by the people — The visit turns out a 
 
 MOCKERY AND DELUSION; DISAPPOINTMENT OF CATHOLIC HOPES — The IrISH AVATAR — 
 
 Arrival of an Irish viceroy, the Marquis Wellesley — His conciliatory demeanor 
 — A confused meeting — Famine in the south and west of Ireland — Coercive meas- 
 ures — Orange display — Repeal of the union — Suicide of Lord Londonderry (Cas- 
 tlereagh) — Bottle riot — Public indignation — Trial of the Handbidges and Gra- 
 ham — Colonel White's election for the county Dublin ; great popular excitement 
 -Law-cases — O'Connell visits France — An unpleasant night-adventure. 
 
 N" the requisition of the government party, who were desirous 
 of getting up an address in approval of George the Fourth's 
 recent persecution of his wife, Queen Caroline, a meeting was 
 J^PP' held at the Kilmainham court-house, near Dublin, on the 30th 
 O of December, 1820. The sheriff, Steele, aided by a large force of 
 police, tried shamefully to pack the meeting, forcibly excluding numbers 
 of most respectable freeholders. The crowd, however, burst in and 
 thronged the room, so that the sheriff, to the great amusement of the 
 spectators, had to get able-bodied policemen to lift Lords Howth and 
 Frankfort, and several others, in on chairs, through a back window. 
 The conduct of the sheriff was outrageous ; he nominated a committee 
 to prepare an address, and then declared the address adopted, in opposi- 
 tion to the overwhelming majority of those present. He threatened to 
 expel persons, as not being freeholders, who actually were so. He asked 
 O'Connell, who objected to these irregular proceedings, was he a free- 
 holder of Dublin ? To which O'Connell answered that he was, that his 
 hereditary property was larger than the sheriff's own, and that his profes- 
 sion gave him an income greater than that which any of those surround- 
 ing "the chair were able to wring from the taxes." Against the wishes 
 of those assembled, the sheriff arbitrarily declared the meeting dis- 
 
 800 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 801 
 
 solved. He threatened to commit the patriotic Lord Cloncurry to 
 prison, when that nobleman, called to the chair by the people, said he 
 would "obey their commands," protested against the sheriff's illegal 
 conduct, and declared, amid boundless applause, "that in support of 
 the law he was ready to perish in the chair, and that nothing but force 
 should tear him from it." O'Connell said, if the prison were large 
 enough, they would all accompany Lord Cloncurry. The sheriff then 
 said the meeting was illegal. O'Connell vehemently declared that it 
 was quite legal, and called on such freeholders as valued their rights to 
 remain. The furious sheriff, who had already violently declared that 
 "he would call in the military," now withdrew in order to fulfil his 
 threat. Though perfect order and decorum prevailed, a side-door was 
 thrown open with a crash ; an officer and soldiers rushed in and com- 
 manded the freeholders to disperse. Some violence was used to individ- 
 uals, though, upon the whole, the military showed good temper. Mr. 
 Curran (doubtless, the late John Adye Cm-ran or some other son of the 
 immortal orator's) stood by Lord Cloncurry and good-humoredly thrust 
 the soldiers' bayonets aside. That nobleman had to be forced out of the 
 chair. The officer drew or was drawing his sword. The freeholders 
 next assembled in vast crowds on the opposite side of the road. A 
 chair was placed for Lord Cloncurry in the passage of a house, to evade 
 the law, which then made open-air meetings illegal. An amended 
 address, proposed by Mr. Burne, K. C, and seconded by our hero, Avas 
 carried by acclamation. This address, referring to "the late proceed- 
 ings in the House of Lords" against the unfortunate Caroline, expressed 
 a sincere hope "that proceedings so dangerous and unconstitutional 
 would never be revived in any shape." O'Connell moved that a com- 
 mittee should be appointed to lay before the viceroy, Earl Talbot, "the 
 outrageous and illegal conduct of the sheriff on that day." On the 2d 
 of January, 1821, a meeting, presided over by Hamilton Kowan, who 
 had been pardoned so early as the year 1805, was held at the Corn 
 Exchange Rooms (then D'Arcy's tavern), "to consider the best steps to 
 be taken as to the outrage on Saturday at Kilmainham." O'Connell 
 spoke at length, opposed a deputation to Mr. Grant, now chief secretary 
 for Ireland, though he respected that gentleman. He thought the matter 
 should be brought before Parliament. In this speech he glorified Por- 
 
 __.j 
 
802 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 tugal on account of her newly-won constitutional freedom, praised Lord 
 Byron as "the poet of the age and the friend of humanity," and con- 
 cluded with that one of his favorite quotations from Moore beginning, 
 " The nations have fallen, but thou art still young," etc. At an ad- 
 journed meeting, a few days after, he spoke again to the same effect, A 
 large number of gentlemen, Protestants and others, who seldom attended 
 public meetings, were present. There was a unanimous vote of thanks 
 and compliment to O'Connell. But, finally, no redress was obtained by 
 the people for the outrage at Kilmainham court-house. 
 
 O'Connell now began to write his annual letters to the people of 
 Ireland. For a time he recommended an alliance with the English rad- 
 icals. The Catholics should try to carry reform first, emancipation after- 
 wards. He seemed to think their petitions had no chance in an unre- 
 formed Parliament. This proposed change of tactics brought on an 
 amusing controversy between him and Kichard Lalor Shiel. The latter 
 indulged in some bewildering, high-flown rhetoric, all ablaze with will- 
 o'-the-wisp conceits and metaphorical fireworks. " If," said Shiel, "our 
 question, simplified by plain right and obvious necessity, cannot pass 
 through the needle's eye, will Mr. O'Connell, mounted upon a camel 
 loaded with the union and Parliamentary reform, spur the slow and un- 
 wieldy animal through the narrow orifice?" O'Connell's arguments 
 were "the drowning grasp of a sophist in the agonies of conviction!" 
 A phrase respecting Plunket was " a transparent one, and the rushlight, 
 with its feeble and fretful fire, is seen behind. It is clear as glass; it 
 covers but it does not hide. . . . The patriotism of O'Connell may be 
 as pure as amber; but even in amber we may find a straw." No doubt 
 some of Shiel' s analogies are ingenious and happy. But his talk of 
 "annual eruptions," "a flaming fragment of declamation accompanied 
 with a considerable obscuration," a "shower of volatile opinion," "lava 
 compounded out of a variety of heterogeneous materials," "casting a 
 peacock's feather into the scale" — all this profusion of far-fetched 
 images wearies the mind and offends a correct taste. The conclusion 
 of Shiel's letter is a regular maze of fantastic imagery, beyond which 
 burlesque could hardly go. "I should be loth to compare him" (O'Con- 
 nell) "to a sort of political vane by which all the veerings of the breeze 
 might be determined ; but it were as idle to imagine that the currents 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 803 
 
 of air on which the balloon is borne are regulated by the painted ma- 
 chine that floats on them, as to suppose that a person swelled out with 
 the very inflammable patriotism of Mr. O'Connell, and raised by the 
 very levity of his opinions, should create the vicissitudes of passion on 
 which he ascends. That gentleman was certainly elevated in a very 
 .gaudy vehicle, embellished with every diversity of hue. He had risen 
 with the shout of the multitude, and after throwing out all his ballast 
 and waving his green flag, he very skilfully adapted his course, in this 
 aerial voyage, to all the mutations of impulse which agitated the stormy 
 medium through which he passed ; until at last, in striving to rise into 
 a still more lofty region, he has allowed the thin and combustible mate- 
 rials of his buoyancy to ignite, and comes tumbling down in a volume of 
 fiery vapor, composed of the veto, the union and Parliamentary reform." 
 
 To this extraordinary specimen of Shiel's artificial style of rhetoric 
 our hero replied in a letter full of inimitable fun, and, though severe, 
 sufficiently good-humored. I regret that I can only quote a few scattered 
 sentences. " I am really," says O'Connell, " at a loss to know how I have 
 provoked the tragic wrath and noble ire of this iambic rhapsodist." 
 This is a humorous hit at Shiel's dramatic attempts. " I would venture 
 to wager that, like the rabid animal in the fable, Mr. Shiel is not half so 
 mad as he pretends to be. . . . He begins by calling me 'a flaming 
 fragment,' next I am 'lava,' and thirdly 'heterogeneous materials.' 
 
 "Again he denominates me 'a straw in amber,' then a 'rushlight with 
 fretful fire,' then, how terrific ! ' a sophist drowning in confutation,' and, 
 lastly — and which is quite sublime — 'a volume of fiery vapor.' " O'Con- 
 nell insists that a decision on the momentous question in dispute is not 
 to be "aided either by vituperation, however rancorous, or by the tawdry 
 and tinsel decorations of melodramatic oratory. Such oratory is fit for 
 nothing else but to gratify that species of vanity which might in a 
 schoolboy be allowed to exclaim, ' See what a very clever little gentle- 
 man I am ! Who w T ants me ?' " 
 
 Of two topics in Shiel's letter — that he had convicted O'Connell of 
 inconsistency on the question of the veto, and that O'Connell was 
 "actuated by motives of private hostility or personal resentment to 
 Plunket" — O'Connell says: "The first of these topics is an empty 
 boast; the second is an unfounded insinuation." Every fool can vary 
 
804 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 a man's meaning by garbling what he says. " I do not accuse Mr. Shiel 
 of being a fool — very far indeed from it. I only point out how admirable 
 is the candor of a rhapsodist. Pray admire that candor! With this 
 single observation, I take leave of Mr. Shiel's boast. If it be not an 
 empty boast, I consent to be called a balloon, and a vane, and a fiery 
 vapor for the rest of my life. ... I have neither leisure nor inclination 
 to follow Mr. Shiel through any more of the affectations, the 'peacock's 
 feathers 1 and the 'volcanoes,'' which glitter in labored and puny conceits. 
 ... I may now dismiss Mr. Shiel in perfect cheerfulness. I may dis- 
 miss him to the association of his fellow-laborers in the Correspondent 
 and Dublin Journal." These were journals prone to calumniating our 
 hero. O'Connell ends this letter, which is dated 12th January, 1821, by 
 imploring Shiel not to direct his sneers against the " faithful, the long- 
 suffering and very wretched people of Ireland." 
 
 O'Connell's threat of uniting with the English reformers alarmed the 
 government and legislature. Measures were adopted to divert his atten- 
 tion from the reform movement, which was agitating Englishmen. 
 Plunket carried a Catholic relief bill through the Commons. It was 
 lost, however, in the House of Lords. The fact of a relief bill passing 
 in the Commons revived the hopes of the Catholics, though the majority 
 of them were glad that this particular measure failed to become law. 
 O'Connell, in long and able letters to the people, pronounced Plunket's 
 two bills, taken together (for there were two), to be "abominable," and 
 "horribly cruel to the Catholic clergy." The first, indeed, if unaccom- 
 panied by the second, would give relief; but the second was "more 
 strictly, literally and emphatically a penal and persecuting bill than any 
 or all the statutes passed in the darkest and most bigoted periods of the 
 reign of Queen Anne, or of the first two Georges. Its title should be, 
 An act to ' decatliolicize' 1 Ireland; for that is certainly its object." On the 
 subject of these bills there was considerable angry discussion among the 
 Catholics. 
 
 We have now arrived at the period of George the Fourth's visit to 
 Ireland. O'Connell wished the Catholics to take the " occasion of their 
 preparations for the king's visit" to consider the state of their affairs. 
 But Lords Fingal, Netterville, Gormanstown and Killeen, with Sir John 
 Burke, Mr. Bagot and others, published a protest against "connecting the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 805 
 
 general question of Catholic affairs with the object of voting a congrat- 
 ulatory address" to the king. O'Connell, to promote harmony, yielded, 
 and adopted their requisition for a meeting, instead of his own. 
 
 In order to secure for the king a good reception in Ireland, vague 
 and deceitful promises to the Catholics heralded his coming. Even 
 the Orange corporation of Dublin made for the time a false but specious 
 show of good feeling to their Catholic countrymen. The Catholics met 
 their advances in a warm and generous spirit. A sort of promise was 
 made by the Orange mayor of Dublin, Abraham Bradley King, that the 
 annual insult to the Catholics of dressing out King William's statue 
 with orange ribbons should be omitted this year, as a conciliatory offer- 
 ing. This engagement, however, was disgracefully violated on the 12th 
 of July, on which occasion, according to the descriptions of Mr. Costelloe 
 and other eye-witnesses, the Orange mob, with respectable and sober cit- 
 izens among them, dressed the statue in the morning, while in the even- 
 ing a ragged, but well-armed, infuriated, half-drunken mob groaned the 
 chief secretary as "Popish Grant," and were abetted in their disorderly 
 conduct by several soldiers of the 12th Lancers, brandishing their sabres 
 and vociferating "Down with the Papists!" "To hell with the pope!" 
 "To hell with popish defenders!" "The pope in a pillory in hell, and 
 the devil pelting O'Connell at him!" "To hell with O'Gorman!" etc. 
 In spite of all this, the irritation of the Catholics was apparently but of 
 momentary duration. At two meetings they debated concerning this 
 outrage with considerable moderation, and even gave the lord-mayor 
 credit for sincerity, to use Lord Fingal's expression, "in his original 
 offer of conciliation." O'Connell concurred in this view; indeed, in his 
 speeches, he showed the most remarkable desire to be on terms of amity 
 even with the Orange faction. 
 
 George the Fourth landed at Howth on the 12th of August, 1821, 
 and drove at once to the viceregal lodge in the Phoenix Park amid the 
 roar of artillery and the ringing of joy-bells. His wife had just died ; 
 this, however, was probably a source of rejoicing to his wicked heart. 
 He remained in seclusion for several days. On the 17th of August he 
 made his public entry into his Irish capital. The ceremony of present- 
 ing the keys was gone through, according to ancient forms, at the end 
 of Sackville street. A barrier of green boughs interlaced, with a gate 
 
806 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 in the middle, stretched across that magnificent street. After a parley, 
 the mayor consented to -open the gate and welcome the king, when asked 
 to do so, in due form, by the Athlone pursuivant, His Majesty was 
 completely astounded at the vision which now met his gaze, as he was 
 borne in his chariot along Sackville street. That spacious street was 
 packed from end to end with a dense mass of human beings that seemed 
 innumerable. Every window was crowded; temporary balconies in front 
 of the houses were crowded ; the roofs of the houses and public buildings 
 were crowded. "The post-office," to quote another life of O'Connell, 
 "even to the most perilous projection of the building, was black with 
 human beings. The very architrave was crowded with well-dressed 
 females ; and on the summit of Nelson's monument men were perched 
 upon the veiy capstan which supports the statue of the naval victor." 
 
 The king had always professed a kindly feeling towards his Irish 
 subjects. He was almost the only English sovereign who ha'd ever come 
 to Ireland in friendly guise. The people, too, were just then deluded 
 into believing that they were on the point of being emancipated. Be- 
 sides, they were excitable, and "the cherished lure of pomp" easily 
 beguiles the imaginations of Irishmen. Is it, then, so very wonderful 
 that for the moment they went mad ? that those myriads on the earth, 
 on the balconies, in the windows, on the roofs, were wild with insane 
 delight and what seemed genuine enthusiasm ? Nor is it even astonish- 
 ing that the withered heart and worn-out feelings of the royal profligate 
 seemed for an instant, as if he had drained some charmed cup, to show 
 signs of reviving freshness, when he heard such glad and lusty cheering 
 as had never rung through his ears before, when he saw the hats and 
 handkerchiefs of innumerable devoted subjects, stalwart men and fairest 
 women, waving "cead mille failthe" saw, in short, joy at his coming- 
 gleaming on thousands and myriads of eager faces. This was the one 
 triumphant day of his worthless life. He was deeply moved — ay, almost 
 to tears. That hour, in his self-delusion, he may have fancied himself 
 almost a demigod. And, no doubt, in mere outward semblance, he was 
 "every inch a king." Right royally he saluted the admiring myriads, 
 who felt a treble foolish joy and shouted like the very thunder, when 
 they saw the huge bunch of shamrocks decorating the military hat 
 which their sovereign lifted at short intervals with such princely grace. 
 
uk^'hy nu.vnw^ M.IR 
 
 . 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 807 
 
 Such a magnificent spectacle was never witnessed in Dublin before. 
 Through the long narrow space kept clear in the centre of the street, 
 with a dense wall of human beings on each side, the royal procession 
 moved in pomp along. Behind the king followed nobles, gentry, profes- 
 sions, corporations, trades with their gorgeous banners waving overhead, 
 magnificent equipages, horsemen splendidly mounted. All these had 
 gone from the Castle to the Park that morning, in order to swell the 
 royal train, and now encircled half the city. To look back the ad- 
 vancing files seemed endless. On Carlyle bridge the pressure was 
 fearful. On through Westmoreland street, College Green and Dame 
 street the king passed to the Castle. 
 
 The sums lavished by the Irish during the royal visit were enormous. 
 All were seized with the factitious enthusiasm, which lasted till the king 
 returned to England, in September. O'Connell made as much parade 
 of loyalty as the rest. To gratify the king's desire, conveyed before his 
 arrival by Sir Benjamin Bloomfield, "that all differences and animosities 
 should be laid aside," a dinner took place at Morison's, where the leaders 
 of the Catholics and the Orange faction dined together and toasted each 
 other with too exuberant protestations of eternal friendship. O'Connell 
 and Orange Grand-master Ellis were quite affectionate each to the 
 other. O'Connell gives himself immense credit for his policy in con- 
 nection with the royal visit. He seems to think it was "most success- 
 ful." Many will take a different view of the matter. He seems to think 
 it was necessary to make great display of loyalty to the corrupt-hearted 
 king. "For the first time," he says, "for two centuries were the Cath- 
 olics received by the executive on terms of perfect equality with the 
 Protestants. The Catholic prelates were received by the king in their 
 ecclesiastical costume, with their golden crosses and chains. It was the 
 first official recognition of their dignity as prelates. To the earl of 
 Fingal, as head of the Catholic laity, the ribbon of the Order of St. 
 Patrick was given at an installation at which the king himself presided. 
 The rest of the Catholic laity were received and cherished precisely as 
 the Protestants were ; and, to crown all, the celebrated Sidmouth letter 
 was issued, full of present kindness and gratitude to the Catholics and 
 of future hope and expectation of conciliation — a conciliation which 
 everybody knew could never be effected without legal and perfect equal- 
 
808 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O' CORNELL. 
 
 ization of political rights." This letter was a mere " palavering" letter, 
 written by Lord Sidmouth to the viceroy, in accordance with the king's 
 directions, expressing his affection "to his faithful people of Ireland," 
 recommending them to be united, and tickling them a little with "hum- 
 bugging" praises of their "generosity and warmth of heart." O'Connell, 
 meanwhile, remained perfectly satisfied with his own management on 
 this occasion. He considered himself entitled to "the gratitude and 
 confidence" of his countrymen for his triumph over "the difficulties he 
 had to encounter," and for "the mode in which he was enabled to con- 
 vert the king's visit to Ireland from being a source of weakness and dis- 
 comfiture to the Catholics into a future claim for practical relief and 
 political equalization." He also says, "His Majesty was the first 
 monarch that ever showed a friendly feeling towards poor Ireland, and 
 when he came among us his regal court presented Catholics and Prot- 
 estants as they should ever be, united." Speaking of the friendly over- 
 tures from the Ascendency corporation, he says : " Two days after the 
 statue was dressed ! We remonstrated, and there was something about 
 promises for the future. There were many amongst us who did not 
 believe those promises ; I must own that I was one who put no faith in 
 them, though I pretended I did. Well, I got into the den — Daniel in the 
 lion's den ; ay, into the midst of the corporation. Some, who had more 
 candor than I possessed at that period, did not attend the dinner." He 
 then speaks of the baronetcy which, at the close of the royal visit, was 
 conferred on the mayor, Abraham Bradley King, as due to the concilia- 
 tory resolution of the corporation. Many will regard much of O'Connell's 
 clever policy during the progress of these events, as little deserving of 
 admiration. It was all the better for His Majesty, however. The Cath- 
 olics, like their leader, overflowed with demonstrative loyalty, and were too 
 considerate of their sovereign's comfort to "bother" him, at such a time, 
 with their wearisome complaints and grievances ; so that the old rake 
 of royalty spent his unruffled time in Dublin right gayly and pleasantly. 
 Thirty lords and Protestant bishops signed a requisition and held a 
 meeting at the Exchange, at which it was moved by Lord Carbery and 
 seconded by Colonel Cuffe, that a palace should be built for George in 
 Ireland. It was modestly proposed to squeeze a million of money from 
 the impoverished Irish for this purpose. O'Connell (it is hard to tell it 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 809 
 
 without ridicule) promised to contribute twenty guineas a year towards 
 the erection of the regal pile. O'Connell, too, was one of the very few 
 who attended the committee after the king's departure. Of course, the 
 design was never realized. It was time to have done with the project 
 when the committee found it impossible to make one of the judges pay 
 the subscription of thirty guineas, which he had promised while the 
 king was in Ireland. Human geese have since, from time to time, sug- 
 gested the erection of a royal palace in Ireland as a sure means of regen- 
 erating the nation. Such proposals, however, invariably lead to nothing. 
 In Dublin, however, the King's Bridge, over the Liffey, was erected to 
 commemorate the royal visit. O'Connell took an active part in urging 
 on tin's so-called national testimonial. He recommended a bridge in 
 preference to an arch, a statue, a pyramid, or a column. 
 
 But it was on the day of the king's departure, at half-past, seven on 
 a bright morning in September, that O'Connell signalized himself by his 
 most exaggerated demonstrations of loyalty to the unclean being who 
 then swayed the British sceptre. He presented, on bended knee, a 
 laurel crown to His Majesty in a tent. The king received it graciously 
 enough, and offered the great Agitator his hand to kiss. The anti-Irish 
 papers of London ridiculed O'Connell for his servility. They described 
 him as literally following the king into the sea, and kneeling in the water 
 to present the wreath. O'Connell had adopted the fashion of wearing a 
 sealskin cap with a gold band like the king's. " Counsellor O'Connell," 
 said a London paper, shortly after the king's departure, "is now trav- 
 elling on circuit with a fur cap and a gold band, which, he says, is a 
 present from the king, who certainly wore such a cap and band on his 
 landing in Ireland." Our hero thought it necessary to deny the veracity 
 of these ugly impeachments. So far was he, he maintained, from having 
 been "unbecomingly servile" on the occasion of presenting the wreath, 
 "that he did not even kiss the hand which the king held out to him for 
 that purpose." Of course, he unequivocally denied his having ever 
 asserted that he had got the cap from the king. 
 
 His Majesty had been looking at some of the beautiful scenery of 
 Wicklow on the morning of his departure from old Dunleary. Crowds, 
 as great as those that had welcomed him to Ireland, assembled in Dun- 
 leary to see him off, with far more good wishes and blessings than the 
 
810 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 old sinner merited. He seemed profoundly affected. He even shed 
 tears. As the royal yacht conveyed him away, the old dandy, in his 
 blue frock-coat and white vest and sealskin cap with the gold band, was 
 seen gazing through his telescope at the shores of Ireland. He saw 
 thousands upon thousands of the Irish blackening the hills, while they 
 wafted good wishes after him on the winds. The royal squadron sailed 
 past Brayhead and the bold coast of romantic Wicklow. The king to 
 the last kept his gaze fixed on the shores he was never to see again. 
 The name of Dunleary was changed or degraded into Kingstown. An 
 obelisk marks the spot where the king stood previous to his going on 
 board. And so ended the visit of the " first gentleman" [or first scamp?) 
 "of Europe" to his loving subjects, the Irish. That very soft-hearted 
 people found out almost immediately after that they had been deluded 
 by a glamourous fairy-show — a mere splendid pageant, an extravaganza 
 with magnificent transformation scenes. The king showed no real dis- 
 position whatever to redress the grievances of the Catholics ; though we 
 learn from Horace Twiss's "Memoirs of Lord Eldon" that, at one 
 moment, "he half believed himself that he was sincere, to the great con- 
 sternation of Lord Eldon and his associates, who at once hastened the 
 measures for his departure." 
 
 "The Orange party," says John O'Connell, "who had signalized 
 themselves by not refraining from their shibboleth of the 'glorious, 
 pious and immortal memory,' even at the corporation dinner to the 
 king (though, of course, not proposed till after he had left the room), 
 laughed in their sleeves at this letter" (Sidmotdtis). "The Catholics took 
 it in earnest, and set about preparing to meet it in what they deemed a 
 corresponding spirit, having summoned meetings and prepared the out- 
 lines of an organization for the purpose, which was intended to include 
 men of every class and shade of opinion. But the illusion about con- 
 ciliation was soon over, the corporation having lost no time in dispelling 
 it, by renewing their old Orange orgies within one month after the king's 
 departure." The year following this unsubstantial pageant all the grim 
 realities of famine were spreading ghastly horror over the unfortunate 
 island. 
 
 On this visit of King George the Fourth to Ireland, Lord Byron wrote 
 some verses, entitled "The Irish Avatar," characterized by a terrible 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 811 
 
 intensity of bitterness. Of course, lie lashes the king unsparingly; hut 
 he lashes the Irish people and their great leader, O'Connell, too. I shall 
 give a few stanzas of this poem, written as a retaliation on Moore for 
 his attacks on the Carbonari : 
 
 "But he comes! the Messiah of royalty comes! 
 Like a goodly leviathan rolled from the waves ; 
 Then receive him as best such an advent becomes — 
 With a legion of cooks and an army of slaves. 
 
 " He comes in the promise and bloom of three-score, 
 To perform in the pageant the sovereign's part — 
 But long live the shamrock which shadows him o'er, 
 Could the green in his hat be transferred to his heart! 
 
 " Could that long-withered spot but be verdant again, 
 And a new spring of noble affections arise, 
 Then might Freedom forgive thee this dance in thy chain, 
 And this shout of thy slavery which saddens the skies. 
 
 "Is it madness or meanness which clings to thee now? 
 Were he god, as he is but the commonest clay, 
 With scarce fewer wrinkles than sins on his brow, 
 
 Such servile devotion might shame him away. 
 
 m 
 
 " Let the poor, squalid splendor thy wreck can afford 
 (As the bankrupt's profusion his ruin would hide) 
 Gild over the pala'ce. Lo ! Erin, thy lord ! 
 
 Kiss his foot, with thy blessing for blessings denied ! 
 
 " Wear, Fingal, thy trapping ! O'Connell, proclaim 
 
 His accomplishments ! — his ! ! ! and thy country convince 
 Half an age's contempt was an error of fame. 
 
 And that 'Hal is the rascalliest, sweetest young prince!' 
 
 "Will thy yard of blue ribbon, poor Fingal, recall 
 The fetters from millions of Catholic limbs? 
 Or has it not bound thee the fastest of all 
 
 The slaves who now hail their betrayer with hymns? 
 
 " Ay, ' build him a dwelling ;' let each give his mite, 
 Till, like Babel, the new royal dome hath arisen; 
 Let thy beggars and helots their pittance unite, 
 And a palace bestow for a poor-house and prison! 
 
 "Spread, spread for Vitellius the royal repast, 
 
 Till the gluttonous despot be stuffed to the gorge, 
 And the roar of his drunkards proclaim him at last, 
 The fourth of the fools and oppressors called ' George !' " 
 
812 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 The noble poet then goes on to say : 
 
 "Let the wine flow around the old bacchanal's throne, 
 
 Like their blood which has flowed and which yet has to flow." 
 
 After this he calls Castlereagh his Sejanus. He wonders that Ireland, 
 instead of blushing for Castlereagh's birth, seems proud now of that 
 reptile, without one ray of her genius, without "the fancy, the manhood, 
 the fire of her race." She might well doubt she ever produced such "a 
 reptile." " If she did," it appears that, contrary to her proverbial boast, 
 she can produce a "cold-blooded serpent." The welcome of tyrants has 
 plunged Ireland lower than even misfortune and tyranny could. This 
 bitter poem concludes thus : 
 
 "Till now I had envied thy sons and their sh'ore: 
 
 Though their virtues were hunted, their liberties fled, 
 There was something so warm and sublime in the core 
 Of an Irishman's heart, that I envy — thy dead. 
 
 " Or, if aught in my bosom can quench for an hour 
 My contempt for a nation so servile, though sore, 
 Which, though trod like the worm, will not turn upon power, 
 'Tis the glory of Grattan and genius of Mooee." 
 
 On the 7th of January, 1822, at D'Arcy's, a Catholic meeting was 
 held, for the purpose of presenting an address to the new viceroy, the 
 marquis of Wellesley. Lord Fingal was in the chair. O'Connell pro- 
 posed and Shiel seconded an address submitted by the latter gentleman. 
 The arrival of the marquis had given unbounded satisfaction to the vast 
 majority of the Irish people, both on account of his being the first Irish- 
 man appointed for centuries to the viceregal office, and because of his 
 shining personal qualities. The Orangemen, indeed, were furious at his 
 appointment. O'Connell dwelt on the " classical eloquence " and "splen- 
 did talents" of the marquis, also on the fact that "at the interesting 
 and eventful period of 1782" the marquis "was the first person to raise 
 a volunteer corps, in which a principle of exclusion to persons professing 
 their creed was not acted upon, countenanced and cherished." (Much 
 applause.) Such a man would not by his presence encourage offensive 
 toasts. " Since the arrival," continued O'Connell, "of the noble marquis 
 in this country, important events had taken place, which presented re- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 813 
 
 newecl and augmented claims to their gratitude. Mr. Plunket, the 
 eloquent and powerful advocate of their civil rights at least, was at that 
 moment, if not actually, certainly potentially, the first officer of the law 
 in Ireland. This was an appointment at which they had much reason 
 to rejoice, not only because their friend had been advanced, but also 
 because, by that appointment, Mr. Saurin ceased to be chief governor of 
 Ireland.'' 1 Loud acclamations greeted this announcement of the rise of 
 Plunket and fall of Saurin. O'Connell also alluded to the elevation 
 of Solicitor-General Bushe to the dignity of chief-justice of the King's 
 Bench. He praised his talents. He had never leagued with any party 
 "in a system and determination to oppress his Eoman Catholic country- 
 men." If he sometimes helped to prosecute individuals, on such occa- 
 sions in him were "always found united the talents of the orator and 
 the feelings of the gentleman. He never left a sting of angry sentiment 
 behind. ... It had been even said in the House of Commons by the 
 official organ of government that, 'if the Catholics were to be persecuted, 
 he was not the man to do it.' " The Catholic address was graciously 
 received by the marquis of Wellesley. 
 
 Perhaps it was a special object of Wellesley' s policy to prevent 
 O'Connell from forming an alliance with the English Reformers. At all 
 events, the reception of O'Connell by the marquis, when " the Man of 
 the People" made his first attempt to play the part of courtier at the 
 viceregal levee, was in the highest degree flattering. It was said that 
 he even asked "the Agitator," in a style of courtly compliment, to co- 
 operate with him in his endeavors to tranquillize Ireland, at that time 
 sorely tormented with distress and agitated by "Captain Rock" and his 
 merry men. O'Connell may have been lulled for the moment, as it were, 
 by the honeyed words, but he was far too shrewd to succumb to the influ- 
 ence of the viceregal "blarney" for any length of time. Besides, the 
 Catholics were soon offended by the circumstance that John Kingston 
 James, the "noted," or "notorious," lord-mayor of Dublin, as the Times 
 called him, "who had the courage to set the king's letter at defiance" 
 by proposing a toast insulting to the Catholics, was created a baronet 
 of Great Britain. A clever Catholic member of the English bar, a Con- 
 naught man named Blake, who was supposed to have great influence 
 with Lord Wellesley, and had followed in his train from England, sue- 
 
814 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 ceeded, indeed, in mitigating to a certain degree the displeasure of the 
 Catholics, by taking on himself the blame of having induced his friend, 
 the marquis, to confer a title of honor on James. 
 
 O'Connell about this time published an address to the Catholics of 
 Ireland. It begins with his favorite quotation from Byron— 
 
 " Hereditary bondsmen ! know ye not, 
 Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow ?" 
 
 He admits that, the year before, he and others had come to the conclu- 
 sion that it was useless to petition the British Parliament again, while 
 it was so unpopularly constituted. However, subsequent events, such 
 as the king's visit and letter, which showed "both the monarch and 
 people in new and favorable lights," should, he says, cause them to alter 
 their resolution. He accuses the Catholics of Dublin of "apathy or 
 inconsistency" on the subject of the veto, "while the last bill was in 
 discussion." He even insists— referring to a hastily got up meeting, 
 where silence on the subject of the veto had been preserved — that " by 
 dexterity, and a species of side-wind, the Catholics of Dublin are at this 
 moment committed to an approval of that measure, which they often so 
 unanimously and so loudly condemned." He then speaks of a plan de- 
 vised by himself in order "to obviate the mischief of a vetoistical bill," 
 which he had submitted to Mr. Plunket, This is, in point of fact, a 
 modified plan for the concession of "securities" to the government. 
 The recent delusive appearances of increased liberality on the part of 
 "the powers that be," followed up by the arrival of the enlightened 
 Wellesley and Plunket' s appointment as attorney-general, for the time 
 being softened the sternness of 0' Council's resistance to the desire on the 
 part of government to have some check on the appointment of the Cath- 
 olic bishops. According to O'Connell' s plan for "domestic nomination" 
 of prelates, the candidates for vacant Irish sees should be natural-born 
 subjects of the Crown, who had taken the oath of allegiance in one of 
 the superior courts of Dublin, and had discharged clerical duties " for 
 at least five years;" the electors should take "a solemn oath" not to 
 vote for any person who had not been known to them "by the most sat- 
 isfactory proofs to be strictly loyal and peaceable in his principles and 
 conduct." This plan proposed, also, that, ere the successful candidate 
 
THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 815 
 
 should be consecrated, the government should have two months "for 
 investigating his character;" that if "a charge of disloyalty or disaffec- 
 tion against him should be proved before the Roman Catholic arch- 
 bishops of Ireland, the electors should proceed to a new nomination;" 
 that all Irish Catholic bishops should take an oath not to " correspond 
 with any pope, prince, prelate, potentate or any other person" abroad, 
 "upon any political subject whatever," and that, if any foreign poten- 
 tate or other person should write to him, he should transmit to govern- 
 ment a true copy of so much of the communication as might be "inju- 
 rious to the rights of the Crown or government," etc. O'Connell's 
 address and this plan are given in full in the second volume of his son's 
 selection of his speeches, etc. Plunket in reply made some objections 
 and suggested certain modifications, especially, that " instead of a spe- 
 cific charge" of disaffection to the state, "to be established by specific 
 proof," a general objection to the loyalty of a candidate should justify 
 his being set aside. However, this plan of "domestic nomination" 
 never produced any practical result. 
 
 On Wednesday, February the 13th, an aggregate meeting of Cath- 
 olics, the proceedings at which were confused and somewhat unintelli- 
 gible, was held at Denmark Street Chapel. Counsellor 0' Gorman read 
 the following resolution: " Resolved, that we deem it essential to our 
 honor and interests that as speedy a discussion as possible, in the present 
 session, may be obtained on the merits of our petition." When this had 
 been moved and seconded, Mr. Hugh O'Connor, a wealthy Catholic mer- 
 chant, engaged in the West-Indian trade, moved an amendment to the 
 effect that their petition should be committed to Plunket and Lord 
 Donoughmore, to be presented for discussion in Parliament, "at such 
 period in the present session as they may conceive most beneficial for 
 Catholic interests." In urging the adoption of this amendment, he talked 
 of the necessity of prudence and moderation and patience. The word 
 "speedy" in the original resolution, seemed to him "not decorous or well 
 advised." He also spoke of the infamous Castlereagh as "our distin- 
 guished friend." When O'Connell, in his turn, rose and said that the 
 petition "called for a speedy discussion on the merits of our claims," 
 he was, as it appears to me, most unreasonably and discourteously 
 interrupted by Mr. Nicholas Mahon, who called him to order. "The 
 
 52 
 
816 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 petition had been passed and should not now be made the subject of 
 discussion." 
 
 Mr. O'Connell. "I am not out of order. I assert that that petition 
 requires the meeting to pass my resolution." 
 
 Mr. James 'Gorman. "I call Mr. O'Connell to order; we are not 
 now discussing the merits of the petition." 
 
 Mr. O'Connell. " I call on the meeting to call for a speedy discussion 
 on our petition." 
 
 Confusion now arose ; but the chairman, Sir Thomas Esmonde, con- 
 ceived O'Connell had a right to be heard. O'Connell went on to say, he 
 couldn't see why they " should put their reason and judgment into the 
 pockets of two individuals." He ridiculed Mr. O'Connor's calling Lord 
 Londonderry, or Castlereagh, "our distinguished friend;" upon which 
 some one in the crowd cried out, " Do you come here to abuse members 
 of Parliament?" "The marquis of Londonderry is not my friend," 
 replied O'Connell. He added that Jack Lawless had asserted that he 
 (O'Connell) was about to accept a silk gown as a bribe from government. 
 " The created universe," exclaimed he, " would not induce me to accept 
 a favor under the administration of Lord Londonderry." Here there 
 arose boisterous interruption and disapproving murmurs, and cries of 
 "Question, question!" and Mr. Hugh O'Connor conceived "that Mr. 
 O'Connell was taking up the time of the meeting very unnecessarily." 
 Upon this several groans were heard. Presently O'Connell talked of 
 Russia "breaking up the Holy Alliance," and referred to " Greece strug- 
 gling for freedom. Look to Spain ! look to Portugal ! In those countries 
 we see the Inquisition and the tithe system abolished. Look to France !" 
 Here Mr. Hugh O'Connor asked, " Does Mr. O'Connell mean to occupy 
 the time of this meeting with such ridiculous nonsense?" {Applause.) 
 "Whether it be ridiculous or sensible," quoth our hero, with good- 
 humored sturdiness, "I am determined I will not be prevented from 
 going on." This set them all a-laughing for several minutes. O'Con- 
 nell now went on: "Can they look for foreign support against our 
 claims ? What might have ensued in Ireland if the Catholic clergy had 
 remained neuter?" Mr. D'Evereux here hastened to call Mr. O'Connell 
 to order. Towards the end, after a good deal more confusion, Messrs. 
 Hugh O'Connor, Howley and others declared they would withdraw the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 817 
 
 amendment and let O'Connell's resolution pass, on the understanding 
 that he would not oppose their amendment as a separate resolution. To 
 this O'Connell assented. The original resolution was then carried amid 
 cries of "No, no;" after which Hugh O'Connor's amendment was also 
 carried as a resolution. A committee was finally appointed to prepare 
 an address from the Catholics to the king, begging him to recommend 
 a repeal of the penal laws that still affected them. Jack Lawless, a 
 few days after, wrote a letter disclaiming all intention of charging 
 O'Connell with any thought of taking a bribe from government. Some 
 writers assert that this strange attempt to worry O'Connell by unusual 
 and unseemly interruptions resulted from the intrigues of the viceregal 
 favorite, Mr. Blake. Whether this were the fact or not, I shall not take 
 on me to pronounce. 
 
 On the 7th of May, in the same year, we find O'Connell, at a meet- 
 ing held in the Rotunda buildings, co-operating with a society called 
 "The National Society" in getting up a petition to the House of Com- 
 mons, praying for legislative aid to establish a system of "national 
 education." His son says that, on this occasion, "the first idea of the 
 present National Board of Education seems to have been shadowed out." 
 O'Connell's speech is not well preserved. Among other things, he said, 
 " They would teach children of all persuasions, but would not interfere 
 with the religious tenets of any." 
 
 There were terrible scenes of famine and distress in Ireland, chiefly 
 in the south and west, in this year, 1822. Sir John Newport of Water- 
 ford, in the House of Commons, described one parish in his neighbor- 
 hood where fifteen persons had already died of hunger, twenty-eight 
 more were past hope of recovery, one hundred and twenty prostrated by 
 famine-fever. In another parish, upon the inhabitants of which fell 
 famine had "scowled a baleful smile," the priest had gone round and 
 administered extreme unction to every man, woman and child. Colonel 
 Patricson, quartered in Galway, reports to his superior officer that 
 "hundreds of half-famished wretches arrive almost daily from a dis- 
 tance of fifty miles, many of them so exhausted by want of food that 
 the means taken to restore them fail of effect, from the weakness of the 
 digestive organs occasioned by long fasting." In the county Clare 
 99.639 persons subsisted on daily charity; in Cork, 122,000. The sta- 
 
818 THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 tistics of the time are very defective. Alison, the Scotch historian, 
 attributes this famine-havoc to "the contraction of the currency, and 
 consequent fall of the prices of agricultural produce fifty per cent." 
 All through the war, from the closing years of the last century, there 
 had been a suspension of cash payments. Paper money had been a 
 legal tender. In 1819, Peel's measure for the resumption of cash pay- 
 ments had passed. Alison, however, does not trouble himself to men- 
 tion that the Irish grain crop of 1821, to the amount of nearly two 
 millions of quarters, and that of 1822, to the amount of more than a 
 million quarters, with numberless herds of cattle, sheep and pigs, had 
 been carried over to England. The English Parliament voted out of the 
 consolidated exchequer of the two islands £500,000 to relieve Irish dis- 
 tress by giving the destitute employment on public works. This appro- 
 priation, like similar grants during later Irish famines, was grossly 
 mismanaged by English officials and wasted on senseless and unpro- 
 ductive works. The English press of the time talked of it as if it were 
 mere British alms to the pauper Irish. Alison gives England any 
 amount of glory for her generosity: "England no longer remembered 
 the crimes of Ireland — thought only of her sorrows." More of this sort 
 of sickly and sickening cant he drivels forth. But the Tory Scotchman 
 takes good care not to remind us of the fact that John Mitchel takes 
 good care to mention — viz., that this appropriation "by no means 
 amounted to one-tenth part of the Irish money annually drained from 
 Ireland into England, and applied to English purposes." 
 
 To add to the horror of this terrible time, numbers of hapless tenants 
 were "exterminated" by rapacious landlords and their still more unscru- 
 pulous agents. Tenants retaliated, and now and then shot a landlord 
 or an agent. "Nocturnal outrages" took place. Men with blackened 
 faces, wearing white shirts, in the hours of darkness searched houses 
 for arms, which could be used for defence or vengeance. These disturb- 
 ances were purely agrarian, not in the least revolutionary; yet the gov- 
 ernment considered a new "Insurrection Act" the proper remedy for 
 such disorders. "An act for the suspension of the habeas corpus" was 
 also passed. To carry this measure was almost the last public act of 
 the infamous Castlereagh, or Londonderry. It must be admitted that 
 the marquis of Wellesley, in using the terrible extraordinary powers for 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 819 
 
 the suppression of Irish outrage with which he was armed, showed a 
 certain humanity towards his unfortunate countrymen, and this mod- 
 eration was probably one of the main causes of his daily increasing 
 unpopularity with the Orange and Ascendency faction. 
 
 However, even the Ascendency corporation were not quite insensible 
 to the distress in the south and west. A meeting on behalf of the 
 famine- stricken sufferers was held at the Mansion House, Dawson street, 
 on Thursday, the 16th of May. O'Connell, strange to say, received an 
 invitation to be present at this meeting. He attended, and made them 
 all laugh when he said, "I received an invitation to come here — an invi- 
 tation which it is not usual for me to receive." Indeed, O'Connell, it 
 appears to me, was always desirous to conciliate even the Orange faction, 
 if it were at all possible ; and when, on rare occasions, brought into im- 
 mediate contact with them, he would for the moment succeed in inspiring 
 them with more kindly feelings towards him. Thus, at an earlier date 
 (1814), when he had an opportunity of speaking before the corporation, 
 they were quite taken with him. Even the inveterate Giffard remarked, 
 after Dan had retired, " The mildness of that man's manner surprised 
 me ; I expected something very different. His demeanor is extremely 
 conciliating. He is eloquent ; and, d — n — n to him ! the fellow is so 
 handsome!" Returning, however, to the Mansion House meeting of 
 1822, O'Connell also said : " There should be no rivalry in the present 
 case, except a generous rivalry and emulation to excel each other in 
 cheerfully contributing to the relief of their suffering fellow-country- 
 men." [Cheers.) Neither did he on this occasion forget his favorite 
 topic of a repeal of the union. Speaking of the causes of the existing 
 distress, he said : " His friend, Mr. Leader, had eloquently enumerated 
 many of the causes. It was now vain, he feared, to speak of absentee- 
 ism. The period for that was now gone by. When the government of 
 this country, with its peers and commoners, was transported to another 
 country, it was idle to speak of absentees, for the great proprietors were 
 obliged by law to be absent from their native land." [Hear, hear!) 
 
 On the 13th of November, in the same year, at a Catholic charity din- 
 ner for the orphan school of Clondalkin, presided over by Lord Cloncurry, 
 after thanking his noble friend, who had proposed his health, for saying 
 "that he was honestly disposed to serve Ireland," O'Connell declared that 
 
820 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. 
 
 " to Alderman Nugent, as an Irishman, he felt unaffectedly grateful for 
 his meritorious exertions in endeavoring to effect a repeal of the union. 
 'Twas true he differed, most widely differed, from that gentleman in pol- 
 itics, but he would forgive any man his injuries towards himself, or his 
 general political line of conduct, provided he redeemed them by a sin- 
 cere and substantial service towards his country." He also spoke against 
 "secret confederacies and private associations," and ended by proposing 
 the health of the duke of Leinster. What he said of Alderman Nugent 
 referred to a meeting of the Protestant guild of merchants, or "The 
 Masters, Warden and Brethren of the Corporation of Merchants, or 
 Guild of the Holy Trinity, Dublin," at which a committee of their body, 
 with Henry and James Grattan, sons of the illustrious Grattan, at their 
 head, were appointed to prepare a petition for repeal of the union. This 
 petition dwelt on the miseries and grievances of Ireland since the union, 
 consequent on or aggravated by that measure — fever, famine, inordinate 
 taxation, suspended habeas corpus, insurrection acts, government by sti- 
 pendiary magistrates and armed police, constant coercive measures, 
 rejection of all motions for inquiry, stoppage of Ireland's progress. 
 The petitioners said that a measure carried "by such unconstitutional 
 means . . . must end in calamity and recoil upon the authors of so 
 much evil." They also reminded the House that "the pressure of busi- 
 ness upon you is too great, the inconvenience to Irish members to 
 attend is too great, the wants of seven millions of people are too great." 
 Such, in spite of their party prejudice, was the petition of this Orange 
 guild. 
 
 In truth, many of the Ascendency faction, while narrowly holding 
 out for the maintenance of the exclusive rule of Protestants, would fain 
 have seen the national legislature of Ireland restored. This very Alder- 
 man Nugent, who so longed for repeal, apparently clung at the same 
 time to the narrow system of intolerance which went far to make Irish 
 independence in any form impracticable. On the 15th of January, in the 
 same year, at a corporation dinner at Morrison's Hotel, amid loud hurrahs, 
 and to the tune of "July the First," Sir Thomas Whelan had given the 
 celebrated Orange toast, "To the glorious, pious and immortal memory 
 of the great and good king William the Third." When Sir Thomas had 
 expressed his trust "that the corporation would not be blown about like 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. 821 
 
 a weathercock," Alderman Nugent had risen and proposed the health 
 of Sir Thomas for having given that never-to-be-forgotten toast. "If," 
 he exclaimed, "the present system" [of conciliation) "should be per- 
 sisted in, His Majesty's crown would not be safe in six months." 
 
 Barrington gives an amusing full-length version of this Orange toast 
 in his "Personal Sketches." I shall give a sentence or two: "To the 
 glorious, pious and immortal memory of the great and good king Wil- 
 liam, who saved us from popery, slavery, arbitrary laws, wooden shoes 
 and brass money. May he who would not drink the toast on his bare 
 knees be damned, crammed and rammed, with flints and sparables, into 
 the great gun of Athlone, blown into the air and fall into the bottomless 
 pit of hell — the key in an Orangeman's pocket!" The reader had better 
 refer to Barrington and see the toast complete. 
 
 On the 12th of August, this year, an Irishman, who was all through 
 life a worse enemy to his country than the worst Orangeman, executed 
 justice on himself by severing his carotid artery with a knife. I allude 
 to the suicide of the baleful and infamous Castlereagh. In a former 
 chapter I have already referred to this self-inflicted deed of retributive 
 justice. Alison, speaking of the yell of execration with which a London 
 crowd (probably chiefly composed of Irishmen) welcomed the destroyer 
 of Ireland's independence to his grave in Westminster Abbey, says that 
 "savage miscreants raised a horrid shout." Mr. Mitchel remarks on 
 this : " But future ages will probably pronounce, that in all the mob of 
 London was no such dreadful miscreant as the man then borne to his 
 grave." Even though I have little space to spare, I cannot refrain from 
 giving some of Lord Byron's remarks on the death of this wretched 
 traitor to his country: "As to lamenting his death," says the noble 
 bard, " it will be time enough when Ireland has ceased to mourn for his 
 birth. As a minister, I, for one of millions, looked upon him as the 
 most despotic in intention, and the weakest in intellect, that ever tyran- 
 nized over a country. It is the first time, indeed, since the Normans, 
 that England has been insulted by a minister (at least) who could not 
 speak English, and that Parliament permitted itself to be dictated to in 
 the language of Mrs. Malaprop." The wretch, in addressing Parliament, 
 used to indulge in such sentences as the following: "Before I embark 
 into the feature upon which the question hinges." Hear Byron again : 
 
822 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 " In his life he was — what all the world knows, and half of it will feel 
 for years to come, unless his death prove ' a moral lesson ' to the surviving 
 Sejani of Europe. It may at least serve as some consolation to the 
 Nations that their Oppressors are not happy, and in some instances 
 judge so justly of their own actions as to anticipate the sentence of 
 mankind. Let us hear no more of this man, and let Ireland remove the 
 ashes of her Grattan from the Sanctuary of Westminster. Shall the 
 Patriot of Humanity repose by the Werther of Politics? ! !" 
 
 The Orangemen showed their inveterate prejudices on the 12th of 
 July, 1822, as on former anniversaries. On the 11th, O'Connell had 
 written a long letter to the marquis of Wellesley, calling on him to pre- 
 vent the insulting Orange display, which he maintained was an illegal 
 "provocation to tumult." He told the viceroy that he had damped the 
 hopes of the Catholics, who had looked to him as "a friend," by telling 
 the people that he had come "to administer the laws, not change them." 
 The viceroy had also recommended the "Insurrection Act" and the sus- 
 pension of the habeas corpus. If Saurin had been driven from power, 
 "the mildest, kindest and best public man Ireland had ever yet seen — 
 Mr. Grant" — had also been removed. "As you cannot alter, I respect- 
 fully, but firmly, call upon you to administer the law, and to suppress an 
 illegal and insulting nuisance. . . . To-morrow decides the character of 
 your excellency's administration." This letter embarrassed the viceroy, 
 who wished, if possible, to stand well with both parties. He did not 
 wish to exasperate the Catholics by suffering them to be insulted, nor to 
 give the Orangemen the opportunity of saying that he yielded to the 
 great "Agitator." He tried to persuade the Orangemen, through Master 
 Ellis and Sir Abraham Bradley King, to forego their celebration. His 
 diplomatic efforts failed. The statue of King William was dressed as 
 usual. The police looked on without interfering. Orange insolence was 
 rampant. The peace of the streets was disturbed. When indignant 
 Catholics attempted to undress the statue, the police prevented them. 
 The favored Orange band were allowed not merely to undress it, but to 
 yell and shout and force the drivers of all vehicles to uncover their 
 heads in passing the idol. Accidents happened in the confusion. Peace- 
 able citizens were alarmed. It is in no degree wonderful that religious 
 animosity now grew as strong as ever. A sentence in an address of the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 823 
 
 Protestant archbishop Magee to his clergy fanned the flame. "The 
 Dissenters," said the prelate, "have a religion without a church, and 
 the Papists have a church without a religion." Controversies buzzed 
 on all sides about men's ears. The famous Catholic bishop of Kildare 
 and Leighlin, Dr. Doyle (whose signature, J. K. L., meaning James Kil- 
 dare and Leighlin, appended to many an able letter and pamphlet, after- 
 wards became famous), was at this time one of the most formidable of 
 the antagonists of Dr. Magee. 
 
 When the 4th of November, another of the Orange anniversaries, 
 came round, a body of troops surrounding the statue prevented the 
 Orangemen from dressing it. The Orangemen now became infuriated 
 against the viceroy, on account of this energetic step, especially as it 
 was declared illegal by Lord-Chancellor Manners and by Saurin. It 
 was in vain that he had tried to conciliate them, as well as the Catholics, 
 almost from the commencement of his administration. Had he not at 
 a corporation dinner, soon after his arrival, lavished graceful compli- 
 ments and classic eloquence on stolid, turtle-devouring, boozing Orange 
 aldermen and town-councillors ? It was on this occasion that, with his 
 usual self-complacency and love of display, he had expatiated upon the 
 very apocryphal antiquity of his family, and the still more apociyphal 
 devotion of his brother, the duke of Wellington, to the land of his birth. 
 Had he not, also, though he had been insulted by them, dined with the 
 Beefsteak Club, who, on his retiring from the festive board, had repeated 
 the former insult, drinking " The exports of Ireland," signifying thereby 
 the hopes of the Ascendency that the viceroy would be speedily recalled ? 
 All his fire of intellect and princely, though somewhat theatric, deport- 
 ment failed to win those bigots; for was he not conciliatory, friendly 
 even, to the Catholics, and, as it now appeared, willing to prevent them 
 from being insulted ? Besides, had not the old beau made an American 
 beauty, who was a "Papist," his vice-queen? Then his household had 
 shamrocks on their gold buttons. No wonder, then, that that odd little 
 square-built lunatic, in a spencer, the Eev. Sir Harcourt Lees, whose 
 enlightened mission it was to discover Popish plots for the general mas- 
 sacre of Protestants, to denounce in the newspapers those three dreadful 
 potentates, "O'Connell, the pope and the devil," to petition Parliament 
 "to put clown popery and send O'Connell to the Tower," while his crazy 
 
824 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 fancy was for ever haunted by visions of Jesuit conspiracies, and brooding 
 over the tales of "Fox's Book of Martyrs" — no wonder that he and all 
 the bigots of the Ascendency faction were now on fire with rage. A 
 war of pamphlets increased the flame. The Orange mob only burned 
 for an opportunity to give their lawless fury vent. 
 
 The 14th of December, 1822, was a command-night at the theatre. 
 Every part of the house was crowded to suffocation. The dress boxes 
 were radiant with female loveliness. The marquis of Wellesley, his 
 small, but graceful, person arrayed in scarlet, his intellectual head un- 
 covered, soon entered the viceregal box, which was quite superb with 
 velvet and gold, and, after bowing repeatedly to the audience, the major- 
 ity of whom rose and received him with hearty acclamations, sat down 
 on his gilded chair of state. Goldsmith's amusing comedy, "She Stoops 
 to Conquer," had proceeded for some time, when disturbances com- 
 menced in the upper gallery. "A groan for Wellesley!" "No popish 
 governors!" "The Boyne Water!" "Protestant Ascendency!" Such 
 cries were shouted aloud. A shower of papers next came down, on 
 which was this sentence, "The governor of the Bantams shall change 
 his Morning-tone.' 1 '' [The marquis was also earl of Momington.) Every 
 now and then riots continued to break out in the gallery. A consider- 
 able band seemed to obey a leader. "The glorious memory" was called 
 for. The band of disturbers would now retire to the back of the gallery 
 to sing party songs and again come to the front brandishing bludgeons. 
 In the interval between the comedy and the farce, "God Save the King" 
 and "Patrick's Day" were played by the orchestra, the latter of which 
 was loudly applauded by the viceroy and his attendants. Mingled 
 groans and hisses and applause — a dissonant bedlam-din, in short — 
 resounded in the upper gallery. While the music was being played, an 
 apple was pelted from the gallery at the viceregal box ; next an empty 
 quart-bottle was flung with great force by a burly carpenter named 
 Handbidge, that struck with a loud sound on the top of the box just 
 over Lord Wellesley' s head. Kebounding, the bottle fell into the or- 
 chestra, and, though nobody was hurt, the fright which seized the 
 musicians put an end to their music. One of them held up the bottle, 
 on which boxes and pit roared out, "Seize the miscreant!" The old 
 marquis had fearlessly stretched his gray, high-domed head out of the 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 825 
 
 box and looked up at the gallery, his penetrating eyes all aflame with 
 indignation. 
 
 After the farce had commenced fresh disturbances began, which soon 
 called attention away from the humorous acting of the inimitable Liston. 
 White bludgeons were displayed in the pit, on which, as if in response, 
 similar ones were brandished in the gallery with loud cries. Suddenly 
 a huge lump of wood was dashed from the top gallery down on the 
 cushion of the box next to the viceroy's, which, rebounding, passed be- 
 tween him and the chandelier, struck the proscenium and finally fell on 
 the stage. The confusion was now tremendous. All started to their 
 feet. Ladies were fainting or hastily flinging their shawls round them 
 and rushing from the theatre. The gentlemen were furious. The mar- 
 quis was standing up, apparently pointing out some one in the gallery to 
 one of his attendants. Immediately a gentleman, wearing the blue and 
 gokl of the household, stood in the front of the lower gallery. He ad- 
 dressed the audience, denouncing the "paltry" ruffian crew "that had 
 been packed in the theatre" to insult the viceroy. "I am sure there is 
 spirit and loyalty enough on the galleiy to secure the ruffian. He is in 
 that corner." Several, now panic-stricken, got down from the top gal- 
 lery and escaped through the lower. The soldiers were called in. They 
 found it hard to force their way through the narrow entrance, which only 
 admitted one at a time. However, finally five men were captured — two 
 tall, stalwart brothers Handbidge, carpenters; George Graham, a printer; 
 a baker named Bernard Tuite, and a servant named Patrick Bedford. 
 
 Such was the memorable bottle-row. I have hardly space to give 
 the sequel of this curious incident in full derail. Great indignation was 
 felt at the outrage by the majority of the Irish people. Several "indig- 
 nation" meetings were held. One, attended by persons of all parties, 
 was held at the Royal Exchange, on Friday, the 26th of December, the 
 new lord-mayor, Fleming, in the chair. The duke of Leinster was the 
 second chairman. The county Dublin meeting took place at Kilmain- 
 ham, on Wednesday, the 18th of January, 1823, the high-sheriff presid- 
 ing. Lord Cloncurry was afterward moved to the chair ; he caused the 
 meeting to separate in good humor by contrasting their treatment on 
 that day with the treatment they received at the Kilmainham meeting, 
 to which I referred at the commencement of this chapter. At both 
 
826 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 these meetings O'Connell took a prominent part, spoke with great ability, 
 and received loud and general applause from those assembled. At the 
 second he had signal success in bringing opponents round to his views. 
 At the first he praised the marquis of Wellesley and the lord-mayor. 
 On both occasions he uttered many liberal sentiments, tending to pro- 
 mote union and harmony among Irishmen of different sects. Numbers 
 of addresses were voted to the lord-lieutenant in consequence of the 
 bottle riot. O'Connell and the Orange Sir Abraham Bradley King were 
 brought into friendly contact for the first, but not the last, time at the 
 city of Dublin meeting. O'Connell moved, and Sir Abraham seconded, 
 the adoption of the address to Lord Wellesley. 
 
 This address was received by that nobleman in the most gracious 
 manner. It was almost open house at the Castle on the day of its pre- 
 sentation. Great numbers were there in court-dresses, but, as any one 
 of moderately respectable appearance was admitted on this peculiar 
 occasion, multitudes who, under ordinary circumstances, would have 
 been excluded from the charmed circle, thronged the viceregal halls. 
 During the interval between two o'clock, the hour appointed for the pre- 
 sentation of the address, and four, when the viceroy arrived, costly wines 
 in profusion were served to all comers. Some grotesque scenes took 
 place. A tipsy student of the university tormented Archbishop Magee 
 with scholastic disputations. When His Excellency at length arrived, 
 he took his stand before the crimson-curtained throne, brilliant lights 
 glancing on the gorgeous court-dresses around. Though his stature was 
 small, he had an air of dignity that bespoke the great lord. The lord- 
 mayor read the address. At its close the viceroy remained silent for a 
 brief space. He seemed greatly moved. But soon he spoke impress- 
 ively, in clear, loud tones, deeply stirring the hearts of his attentive 
 auditory. There was, perhaps, something theatrical in some of his sen- 
 timents and in his delivery. He declared himself to have attained to 
 such a point of felicity that he could hardly hope to experience the like 
 again ; he added, that " if the poniard were lifted against his bosom, he 
 would bid the assassin strike." This use of the word "assassin" prob- 
 ably galled the Orange faction still more, and added fresh venom to their 
 spiteful feelings. 
 
 Three of the alleged offenders in this truculent Orange conspiracy — 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O' CONN ELL. 827 
 
 Henry and John Handbidge, carpenters, and George Graham, a printer 
 (John O'Connell says, a shoemaker)— were capitally committed, hut a 
 Dublin grand-jury, of "the rigid sort," ignored the bills. Mr. Plunket, 
 however, the attorney-general, resolved on proceeding by ex-officio in- 
 formation, and a day was appointed for the trial of the accused. The 
 capital charge, however, was withdrawn. 
 
 On the day of trial the excitement and interest, felt throughout 
 Dublin about this outrage and the different parties concerned, were at 
 their highest pitch of intensity. Bushe, chief-justice of the King's Bench, 
 and Justices Burton, Jebb and Vandeleur took their seats on the bench 
 at nine o'clock a. m. The moment the doors were thrown open, a fearful 
 rush of the expectant mass of human beings, that stood around, filled 
 the spectators' galleries and all the approaches to the body of the court. 
 There was some inclination to mirth, when Sheriff Thorpe found no small 
 difficulty in extricating Lefroy and another Crown lawyer from the 
 pressure of the densely-packed crowd and getting them into court. The 
 countenances of the Orangemen present wore a look of confidence, as if 
 they were troubled by few or no misgivings as to the fate of their ac- 
 cused brethren. It appeared, however, pretty clear from the statements 
 of the prosecuting counsel, sustained as they were by the evidence, that 
 two lodges — one of them a Purple lodge, the other an ordinary one — 
 had conspired to create the riot. The rioters, who had showed them- 
 selves in the pit, were Purple ; the ordinary lodge had caused the tumult 
 in the gallery. The admittance of the latter to the gallery had been 
 paid for by the former, who were their superiors in the organization 
 of Orange banditti. The Purple lodge had met at Daly's tavern, in 
 Werburgh street, before the play, to collect the four pounds necessary 
 for this payment. The demand for "The Boyne Water" was precon- 
 certed ; it was settled that, if the orchestra should refuse to play that 
 tune, riot should ensue. There was evidence that Henry Handbidge, 
 going into the theatre, said to his associates, "Now be wicked!" When 
 they got in, the cries which resounded through the theatre were, "To- 
 night the gallery is our own!" "Bald-pated Wellesley, go home out of 
 that, you bloody Papist — you old rascal!" "Look out, boys!" to which 
 the response was, "Here we are!" It appears that the "Purple" men, 
 at a meeting held in another tavern after the play, referring to the 
 
828 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 bottle's not having struck Lord Wellesley, said, "It was a damnable 
 miss!" The "Black" lodges (the highest) shared this opinion. The 
 bottle was stated to have been thrown at the viceroy by Henry Hand- 
 bidge, who was a powerful man, six feet two in height. A portion of a 
 watchman's rattle {the fluke) was flung by Graham. It was asserted, in 
 fact, that the whole riot was the result of a premeditated plan ; the 
 rioters were provided with bludgeons, whistles, the watchman's rattle 
 and drink. All the hissing and hooting and violence were pursuant to 
 instructions given beforehand. Yet, when the jury retired, at four o'clock 
 on the afternoon of the second day of the trial, they were unable to agree 
 to a verdict. They were locked up for the night. Next day, however, 
 they were discharged. Subsequently the case was brought to London ; 
 but there, too, the prosecution failed ; in short, no one ever suffered any 
 legal penalty for this famous, or infamous, bottle riot. 
 
 As for the Handbidges, they seem to have denied the truth of man)' 
 of the statements that appeared in evidence against them on their trial. 
 According to the version of the widow of John Hanclbidge, given in the 
 "Life of O'Connell," published by Mullany of Dublin, the bottle was 
 not flung by Henry Hanclbidge. A bottle of whisky, indeed, was pur- 
 chased by John Handbiclge at the " Black Bull," in Ship street. After 
 taking a "swig" from it, on entering the gallery he passed it away to 
 some other of the brethren, and never saw it again. Contrary to the 
 evidence, it was he, not his brother Henry, who was on the side of the 
 theatre opposite to the viceregal box ; and neither Henry nor he, if you 
 believe the family story as told by his relict, was the man who fired the 
 bottle at the viceroy. The Handbidges even asserted that that bottle 
 was hurled from the pit, not the gallery. They admitted, however, that 
 Graham, who, it appears, "rejoiced" in the euphonious nickname of 
 " Badgy Kow," flung from the gallery a fragment of a watchman's rattle. 
 
 Shortly after this incident, so characteristic of the state of society in 
 Ireland at the time, and which might be regarded as a momentary 
 triumph by the Orange fanatics, though undoubtedly the outrage to the 
 marquis of Wellesley injured their cause and served the Catholics in the 
 long run (who can tell what influence it may have had on the mind of 
 the duke of Wellington, the marquis's younger brother, at the crisis of 
 the fortunes of Catholics and Orangemen, in '29 ?) — shortly after this 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 829 
 
 Orange brawl, I say, the Catholics in their turn achieved a considerable 
 popular triumph at the county Dublin election. On the death of Hans 
 Hamilton, who for many years had represented that county, Luke "White 
 — a very remarkable character in those days, who, beginning life as a 
 peddler, had in some mysterious way accumulated a vast fortune — put his 
 son, Colonel White, forward as candidate in the Catholic interest, against 
 Sir Compton Domville, a very wealthy baronet who took the side of "the 
 Ascendency." As the Whites were eager partisans of the Catholic 
 cause, O'Connell and the leading Catholics gave them all the support in 
 their power. The cry of the hour was "Catholicity and White." Old 
 Luke spent his money freely in the struggle ; Billy Murphy, too, the 
 rich Catholic salesmaster of Smithfield, Dublin, who, it is said, had been 
 concerned in the rebellion of '98, was also liberal of his gold. But 
 O'Connell's popular eloquence was better than gold. He even went 
 through the sea-coast chapels and harangued the simple fishermen, 
 many of whom were "forty-shilling freeholders," in language that came 
 home to their habits and feelings. Crowds of voters, at first intim- 
 idated by the threats of their landlords, when adjured by O'Connell to 
 remember their country and not to sell the Catholic cause (priests, too, 
 lent important aid to White), forgot their fears, defied their petty 
 tyrants and, though they had come to the polling-booth of Kilmainham 
 to vote for Domville, polled for White. Finally, the patriotic enthusiasm 
 became so overwhelming that Domville, feeling himself beaten beyond 
 hope, retired from the contest, and Colonel White was declared duly 
 elected. The excited populace resolved on chairing their new member. 
 He was borne in triumph through the streets of the metropolis at the 
 head of a multitudinous procession. As the exulting masses were pass- 
 ing Trinity College, missiles were thrown at them by the students, who 
 chiefly belonged to the Ascendency faction. In a few moments the iron 
 railings in front of the college were burst through. As the students 
 were flying through the archway, that leads to the inner courts, several 
 were seized by the exasperated people, and probably they owed the 
 preservation of their lives solely to the strenuous exertions of O'Connell 
 and other prominent Catholics. As for the Whites, like the thane of 
 Cawdor, they became "prosperous gentlemen." The head of the family 
 is now Lord Annally. 
 
830 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 I can only make brief mention of the libel case of Wallace versus 
 Staunton, in which O'Connell defended Michael Staunton, who was ar- 
 raigned on the 25th of May, 1821, for an alleged libel, in the Weekly 
 Register, on Thomas Wallace, the king's counsel, afterwards master in 
 chancery. He, it may be remembered, was one of the unfortunate John 
 Magee's counsel. In spite of O'Connell's able speech, the close of which 
 drew forth a burst of applause from a crowded court, a packed jury 
 convicted Mr. Staunton, who suffered an imprisonment in Kilmainham. 
 Mr. Staunton, through the better portion of his life, was one of the most 
 prominent liberal journalists in Dublin and one of O'Connell's most 
 devoted partisans. He lived to be lord-mayor of Dublin in the reformed 
 corporation. In his latter years, through O'Connell's influence, he also 
 became collector-general of metropolitan rates. 
 
 I shall also notice, in passing, a letter written by O'Connell to the 
 Dublin Freeman's Journal, on the 6th of December, 1822, in reference 
 to a point of legal etiquette. The Freeman had made an inaccurate state- 
 ment in reference to O'Connell's connection with the case of Crowe versus 
 Fleming, and O'Connell, in consequence, gives a brief, but lucid, expla- 
 nation of the whole matter. " I was counsel," he writes, "for Mr. Crowe 
 at the trial of the first cause instituted by hini'in the Court of Exchequer, 
 and tried at Ennis, in the summer assizes, 1819. He was unsuccessful, 
 and the cause was at an end. 
 
 "He afterwards filed a bill against Mr. Fleming in the Court of Chan- 
 cery. In that cause I was not counsel for either party ; Mr. Crowe had 
 a right to leave me out, and he very properly exercised that right. 
 
 " He next instituted this suit in the Court of King's Bench, and issue 
 had been for some time joined in it before either party applied to me. 
 Mr. Hickman, the defendant's attorney, was the first to do so. He 
 offered me a retainer." O'Connell wanted to decline, having been 
 "counsel for the plaintiff in the former case." Hickman insisted on 
 "the defendant's right" that O'Connell "should accept of his retainer," 
 and that he could not, " consistently with professional propriety, refuse." 
 O'Connell still hesitated. Finally, the matter was referred to that cele- 
 brated lawyer, the late Edward Pennefather, with whom, in spite of 
 widely-different political views, O'Connell seems to have been generally 
 on not unfriendly terms. O'Connell and Hickman went together to Mr. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 831 
 
 Pennefa ther's house. On Hickman's statement, that distinguished au- 
 thority "decided," says O'Connell, "that I was bound to accept the defend- 
 ant's retainer. In that decision, of course, I acquiesced." O'Connell 
 touches on a few other points, to which the Freeman had referred inac- 
 curately, but I have given the only point of any particular interest in 
 the letter. 
 
 Early in the summer of 1822, our hero had sent his family to the 
 South of France, chiefly for the benefit of Mrs. O'Connell's health. They 
 had sailed from Dublin to Bordeaux. From that city they had gone to 
 the town of Pau, in the department of Basses Pyrenees, where they 
 waited till O'Connell could join them. 
 
 In the month of August he managed to leave Ireland for the purpose 
 of doing so. He went, however, in the first instance, by Dover and 
 Calais, to Paris, in order to visit his distinguished and venerable uncle, 
 General Count O'Connell. The political creeds of those two remarkable 
 O'Connells were completely at variance. But the fine old soldier did 
 not let his unbounded veneration for royalty interfere with the warmth 
 and kindness of the reception he gave the great popular chieftain, his 
 nephew. In spite of his eighty years and old woimds, of which he bore 
 the numerous scars (forty years before, at the memorable siege of Gib- 
 raltar, the scattering fragments of a shell from the British batteries had, 
 in a moment, wounded him in nine places; a bullet had also carried 
 off a portion of his ear), in spite of time and toils, the brave old gen- 
 eral was still hale and hearty. He was kind and genial, thoroughly 
 Irish, and full of old anecdotes and recollections of the "battles, sieges, 
 fortunes" through which he had passed "even from his boyish days." 
 He no doubt entertained his kinsman with full many a tale 
 
 " Of most disastrous chances ; 
 Of moving accidents by flood and field ; 
 Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach." 
 
 Our hero now left Paris for the South of France. It was on this 
 journey, according to John O'Connell, that he had the adventure in the 
 diligence with a good-looking French sea-captain, who, imagining him to 
 be an Englishman, tried to provoke him by abusing England, and was 
 equally vexed and astonished at Dan's imperturbable good-humor, till 
 the true cause was explained to him, when he showed all the true polite- 
 
 53 
 
832 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 ness of a Frenchman. I follow the authority of O'Neill Daunt (and I 
 think rightly), in ascribing this adventure to O'Connell's visit to France 
 in early life. The reader may call to mind the brief account of this 
 incident, which occurs towards the commencement of the fifth chapter 
 of this biography. 
 
 During the latter part of this journey, O'Connell had to post. He 
 encountered a somewhat unpleasant adventure, such as travellers in 
 foreign lands are still occasionally liable to, but which, in those days 
 when railway communication was not, they might meet at any time 
 without any need to be much surprised. By some misconception of his 
 orders (probably some provincial speaker of patois misunderstood O'Con- 
 nell's excellent French), he was taken along the route to Bayonne instead 
 of that to Pau. He did not discover this mistake till, just at the very 
 close of a most exhausting day, during the whole of which he had been 
 sustaining himself with anticipations of the delight he would feel that 
 night in being reunited with Mrs. O'Connell and his family, he learned, 
 in answer to an inquiry as to the exact distance yet between him and 
 Pau, that, instead of being near his loved ones, he was at the second or 
 third last stage from Bayonne, and nearly forty leagues by cross-roads 
 (probably infernal) from his real destination. One can easily imagine 
 the miserable night-travelling he had to endure, attended, no doubt, 
 with any amount of jolting, if not actual danger to life and limb, over 
 the ruts and inequalities of the badly-constructed and worse-kept cross- 
 roads (the great chaussees, or main roads, of France, indeed, were even 
 then magnificent). After this night of unrest, he had also to travel 
 all through the next long, weaiy day, ere he could rejoin his family. 
 These amenities of travel, his son tells us, "were long most disagreeably 
 remembered." One would expect that a fine, jovial nature, like O'Con- 
 nell's, would speedily laugh at such misadventures. At all events, the 
 joy of reunion with his much-loved wife and children would soon banish 
 any unpleasant remembrances of the road. I fancy that poor creature, 
 John O'Connell, paints rather what he would be likely to feel under such 
 circumstances himself, than the actual feelings of his father. 
 
 After sojourning for a few weeks at Pau, O'Connell brought his 
 family to Tours, where he left them to spend the winter, and then set 
 out on his return to his public and legal duties in Ireland. His son 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 833 
 
 Morgan, who had been back from his South American expedition for about 
 two years, and was now on his way to join the Austrian army as a cadet 
 in a light dragoon regiment, accompanied him as far as Paris. No doubt 
 the gallant veteran, Count O'Connell, was especially rejoiced to see a 
 young soldier of his ancient race. Morgan proceeded to Austria ; and 
 our hero, having also bid farewell to the old warrior of his race, hastened 
 to their native isle.* 
 
 * Authorities for the foregoing chapter: "The Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P., 
 edited, with Historical Notices, etc., by his Son, John O'Connell, Esq.;" Fagan's "Life of O'Con- 
 nell ;" " Life of Dr. Doyle," by Fitzpatrick ; " Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell, with Sketches 
 of his Contemporaries, etc., Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Parliament street ;" " The History of Ireland, 
 from the Treaty of Limerick to the Present Time," by John Mitchel ; " History of Europe since 
 1815," by Sir Archibald Alison, Bart. ; "Memoirs of Lord Wellesley;" "Cobbett's Kegister;" 
 Horace Twiss's " Memoirs of Lord Eldon," etc. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 O'CONNELL COK^w.-.-^aTES THE PLAN OF A NEW ASSOCIATION TO SHIEL AT A FRIEND'S HOUSE 
 
 in Wicklow — The real Catholic Association founded — Lord Killeen — Union of 
 
 ALL SECTIONS OF CATHOLICS — The PRIESTS BECOME ACTIVE WORKERS IN THE CAUSE — SLOW 
 PROGRESS OF THE NEW MOVEMENT AT FIRST — O'CONNELL A DELIGHTFUL TRAVELLING COM- 
 PANION — O'CONNELL ESTABLISHES THE "CATHOLIC RENT " — DIFFICULTIES HE HAS TO OVER- 
 COME; HIS PROJECT SNEERED AT; HIS TREMENDOUS ENERGY — HlS COMPLETE TRIUMPH; 
 FRIENDS AND ENEMIES SURPRISED — THE POPULAR ELEMENT STRONG IN THE CATHOLIC 
 MOVEMENT FOR THE FIRST TIME — The ASSOCIATION A SORT OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT; 
 THE MULTIPLICITY OF ITS BUSINESS; O'CONNELL HAS THE LION'S SHARE — 1824 ONE OF 
 THE MOST GLORIOUS YEARS OF HIS LIFE — BOLD OPINIONS OF Dr. DOYLE — "THE SoRBONNE 
 
 Manifesto" — The Dissenters not unfriendly to the Catholics — Clever literary 
 defenders of the catholic cause — dulness of their opponents — insanity of slr 
 Harcourt Lees and the Orange faction — Establishment of the "Morning Regis- 
 ter" — Moore's "Captain Rock" — A year's work in the Association — O'Connell de- 
 nounces the hostile journals of England and Ireland — "The best-abused man in 
 the world " — o'connell's epistolary " bores " — aristocratic adhesions — death of 
 "Old Hunting-cap" — Aggregate meeting — "The New Reformation" — O'Connell 
 arrested for a speech on bolivar — o'connell and the catholic delegates in 
 England — The Catholic Association suppressed — The duke of York's speech on 
 Peel's emancipation bill — "The wings" — Stephen Coppinger — The Mahon party — 
 Cobbett and O'Connell — Affair with Leyne — Fourteen-days' meetings — O'Connell 
 unconquerable; the new Association — O'Connell's amusing difference with the 
 press — Elections; defeat of the Beresfords, etc. — The Order of Liberators — 
 Foreign sympathizers — Death of Bric — Death of the duke of York and Lord 
 Liverpool — Dan and Remmy Sheehan — Burdett's bill defeated — Napoleon's niece 
 at a Catholic meeting — Canning minister; his death; great disappointment of 
 the Catholics — Pope and Maguire — Anglesea viceroy— Monster Catholic petition 
 — Wellington prime minister — Military appearance of the peasantry — Repeal of 
 the Test and Corporation acts. 
 
 jE are now fast approaching the triumphant period of O'Con- 
 nell's career. In the spring of 1823, at a dinner-party at 
 Glencullen, in the county Wicklow, then the residence of 
 T. O'Mara, Esq., O'Connell, who had been long revolving in 
 mind the idea of a new Catholic, association, mentioned his 
 plan to the assembled company. He stated that he intended to propose 
 that the new body should consist of two classes of members, the one 
 paying a pound, the other a shilling, a year each, and that the working 
 
 834 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 835 
 
 committee should be selected from the former class. Eichard Lalor Shiel, 
 who was present, gave expression to some doubts as to the practica- 
 bility of the plan. He thought the time also unsuitable for such an 
 experiment. O'Connell, however, maintained that the time to make 
 another effort for emancipation had arrived, and that the plan would 
 work ; in short, he said he would make it work. It would not be quite 
 accurate, then, to state, as many have done, that the first idea of the 
 Catholic Association arose in a conversation between O'Connell and 
 Shiel at the house of a mutual friend in Wicklow. 
 
 After various preliminary meetings, at which O'Connell takes the 
 most conspicuous part, and at one of which he tells his audience that 
 "some persons must take the trouble of managing the affairs of the 
 Catholics," and at another of which we find him warmly defending Wil- 
 liam Cunningham Plunket "as a perfect martyr to his public duty," in 
 obedience to a numerously and influentially signed requisition, Nicholas 
 Purcell O'Gorman summons the Catholics of Dublin to assemble in gen- 
 eral meeting at Townsend Street Chapel. At this meeting, which took 
 place on the 10th of May, a resolution expressive of gratitude to Plunket 
 for his services to the Catholics was carried. O'Connell spoke at con- 
 siderable length and touched on a variety of topics. He dwelt ably on 
 Ireland's capacity for a prosperous career, enumerating her chief re- 
 sources. "We live," said he, "in the richest country in the universe, 
 and amongst the poorest people." Speaking of the natural gifts of his 
 countrymen, he exclaimed : " Irishmen never combat to be on a level 
 with, but always above, their competitors. There was not an army in 
 Europe bat was led by Irishmen ; there is not a corner of the world but 
 resounds with their achievements. When Maria Theresa founded a new 
 order of honor and merit, out of the first fifty officers who received the 
 decoration, no less than forty-two were Irishmen. 
 
 "And why are they not more generally celebrated in the service of 
 their country ? Let the intolerant, persecuting bigot answer. All they 
 want, Cobbett says, is 'a clear stage and fair play.' But that clear 
 stage they had hitherto been insultingly refused." It was in this speech 
 that he made reference to the friendly overtures of the Orange corpora- 
 tion on the occasion of the king's visit. He next defied "the tongue of 
 malignity, the most shameless audacity of that compound of stupidity 
 
836 THE LIFE OF DANIEL 0'CONNELL."» 
 
 and slanderous villainy (produced from the crazed brain of a reverend 
 fox-hunter, and translated into better English by his coadjutor), The 
 Warder" and "that reservoir of baseness and calumny, in which truth 
 never appears but by accident, The Mail" to say that the Catholics 
 had, " in the slightest degree, been accessory to the failure of our gra- 
 cious monarch's blessed work of conciliation !" He would even appeal 
 to the "candor" of these "scribblers," if they could be supposed to 
 have any. He then compares the "stupidity" of the English press to 
 that of "the bird of night." The fox-hunting parson just alluded to 
 was no doubt the notorious Sir Harcourt Lees. Presently our hero calls 
 attention to a monstrous letter, written by ex- Attorney-General Saurin 
 to Lord Norbury, which had been found accidentally. O'Connell styles 
 it "this shameless and secret interference of a law-officer in the admin- 
 istration of justice." In the letter Saurin begs his "dear Norbury" to 
 "judiciously administer a little of this medicine" [certain threats that 
 they may lose their seats) "to the King's county and other members of 
 Parliament that may fall in his way." I may here turn aside to remark, 
 that this disclosure of his tampering with the independence of a judge 
 seriously injured Saurin. Lord Norbury was more lucky. The govern- 
 ment — Peel and Goulbourn, the Irish chief-secretary, especially — had 
 the effrontery to defend him from the charge of incompetency, when it 
 was brought against him, later. It was asserted that, at eighty years 
 of age, he was quite as fit to administer justice as at any former period 
 of his life. "That is perfectly true," said our hero, "because he was 
 not fit to administer justice at any time." At last O'Connell presented 
 a petition for his removal. It was entrusted to Mr. Scarlett, afterwards 
 Lord Abinger. He did not move on it, however, for Peel, who at bottom 
 was ashamed of Lord Norbury, promised that he would tiy and induce 
 that old judicial zany to retire voluntarily. Norbury, by shifts and 
 evasions, put off the evil day of giving up his "racket court" as long 
 as possible ; indeed, it was not till he saw George Canning rising to the 
 head of affairs that he felt his hour was come. Even then he contrived 
 to be raised to an earldom before he resigned his judicial seat in favor 
 of Plunket. O'Connell's exertions to get this bloodthirsty old buffoon 
 removed from the bench deserved the gratitude of his countrymen. It 
 is to a special commission of Norbury's that he alludes in his defence 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 837 
 
 of Magee, where he says, "Why, in one circuit, during the administra- 
 tion of the cold-hearted and cruel Camden, there were one hundred indi- 
 viduals tried before one judge ; of these ninety-eight were capitally con- 
 victed, and ninety-seven hanged! One escaped, but he was a soldier, 
 who murdered a peasant, or something of that trivial nature. Ninety- 
 seven victims in one circuit! ! /" Though Toler (Norbury) had not been 
 as yet elevated to the bench in '98, even then he was sometimes (I have 
 possibly said so before) put on the commission and went circuit in place 
 of one of the judges. 
 
 Eeturning to 0' Council's speech at this meeting of the 10th of May, 
 he expresses a qualified disapproval of the conduct of one of their Par- 
 liamentary advocates — the high-born English demagogue, Sir Francis 
 Burdett, whom he on another occasion styled "a faded and foolish gen- 
 tleman." He demanded, amid general and animated applause that 
 continued for several minutes, "And will you, my countrymen, submit 
 to this bartering of your privileges and liberties ? Will you, like torpid 
 slaves, lie under the lash of the oppressor ? If we are not free, let us 
 at least prove ourselves worthy of being so. Shall the interests of five 
 millions of men be left to the mere eleemosynary protection of their ad- 
 vocates in Parliament ? . . . Let it be, then, our care to attend to the 
 management of our local affairs. . . . These are the sentiments of an 
 humble, but ardent and faithful, Irishman, who, after twenty-three years' 
 exertions in his country's cause, finds her worse than when he commenced 
 his labors, but who, loving new-born freedom with more ardor than lover 
 ever doated upon his mistress, still clings to the hope of seeing his country 
 great, contented and free." [Loud and long-continued cheering.) 
 
 It was decided at this meeting, over which Lord Killeen presided, 
 that a Catholic association should at once be established. Accordingly, 
 the first formal meeting of this body, the real Association, took place at 
 Dempsey's Beef-steak Tavern, in Sackville street, afterwards known as 
 Tyrrell's Library, on the 12th of May, 1823, two days after the general 
 meeting. About fifty gentlemen paid instanter the subscription of one 
 guinea, which was made an indispensable qualification for acquiring 
 membership. Mr. Hugh O'Conner had proposed that it should be two 
 guineas, but was overruled. On the 13th, a committee, consisting of Lord 
 Fingal and others, was appointed to wait on the king with an address 
 
838 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 agreed to at the general meeting. At the meetings both of the 12th 
 and 13th, Lord Killeen, the eldest son of Lord Fingal, occupied the chair. 
 
 This nobleman, who possessed more than ordinary abilities, was free 
 from the prejudices and fears of the old earl, his father. He was also 
 superior to the habits of submission, which the penal oppression had 
 taught to most of the Catholic aristocracy. He had for some time 
 eagerly longed to join O'Connell in making another earnest effort to win 
 emancipation. His hearty co-operation with O'Connell gave good assur- 
 ance that the time had arrived when that combination of all sections of 
 Catholics in the struggle, which was the indispensable condition of suc- 
 cess, might be at length effected. The worthy example of Lord Killeen 
 was followed by other nobles. Soon the premier viscount of Ireland, 
 Lord Gorman stown, in spite of his retiring habits, emerged from the 
 seclusion of his woods near Balbriggan and joined the Association. The 
 earl of Kenmare, having an unconquerable dislike to appearing in public, 
 did not, indeed, join that body formally, but he sent in the authority of 
 his name and his subscription. The Catholic clergy, also, gradually 
 gave in their adhesion. The celebrated Dr. Doyle was the first bishop 
 who openly joined the Association. Before very long other prelates and 
 the great body of the clergy were enrolled members. The clergy felt 
 that the cause at issue was peculiarly their own ; that their interests 
 were specially involved in its fortunes. It is not surprising, then, to 
 find that the influence and efforts of the priests materially contributed 
 to the success of the final struggle for emancipation. In every parish 
 of Ireland "the rent," of which I shall presently speak, was collected 
 by the exercise of their personal influence over the people. 
 
 It was O'Connell who introduced the priesthood into the movement. 
 He did not succeed in doing so without encountering considerable oppo- 
 sition. Many advocates of the Catholic cause thought that the presence 
 of the sacerdotal body would hinder, rather than help, the progress of 
 the movement. But our hero insisted on having them. They were cit- 
 izens like other men. "We have a power," he said, "that has never yet 
 been called into the field, one that must coerce them" (the government) 
 "to do us justice, and that is the priesthood of Ireland. . . . Without 
 them we cannot succeed. To succeed we must have them with us, and 
 from this day forward." Again he said : "They were not only the nat- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 839 
 
 oral protectors of the people; the} r were the only persons who could 
 make them thoroughly sensible of the political degradation into which 
 the laity were plunged." Probably it would be correct to say that the 
 excessive political influence of the Catholic clergy in Ireland dates from 
 this period. Their community of sufferings and mutual fidelity, during 
 the penal laws, had drawn closer the ties that bound the priests and 
 people of Ireland together. After emancipation, the ambition of the 
 Catholic aristocracy and Catholic professional men and merchants being 
 satisfied, these classes, for the most part, stood aloof from the "repeal" 
 and other popular agitations. The priests, on the contrary, went with 
 the people, and, owing to this cause, their political influence was for a 
 time still further augmented. But since the death of O'Connell, and 
 the revival in Ireland of a national war-party and the '98 idea of total 
 separation from England, there has been less political accord and sym- 
 pathy between the majority of the priests and the people, and, conse- 
 quently, they have on various occasions, chiefly within the last thirteen 
 or fourteen years, met with signal failure in their attempts to exercise 
 over their flocks control in politics. At the same time the reverence for 
 the clergy in their sacerdotal capacity remains unshaken. I may here 
 add, in the words of O'Connell, at one of the meetings in 1823, that 
 "the clergy were members of the Association as a matter of right, and 
 without payment." 
 
 The progress of the Association was slow at first. Eichard Lalor 
 Shiel tells us, that "the Association, in its origin, was treated with con- 
 tempt, not only by its open adversaries, but Catholics themselves spoke 
 of it with derision, and spurned at the walls of mud which their breth- 
 ren had rapidly thrown up, which were afterwards to become altce mania 
 Romce" (the walls of lofty Rome). John O'Connell, when a boy, in 1823, 
 saw a meeting of the infant Association; he did not see another till 1829, 
 the year of its triumph. He says the contrast between the two meet- 
 ings was most striking. At the first, held in a narrow room, the returns 
 of money were scanty, the communications from the country few, the 
 business got through in a hasty, informal manner, the members "cap- 
 tious, uncertain, half-timid." At the second, held in the far more com- 
 modious Corn Exchange, you might see crowds filling to suffocation 
 room, passages, stairs and all, "the Catholic rent" pouring in by hun- 
 
840 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 dreds ; you might listen, with kindling eye and brain and heart, to a 
 succession of spirit-stirring letters from the country. The business was 
 conducted with gravity and due observance of forms, and the actors on 
 the scene were bold, enthusiastic, self-reliant. In the first of these years 
 the Association adjourned on the 12th of July, until November, after 
 O'Connell, speaking on a motion of thanks to that orator, had pro- 
 nounced a glowing eulogium on "the splendid and various talents" and 
 resistless eloquence of Henry Brougham, then the formidable popular 
 leader and friend of the Catholics in the House of Commons. O'Con- 
 nell's concluding words were, that, in any monument erected "to perpet- 
 uate the resurrection of Ireland . . . the first name written over the 
 altar of justice should be — ' Henry Brougham.' " 
 
 Shortly after this adjournment of the Catholic body, O'Connell, hav- 
 ing been set free from his forensic duties by the long vacation, found 
 himself at leisure to rejoin his family in France. From Tours, where 
 they had spent the winter, he brought them to Paris. After a sojourn 
 of several weeks in that gay and brilliant metropolis of France, lie 
 brought them, by Rouen and Havre, to Southampton, where they were 1o 
 stay for a few months. Late in October, he returned himself to Ireland, ac- 
 companied only by his son John, then on his way to the Jesuits' College, 
 at Clongowes. O'Connell was not one of those Irish Catholic snobs 
 who think it a fine thing to send their children to England to be edu- 
 cated. It would appear that their recollections of travel in company 
 with our hero were among the sunniest and most delightful memories 
 of his family. His tales of Ireland's ancient wrongs and woes, his 
 snatches of old song and his ballad recitations, his allusions to histor- 
 ical events, associated with the objects seen as they journeyed along, his 
 cheerfulness, his playful humor, parent of many a diverting jest, ren- 
 dered him one of the most entertaining travelling-companions in the 
 world. His son says that his gifts in this w r ay 
 
 " Cheered the rough road and made us wish it long." 
 
 It was in the year 1824 that the Catholic Association began to be 
 really formidable ; for it was then that O'Connell was able to realize his 
 long- cherished project of establishing "the Catholic rent," which had 
 hitherto been scoffed at as trifling, visionary and impracticable. So far 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 841 
 
 from being encouraged to proceed with his plan, obstacles had even been 
 thrown in his way. By a rule of the Association, if ten members were 
 not present on days of meeting at half-past three (the hour of meeting 
 was three o'clock p. m.), an adjournment should take place. In spite of 
 promises of faithful attendance, O'Connell was several times baffled in 
 his attempts to bring forward his project by adjournments in accordance 
 with this rule. It seemed at twenty-three minutes past three, on the 
 4th of February, 1824, as if the same thing were about to happen once 
 more. There were only seven members present. Nicholas Purcell 
 O'Gorman, who was then secretary, sat, in his usual fashion, watch in 
 hand, prepared to cry out, with inexorable punctuality, at half-past 
 three to the moment, and in stereotyped phraseology, "Gentlemen, it is 
 half-past three o'clock, and ten members not present; we must adjourn!" 
 There he sat quite unmoved by the anxiety visibly depicted on O'Con- 
 nell's face. A minute passed; our hero could "stand it" no longer. 
 Flinging down the Chronicle, which he had been glancing over, and 
 seizing his hat, he rushed out of the room. All present gazed at each 
 other in surprise. Was O'Connell at length tired out and disgusted with 
 the apathy of those with whom he was obliged to act ? Was he about 
 to abandon the struggle in despair? Meanwhile, going down the stairs 
 he met an eighth member ascending. Hurrying into Mr. Coyne's book- 
 shop (the meetings, since the establishment of the Association, had 
 been held in the house of Mr. Coyne, the Catholic bookseller, 4 Capel 
 street), he luckily found two young Maynooth priests, buying some 
 theological works before setting out for the parishes to which they had 
 been appointed. By the rule they were ex-qfficio members of the Asso- 
 ciation. Not without difficulty, O'Connell prevailed on these timid and 
 hesitating young men, who had just emerged from the seclusion of an 
 ecclesiastical seminary, and who were ignorant of current topics and 
 startled at the idea of taking part in a political meeting (nearly the 
 whole body of clergy at the time shrank nervously from putting them- 
 selves forward in politics), to help him out of his difficulty. However, 
 his earnestness and energy overcame their scruples. Partly by coaxing, 
 partly by actual pushing, he finally got them up-stairs and into the 
 room of the Association. He at once moved Mr. McDonnell (according 
 to Thomas Kennedy), William Coppinger of Cork (according to John 
 
842 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 O'Connell) into the chair. O'Gorman, seeing at a glance that the new- 
 comers were genuine members, was obliged to reopen his folio of "trans- 
 actions." A formal meeting commenced. Presently other members 
 came in, so that the two poor priests were at liberty to depart. O'Con- 
 nell, at a subsequent meeting, moved that the chair might be taken in 
 future at any hour between three and five o'clock, as soon as ten mem- 
 bers were assembled. This incident I have just related was the turning- 
 point in the fortunes of the Association. O'Connell more than once, in 
 after times, referred to it, when commencing movements with few ad- 
 herents and feeble resources, as an encouragement to "patience and 
 perseverance." 
 
 He now rose "to report from the committee, appointed to consider 
 the best means of increasing the funds" and strength of the Association. 
 He developed his plans in an able speech, and his motions were agreed 
 to. The proposal to establish the rent received the sanction of an ag- 
 gregate meeting, on Friday, the 27th of February, by a formal resolution 
 recommending it for general adoption throughout the country. The 
 sacred building (the old chapel in Townsend street) in which the meet- 
 ing took place was gloomy. At four o'clock the crowds in the aisle and 
 galleries completely shut out the last feeble rays of the wintry sun. A 
 solitary light placed on the secretary's desk only served to make "the 
 darkness visible." It was on this occasion that Richard Lalor Shiel's 
 shrill voice stirred the popular heart with that magnificent, but bitter, 
 outburst of rhetoric, afterwards published as the " Speech on Plato and 
 Dr. Magee," in which he so severely rebuked the unchristian-like bigotry 
 of that arrogant archbishop. The project of "the rent" was adopted. 
 Men all through the country could become "associates" by subscribing 
 one shilling, that might be paid in instalments — a farthing a week or a 
 penny a month, making a shilling in the year. The great difficulty was 
 how to collect this money. But all difficulties were surmounted by 
 O'Connell's energy and fertility of resources. He had now the vigor of 
 ten ordinary men ; he was full of rude health and activity, intellectual 
 and physical. During the greater portion of his career it was by no 
 means unusual with him to address at great length the same meeting 
 three or four times, or even oftener ; we have already seen instances of 
 this. In spite of his manifold occupations, professional and other, he 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. . 843 
 
 undertook to collect for his own parish ; he also let himself be appointed 
 "secretary for correspondence with the several parishes of Ireland, upon 
 the subject of subscriptions," with Mr. James Sugrue as his assistant- 
 secretary. But the priests were his greatest help in working his new 
 machinery. Their influence was brought to bear personally on the 
 people in every parish in Ireland. The popular element was now for 
 the first time really a directly-controlling power in the Catholic move- 
 ment. All the parts of the organization maintained a regular commu- 
 nication with the central body, the executive of which consisted of a 
 standing committee chosen from those members who paid one pound per 
 annum. These last were not required to pay any additional subscription 
 under the new arrangement. The experiment of collecting the rent was 
 first tried in the towns ; subsequently the system was introduced into 
 all the rural parishes. Nor was its success long a matter of doubt. At 
 first, indeed, every one was inclined to ridicule the idea. Friends as 
 well as enemies, Catholics as well as Protestants, scouted it as childish. 
 Even boys caught up this derisive incredulity of their elders. John 
 O'Connell, in his clumsy biography of his illustrious father, recalls the 
 fact that, in his boyhood, " he himself was for some time much jeered 
 at by several of his schoolfellows, for his father's ' penny-a-month plan 
 for liberating Ireland.' " 
 
 Soon, however, the mockers, old and young, of every class and creed, 
 were silenced. Friends were equally astonished and delighted, enemies 
 equally astonished and chagrined, or even alarmed. The sanguine mind 
 of O'Connell himself, in its soberer mood, in all probability, had hardly 
 anticipated the success that resulted from his project. Within two years 
 from its commencement, the sum of £500 a week, which represented 
 half a million of associates, was the average income arising from the 
 penny subscriptions. Previous to the establishment of the rent, the 
 Association had, indeed, debated on various questions of the day besides 
 emancipation — on Catholic chaplains of Newgate ; on church-rates ; on 
 the tithe-commutation bill ; on procuring Catholic burial-grounds — as, 
 in certain Protestant burial-grounds, bigoted Protestant ecclesiastics 
 had refused to allow Catholic clergymen to say prayers over Catholic 
 corpses. Thus Archbishop Magee, had he not shamefully expelled 
 priests from churchyards? This it was that had drawn forth Shiel's 
 
84-4 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 stinging satire in his splendid declamation " On Plato and Dr. Magee." 
 But now the deliberations of the Association on these and other subjects 
 were regarded as something more than idle breath. They carried weight 
 as the utterances of the leaders of a formidable organization. "The 
 monthly Catholic rent," a phenomenon the like of which had not been 
 seen in the political world before, quickly made the Association a power 
 that startled the ministers of the Crown. Probably the more far-seeing 
 members of the cabinet began to feel the conviction that emancipation 
 was now only a question of time. O'Connell had proposed to allocate 
 the funds accruing from the rent to five purposes in particular — 1st, to 
 meet Parliamentary expenses ; 2dly, for the services of the press ; 3dly, 
 for law proceedings, in preserving the legal privileges of the Catholics, 
 and prosecuting Oranges aggressors ; 4thly, for the purpose of education 
 for the Catholic poor ; 5thly, for educating Catholic priests for the ser- 
 vice of America. The daily increasing funds of the Association seemed 
 likely to prove adequate to the accomplishment of these and various 
 other objects. 
 
 In truth, O'Connell with his able lieutenants, Shiel, Wyse, O'Gorman 
 and many others, once the "rent" was established, speedily made the 
 new body, not merely a training-school to fill the people's minds with 
 the principles of Irish nationality, but in some sort a national govern- 
 ment. The peasantry were now thoroughly interested in the movement. 
 Their complaints were heard, protection was promised, by the Associa- 
 tion. The Ascendency magistrates in rural places were wrathful and 
 alarmed when the clever barristers of the Association would go down to 
 watch and curb their proceedings. " I do not think," said Major War- 
 burton, a police-magistrate, before a committee of the Commons, "any 
 system of government could be more complete in carrying on communi- 
 cation from heads to inferiors." This feature of the society, he thought, 
 made it dangerous. Again he says: "The Catholic Association pro- 
 duced the tranquillity of the country in combination with the clergy." 
 He even considered that the Association added to the control of the 
 priests. 
 
 The Catholic Association had more or less resemblance to the other 
 political societies which O'Connell called into existence in the course of 
 his long career. However, in one point it was more like the Repeal As- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 845 
 
 sociation than it was to the Catholic Committee or Board. O'Cormell 
 said, in originating it, that "the verdict in the case of Downes precluded 
 all delegation' 1 '' (the Convention Act still haunted him) ; "all former plans 
 were, therefore, impracticable ; a new principle — -that of an open club 
 without canvass or ballot, the members admissible on the verbal prop- 
 osition of a friend — should be adopted." The regular meetings were 
 weekly, each Saturday. The business was to read correspondence, to 
 decide on petitions, to perfect organization and to debate in a practical 
 style questions bearing on the cause. Of this work, but especially of 
 the debating, our indefatigable hero had the lion's share from the very 
 foundation of the body to its dissolution. His energy burned without 
 consuming itself, like the unwearying blaze kindled on the crest of 
 Homer's Diomede by Minerva. As usual, he was against all religious 
 exclusiveness. When iEneas McDonnell and others, on grounds more 
 or less plausible, "contended against Protestants having a deliberate 
 voice" in the Association, he insisted that, as they were to receive their 
 emancipation from Protestants, no one could be "more capable of dis- 
 cussing and advising the means for obtaining it than a Protestant." 
 Protestants, also, might be simple spectators of their meetings (Catholics 
 could not) without subscribing. 
 
 Sometimes he dwells on the advantages France would have in a war 
 with Britain. On one occasion he adds : "But with such facilities and pow- 
 erful means, and having previously secured the alliance of Marshal Rock, 
 she might, on a landing at Bantry Bay, prove an infinitely more formidable 
 enemy than ministers appeared to think." Another day, when the chair 
 was filled by Counsellor Fitzsimon — I presume the gentleman who after- 
 wards became his son-in-law — we find our hero relating of Sir Harcourt 
 Lees that, when one Cole, a Catholic, died, just as he had made good his 
 claim to the freedom of the city, the reverend and half-lunatic baronet " an- 
 nounced in his paper, that Providence had specially interfered to preserve 
 the corporation from the contamination of Popery by the admission of a 
 Catholic among them." Another time he jocularly promises, as one of the 
 leaders of his clan, to present the Milesian prefix or "distinction of 0'," 
 to one Connell, "upon his being made free of the city." More than once 
 he lashes the an ti -Catholic press, British and Irish — Blackwood's Maga- 
 zine, John Bull, also " the journal of Sir Harcourt Lees, who resembled a 
 
846 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 bottle of soda-water, lively and brisk, without spirit," The Mail and 
 others. The last-named journal had accused him of want of courage. 
 He says, " But would to God The Mail had more cause to taunt me with 
 that failing." By the way, N. P. Willis, in his " Pencillings," asserted 
 that he had the authority of Thomas Moore for saying that O'Connell 
 was a coward. I hardly believe Willis's statement. If, however, Moore 
 really said that O'Connell was a coward, he simply said what was excess- 
 ively foolish and unfounded. 
 
 In the meetings, held at the time that " the monthly emancipation 
 rent" (for so the "Catholic rent" was also called) was established, we 
 find him mingling the lightest anecdotes and jests with serious business. 
 Thus he tells how the Odd-Fellows drubbed a man, who " reminded them 
 that before they appointed a treasurer they should first have a treasury, 
 . . . for being an odd fellow amongst them, as he was the only one that 
 had common sense. Now," adds Dan, "if Mr. O'Gorman were amongst 
 the Odd-Fellows, he would be quite at home." It may be interesting, 
 as showing how numerically weak the Association was when the rent 
 was established, to record that the numbers at this meeting (held on the 
 21st of February, 1824), who voted for the printing of the report recom- 
 mending the "rent," were twenty-one; those against it four, amongst 
 whom, apparently, was Nicholas Mahon. At the aggregate meeting of 
 February the 27th, already referred to, where a petition to Parliament 
 was adopted, O'Connell said : " Emancipation might be attained by two 
 means ; first, by external means, in which he included the apprehension 
 of war and the effect of foreign policy upon domestic legislation ; sec- 
 ondly, by internal wisdom," etc. In his speech on this occasion he glo- 
 rifies and blesses rapturously America for her revolt against England : 
 "Oh, it was a glorious sight to see them" [the colonists) "in open battle 
 contending for their liberties!" He shows how fear of war always 
 makes England yield to Ireland's demands ; how, on the other hand, in 
 her day of triumph, she refuses the slightest concession. He praises 
 the Jesuits and the eagle-eyed penetration of Brougham, with whom he 
 lived to quarrel bitterly, and abuses the Orangemen, in whose acts "the 
 spirit of the deceased dog Jack Giffard survived." 
 
 The "rent" being once established, it became easier everyday for 
 O'Connell and his fellow-agitatui s to diffuse national sentiments 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 847 
 
 through the length and breadth of the island. Publications in aid of the 
 cause were disseminated. The sum of £5000 was devoted to provide 
 schools for children. Reading-rooms were gradually established in the 
 country parishes, and in these local meetings were held ; everywhere the 
 people were alive and active in the good work. Possibly some impulse 
 had been given to the Irish by the tidings of the decisive successes 
 which, towards the close of 1823, had secured for the revolted Spanish 
 colonies of South America their independence. As for O'Connell, he 
 now even conceived the idea of purchasing seats in Parliament. "The 
 nabob of Arcot," he said, "had at one time five borough-seats in the 
 House, and what was practicable to him, is so to others." He also 
 thought that the Catholics should have a Parliamentary agent in London 
 to watch their interests. He thought £45,000 a year would suffice to 
 meet the intended expenditure. He calculated on the rent bringing in 
 £50,000. He intended that the surplus of £5000 should be allowed to 
 accumulate, and then the increased sum be applied to the purchase of 
 farms and the building of glebe-houses for the Catholic priests. This 
 was, no doubt, one of the happiest periods of O'Connell's life. He had 
 surmounted a long series of difficulties, and Hope at length smiled upon 
 his designs. His family, too, were with him again. Towards the end 
 of January he had gone over for a few days to England to bring them 
 home. Speaking of this period of radiant promise, Fagan says : " The 
 moment he organized the Catholic rent — the moment he made every 
 shilling received by the Association represent a man — the moment the 
 voice of millions spoke through the weekly contributions to its treasury 
 — the moment the public opinion of Ireland became concentrated in the 
 Association, the days of religious intolerance and Protestant ascendency 
 were numbered, and the triumph of conscience secured. This was done 
 in 1824; and, therefore, we look upon that year as the one of O'Connell's 
 crowning glory." " It is difficult to paint to a stranger," says Wyse, "it 
 is unnecessary to paint to a witness, the spirit of extraordinary enthu- 
 siasm which burst forth at that period through all Ireland. . . . The 
 right path to emancipation was discerned. The days of '82 seemed 
 returning with a brighter radiance on the nation." 
 
 If the progress of the Association vexed and startled the government 
 and the Ascendency faction, hardly less were they alarmed by the bold 
 
 54 
 
848 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 writings of the learned and eloquent Dr. Doyle. Even certain of the 
 Maynooth professors opened their eyes at his daring doctrines. Speak- 
 ing of the possibility of a rebellion and a French invasion, he writes 
 thus: "The minister of England cannot look to the exertions of the 
 Catholic priesthood. They have been ill-treated, and they may yield for 
 a moment to the influence of nature, though it be opposed to grace. 
 The clergy, with a few exceptions, are from the ranks of the people; 
 they inherit their feelings ; they are not, as formerly, brought up under 
 despotic governments ; and they have imbibed the doctrines of Locke 
 and Paley more deeply than those of Bellarmine, or even of Bossuet on 
 the divine right of kings. They know much more of the principles of 
 the constitution than they do of passive obedience. If a rebellion were 
 raging from Carrickfergus to Cape Clear, no sentence of excommunication 
 would ever be fulminated by a Catholic prelate." A protest against Dr. 
 Doyle's manly doctrines was signed by live Maynooth professors. It was 
 said that Lord Wellesley applied to Maynooth for it. Be that as it may, 
 it was got up by two old French doctors of the Sorbonne, men of the old 
 regime, who, as Shiel says, "with a good deal of learning imported into 
 Ireland a strong relish for submission." This " Sorbonne Manifesto," as 
 it was nicknamed, was disapproved of by Dr. Crotty, president of May- 
 nooth, and the students. Indeed, it was laughed at by the Irish priest- 
 hood in general. Dr. Murray, archbishop of Dublin, not merely joined 
 the Association, but said in Marlborough Street Cathedral, "The con- 
 templation of the wrongs of my country makes my soul burn within me." 
 Meanwhile, the Dissenters were not hostile to the Catholic cause. 
 Many of the most enlightened of them warmly sympathized with their 
 oppressed countrymen. O'Connell had often pointed out that the de- 
 struction of the remaining penal laws, which insulted and oppressed his 
 co-religionists, would involve their relief also from such penal laws as 
 still injured them. Irish Catholics and Dissenters united could easily 
 put an end to tithes, church-rates, ministers' money and the other extor- 
 tions of the Church by law established. The English reformers, too, and 
 the vigorous writers who advocated their cause, gave potent aid to the 
 Catholic movement. "Indeed," says Mr. Mitchel, "during this whole 
 controversy nothing was more observable than the literary superiority 
 of the advocates of the Catholics, and the utter nullity of anything 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 849 
 
 which was attempted on the other side, in the shape either of argument 
 or satire. Most of the wisest and wittiest pens of the two islands were 
 wielded in favor of emancipation. Trenchant reasoning from Jeffrey, in 
 the Edinburgh Review; the piquant humor of Sidney Smith, in 'Peter 
 Plymley's Letters ' ; the brawny might of William Cobbett, who, wher- 
 ever tyranny and intolerance showed their head, smote it amain with 
 his knotted club ; the exquisite satire of Moore, like a rapier of the finest 
 edge, that cut clean and drew blood, and often with the lightest and most 
 graceful movement, as if in play, searched the very vitals of some villain in 
 high places, and made him howl; Shiel's brilliant shafts of wit, shot from 
 the Neiv Monthly Magazine— ■&& these were aimed at the monster called 
 Protestant Ascendency in Church and State, and there was nothing of 
 the kind to oppose them — nothing but the raving letters of Sir Harcourt 
 Lees and his friends, or the bitter spite of the Tories in Blackwoo ■ and 
 Frazer and the Quarterly. ." 
 
 Probably, too, all this intemperance and fury of the Orange party at 
 the progress of the Association and the Catholics ; these insane dreams 
 and prophesyings of Sir Harcourt Lees ; the curses of the other Ascend- 
 ency fanatics; their absurd petitions to Parliament "to put down 
 Popery"; their grotesque uniting in one group, as the arch-enemies of 
 Protestantism, of O'Connell, the pope and the devil — upon the whole 
 only tended to serve the Catholic cause by rendering its enemies at once 
 ridiculous and loathsome. The maniac Lees went so far, about this time, 
 as to recommend "a great military confederation" of the Protestants of 
 Ulster, and to say that he would "pass in review the entire Protestant 
 force" of that province; to talk also "of protecting the island for his 
 venerated sovereign" and to style himself the "acknowledged protector" 
 of the Protestants. He defies at the same time "the infatuated and 
 ignorant cabal of His Majesty's cabinet." 
 
 Shortly after the establishment of "the Catholic rent," the Morning 
 Register was founded by Michael Staunton, to advocate the principles of 
 the Association. The Weekly Register had been already in existence. 
 The new morning paper, by its rivalry, forced other journals of a waver- 
 ing character to bid for continued circulation by a more steady and con- 
 sistent support of the people's cause. It is stated that "The Register 
 was the first Irish paper which maintained a regular staff of professional 
 
850 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 reporters." Other papers followed its example in this respect. O'Con- 
 nell not merely kept a careful eye on the Dublin journals, but he spoke 
 even of influencing the London press. Referring to the Scotchman who 
 then edited the Morning Chronicle (that paper had passed from the 
 hands of the well-known Mr. Perry, who had effectually supported the 
 Catholics), our hero says : " Now a few pounds sterling might have a 
 great effect upon a sour Scotch sectarian." With respect to the Register, 
 I may as well add that, though for a number of years it was a favorite 
 journal with a large portion of the national party, it is now, and has 
 been for many a year, defunct, while the Dublin Evening Post, the Free- 
 man's Journal, and the bigoted Evening Mail — all papers in existence 
 long before its first number came out — are still alive, if not very merry. 
 I snail also observe here, that among the names of the literary defenders 
 of the Catholic cause, which deserve to be held in grateful remembrance 
 by the Irish people, those of that remarkably clever Connaught-woman, 
 the Protestant Lady Morgan, and the talented Catholic poet of Wexford, 
 Thomas Furlong, stand forth conspicuously. Probably, however, no 
 literary work did better service to the cause than Moore's "Captain 
 Rock," with its wit and learning, which appeared in the year 1824. 
 
 Before specially noticing, in a rapid summary, the more important 
 incidents connected with O'ConnelFs biography and the Catholic cause, 
 that occurred in the years between 1823 and the Clare election, I shall 
 bring together into a few pages the principal subjects handled by O'Con- 
 nell in the Association during the year 1824, in order that the reader 
 may see at a single glance, as it were, the nature of his work in that 
 body. We find him on various occasions, this year, defending himself 
 against barefaced slanders ; for example, he is absurdly charged by the 
 Correspondent with exciting the people, in a speech on the burial bill, to 
 assassinate Archbishop Magee. The Courier also took up this calumny. 
 O'Connell showed that he ridiculed the idea of the archbishop's being 
 in any danger of assassination. He refutes a statement that Counsellor 
 Stephen Coppinger had brought an action against John Magee. We 
 have already seen that it was quite another Coppinger who sought dam- 
 ages for libel from that unfortunate journalist. He also shows the false- 
 ness of a statement made "with great confidence, that Mr. Magee was 
 left to pay £500 damages and costs upon that occasion." The damages 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 851 
 
 really amounted to only £60, making with costs £140; and O'Connell 
 had negotiated between Magee and the real defendant, arranging the mat- 
 ter so that the former "never had occasion to pay one penny on account 
 of that verdict." He refutes certain other black charges made by the 
 Correspondent and Evening Mail — 1st. " That a person named Harding 
 Tracy had him completely in his power; that he knew, and could prove, 
 him to be the author of the publication for which he was prosecuted ; 
 that he destroyed the manuscript at his" (O'ConneWs) "request; and 
 that he" [Tracy] "afterwards procured a part of that mcmuscript ! ! that 
 Tracy . . . refused to betray him, although earnestly requested by gov- 
 ernment to do so." 2d. " That Tracy lay in prison couched on straw, 
 and was left to starve in the society of felons." 3d. " That Tracy's wife 
 and family were left to starve whilst he was in prison." 4th. " That he" 
 (Tracy) "got an illness in prison of which he died." O'Connell, at great 
 length, successfully combats all these vile calumnies. Tracy was the 
 printer of the Cork Chronicle. Saurin had prosecuted him in the hope 
 of tracing the manuscript to O'Connell. Tracy, on being sentenced, had 
 applied to government for pardon, and, O'Connell tells us, had made three 
 affidavits to the effect that he "could not give any information of the 
 person who supplied the speech," and "that to his knowledge, he" (Mr. 
 O'Connell) "had no connection with the publication." He was finally 
 discharged. O'Connell reasonably asks, Was all this consistent with 
 the story of his having so "romantically and heroically" refused to give 
 up the manuscript? and acids, that "party spirit should not carry men" 
 to such a "monstrous length beyond truth, with the view of defamation." 
 Our hero next states, that, while Tracy was imprisoned, "he" (O'Con- 
 nell) "paid forty shillings a week for his board at the same table with 
 Mr. JEneas McDonnell ; and he shared the same bottle and table with 
 that respectable gentleman, at his expense, though Dr. England said he 
 should not do so." The fact that O'Connell supported him was con- 
 cealed even from Tracy himself, lest Saurin should learn it, and keep 
 Tracy in to punish O'Connell. iEneas McDonnell, to whom O'Connell 
 had paid the money for Tracy's support, could prove all this. As for the 
 printer's wife and family, Dr. England had made provision that Mrs. 
 Tracy should receive "the full wages to which her husband would have 
 been entitled if at work." With regard to Tracy's death, " it had not 
 
852 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 taken place " for seven years after he was imprisoned, and then it was 
 not from an illness contracted in prison, but from a sore throat." Dur- 
 ing the last seven years of his life he had never once complained of 
 having been neglected by O'Connell. On several occasions, distinctly 
 stating "that he had no claim on him," he had asked O'Connell for 
 sums of money — once for five guineas — and with these requests our 
 hero had always complied. O'Connell was able to produce Tracy's 
 letters and receipts. A very crowded meeting of the Association, hav- 
 ing listened to this explanation attentively, greeted O'Connell with 
 general and hearty applause. 
 
 I have noticed these slanders to give the reader a specimen of the 
 sort of thing that caused O'Connell to speak so bitterly years after, in 
 his famous letter to Lord Shrewsbury, of the hideous calumnies which 
 he was constantly forced to endure. In reply to the earl's ungenerous 
 insinuation, that O'Connell kept up agitation "to augment the rent" or 
 tribute, which the people paid him annually after the achievement of 
 emancipation, O'Connell proudly enumerates the services and sacrifices 
 which he thinks constitute his just claim to it; he thus describes what 
 he deems the greatest trial he has to endure for Ireland : " Still there 
 lingers behind one source of vexation and sorrow ; one evil perhaps 
 greater than all the rest; one claim, I believe, higher than any other 
 upon the gratitude of my countrymen. It consists in the bitter, the 
 virulent, the mercenary, and, therefore, the more envenomed, hostility 
 towards me, which my love for Ireland and for liberty has provoked. 
 What taunts, what reproaches, what calumnies, have I not sustained? 
 What modes of abuse ! what vituperation, what slander have been ex- 
 hausted against me! what vials of bitterness have been poured on 
 my head ! what coarseness of language has not been used, abused and 
 worn out in assailing me? What derogatory appellation has been 
 spared ? What treasures of malevolence have been expended ? What 
 follies have not been imputed, in fact what crimes have I not been 
 charged with ? 
 
 " I do not believe that I ever had in private life an enemy. I know 
 that I had and have many, very many,, warm, cordial, affectionate, at- 
 tached friends. Yet here I stand, beyond controversy the most and the 
 best abused man in the universal world ! And, to cap the climax of 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 853 
 
 calumny, you come with a lath at your side instead of the sword of a 
 Talbot, and you throw Peel's scurrility along with your own into my cup 
 of bitterness. 
 
 "All this have I done and suffered for Ireland. And let her be 
 grateful or ungrateful, solvent or insolvent, he who insults me for taking 
 her pay, wants the vulgar elements of morality which teach that the 
 laborer is worthy of his hire; he wants the higher sensations of the 
 soul, which enable one to perceive that there are services which bear no 
 comparison with money, and can never be recompensed by pecuniary 
 rewards. 
 
 " Yes, I am — I say it proudly — I am the hired servant of Ireland ; 
 and I glory in my servitude." 
 
 O'Connell busies himself in defending the Irish Catholic schools 
 against certain foul misrepresentations of their system of training, ut- 
 tered at meetings of the Warwickshire Bible Society, in Birmingham, 
 under the presidency of that bigoted Irishman, the late earl of Roden. 
 He shows the earl's want of fair play in not allowing an English priest 
 to speak in reply to the charges. This had disgusted even an anti- 
 Catholic Dissenter. He also suggests that Dr. Doyle and other Irish 
 ecclesiastics ought to make a tour through England to solicit " subscrip- 
 tions for really instructing the Irish poor" and to disabuse the English 
 of their anti-Irish prejudices. He says that "the darkest recesses of 
 the most depraved, malignant and infuriated minds seem to have been 
 sedulously ransacked in order to supply a sufficient store of filth and 
 abominable falsehood for the gang of itinerant defamers who are now 
 employed in traversing England to raise subscriptions for those whom 
 they style the benighted, deluded and uncivilized Irish." We find him 
 also denouncing the mendacious Times for stating "that Lord Eedesdale 
 had mentioned, during a debate in the House of Lords, that he had been 
 once threatened with assassination in Dublin," and that the merit of 
 such an act had been "urged from the altar of one of the Catholic 
 chapels of Dublin." O'Connell insists that the statement of the Times 
 is, for many reasons, incredible ; above all, it is incompatible with things 
 both said and written by Lord Redesdale ; that ex-chancellor had re- 
 gretted "being obliged to leave Ireland," thought his removal an act of 
 ill-usage, and had then "passed an eulogium" upon the Irish people, 
 
854 THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 O'Connell caused a letter to be read "from his lordship to a Catholic 
 clergyman, acknowledging some restitution-money transmitted from a 
 penitent of the clergyman's. The letter was very courteous in tone and 
 manner." He also moved that a petition should be prepared by Coun- 
 sellor John Brie challenging inquiry into this calumny. 
 
 It is not surprising that we find O'Connell this year, 1824, frequent 
 in his denunciations of the unprincipled and venal journals of Dublin 
 and London. He describes the claims of several of the newspapers on 
 the Association as having "no just foundation." He speaks of "the 
 base Dublin press" having turned "upon him and all the honest Cath- 
 olics for pursuing the same measures that are now approved of; but in 
 spite of that vile press he now held up his head too high, and enjoyed 
 too much the confidence and consideration of the public, to be affected 
 by their envious rancor or impotent malignity." Towards the end of 
 the year (on the 16th of December), he makes another onslaught on the 
 press. Something he was alleged to have said, on this occasion, about 
 the South American liberator, Bolivar, caused the authorities to take a 
 step to which I shall refer presently. On this day, too, he asserted a 
 second time — in noticing a. boast made by the London Courier, "that 
 polluted vehicle of falsehood and calumny," to the effect "that all the 
 generals of the British army were Protestants" — that "when Maria 
 Theresa instituted the Order of the Cross of military merit in Austria, 
 of the first fifty individuals who were promoted to that honor, forty-two 
 were Irish Catholics." He pledged himself to procure their names, and 
 added : " The proportion of Irishmen in the Austrian service could not, 
 of course, have been more than as one to three hundred, and yet we find 
 forty-two out of fifty whose merit was rewarded with a signal promotion 
 to be Irishmen. He" (Mr. O'Connell) "had no fewer than six relatives 
 who had attained the rank of general in foreign armies. His father's 
 cousin was governor of Prague and chamberlain to the emperor of 
 Austria." This fact greatly astounded the German tourist, Prince 
 Puckler-Muskau. "His uncle had" (before the Revolution) "been a gen- 
 eral in the French service. But such had been the good effects even of 
 the partial relaxation of the penal code, that of thirty-seven relatives of his, 
 within the degree of second cousin, who, before the Kevolution, had been 
 in the French service, not one was now in any foreign army" (mores the 
 
HI ' 
 
Enfd accord's to act o/Congress % in the year 1868, by T. Farrett $- Son, in the cleric's office of the dist. court of the U. S.for the south, dit>t. ofN. Y 
 
 HOMEWAED BOUND. 
 
 THE RETURN OF THE IRISH EXILE. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 855 
 
 pity), "but many had perished in securing the triumphs and establish- 
 ing the glory of the Wellingtons and the Packs." They deserved no 
 better luck. It appears the meeting was foolish enough to cheer this 
 last sentence. In a second speech, delivered by him on this occasion, 
 our hero sneers at the hypocrisy of the Northern Whig, a Belfast paper. 
 He jests upon its management by three Presbyterian parsons, "who 
 borrow, as far as I can understand, their best inspirations from 'moun- 
 tain dew,' known by the vulgar appellation of 'pot teen.'" [Loud 
 laughter.) He differs from his friend Lawless about the liberality of 
 Belfast, which, he says, "is affected." He denies that it was in Belfast 
 that Catholics were first allowed to join volunteer corps. " I totally deny 
 my worthy friend's" [Lawless 's) "history; Catholics formed the majority, 
 and in some instances the entire, of several volunteer corps in the South, 
 before they were allowed to join a single corps in the North. In Con- 
 naught the distinction never existed ; and even in Dublin, at the boasted 
 period of northern liberality, there was an entire corps of Catholics, 
 called the Irish Brigade, under, by the way, the present illustrious head 
 of the Irish government, the Marquis Wellesley." {Cheers.) O'Connell 
 is, perhaps, somewhat too bitter against Belfast in this address. He 
 will not admit that the support of Lawless's paper, The Irishman, by 
 that town is any "mighty proof of Belfast liberality." Why did the 
 liberals of Belfast let that honest Deny journal, the Ulster Recorder, 
 perish? "Even admitting that some creditable things are to be told of 
 the Dissenters who nourished in Belfast in the Augustan days of Ireland, 
 does that show that its people of the present time are any better than 
 mere pretenders to liberality?" As well might Solicitor-General Joy 
 claim credit for liberality because his father and uncle were United 
 Irishmen. O'Connell might have added that Henry Joy McCracken, 
 who, in '98, commanded the rebels at the battle of Antrim, and was 
 hung shortly after, was Joy's first cousin. In this speech our hero calls 
 Wolfe Tone "the classic, the elegant and the ill-fated Tone." 
 
 He next speaks of petitions to Parliament. A great one, with a 
 million of names, is being prepared. He says, amid great laughter, 
 "There will have to be a wagon hired to carry it from the Tower wharf 
 to Parliament, for the earl of Donoughmore, in the House of Lords, and 
 Sir Francis Burdett, in the House of Commons. They should petition, 
 
856 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 also, against the building of Protestant churches at the expense of Cath- 
 olics. Two or three Protestants in a parish, by applying to the Board 
 of First-fruits, could get a sum to build a church, to be levied off the 
 parishioners. Then they should petition, "praying to be exempted from 
 the payment of tithes and building and repairing of churches," where 
 there are no Protestants. • Here the meeting seemed to be amused. 
 " There will be a petition on the subject of church-wardens ; the law on 
 that head in Ireland is a frightful anomaly — a Catholic is made to fill, 
 but cannot vote for, the office of church-warden. 
 
 " In England, the Dissenters and Jews are exempted from serving 
 the office. None fill the office without taking an oath which the Cath- 
 olics cannot take. The oath binds him to attend divine service, to pro- 
 vide bread, etc., for the communion-table, and generally to see that 
 things are kept in order at divine service ; two or three Protestants, 
 with the concurrence of the minister, may, perhaps, in spite, elect him 
 church-warden ; his conscience will not allow him to act, yet he is held 
 responsible. What will the English people say to this ? Will they not 
 be astonished? and will they not applaud the Association for their 
 struggles to see justice done to a suffering people?" Here O'Connell 
 seems for the moment strangely credulous in his ideas of British sense 
 of justice towards the Irish people. 
 
 He returns to the press. Again he lashes the Courier. He suspects 
 that the assailant of Ireland in that journal is " some renegade Irish- 
 man." He cannot express his "detestation and horror" of this scrib- 
 bler. He is a traduccr of the "defenceless female" and "the virtuous 
 priest. Wherever he went, his track could be traced by the slime of 
 slander which he left behind him." (Cheers.) O'Connell defends the 
 priests against the attacks of this anonymous scribe : " They did not 
 delight, with a morbid appetite for all that was degrading and disgust- 
 ing, to gloat over the transcendent turpitude of the mitred monster, nor 
 over the skibbereen pastor; they did not seek, curiously, to inquire what 
 most powerful cause could induce a parson to give up £1500 a year, 
 but they very well knew it was not a desire to abstain from the comforts 
 and conveniences of life" (cheers) ; "they very well knew it was not a wish 
 to live like an anchorite. All he would say was, that there was a most 
 potent cause for all this, but he would not pollute his lips, nor horrify 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 857 
 
 his hearers, by more than distantly alluding to that cause, and he de- 
 sired it to be understood that the skibbereen parsons owed much to their 
 forbearance." However, he does not think all papers as bad as the 
 Courier. He praises the Dublin Evening Post, then edited by the late 
 Frederick William Conway, who, at a later period, became its proprietor. 
 Conway, though then a Protestant, had been for a time one of the sec- 
 retaries of the Catholic Association. Some London journals, too, are 
 commended warmly, as deserving the gratitude of the Catholic body. 
 The British Traveller, The Morning Chronicle (he had some time pre- 
 viously regretted the death of its former proprietor, Perry) and The 
 Examiner are friendly, honest and talented. In his latter years, indeed, 
 he retracted his good opinion of the last-named journal and denounced 
 its editor as "the miscreant of the Examiner." John O'Connell conjec- 
 tures that the attacks on O'Connell and the Eepeal cause, which pro- 
 voked this retaliation on the Examiner, were caused by some censures 
 that had been uttered by our hero "on the malpractices of a person con- 
 nected by family with the leading writer" [Albany Fonblanqite, I suppose) 
 of that clever paper. In this sharp review of the press, as it existed in 
 1821, O'Connell, comparing the anti-Catholic journals of London and 
 Dublin, observes: "Bad as the London prints are. they have, however, 
 some taste for decency; they do not, in general, outrage every social 
 feeling, like The Mail and Star, of Dublin." 
 
 In this year, 1824, we find O'Connell announcing the co-operation 
 of various charitable and religious societies of Dublin with the Associa- 
 tion. Forty-eight collectors of such societies volunteered to assist in 
 collecting the rent under the superintendence of the clergy. We find 
 him protesting against an increased grant to the Kildare street society; 
 moving that Mr. Plunket should, in spite of his doubts of the utility 
 of then doing so, be requested to urge the Catholic claims in Parliament; 
 taking the Irish Quakers to task for their inconsistency in petitioning 
 "for the relief of the West India slaves," while they remained "utterly 
 regardless of the most miserable condition of the wretched bondsmen 
 of their own country." Some of the Irish Quakers, when pressed hard 
 to imitate the more liberal example of their English brethren, would 
 fain have excused their indifference by saying "they were no politicians." 
 O'Connell held this plea in light account, for it was his maxim that "the 
 
 & 
 
858 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 man who says lie has no politics generally contrives to act in accordance 
 with the worst." On the whole, however, O'Connell had great respect 
 for the Society of Friends. Indeed, my late friend, Father Kenyon, and 
 other leaders of the Young Ireland party, condemned his latter-day pol- 
 icy as savoring of "fat, sensual Quakerism." O'Connell also recom- 
 mends that Lord Grey and Mr. Brougham should be made to understand 
 that the Catholics intended their petition should pray "for a reformation 
 in the temporalities of the Church establishment in Ireland ; . . . for 
 the better regulation of juries; . . . the disfranchisement of the exist- 
 ing rotten borough corporations," as well as "for the removal of the dis- 
 qualifications to which Catholics are now subject;" though the above- 
 named senatorial patrons of the Catholic cause, at this time, only agreed 
 with the last prayer (regretting that the Catholics had increased their 
 demands), and refused to support the other parts of the petition. 
 
 Our hero's attention is also occupied by recent Orange riots and 
 murders in the county Fermanagh, and he busies himself in getting up 
 petitions for the disarming of Orangemen. Strange to say, considering 
 the High-Tory politics of Mr. Blackburn, he approves of that celebrated 
 lawyer's appointment by the marquis of Wellesley "to conduct the Fer- 
 managh inquiry." He considers "that gentleman's conduct most satis- 
 factory to the public, serviceable to the government and creditable to 
 himself." He denounces the Kibbonmen, and writes an argumentative 
 address to the people of Ireland "against Ribbonism, Whiteboyism and 
 other unlawful societies." He speaks with natural indignation of a 
 " murder by the police in Mcath." Various other subjects employ his 
 energies. He takes Goulburn, the chief secretary for Ireland, to task 
 for his false boast that appointments, to the value of £3000 per annum, 
 had been bestowed, under Lord Wellesley's government, upon Catholic 
 barristers. It was true that Mr. Blake, an Irish member of the English 
 bar and the marquis's friend, had received an appointment worth that 
 amount, but, in the words of O'Connell's resolution, " since the Catholic 
 barristers had become eligible to many offices, not one" [of the Irish bar) 
 'had been appointed by the government." Another day, pursuant to 
 notice, our hero moves "a resolution thanking Dr. Doyle for his letter 
 upon the union of churches," and compares that learned prelate to the 
 illustrious archbishop of Cambray, Fenelon. We find him properly 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 859 
 
 recommending the Association not to notice or trouble themselves with 
 anonymous letters, pretending to narrate tales of Catholic grievances in 
 the North. He says, amusingly enough, that he "himself would be 
 almost mined in postage charges, by anonymous letters, if the author- 
 ities at the post-office had not been so considerate as to take them off 
 his hands. These letters conveyed plenty of abuse and threats of all 
 kinds. Indeed, he had recently received no less than twelve letters, 
 intimating to him that he might soon expect the favor of having his 
 throat cut by the Orangemen." {Laughter.) Here a voice from behind 
 our hero exclaimed, unmeaningly or oddly, "And they are the only 
 people who would take your part.'' Upon which Dan cries out, "Heaven 
 protect me from them, at any rate. I would be sorry to try them!" 
 [Lawjhter.) 
 
 As we are on the subject of letters, I may as well pause here to say, 
 that O'Connell was continually bored by queer letters on the most ridic- 
 ulously trivial subjects. Doubtless the patience of most public characters 
 is sorely tried b} r absurd correspondents. One day a letter addressed to 
 him arrived from New York. As he did not remember having any cor- 
 respondent in that city whose communication could be worth the postage, 
 he was about to return the letter unopened. Curiosity, however, got the 
 better of this wise intention. He was rewarded by finding that the 
 trans-Atlantic epistle contained a minute description of a Queen Anne's 
 farthing recently found by the writer, with a modest request that "Ire- 
 land's Liberator" might negotiate the sale of said farthing in London, 
 where, as many sage individuals had informed him, the wonderful far- 
 thing might prove a fortune to the wise and lucky writer. Another 
 New Yorker, a certain preposterous Peter Waldron, wrote the following 
 whimsical letter to O'Connell : " Sir, — I have discovered an old paper, 
 by which I find that my grandfather, Peter Waldron, left Dublin about 
 the year 1730. You will very much oblige me by instituting an imme- 
 diate inquiry who the said Peter Waldron was ; whether he possessed 
 any property in Dublin or elsewhere, and to what amount; and in case 
 that he did, you will confer a particular favor on me by taking imme- 
 diate steps to recover it, and, if successful, forwarding the amount to me 
 at New York." One time a Protestant parson writes to Dan that he 
 and his family are praying for his conversion to Protestantism. The 
 
8(30 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 writer is anxious to have a bout at controversy with so renowned an 
 antagonist. Similarly scribbles one Lackington, a Methodist. A fair 
 American begs that he will help her to get up a raffle. The fact of one 
 of her relations having written a work in praise of Ireland will, as a 
 matter of course, induce "Ireland's most distinguished son" to devote 
 to her project the time necessary to make it a success. Letters asking 
 patronage came, it may readily be guessed, 
 
 "Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks 
 In Vallombrosa." 
 
 "Everybody," says our hero, "writes to me about everything, and the 
 applicants for places, without a single exception, tell me that one word 
 of mine will infallibly get them what they want. ' One word! 1 Oh, 
 how I am sick of that 'one word V " 
 
 Some were even impertinent enough to offer him a "hand-over" for 
 his patronage. One of these scamps he threatened with a prosecution. 
 When another impudent rascal promised to call for a reply, O'Connell 
 told his servant to kick him out of doors as soon as he came to the house. 
 Country-folks sometimes addressed him in a singularly grotesque style. 
 One of these commenced an epistle to him with "Awful sir!" Anony- 
 mous letters he condemned to the flames unread. "I just look to see 
 what signature the letter bears, and if I find none, I fling it into the 
 tire." In all the anonymous communications he ever got, he found but 
 one valuable suggestion. "That," says he, "was the contrast between 
 the Irish and British elective franchises, and an excellent hint it was. I 
 think I've worked it pretty well, too." 
 
 Returning from this digression to the business of the Association in 
 182L we see O'Connell advocating an address to the Crown, praying 
 "for the enlargement of the commission for inquiring into the state of 
 education in Ireland." He objects to several of the commissioners, 
 especially to Mr. John Leslie Foster, on account of his being "the pro- 
 fessed and unyielding opponent of the rights of six millions of his coun- 
 trymen." At the same time he admits the honorable way in which Mr. 
 Foster discharges "his duty as a public officer." O'Connell says also: 
 "The great and serious disadvantage of having strangers upon this 
 commission is, that they will naturally be influenced by the deservedly 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 8G1 
 
 high character which Mr. Foster bears as counsel for the revenue." 
 Our hero is tormented with some squabbles about giving Mr. Edward 
 Dwyer, as assistant-secretary of the Association, a salary of £160 per 
 annum. Some objectors desired to fix the salary at £100 per annum. 
 John O'Connell says, in his inelegant diction : "A spirit of small economy 
 . . . often very much calculated to impede and cripple important polit- 
 ical moves, manifested itself ... in respect to the management of — to 
 use the stereotyped phrase on those occasions — the people's money." 
 He describes this sort of opposition as a cheap way of winning notoriety. 
 Mr. Dwyer's appointment was finally carried. John O'Connell says that 
 his father showed, "through life, a singular quickness in finding out 
 the exact man wanted for any special purpose of the agitation," and 
 that "events proved how well and rightly the choice had been made" 
 when he fixed his eye without any hesitation upon Edward Dwyer. 
 
 At one of its meetings, the Association busies itself about sending 
 down Mr. Kavanagh to prosecute the offender, in the case of an Orange 
 murder in Ballibay. O'Connell discourses upon "Orange signs," and 
 refers to the quarrels of two bodies of English Catholics. He discusses 
 the propriety of contributing from the funds of the Association to the 
 establishment of a Catholic paper in London. He ridicules the assump- 
 tion of superiority on the part of the English Catholic Association, 
 which, compared to the Irish body, is no more "than a cock-boat to a 
 man-of-war, or a canoe following in the wake of a seventy-four." These 
 English Catholics can only get into "the haven of emancipation under 
 the lee and protection of the Irish Catholic Association." Still he was 
 glad to see "the imperious aristocracy of English Catholics" active. 
 Shortly after we find the English bodies on good terms with each other 
 and with the Irish Association, and O'Connell pointing out to the Eng- 
 lish provincial associations the way to evade the act against correspond- 
 ing societies "by forming themselves into independent societies." On 
 this and other occasions in the same year he pronounces the most glow- 
 ing panegyrics on Cobbett, He calls him "unpurchasable," "their 
 gifted advocate," and talks of "his manly and transcendent intellect." 
 "Had Cobbett," says O'Connell, "been inclined to sell his services, is it 
 too much to say, that when the most disgusting carrion has been pur- 
 chased in the market of corruption, what would they not lane civen for 
 
862 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 .1 writer like Cobbett?" The Association must take CobbeWs Register 
 and post up "a list of his various works in their rooms." 
 
 iEneas McDonnell is appointed general Parliamentary agent of the 
 Catholic Association in London. O'Connell notices the fact that inti- 
 macy has ceased between him and that gentleman, in order "to show 
 that his recommendation did not proceed from personal feeling, but a 
 conviction of Mr. McDonnell's abilities." John O'Connell says this 
 appointment was "in a manner forced" on his father "by a party . . . 
 prompt to thwart and counteract his views." The "pious JEneas" 
 wanted a salary of £500 per annum; however, the Association gave him 
 only £300. For this yearly stipend he gave them voluminous "special 
 correspondence." attended "the House" on nights of Irish debate, and 
 carried on "an occasional little bit of petty diplomacy with the gracious 
 patrons of the Catholic cause among the members of the two Houses 
 of Parliament." According to Thomas Kenned}-, the "pious ^Eneas" 
 knew how to draw up a nice little bill. When the Association finally 
 wound up its affairs, a committee had to investigate certain claims of 
 Mr. McDonnell's. In his account were such amusing items as " fifteen 
 shillings paid for a copy of 'Lalla Kookh'" and "picked out of my 
 pocket in the gallery of the House of Commons five pounds." Whether 
 or not these were recognized by the committee of investigation as 
 legitimate expenses, I am not in a. position to speak with absolute 
 certainty. 
 
 " Religious liberty for Catholics and Protestant Dissenters ; education 
 on liberal and just principles; abolition of church-rates; diminution of 
 tithes and to facilitate the delivery in kind ; abolition of corporation 
 abuses, monopolies and powers of levying money; the administration 
 of justice, rejection of party sheriffs and party juries, correction of the 
 list r,f magistrates and great diminution of their powers, so as to bring 
 them as near the common law as possible;" reformation of various courts 
 and jurisdictions; the enabling "ecclesiastical persons to make leases of 
 lives or forty-one years;" redress of local grievances, particularly the abo- 
 lition of the Dublin Paving Board ; and "the introduction of poor-rates" 
 — all these subjects were ably reviewed by O'Connell in the course of 
 this year. At a public meeting, in February, he had vigorously opposed 
 
 claim of a right to levy tolls made by the corrupt Dublin corporation. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 863 
 
 Nor does he ever let slip any favorable opportunity of advocating the 
 repeal of the union. On the subject of poor-laws his opinions under- 
 went a change in his latter days. In fact, he was vehemently o-ppo; 
 f<> the system of poor-laws ultimately established in Ireland. In addi- 
 tion to these topics, he notices that "the press of France had challeni 1 
 the press of England to the proof, but as yet that challenge had been 
 unaccepted. L'ffioile" (t/ie Star) "had proved that the English Dis- 
 senters — one-third of the population — were inadmissible by law to all 
 offices of trust and power, while it demonstrated that in France the 
 Dissenters from the Catholic Church, who did not amount to one-fiftieth 
 part of the population, were not only tolerated, but admissible to all 
 offices of trust and power — -were not only admissible, but actually ad- 
 mitted." (Cheers.) He also expresses sympathy with the struggling 
 patriots of Greece and the heroic devotion of Missolonghi. We find 
 him in communication with a Mr. George Parker Tevers, living in the 
 Rue de Grenelle, who proposes to procure the insertion of articles in the 
 French and other Continental papers. Tevers suggests "that his pro- 
 posal should not be made public, as the advocacy of the French press, 
 if considered spontaneous, would be more serviceable." O'Connell, how- 
 ever, is determined "that there shall be no secrets in the Association.'" He 
 takes occasion at the same time to make an onslaught on the Morning 
 Post and "the slave of the Courier.'" 
 
 Aristocratic adhesions (Protestant and Catholic) to the Association are 
 numerous this year. Besides the magnates already mentioned as having 
 speedily joined the Catholic ranks, we have Colonel Talbot, afterwards 
 Lord Talbot de Malahide, colleague of Colonel White in the representation 
 of Dublin county, expressing his approval of the objects and conduct of 
 the Association, and enclosing his subscription of £10. Colonel White, 
 the other county member, sent £5. O'Connell passed a high eulogium 
 on each of these gentlemen. He announced that Lord Kenmare and his 
 brother, the Honorable Captain Browne, would send in their donations. 
 Lord Donoughmore concurs with the Association. The Hon. G. Agai 
 Ellis writes, enclosing his own and Viscount Clifden's subscriptions ot 
 £10 each. William Villiers Stuart, afterwards Lord Stuart de Decies, 
 encloses £20. Nugent of Pallas, or Lord Kiverston, one of the Catholic 
 lords (his peerage was one of the creations of James the Second, un- 
 
 55 
 
864 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 recognized by the house of Brunswick ; this branch of the house of 
 Nugent, however, has recently inherited the earldom of Westmeath), 
 sent in a subscription of £10. O'Connell was anxious that the king 
 should be petitioned to restore to this gentleman his title. A Mr. Pallas 
 commissions our hero to hand in £5, the subscription of General O'Far- 
 rell Ambrose, and to propose that gallant veteran, who "had been thirty- 
 nine years in the Austrian army and had seen thirty-four campaigns," 
 as a member of the Association. In November, £10 are handed in 
 from the good Lord Cloncurry, with a patriotic letter, in which the fol- 
 lowing passage occurs : " The last wish I ever heard from Grattan was 
 for the repeal of the union. If all Ireland were polled, I do not believe 
 that out of the seven millions, one hundred votes could be against the 
 repeal of that finishing act of Ireland's degradation. In that repeal I 
 place my best, my almost only, hope of her regeneration." The Catho- 
 lic prelates, too (for example, Dr. Plunket, bishop of Mcath, the oldest 
 member of the Irish hierarchy, and Dr. Kell} T , bishop of Dromore), con- 
 tinued to give the Association the sanction of their approval. Though 
 last not least, we have, on the 10th of December, a long letter from 
 O'Connell's uncle, "Old Hunting-cap," or Maurice of Darrynane, with 
 his subscription of £10. On this occasion O'Connell's brother, James, 
 occupied the chair. The reading of the old man's long letter drew forth 
 enthusiastic plaudits from the crowded meeting. Mr. Dominick Bouayne, 
 afterwards member of Parliament for Clonmel, moved, and Mr. Shiel 
 seconded, the motion for its insertion on the minutes. Our hero said: 
 "The venerable writer had now lived for nearly an entire century, a 
 victim to the cruel penal code; yet his intellect was as unclouded, and 
 his heart as warm to the adopted child of his affections, the cause of 
 Irish liberty and Irish rights, as when his youthful indignation had first 
 been aroused against the injustices and oppressions which had so long 
 been the order of the day against those professing the Catholic religion. 
 
 "But he" [Mr. O'Connell) "hoped that his venerable relative would 
 at last witness the opening of a brighter day." 
 
 Alas! poor old "Hunting-cap" lived not to see that brighter day. 
 Shortly after this incident, he died, at the advanced age of ninety-six 
 years. He left Darrynane Abbey and landed property, said to have been 
 worth £4000 a year, to our hero. He had never married. I can scarcely 
 
THE LIFE OF DAKIEL O'CONNELL. 865 
 
 credit — chiefly on account of this long letter, which he seems to have 
 written to Mr. O'Gorman with his own hand — a statement in the clever 
 life of O'Connell, published by Mullany, of Dublin, that he was totally 
 blind for some years before liis death. The people of Kerry tell stories,, 
 which seem to show that, like many others of the Irish gentry of those 
 wild times, he made a good deal of his money by contraband dealings. 
 To speak plainly, he is said to have smuggled tea and wine to a great 
 extent — to have had men in his employment to bring the smuggled 
 goods to Cork. O'ConneH's own father is reported to have made a con- 
 siderable deal of money by the same pursuits. "Hunting-cap" is also 
 said to have had frequent quarrels and lawsuits with a family called the 
 Segersons about these contraband commodities, and about ships wrecked 
 near his and their lands. The factions that rallied round each family 
 would take part in these quarrels. Curious traditions, illustrative of man- 
 ners in those days, and having more or less foundation in fact, exist in 
 Kerry about the wreck of a ship called the Hercules, in all probability 
 a Spanish vessel, laden with gold and silver doubloons. The drowned 
 sailors, it would appear, had for buttons Spanish gold coins covered with 
 cloth. A man, burying the corpses, is said to have discovered this by 
 perceiving the edge of a coin protruding through the cloth. The 
 peasantry talk of expensive diving-gear having been got by a coast- 
 guard's son named Quailing to fish up the sunken treasures. As the 
 story goes, money "galore" was rescued from the deep. Tales are told 
 of firkins of gold sent to Tralce and kept there for a year without any 
 claimant turning up. It is added that somehow the O'Connells finally got 
 possession of the treasure. Whether there be any amount of truth, much 
 or little, in these confused local traditions, or whether they be all mere 
 romance of the peasantry, it is impossible to say. I merely notice them 
 as presenting a curious picture of the notions and beliefs which the 
 Kerry peasantry entertain about the origin of the renewed prosperity 
 of the O'Connell family. 
 
 If, much about this period, an old and energetic representative of the 
 ancient tribe of O'Connell went to his last, inevitable dwelling-place, at 
 the same time a promising scion of the race (unfortunately, the early 
 promise Avas never to any great extent fulfilled) was fast springing up 
 to maturity. In this year, 1824, we find, on one occasion, young Maurice 
 
O'Connell, our hero's eldest son, acting as pro-secretary at a meeting of 
 the Association. Maurice seems to have been, upon the whole, the best 
 of O'Connell's sons — the one gifted with the greatest share of ability, 
 and patriotism, and manhood. Indeed, he was in many respects a fine, 
 bold, dashing fellow. But he was indolent, and a blight fell upon his 
 career, destroying the hope and promise of his youth. He made an 
 unfortunate marriage, of which the least said the better. His domestic 
 happiness was blasted for ever. His life was a complete failure. He 
 only survived his illustrious father a few years. 
 
 For the Catholic cause this year, 1824, is, indeed, a year of hope and 
 promise. Even the hostility of the cabinet is gradually becoming less 
 bitter. Canning is now relied on as the friend of the Catholics, and his 
 colleagues, Huskisson and Robinson, are their "decided friends." Even 
 of Peel, his personal antagonist, O'Connell can now speak in the following- 
 civil terms: "And I cannot forget that we have a prospect of Mr. Peel's 
 hostility being considerably mitigated. He proposed in last session a bill 
 that, when carried into effect, will give him a claim to the title of bene- 
 factor of Ireland. It is a bill framed for the purpose of giving justice 
 to the Catholics in civil cases, at least when tried by juries; and there- 
 fore, when he is manifesting a disposition of that kind, it is but fair to 
 hope for better things from him." He also, referring to the House of 
 Lords, speaks of "the mitigated tone of Lord Liverpool's opposition;" 
 that minister had even shown an "anxiety to advance tlie Catholic relief 
 bills of last session. . . . Lord Eldon, to be sure, is the decided enemy 
 of the Catholics, because his party desires it, but he, even, would not be 
 at a loss for an excuse to vote for emancipation." 
 
 Several odd scenes occurred at the Association this year. On the 
 15th of May, while Mr. Shiel was speaking on the conduct of the Prot- 
 estant clergymen of Dublin with respect to the burial bill, a young 
 stranger frequently interrupted him by calling out, "No, no." When 
 Shiel sat down, O'Connell invited the unknown to mention any fact he 
 might know contradictory of that gentleman's statements, giving him, 
 at the same time, assurance of an attentive and courteous hearing. On 
 that occasion, however, the young gentleman refused to avail himself of 
 our hero's invitation; but, at the meeting of the 22d, he appeared once 
 more, and, after a conversation that took place respecting the Quakers, 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 8G7 
 
 proceeded to address the meeting in a very solemn tone, accusing tlicm 
 of faction, sedition, desire of inciting the mob to violence and to the 
 murder of Protestants, etc. ; condemning our hero especially as the most 
 dangerous, from his great talents. This in every sense strange young 
 person was frequently interrupted by gentlemen, who protested against 
 his being heard, as he was not a member. O'Conncll insisted that he 
 should be allowed to finish, " if only for the reason that he was a Prot- 
 estant, as it should not be said a Protestant was denied a hearing." 
 It appears that this indulgence disconcerted the senseless intruder more 
 than any thing else. He brought his oratory to a somewhat abrupt 
 close. 
 
 O'Conncll, with great coolness, said that he had often wondered how 
 "the foul fiend" of the "atrocious faction of Orange assassins" could 
 have "acquired so monstrous an ascendency over the feelings of Irish- 
 men, that no innocency of life, weakness of sex or infirmity of age could 
 prevent the daring contempt of the laws of God and nature! But I 
 shall wonder no more. Oh, Heavens! in what society has this young 
 lad been reared, that at his age, and with his education, he should have 
 acquired opinions and feelings, the mere expression of which makes 
 humanity shudder?" O'Connell contrasts powerfully the legal positions 
 of Protestants and Catholics, as exemplified in this young stranger, with 
 his " shallow mind, perverted intellect and habitual prejudices," and 
 himself. To O'Connell, "the descendant of the ancient proprietors of 
 the soil," himself a large proprietor, at the head of his profession by his 
 own energies, this presumptuous "lad" may hold the language of a 
 superior to an inferior, and say, "But you are — a Catholic, and because 
 I came reeking from the drunken orgies of a secret and swor-n band of 
 fanatics, I am entitled, without any other qualification or merit than 
 infuriated bigotry, to ascend the highest step of the ladder of ambition 
 or professional promotion, whilst you have the privilege of looking at me 
 there." O'Connell goes on to say that "this young gentleman may be 
 but the tutored agent of some plodding, hoary miscreant," or (he 
 intrusion "maybe the mere wanton prank of privileged insolence in 
 this young exclusionist." The intruder "may be a bravo hired by (he 
 Oramre club to assail my character and motives." But the time is past 
 when " mere personal ribaldry can make me forgetful of the obedience I 
 
868 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 owe my Maker and of my duty to my family, and would to God, sir, 
 I liad ever been guided by the same feeling." Our hero, in conclusion, 
 tells "this juvenile intolerant" to report to those who sent him that 
 "his impotent rage" was without effect; "that his slanders were to me 
 but as playthings to a boy, which, after amusing him, he flings to the 
 wind; that "his monstrous audacity in coining into an assembly of 
 Catholics, whom he charged with the vilest atrocities," without adducing 
 one proof, "excited their quiet contempt," while "his early desertion of 
 all those amiable and honorable feelings," that belong to the Christian, 
 drew forth "their pity." Great cheers followed O'Connell's "instruc- 
 tion" of "this intemperate youth." The latter unlucky wight was then 
 abused by Messrs. Shiel and Kirwan. Mr. Kirwan, indeed, used such 
 strong language, that the unknown demanded his card. As this curious 
 individual, however, refused to state his own name, etc., his request was 
 not complied with, upon which he speedily beat a retreat. 
 
 On the 31st of July O'Connell moved "That all students of Trinity 
 Collcsre should be admitted to the meetings of the Association without 
 payment." They were not to "have the privilege of voting or speaking. 
 The heads of the college had prohibited them from becoming members 
 of political societies;" but O'Connell wished that they should have a 
 fair opportunity of unlearning their anti-Catholic prejudices. In admit- 
 ting these "Trinity College boys," as they were styled, it was for a time 
 necessary to observe considerable caution. In fact, they had nearly suc- 
 ceeded in upsetting the infant Association. On leaving Capel street, 
 Mr. O'Connell had taken for the Association the premises afterwards 
 known as Home's Hotel. At first they seemed admirably suited to his 
 purpose. But the University students made a practice of coming in 
 such force to interrupt the proceedings of the Association that it became 
 a serious question with O'Connell whether the meetings of that body 
 could be continued. Finally he transferred its sittings to the building 
 subsequently called the Corn Exchange, which was situated "in a more 
 popular and populous neighborhood, where" (I am using the words of 
 John O'Connell) "he found he had a guard in the coal-porters (whose 
 stand is just opposite) quite sufficient to frighten away the young Orange- 
 men. He often afterwards declared that it was the Dublin coal-porters 
 who saved the agitation, and thus mainly 'carried emancipation.'' 
 
THE Ln-tL OK DANIEL 0'COXXELL. 8G!) 
 
 Indeed, lie did well to place the struggling movement under the grim 
 guardianship of the redoubtable "black diamonds." The conduct of 
 the "Trinity boys" at the meeting of Wednesday, October the 27th, 
 afforded a most striking example of their bigotry and riotous spirit. 
 Mr. Conway called the attention of the Association to the fact that a 
 snug trade had grown up between London and Dublin bibliopoles, for 
 which the State had to furnish the capital. The Bibles and other books 
 which the Kildare street society published and offered for sale in Ireland 
 for twopence and fourpence a piece, were sent in quantities to London 
 and there sold at one-and-sixpence each. O'Connell observed, "that 
 was one way of accounting for the disposition of the £10,000 grant, and 
 that it was a matter which should be laid before Parliament." Here a 
 tumult arose, owing to a violent irruption of the college scamps bent 
 on disturbance and the overthrow, if possible, of the new popular organ- 
 ization. A struggle ensued, when the college men, finding themselves 
 overmatched, effected a hasty and disordered retreat. The people wanted 
 to follow up their victory and inflict punishment on the scholastic "row- 
 dies;" but O'Connell refused to sanction this, and soon succeeded in 
 restoring order. After pronouncing a glowing eulogium on his friend 
 Counsellor Finlay, for " his untainted principle and independent spirit," 
 and bustling through a deal of other business, which I have already 
 noticed in this chapter, our hero informed the meeting "that the mem- 
 bers of the Association should be supplied with tickets by the secretary 
 against the next day of meeting, so as to prevent the unpleasant inter- 
 ruption that had taken place during the present one." In spite of the 
 temporary disorder on this occasion, the ladies present had remained for 
 the conclusion of the proceedings. Previous to the taking of the chair, 
 Mrs. O'Connell and her two daughters — afterwards Mrs. Fitzsimon and 
 Mrs. Ffrench — had been conducted to a seat by "the Liberator." As 
 might be expected, they had been enthusiastically received, Waving 
 of hats, clapping of hands, loudest demonstrations of affectionate respect 
 had lasted for several minutes. 
 
 This was the most numerously attended meeting that had taken 
 place since the foundation of the Association. Thirty new members 
 were enrolled. Long before the hour of meeting the avenues of approach 
 were blocked up by the expectant crowd. To obtain entrance was difri- 
 
S70 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 cult. From time to time, those within the hall of meeting heard the 
 screams and wailings occasioned by the pressure outside the door, which 
 at length burst open; and yet, strange to say, no one was hurt. Indeed. 
 O'Connell's son remarks, as a ''singular fact, that among all the crowded 
 meetings attended by Mr. O'Connell throughout his life, there was not 
 one in which any accident of any consequence was even reported to have 
 occurred." I may observe, that the first meeting of the Association, 
 which took place at the great room of the Corn Exchange on November 
 the 18th, was marked by rent remittances from three of the Catholic 
 hierarchy, "with their clergy," headed by the Catholic primate, Dr. 
 Curtis. 
 
 On the 2d of December, 1824, an aggregate meeting of the Catholics 
 of Ireland took place in Dublin. Sir Thomas Esmonde, a Catholic 
 baronet, was chairman, and O'Connell was as usual the orator of the 
 occasion. He began bv saying, amid loud laughter, " I have news for 
 you. We really are to be emancipated." He "runs a muck and tilts 
 at" the hostile press in his usual style; abuses "the frantic ribaldry 
 and scandal of the miscreant Mail," "the abominable falsehoods of the 
 Courier" "the beastly calumnies of the Times and Morning Post." He 
 thrusts also at the bigoted parsons. " I once," he amusingly says, "saw 
 a caricature describing a flight of parsons, which was first taken for a 
 (light of crows by an observing farmer. As soon as the farmer perceived 
 his mistake, he naturally enough exclaimed, 'I hope they will not light 
 upon my farm.' If the fanner's expectation was disappointed, we can 
 tell something of the consequences that were likely to follow the visita- 
 tion." [Laughter.) He derides the bigoted Ascendency faction for their 
 want of talent, mocks the attempts at speech-making of Sir Abraham 
 Bradley King and Master Ellis. " God bless the mark — what an ora- 
 tor! I once heard Master Ellis attempt to make a speech, and laughed 
 a considerable time after." He creates great fun by his allusions to the 
 twin stars of the "New Reformation," which had recently been attempted 
 in Ireland and of which I shall presently give some account — the Hon- 
 orable and Reverend Baptist Noel, a notoriety for many years in the 
 Evangelical circles, and Captain Gordon. " One word with resjiect to 
 my friend, Mr. Noel" (a lavgh), "and that good Scotch hulk, the Gordon" 
 (applause), "come over to instruct the deluded Irish. The Scotch captain 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL OVOXXELL. S71 
 
 praised Scotland and abused Ireland most unsparingly, and after abus- 
 ing the Irish he told them he came to convert them." (A laugh.) "Mr. 
 Noel was a very neat, precise, polite person, fit to attend on ladies of 
 quality; he was, in fact, a very nice man for a small tea-party." 
 [Laughter.) "It is, however, to be lamented that, in a matter of piety 
 as well as of gallantry, Mr. Noel has altogether failed. If I have been 
 rightly inforsied, Mr. Noel has been obliged to make a precipitate retreat 
 from one or two houses in the South; but I cannot assure the meeting 
 that it was not for preaching the gospel. I cannot say more, because 
 the story that came to my ears may not have been altogether correct, 
 although it certainly came from very respectable authority." I princi- 
 pally notice this aggregate meeting, because, at the next day of the 
 Association, the weekly return of Catholic rent amounted to no less than 
 £1032 75. did. 
 
 I shall briefly notice the dinner given on the 3d of July, this year, 
 to our hero at the Corn Exchange. The chair was taken by the Honor- 
 able Colonel Butler, a son of Lord Mountgarrett. Three hundred sat 
 down to dinner. Our hero was toasted as "the honest and uncompro- 
 mising champion of civil and religious liberty." He said, in his eloquent 
 speech, " I will, while I have breath, struggle to make Ireland what she 
 ought to be — 
 
 ' Great, glorious and free, 
 First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea.' " 
 
 He puts Lord Eldon, Ferdinand the Seventh of Spain and the Grand 
 Turk together in the same boat of bigotry. "As for the Turk, I make 
 Lord Eldon a present of him ; they are congenial souls." {Laughter and 
 applause.) He jokes about Eldon's "affection for the abuses of the 
 Court of Chancery," by which "he is said to have put £50,000 a year 
 into his pocket." Of that chancellor's proverbially slow decisions lie 
 says: "Where a man commenced a litigation before his marriage, his 
 grandchildren had strong prospects of bringing the matter to an issue." 
 (A laugh.) "His lordship had his doubts upon everything save upon 
 the subject of religious liberty." O'Connell proposed the health of 
 Colonel Butler as " a Protestant gentleman who felt anxious to come 
 amongst his Catholic fellow-countrymen. Oh, what a country lie], nd 
 would be if she possessed many such men as Colonel Butler!" (Lend 
 
872 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 applause.) O'Connell also presided at the annual dinner of the Blanch- 
 ardstown Patriotic Society this year. The friends of the societ3 T , amount- 
 ing to three hundred, dined in a magnificent pavilion. In returning 
 thanks to the company after they had enthusiastically drunk Mrs. O'Con- 
 nell's health as "the pattern of wives and mothers — a lady -whose cha- 
 ritable and exemplary conduct sheds lustre upon her sex and station," 
 O'Connell said : " It did not become him to say much on that occasion, 
 yet his feelings did not allow him to remain silent. To the lady whose 
 health had been so given, he owed much of the happiness of his life. 
 The home made delightful by his family was, after the cares and agita- 
 tions of professional and public life, the scene of the happiness he en- 
 joyed. He was, indeed, happy in that home — happy in those children 
 into whose minds a fond mother had early and carefully instilled a rev- 
 erence for religion, the love of God and the love of their country." 
 [Applause.) O'Connell, at this dinner, also praised highly the Marquis 
 Welle si ey. 
 
 In this year, 1824, we find O'Connell playing, not without consider- 
 able distinction and success, the role of a religious controversialist. I 
 have just referred to the movement which was called "the second Ref- 
 ormation." According to Mr. William J. Fitzpatrick, it was the cele- 
 brated William Conyngham Plunket who was absurd enough to originate 
 the idea of this huge, solemn farce. He suggested to Archbishop Magee 
 that if accomplished Protestant, divines were to engage in theological 
 encounter with the Irish Catholic priests, "rude, half-taught and little 
 better than peasants," before the naturally astute peasantry of Ireland, 
 the priests would be inevitably discomfited, and would as certainly lose 
 their prestige and their hold on the popular mind. The Irish could 
 easily be converted to Protestantism, if only earnest missionaries under- 
 took the good work. Accordingly, Baptist Noel, an aristocratic English 
 clergyman, and Captain Gordon, a Scotchman, appeared in the polem- 
 ical arena in Cork, assisted by the well-known Irish controversialist 
 Pope, who undoubtedly had a talent for eloquent declamation. O'Con- 
 nell, Richard Lalor Shiel and Counsellor Brie entered the densely-packed 
 assembly to join wordy battle with them. The prepossessing and mildly- 
 persuasive Noel, at this so-called meeting of "The Cork Hibernian School 
 Society," talked of the filthy dwellings of the Irish and their minds void 
 
of religious instruction. The want of Bible-reading was at the root of 
 all their wretchedness. Apparently, it was a similar want of scriptural 
 knowledge that had caused all the horrors of the great French Revolu- 
 tion. Shiel replied to him brilliantly. O'Connell spoke on the two 
 days, September the 9th and 10th, during which the tournament lasted, 
 showing an equal mastery of argument, ridicule and eloquence. On the 
 second day, with the utmost good humor, he quizzed his opponents most 
 inimitably. The Rev. Mr. Irwin " he presumed was all he had described 
 himself" to be. He liked theraciness of Gordon's Scotch accent, That 
 gentleman abused "the ignorant and degraded Irish," thereby "unin- 
 tentionally hitting at the Church which received two millions per annum 
 for educating this corrupted people." Gordon "praised the Scotch — 
 and small blame to him! — above all the other people upon the face of 
 the earth. They were a Bible-reading people, it seemed;" but still they 
 had radicals among them and disturbances. The leaders of these, how- 
 ever, were twenty-live thousand Irish Rockites in Scotland. "This 
 reminded him" (O'Connell) "of an announcement he once read in a 
 Scotch newspaper; it ran thus: 'We are authorized to state that the 
 Archibald McEven, who was hanged at the Canongate last Wednesday, 
 was not a Scotchman, but that he was an Irishman.' " He then re- 
 minds Gordon of the days when Scotland was the weak point through 
 which the throne of England could be assailed, when Scotchmen were 
 persecuted for religion and conscience' sake, like Irishmen of the present 
 century. If Scotland had then possessed seven millions of people, "like 
 Ireland now, she would have rolled back the tide of war until the Tower 
 of London would have yielded to its mighty torrent." (Applause) He 
 showed up the hypocrisy of the English, who sent " schoolboys and cap- 
 tains to convert the wild, unchristian Irish. . . . The elegance of Eng- 
 land was all ascribed to Bible-readimr." Was not Greece elegant though 
 not Christian ? had not Rome the glory of conquering the world when 
 pagan ? But what of the barbarism of England ? He read an immense 
 number of extracts from reports of religious societies, painting in terrific 
 colors the depravity and want of religion of the people of England, or 
 "the land of Goshen," as it was called. To the missionaries he would 
 say, "Take the beam out of your own eye, before you attempt to pick 
 at the mote in ours." In a burst of the truest living eloquence and 
 
pathos, lie celebrated the merits of the Irish priests. As Shiel had ad- 
 vised "the amiable itinerant," Noel, and his associates, to go and preach 
 Christianity to the higher classes, to the oppressive landlords of the 
 Ascendency, rather than to the poor Irish Catholics, so now O'Connell 
 recommended them to go back "to the land of Goshen, to go to the 
 savage and demoralized English, and make converts there, lor though 
 they should prophesy the downfall of Popery until they became hoarse, 
 they would never make a convert here." (Loud applause.) He humor- 
 ously pays mock-compliments to the Scotch military apostle on "his 
 second sight," "his prophetic vision," of the rise of "the new modes of 
 gospel regeneration" in Ireland, and the magically-sudden downfall of 
 Popery and all its appurtenances. The honest captain's oration re- 
 minds him of some verses read by him long ago— 
 
 " ' He talked of Taffy Welsh and Sawney Scot, 
 Of Lillibullero and the Irish trot, 
 When, seized on a sudden with a mighty qualm, 
 He rose, and thundered forth — the hundredth Psalm.'" 
 
 O'Connell was great on the opinions of the fathers, the real presence 
 and all points theological ; he taunted his opponents with their inability 
 to agree with each other in matters of faith. He quizzed " the half- 
 re rerend Mr. Pope" (if I remember rightly, Mr. Pope was only in 
 deacon's orders) as unmercifully as he did the rest. "Mr. Pope had 
 quoted a bundle of saints, but they all differed in opinion from him''' — 
 St. Basil, St. Austin, St. Chiysostom, St. Cyprian. "St. Augustine em- 
 phatically declares that 'he would not believe the gospel unless on 
 the authority of the Catholic Church.' He" (Mr. Pope) "had talked of 
 the differences of the popes, and told you that the popes of those days, 
 as well as the Popes of this, were very extraordinary fellows." (Shouts 
 of laughter and greed applause.) When our hero alluded to female 
 preachers, some fair Quakeresses tried hard to get out of the meeting. 
 He referred to the French Revolution ; the altar had been overturned, 
 but the ancient faith had arisen "from its ashes like a phoenix, or like 
 a giant refreshed with wine." Toleration prevailed now in France. In 
 consideration of his having a family to support, a Protestant curate was 
 allowed more by the French government than a Catholic curate. Would 
 to God every government resembled theaa in liberality. "Something had 
 
been said of the charity of England ; they had given £100,000; but it 
 was not until whole parishes had got extreme unction that it arrived. 
 ... He did not thank the nation for this. Let those not talk who had 
 degraded our gentry, broken the spirit of the people and paid back that 
 beggarly charity. They had scoffed at our religion; yet they talked of 
 charity. He would say to the English, Do justice before you preach 
 religion; send missionaries, not to the poor of the South, but to the 
 Orangemen of the North." [Thunders of applause.) The " 'sister coun- 
 try,' romantically styled 'the land of Goshen,' never established a society 
 to humanize that great moral and political monster, the sanguinary and 
 anti-social Orangeman." [Thunders of applause.) "Oh, no! here the 
 cloven foot of our benefactors appears. Proclaim honestly that conscience 
 is free; destroy that worst of monopolies, the monopoly of religion, and 
 suffer the poor, the patient and the persecuted Catholic to live and die 
 undisturbed in the religion of his forefathers." [Immense applause.) 
 "But he laughed with supreme contempt" at their miserable pretence 
 of "coming as friends — at the insulting policy which induced them, 
 when the people asked for bread, to give them a stone." The speech 
 closed amid loud acclamations, which lasted several minutes. 
 
 Daniel, a second time in "the lion's den," was a second time victo- 
 rious. However, in spite of all his controversial fervor, he was quite 
 good-humored and placable. Before he had entered the place of meet- 
 ing this day, the Rev. Henry Irwin had complained bitterly that the 
 privacy of their meeting was intruded on, their harmony and unanimity 
 disturbed, their meetings, in short, made open ones. He added that the 
 intruders would have just as much right to force their way into the 
 privacy of domestic life. Remarking, then, that O'Connell had the day 
 before thought proper "to introduce his conjugal happiness as one of the 
 topics of a popular oration," he went on to say, "If I had spoken of 
 Mrs. O'Connell as he—" Here shouts of "Order! order!" arose on all 
 sides, while an infinite hubbub of disorder prevailed, in the midst of 
 which it was intimated that our hero was trying to make his way 
 through the densely-crowded passage. Mr. Irwin tried to explain that 
 he meant no offence to Mr. O'Connell. He then proceeded: "If I had 
 spoken of his wife in such terms as he had spoken of the Bible, if 1 
 -J.d she was a very good woman, but that I would not allow her to visit 
 
37G THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 my family — " Here Counsellor Brie interposed and said, "Such lan- 
 guage is highly improper when uttered of any gentlewoman, but cer- 
 tainly ought not to be applied to a lady of Mrs. O'Connell's rank." He 
 added, when Mr. Freeman, the chairman, said "he would not esteem 
 such language an offence," that, "at all events, it was bad taste/' But 
 
 CD (_ J 
 
 now O'Connell enters amid deafening applause and speedily a good- 
 humored and amicable explanation takes place between Parson Irwin 
 and O'Connell. his reverence assuring "the learned gentleman that he 
 meant the lady nothing but respect;" to which "the learned gentleman" 
 replies, "If you believe me, she deserves nothing less." This sets them 
 all laughing, and Irwin continues his harangue, endeavoring to reply to 
 a remark made by Shiel the day before, "that of the lunatics in the 
 asylums a large proportion had gone mad from Bible-reading." After 
 this the lunatic assembly went on with as much good-humor as the case 
 admitted of. 
 
 O'Connell afterwards occasionally referred to this defeat of the "New 
 Reformation." At a meeting of the 9th of October, a gentleman named 
 Candler, who announced himself as an English Protestant Dissenter, 
 while admitting his surprise "that the Catholics did not/<«fetlie Orange- 
 men, instead of simply contemning them," at the same time "depre- 
 cated the opposition given by Catholics to the establishment of Bible 
 societies in Ireland," asserting that such conduct "gave great offence in 
 England." O'Connell, in reply, observed, that if "the attempt at pros- 
 clytism were confined to the cunning and dexterity of the individuals 
 employed, he should not have heeded them, but when the most cruel 
 persecution and aggravated oppression were enforced against the 
 wretched peasantry who refused to send their children to the biblical 
 schools, it would have been inhuman and criminal, when an opportunity 
 offered, did he neglect to expose the imposition, or, by publicly chal- 
 lenging its promoters, afford them an opportunity of explaining their 
 views." He asks, Who were the biblical ''divines? . . . Why, forsooth, 
 a man of war, with a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other, who 
 abused Ireland and praised Scotland, and a young man of fashion, armed 
 with prejudice and enthusiasm." It was meritorious to expose the chi- 
 canery of a system that could dupe such a man as Sergeant Lefroy into 
 countenancing "such a transparent job as the expending of no less M'«»» 
 
TITE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'CONNELL. 877 
 
 £8000 for the printing of Bibles in the Irish language, when it was 
 known to every one that those who were capable of reading Ihe Irish 
 character had acquired that facility by means of the English language; and 
 when it was equally notorious that not one of the peasantry could read 
 Irish at all!" On this occa. ; .on O'Connell was followed by the Rev. 
 Francis Joseph L'Estrange, of the Order of Discalced Carmelite Friars, 
 and Counsellor John Brie. Father L'Estrange was the first Catholic 
 clergyman who entered himself as an every-day worker in the struggle 
 for emancipation. The German traveller, Prince Puckler Muskau, who 
 met Father L'Estrange at Darrynane Abbey, was greatly astonished by 
 his "enlarged and liberal views, 'although (strange to say) he persisted 
 in remaining a Catholic.'' " Counsellor Brie was a young man of great 
 promise. " He came up," says John O'Connell, "from his native county 
 a poor, unfriended, scantily-clothed boy, and, with no other assistance 
 than that which his own talent and efficiency obtained for him, while 
 acting as clerk to Mr. O'Connell, contrived to educate himself for the 
 bar, to which he was called about the year 1819." He was honest and 
 energetic, a forcible and effective speaker in spite of too broad a brogue. 
 His figure was large and somewhat clumsy. 
 
 At the meeting of the Association, on the 10th of November, O'Connell 
 strongly denounced the conduct of the Trench family, one of the great 
 houses of the " souper " aristocracy, at a recent Bible meeting at Loughrea. 
 "Souperism" is a facetious appellation given by the Irish people to those 
 proselytizers who promote the spread of "Evangelical Christianity" by 
 the distribution of soup among the poorer classes. The representative 
 of the principal branch of these rapacious Trenches is earl of Clancarty, 
 one of the titles forfeited by the princely family of McCarthy at the 
 period of the Williamite wars. O'Connell alleges that the earl's brother, 
 the Protestant archbishop of Tuam, had police surrounding the place 
 where the Bible-meeting took place and hussars guarding the door. 
 "The Catholics were invited there to hear their religion abused, while 
 they were placed between their traducers and the military." The arch- 
 bishop would not allow a Catholic clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Daly, to 
 speak. Finally, however, his grace had to leave the chair, and a Prot- 
 estant barrister, Mr. Guthrie, was moved into it, and counter-resolutions 
 passed. O'Connell justifies all this; denies that there was any "out- 
 
rageous conduct" on the part of the Catholics, as had been falsely 
 asserted. 
 
 He also ridiculed the " New Befonnation," at the Catholic aggregate 
 meeting of the 2d of December, to which I have already referred. As 
 the enemies of the Catholics 'could not prevent the Catholics from 
 looking for their rights," could not "cut their throats (they were too 
 numerous for summary persecution)," some other remedy should be 
 applied to' cure this disastrous state of affairs. "The Kildare Street 
 Society discovered the remedy." (vl laugh.) " They procured the attend- 
 ance of Mr. Noel and Captain Gordon" (a laugh), "and that great com- 
 mander, Admiral Oliver." {A laugh.) "Thus the poor Papists were 
 besieged by sea and land." (Laughter.) "They were attacked by land- 
 rats and by water-rats" (a laugh); "and the efforts of all those odious 
 and mischievous vermin were directed to undermine the religion and to 
 destroy the hopes of this country." This very eccentric Admiral Oliver, 
 who had seen much more service as one of "the church militant" than 
 as a naval officer, who, with little glory, had been fortunate enough to 
 win much prize-money when an acting post-captain, and who had re- 
 mained on the half-pay list under the shadow of his scanty laurels, ever 
 after was a constant butt of O'Connell's wicked ridicule. The Liberator 
 took the intensest delight in nicknaming him the "poor Canal Admiral." 
 
 Having thus related, somewhat in detail, the foundation and rise to 
 great popular power and influence of the celebrated Catholic Association, 
 having at length brought our hero to a commanding position in Irish 
 politics, so that himself alone might now be regarded as a formidable 
 power in the empire, I shall devote the remaining pages of this chapter to 
 a hurried summary of the chief occurrences between the year 1824 and 
 that famous Clare election, which forced the British government at last 
 to concede Catholic emancipation. 
 
 Although the Catholic cause was fast becoming irresistible, having 
 the support of the whole Catholic population of Ireland and of "a small 
 but very Avealthy and influential group of nobles and gentry of that 
 ancient faith" in England, who were eager to be restored to their own 
 civil rights; and although the ministers were, by this time, quite sensi- 
 ble that emancipation was only a question of time, yet they could not 
 as yet think of surrendering with a good grace. On the contrary, they 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 879 
 
 were now guilty of a piece of impotent spite and rage utterly contempt- 
 ible. Indeed, to make a concession to Ireland with a good grace, or mag- 
 nanimously, is a thing the English government has hardly ever been able 
 to do. In one of the speeches made by him in the Association on Thurs- 
 day, the 16th of December, after praising the London Examiner for its 
 sympathy with the Irish Catholics, which resembled that which it had 
 manifested for the Greeks, O'Connell uttered the following sentences — 
 at least according to the report of the Morning Register: "Oppression 
 drives the wise man mad; it has not yet had that effect upon the Irish 
 people ; it has never driven them to the extremity of desperate resist- 
 ance, and Heaven forbid it ever should ; but if such an event should come 
 to pass, may another Bolivar" (the president-liberator of Spanish South 
 Amerieet) "and the example of Greece animate their efforts." The ver- 
 sion given by Saunders 1 Neivs Letter varied slightly from this. Accord- 
 ing to it, his language was fiercer: "If she" {Ireland) "were driven 
 mad by persecution, he wished that a new Bolivar might arise — that the 
 spirit of the Greeks and of the South Americans might animate the 
 people of Ireland." In order to give a more seditious coloring to its 
 report, Saunders printed this passage with seven notes of admiration! 
 But indeed, even admitting the correctness of the report in Scmnders, it 
 is not easy to see how this speech could be construed into sedition, con- 
 sidering the numerous saving clauses which O'Connell introduced to 
 qualify the fierceness of his seeming menaces. The authorities, however, 
 appeared to take a different view of the matter, for at half-past five on 
 the evening of Monday the 20th, just as O'Connell was about to comfort 
 himself with domestic enjoyments after the fatigues of the day, Alder- 
 niaii Darley and Police-Constable Farrell entered his study. The alder- 
 man, after the usual salutation, said: "I come, Mr. O'Connell, to save 
 you the trouble of attending at the office, as I have been directed by the 
 attorney-general to call on you to enter into a recognizance to appear at 
 the next sessions." In reply to O'Connell's demand, " On what charge ?" 
 the alderman said : " Upon a charge of having spoken seditious words 
 at the last meeting of the Association." He refused to state what 
 the words were, or who was the informer; he wished to give Mr. O'Con- 
 nell "the least possible trouble — would take his own recognizance, 
 without requiring any one to join him." O'Connell submitted at once, 
 
 56 
 
880 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 thanking the alderman for his politeness and civility. Accordingly, he 
 is bound to appear at the ensuing Quarter Sessions, to commence on the 
 second or third of January. This vexes him, because it interferes with 
 his meditated journey to England (of which I shall have more to say 
 immediately), and he would fain have Darley take his recognizance "for 
 the sessions after the next, or for the term." That gentleman, however, 
 has no discretion in the matter; "our hero must apply to the attorney- 
 general." O'Connell, smiling, says: "There is one thing you'll admit, 
 Mr. Alderman, that the attorney-general will have no difficulty in getting 
 a grand-jury to find any bills he pleases against me." To which speech 
 Darley prudently maketh no reply; but he and O'Connell shake hands 
 and part for the night, 
 
 O'Connell retains Mr. Kildahl of Sackville street, who cannot get a 
 copy of the informations out of the magistrates for love or money; 
 indeed, cannot get any satisfaction at all out of them ; whereupon he 
 writes an indignant demand for a copy of informations to Crown-Solicitor 
 Kemmis. Possibly Plunket had no informations, and was only now 
 spearing about for informations. So far things look black enough for 
 Dan. But, to shorten the story, when the commission sits, Justice 
 Moore and Justice Vandeleur presiding, the government case breaks 
 down most ignominiously. O'Connell's counsel, Wallace and glorious 
 Uobert Holmes (brother-in-law of Emmet and a man who never accepted 
 a silk gown from the British government), contend that the words of 
 the speech must be proved literal///. Judge Vandeleur thinks it enough 
 to prove the substance. The grand-jury, however, return into court at half- 
 past six o'clock with xnE bills ignored ! And how could they act other- 
 wise? fordid not all the reporters of the press nobly and indignantly 
 refuse to give evidence? Vousden of the Morning Post could recollect 
 nothing; Charles O'Flaherty, of the same paper, was not much more 
 satisfactory; Leech of the Freeman, like Vousden, could remember 
 nothing without his note-book, which he hadn't about him. Even Mr. 
 Hayden, proprietor of the Star, a journal denounced by O'Connell as 
 written by "renegades," "protested against the examination of his 
 reporter, because he thought the whole affair a joke of the attorney- 
 general; but, supposing it to be a serious proceeding, he would not 
 permit any of his people to become the accusers of any one." The only 
 
ignoble reporter, Saunders's man, was obliged, on being closely ques- 
 tioned, to confess that he was asleep when the alleged seditious passage 
 was spoken; that a blow on the table had startled him from slumber ; 
 and that he took his report from the person near him, of whom he had 
 asked, "What caused the noise?" Half Dublin, shouting enthusiastic- 
 ally, conducted O'Connell home to Merrion Square, triumphant. Even 
 the London papers appeared to disapprove of Attorney-General Plun- 
 ket's proceedings. The Morning Chronicle asked, Was not William the 
 Third the Bolivar of the seventeenth century? Does not Locke's famous 
 book on government teach that nations oppressed may rebel? O'Con- 
 nell only says what every popular orator has uttered since the first con- 
 demnation by authority of the doctrines of non-resistance and passive 
 obedience. How different the language of O'Connell and that of Sir 
 Harcourt Lees, connived at by the government! Such, in substance, 
 was the burden of the Morning Chronicle. But this was nothing to 
 Shiel's tierce philippic against Plunket, which reminded that ntterer of 
 the famous "Hamilcar speech" of the days when, in the Irish House of 
 Commons, he had "kindled the popular passions," when he was "tierce, 
 and virulent, and vituperative." Shiel made his speech on the proceed- 
 ings against O'Connell on the 8th o f January, 1825. When, at the 
 same meeting, O'Connell rose to speak after Shiel, the waving of hats 
 and acclamations lasted for nearly ten minutes. He had already at this 
 meeting denounced a dreadful statement of the reverend and bigoted 
 Hugh McNeill, son-in-law to Archbishop Magee, made, without his haA ing 
 any evidence to sustain it, at a meeting of the Irish Society in London, 
 "that Catholic priests of Ireland were, at that very time, actually en- 
 gaged in placarding ' Pastorini's Prophecies' in every quarter of that 
 country, in order to excite the peasantry to deluge it with Protestant 
 blood." O'Connell accuses the archbishop of being a party to this cal- 
 umny, sneers at his writing himself down "a poor, persecuted man," 
 and asks, mockingly, "When did we ever hear of one of the apostles 
 being persecuted by the offer of twenty-seven thousand poxinds for renewal 
 of leases?" [Great laughter.) In this speech our hero complains of the 
 false alnn.'.s of plots which were then being disseminated. Loughrca 
 was the focus of these machinations. "In one day several hundred 
 letters containing the word 'Prepare' issued from the post-office of 
 
882 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 that 'biblical' spot. In the county of Clare those letters were also 
 widely circulated." The Mail had recently apologized for publishing a 
 Scotchman's advertisement for ash-poles, required as stakes for nets, as 
 the managers of that journal "understood they were intended for pike- 
 handles." Resolutions were passed at this meeting expressive of aston- 
 ishment and indignation at the recent prosecution of O'Conncll. 
 
 At the meeting of December the 16th, the Association had appointed 
 a deputation, consisting of O'Connell, Shiel and Brie (the last-named 
 gentleman to act as secretary), to proceed to England. On their way to 
 London they were to visit the Catholic associations in Liverpool and 
 such other places as they might deem lit; they were to concert with the 
 English Catholics the best means " of laying before the English people 
 the sufferings and merits of the Catholics of Ireland." O'Connell an- 
 nounced, amid immense cheering, "that they" (the deputation) "would 
 travel at their own expense, without infringing upon the funds of the 
 Association;" and, though it was "a sacrifice in a professional point of 
 view to leave town at that juncture, he was happy to have an oppor- 
 tunity of making such a sacrifice to the interests of his country." 
 
 Early in 1825, the deputation, consisting of the three just named 
 and some others, proceeded to England. But a blow was about to be 
 struck at the Association in the Imperial Parliament. Though Ireland 
 was quite peaceful, the king's speech on the 3d of February described 
 the proceedings of the Irish Catholic Association as "irreconcilable with 
 the constitution" and calculated "to endanger the peace of society and 
 to retard the course of national improvement." Chief-Secretary Goul- 
 bourn succeeded in carrying through both Houses a bill for the "Suppres- 
 sion of Unlawful Associations in Ireland." This was intended to destroy 
 the Catholic Associatiov, though a perfectly legal body. In vain, on the 
 night of the 18th of February, Brougham pleaded vehemently against 
 it, while the Irish deputation were sitting below the bar listening with 
 delight to the rush of his mighty eloquence. We shall see presently 
 how easity O'Connell, to use one of Lis own favorite phra&es, " drove a 
 coach-and-six through this (Algerine) act of Parliament." 
 
 At the same time that the government introduced this arbitrary bill, 
 they brought forward a meagre measure of emancipation, accoinpanii <1 
 with two crafty provisions in the nature of "securities," which were 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 883 
 
 called "the wings" of the relief bill. Thus, while Catholics, both in 
 England and Ireland, were to be admitted to Parliament and municipal 
 corporations, on the other hand, the forty-shilling freeholders were to 
 lie disfranchised, and the Catholic clergy were to become stipendiaries of 
 the British government. A bishop was to receive from the treasury a 
 salary of £1000 per annum, a dean £300, a parish priest £200, a curate 
 £60. This measure, with its accompanying safeguards of English 
 supremacy, was the offspring of Peel's crafty brain. The regium domtm 
 had made the Presbyterian clergy, the Maynooth grant had made many 
 professors, so subservient to British power, that they might be always 
 counted on to exercise their influence over their flocks and pupils against 
 the cause of Ireland's independence. The evident intention of Peel's 
 measure was to reduce the great body of the Catholic clergy to the same 
 subserviency. Luckily, this bill, after passing the Commons, was de- 
 feated on the second reading in the Lords. The heir-presumptive to 
 the crown, the Duke of York, signalized himself by his hostility to the 
 Catholics on this occasion. He solemnly declared that he would never 
 give his consent to their claims — "never, so help him God !" 
 
 Meanwhile the Catholic deputation spent a pleasant time in Eng- 
 land. Shicl has written a most amusing sketch of their journey to 
 London and their doings in that Babylonish metropolis. He tells us 
 how the party of deputies, to which he had annexed himself, travelled 
 in a barouche of O'Connell's; how people at inns asked "Who the gen- 
 tlemen were?" how O'Connell. seated on the box of his barouche, "with 
 a large cloak folded about him, which seemed to be a revival of the 
 famous Irish mantle," attracted the larger portion of the public gaze; 
 how, on arriving at Wolverhampton, in a spirit of enthusiastic hero- 
 worship, they -wont in search of Dr. Milner. He relates how hard it 
 was to rind him out; how "a damsel of thirty, with a physiognomy 
 which was at once comely and demure, replied to us at first with a mix- 
 ture of affected ignorance and ostentatious disdain, until Sir Thomas 
 Esmonde, ' a marvellous proper man ' in every sense of the word, ad- 
 dressed the fair votress of Wesley with a sort of chuck-under-the-chin 
 manner (as Leigh Hunt would call it), and induced the fair Methodist to 
 reply, 'If you had asked me for the popish priest instead of the Cath- 
 olic bishop, I should have told you that he lived yonder,' pointing to a 
 
\ 
 
 884 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL 0C0XXELL 
 
 large but desolate-looking building before us." He then relates Low 
 the learned prelate, though by no means discourteous, gave them a 
 reception thoroughly English in its frigidity; how, indeed, the aged man 
 totally forgot O'Connell till he told him who he was; how the decaviim- 
 ein'oers of his spirit were only kindled up by the "odium theologieum" 
 (theological hatred), when Shiel, with sly and malicious pleasantry, men- 
 tioned I he name of the old controversialist's former antagonist, Charles 
 Butler. These and many other entertaining particulars arc to be found 
 in Shiel's agreeable sketch of this memorable -'Journey to London."' 
 
 Money is the great test of worth in England. The Catholic rent 
 made the Association doubly respectable in the eyes of the Mammon- 
 worshiping Englishmen. The members of the deputation Avcre courted 
 by the leading liberal orators, Brougham, Burdett and others. At 
 Brougham's table, O'Connell and Shiel dined in company with four 
 dukes, the former sitting between the dukes of Devonshire and Leinster. 
 They were even feasted in the gorgeous banquet-halls of the great Whig 
 I ). Is. O'Connell, Lord Killecn. Shiel and others were invited to Norfolk 
 .louse to meet an assemblage of men of the highest rank in England. 
 Among the guests were the dukes of Sussex, Devonshire and Leinster. 
 Lords Grey, Fitzwilliam, Shrewsbury, Donoughmore, Stourton, Clifford, 
 Arundel, Mr. Butler of Lincoln's Inn, Mr. Abercrombie and Mr. Denman 
 were also there. "I was dazzled," says Shiel, "with the splendor of an 
 entertainment to which I had seen nothing to be compared. Norfolk 
 House is one of the finest in London. It was occupied at one period by 
 members of the royal family, and the duke mentioned that George the 
 Third was born in the room in which we dined. I passed through a 
 long series of magnificent apartments in crimson and gold. There was 
 no glare of excessive light in this vast mansion. The massive lamps, 
 suspended from the embossed and gilded ceilings, diffused a chequered 
 illumination and left the deep distance in the dusk. The transition to 
 the chamber, where the company wove assembled, and which was glaring 
 with light, presented a brilliant contrast. . . . The duke of LSrfolk 
 came forward to meet us. aivl received us in the most cordial manner." 
 Shiel was most pleased with Led Fitzwilliam. This venerable noble- 
 man brightened up when Ireland was spoken of. "He reverted with a 
 Nestorian pride to the period of his own government, and stated (hat 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 88<"j 
 
 he had preserved ilic addresses presented to him by the Catholics of 
 Ireland as the best memorials of his life." His great wish seemed to be 
 to live to see emancipation. Introduced thus into the society of the 
 royal duke of Sussex, the dukes of Norfolk, Devonshire and other pow- 
 erful nobles, O'Connell for a moment yielded to their insidious blandish- 
 ments. His antagonism to "the wings" softened. He began to think- 
 that emancipation, so long delayed, could not be obtained on any terms 
 more favorable than those now apparently within reach. The most influ- 
 ential Catholics of England were far from being hostile to " the wings." 
 The Whigs wished the bill to pass with "the wings," expecting that it 
 would give them additional Parliamentary partisans. Of course, Shiel, 
 even more easily than O'Connell, fell into this way of viewing the pros- 
 pects of the Catholic question. 
 
 A motion made by Brougham, that O'Connell and Shiel should be 
 heard at the bar of the Commons on behalf of the Association, was de- 
 feated. In the debate Peel, opposing the motion, committed an act of 
 gross indiscretion, a most unusual thing with him. Referring to an 
 address presented by the Association to the venerable " United Irish " 
 leader, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, "he became," says Mr. Shiel, 
 "heated with victory, and. cheered as he was repeatedly by his multi- 
 tudinous partisans, turned suddenly towards the part of the House 
 where the deputies were seated, and looking triumphantly at Mr. 
 O'Connell, with whom he forgot for a moment that he had been once 
 engaged in a personal quarrel, shook his hand with scornful exult- 
 ation, and asked whether the House required any better evidence than 
 the address of the Association " to an attainted traitor." Brougham 
 made a vehement and crushing reply to this ebullition of bad taste and 
 bitter, bigoted feeling. He asked Peel, "How dare hp speak thus of one 
 on whom his sovereign had smiled ?" alluding to Georre the Fourth's 
 gracious reception of Mr. Rowan. 
 
 O'Connell, though not allowed to plead against the suppression of 
 the Association at the bar of the House of Commcas, where he could 
 easily have shown that the Catholic organization was in no respect 
 illegal, and that, in the words of one of the Irish petitions against the 
 hostile bill, "the 'rent' was not a fax levied on the Irish people, but a 
 voluntary contribution" for the purpose of educating the poor and ob- 
 
883 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 taming legal redress for the peasantry, yet found an opportunity of 
 producing a great impression on the English Catholics, by his powerful 
 oratory, at a vast meeting held in the " Freemasons' Hall," London, over 
 which the duke of Norfolk, England's premier duke, presided. O'Con- 
 nell was very solicitous about the impression he should produce on this 
 occasion. Even Charles Butler, a severe but excellent critic, was greatly 
 struck with his eloquence; and Butler was scarcely likely to be a judge 
 partial to our hero. O'Connell was also examined before the House of 
 Lords on the subject of " Pastorini's prophecies." As evidence of their 
 disloyalty, the Catholic clergy were accused of circulating this book. 
 O'Connell's testimony went to show that the Catholic clergy and laity 
 had in reality discouraged its circulation. A letter of Dr. Doyle's had dis- 
 countenanced the "prophecies" in the strongest terms. O'Connell main- 
 tained that the,) were printed and circulated by "persons not of the 
 Catholic persuasion." His acuteness also detected that the mention of 
 the year 1825, as the ominous year, was a misprint for 1828. It appears 
 that "the prophecy fixes upon a period of three hundred years" from 
 the establishment of the Protestant persuasion — that is, from the 11th 
 or 19th of April, 1529 — for the return of Protestants to the ancient 
 faith. The calculation, then, was made by Pastorini from 1528. This 
 whole monstrous humbug is a subject of little interest now. However, 
 it is proper to make this slight reference to it, because O'Connell's replies 
 to the interrogatories put to him created in the minds of those who lis- 
 tened to him a large belief in the range of liis mental powers. His 
 questioners seemed to think Dr. Doyle the only Irishman who could 
 enter into intellectual rivalry with him. On the other hand, O'Connell 
 was far from reciprocating the complimentary feeling. He rather coin- 
 cided with Dr. Doyle's contemptuous criticism of *hose "potent, grave 
 and reverend signiors :" "Pshaw! such silly questions as they put! I 
 think in all my life I never encountered such a parcel of old fools." 
 
 This "journey to London," however, produced, at the time, no favor- 
 able practical result, On the contrary, while the emancipation bill, 
 even with its two "wings" — the abolition of the forty-shilling free- 
 holders and the payment of the Catholic clergy — was defeated, the bill 
 to suppress the Association passed. "There can be no question," says 
 Fagan, that O'Connell was treated with great perfidy in the course oi' 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 887 
 
 these negotiations. He was led to believe that emancipation was cer- 
 tain, provided it were accompanied with ' the wings.' Every one at the 
 time in London, who was mixed in the matter, believed it. Blake, the 
 chief remembrancer, who was then in London, and on terms of political 
 intercourse with the leading political men of the day, has since often 
 stated that the matter was settled. Plnnket was himself deceived, and 
 was thus the means of deceiving O'Connell and the rest of the deputa- 
 tion. The system of deceit was carried so far as to induce O'Connell to 
 attend the levee of the duke of York.'" It would appear, from a state- 
 ment of the late Richard Barrett, proprietor of the Dublin Pilot, that, 
 while the fate of the bill was pending, O'Connell called very early one 
 morning at Plunket's residence in London, by appointment; that 
 Blanket rose hurriedly, came out to him, shook him heartily by the 
 hand, and said, "O'Connell, I congratulate you ; the conference has not 
 broken up an hour. I got up to tell you all is decided ; Catholic eman- 
 cipation will be granted before a fortnight, and without any of the con- 
 ditions to which 3'ou objected." These were no doubt some of the eccle- 
 siastical ones. Canning, Huskisson, even Lord Liverpool and Peel, had 
 agreed to grant the measure. Unfortunately, however, Lord Eldon's 
 concurrence had not been secured. O'Connell thought he might have 
 been won over. At this time a Mr. Pendergast was stopping in the 
 house with Plunket. In some manner he became cognizant of the 
 nature of the interview. He told all about it in the clubs. When Lord 
 Eldon heard what had been resolved on, he hastened to the duke of 
 York and inflamed his bigotry. After having delivered his furious 
 speech against emancipation, the duke followed his brother, the king, t( 
 the theatre, where he was warmly received. The king and the heir- 
 presumptive were evidently against the measure. Its failure was the 
 consequence. Lord Liverpool, the premier, soon veered round and deliv- 
 ered what was called his "ether speech," in order to remove the im- 
 pression that he had given way on the subject of emancipation. He 
 was accustomed to take ether on important occasions. To the influence 
 of an overdose were attributed sundry expressions of unusual vehemence. 
 He stated "that the late Catholic relief bill was a heap of trash and non- 
 sense ;" " that it was a disgraceful measure ;" that it was so sent up by the 
 Commons as to place the Lords "in a most awkward situation ;" that if it 
 
became law "the Protestant succession would not be worth live far- 
 things," and other extravagancies in the same style. 
 
 The Edinburgh Rcvieio gave high praise to the conduct of the dele- 
 gation in London. It also contended that the debate in Parliament had 
 clearly brought out the fact that the Association had restored and main- 
 tained the peace of Ireland. "Of eleven counties," writes the reviewer, 
 "half a year before proclaimed by the Curfew Act, not one now remained 
 disturbed. Rents were peacefully paid, Captain Rock no longer trained 
 the nightly bands of depredators," etc. The Association, acting under 
 the legal advice of O'Connell, to satisfy the law, dissolved itself. This 
 was in accordance with his usual tactics. Of course, immediately after- 
 wards it was reconstituted under the name of "The New Catholic Asso- 
 ciation." This he humorously called "driving a coach-and-six through 
 an act of Parliament." In truth, the bill for the suppression of the 
 Association became practically a dead letter. The Association virtually 
 lived and pursued its triumphant career. Before their apparent disso- 
 lution, the members published a valedictory address, in which, with a 
 certain "honest pride," they asserted their claims to the gratitude of 
 the country. The establishment of "the rent" alone formed a substan- 
 tial claim to that gratitude. At this period they had more than £12,000 
 over their expenses lodged in bank. The weekly income of the Associ- 
 ation had sometimes approached £2000. 
 
 O'Connell's popularity was temporarily shaken by his consenting to 
 the proposal to disfranchise "the forty-shilling freeholders." We find 
 him engaged in epistolary controversy with Jack Lawless upon this 
 subject. The Catholic nobles — indeed, the Whig aristocracy of England 
 in general — had, by their honeyed blandishments, beguiled our hero into 
 a momentary delusion. He had begun to think that it was best to make 
 the required sacrifices, in order to gain immediate emancipation. "There 
 is in our country," said he, "an inexhaustible mine of intellectual and 
 physical strength." This mine he was led to believe would be developed 
 forthwith, if Burdett's Catholic relief bill were at once passed. The vast 
 natural capabilities and resources of Ireland would lie no longer idle and 
 unworked. Ireland would rival England in wealth. And then, though 
 he confessed that he had consented to the disfranchisement of such of 
 the forty-shilling freeholders as "held their lands at a rack-rent, or who 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 889 
 
 were tenants in common," he asserted that he had never agreed to the 
 disfranchisement of those whose condition was at all like that of the 
 English veomanry. His popularity, however, was speedily re-estab- 
 lished. When he found that it was likely to be weakened by his facility 
 and compliance on the question of "the wings," he promptly and frankly 
 retracted, and took his stand once more with the vast, majority of his 
 countrymen for unqualified emancipation. "It had been well, indeed," 
 says Mr. Mitchel, "if he had firmly held his ground against both those 
 wings to the last." 
 
 His reception at Howth, on the first of June, 1825, on his return 
 from London, was warm and flattering in the extreme. The small town 
 and the landing-place were crowded with thousands of people, in vehi- 
 cles of all sorts, on horseback and on foot. All these were eagerly 
 straining their eyes — many gazing through telescopes — to catch the first 
 glimpse of "the man of the people" on the deck of the approaching 
 vessel. "There he is;" "Where?" "That's not he;" "It is;"— such 
 cries arose excitedly and continuously on all sides. Eapturous shouts 
 arose as his tall form was seen moving from the quarter-deck and along 
 the gangway to the shore. The shouts Avere redoubled, and friends 
 thronged around him to grasp his hand, as his foot touched the shore. 
 Seated in an open carriage with his wife and two daughters, he drove 
 along towards Dublin, followed by a mighty train. In Dublin the popu- 
 lace took the horses from his carriage and drew him home to Merrion 
 Square in triumph. On appearing in the balcony of his house he was 
 greeted with tremendous acclamations. "I truly pity," said he, "those 
 who cannot love such a people, and would not die for such a country as 
 Ireland." 
 
 A few days after his arrival in Dublin he attended an aggregate 
 meeting in Anne Street Chapel. At this meeting Stephen Coppinger. 
 one of the most consistent and persevering champions of the Catholic 
 cause, delivered an able speech in support of a resolution that a com- 
 mittee be appointed to prepare petitions to both Houses of Parliament 
 for the full and unqualified emancipation of the Catholics of Ireland." 
 He gave some hard hits to the duke of York for his " so-help-me-God " 
 harangue. "It Avas a pity that this pious bishop of Osnaburg" [the 
 royal duke, though a layman, was bisliop of Osnaburg in his father 's clec- 
 
890 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 torate of Hanover) — "for the duke holds episcopal dignity — had not at 
 hand his favorite clerk to respond 'Amen.' " This was a sly allusion to 
 Mrs. Clarke, the royal bishop-conimander-in-chief's mistress, who had 
 trafficked extensively in the sale of commissions in the British army ; 
 indeed, her profligate dealings had formed the subject of a delicate inves- 
 tigation. "The duke," continues Mr. Coppinger, "has declared — an 
 incredible statement — that his father's sufferings had originated in the 
 agitation of the Catholic question. ... In alluding to his royal father, 
 the pious duke had burst into tears. His filial affection was not so 
 warm when he required to be paid so prodigious a sum as £10,000 a 
 year for visiting his blind hoary father once a month." Coppinger also 
 attacked the marquis of Anglesea for his apparent readiness to suppress 
 Catholic emancipation with the sword. But for the generous manner in 
 which Catholic blood flowed for his defence at Waterloo, the marquis, 
 said Mr. Coppinger, " would not be alive to display his military eloquence 
 in the House of Lords." 
 
 Mr. Coppinger was a great enthusiast about Napoleon. He was 
 fond of making allusions in his speeches to the imperial eagle; also to 
 the "stars and stripes" of the American republic. The broadness of 
 his southern accent somewhat marred the effect of his speeches. lie 
 was a pale, thin man. In his student-days his circumstances were 
 straitened. O'Connell once said, referring to something mysterious, "It 
 is as hard to find out as Stephen Coppinger's lodgings." Coppinger had 
 occasional differences of opinion with our hero. They squabbled on 
 the question of Catholic burial-grounds, Coppinger objecting to some 
 points insisted on by O'Connell. The great man at once retaliated in a 
 style half humorous, half savage: "Boys," said he, addressing an audi- 
 ence in which his pretorian guard of coal-porters was fully represented 
 —"boys, did you ever see such an ugly or a more hungry -looking fellow? 
 Stingy Stephen refuses to give us the light of his countenance — oh wir- 
 rasthrue!" Dan afterwards nicknamed Coppinger "the knight of the 
 rueful countenance." 
 
 Coppinger used to tell himself that, immediately after the achieve- 
 ment of emancipation, O'Connell met him and exclaimed, "Well, Cop- 
 pinger, you see I have emancipated you." "Eather," replied Coppinger, 
 half in joke and half in earnest, "rather say that, notwithstanding all 
 
your efforts to the contrary, we succeeded in obtaining t lie blessings of 
 emancipation." Mr. Coppinger is said to have been full of anecdotes 
 of his contemporaries "of an exclusive character." 
 
 At this meeting Lawless proposed a resolution, •which was intended 
 as a thrust at O'Connell, to the effect that the Catholics of Ireland had 
 not authorized their assent to he given to "the wings." He was re- 
 ceived, we learn from the Evening Post, with hisses. There were also 
 cries of "Off! off!" and "He wants to disunite us." Lawless tried to 
 get a hearing. He said, "I am to-day the friend of unanimity, and, far 
 from dissenting from Mr. O'Connell, I congratulate him on his return to 
 those principles which he formerly advocated, and a departure from 
 which was to me a cause of distress and pain." Still he blamed the 
 London delegation. He earnestly denounced "the wings." But his 
 voice was drowned in mingled disapprobation and applause. Charles 
 Teeling seconded the resolution, many others pressing forward to do so. 
 The clamor and confusion waxed louder. Finally, Lawless withdrew his 
 resolution. 
 
 After several other speakers had been heard, O'Connell rose to ad- 
 dress the meeting amidst the most vehement acclamations. He looked 
 gay, bold, confident and genial. He was dressed in what was styled 
 the uniform of the Association — "a blue frock adorned with black silk 
 buttons, a black velvet collar and a gilt button on the shoulder; the 
 vest yellow and the trowsers white. Soon he carried the meeting along 
 with him. He was humorous and eloquent as usual. He laughed at 
 the prospect of the Kildarc Street Society losing the management of 
 £22,000 a year. "Oh, how sleek and how slim the saints will look, 
 with their eyes turned up and their hands in their empty breeches 
 pockets!" His droll mimicry of the saints set the whole meeting in a 
 roar. He called on them "to rally and unite around the standard of 
 liberty. I have promised in England that there shall be a new Catholic 
 Association." He happily ridiculed Lord Liverpool's promise to Lord 
 Lonsdale, possessor of eight rotten boroughs and nineteen seats in the 
 House of Commons, with which "he traffics as cattle are sold in Smith- 
 field market," to put down the Catholic question. It was "alive and 
 merry," notwithstanding. He artfully passed over "the wings" without 
 any notice, in spite of Lawless's provocations. Cheers arose when he 
 
said, " 'Tis true we have been defeated, but we are riot dismayed ; we 
 have been betrayed, but arc unconquered still." He also referred lo the 
 extraordinary conversion of Mr. Brownlow, the head of the Orange 
 party in Ireland, to the Catholic cause, as a hopeful symptom. Speak- 
 ing of that gentleman's victory over his own prejudices, our hero said, 
 "Mr. Brownlow was too honorable, too honest, not to retract his error 
 openly, generously and nobly, when he discovered it." At this meeting 
 Shiel proposed a census of the Catholics of Ireland to show their 
 strength ; he also suggested aggregate meetings in all the parish 
 chapels throughout Ireland, and petitions from all the parishes. O'Con- 
 nell's horses were taken from his carnage on this day also. 
 
 The bill which suppressed the Catholic Association prohibited any 
 society for the redress of political grievances or the defence of causes in 
 courts of justice from holding meetings beyond fourteen davs. To evade 
 this, it was declared that the Association should not act under the pre- 
 tence or for the purpose of procuring redress of grievances in Church 
 and State or of carrying on civil or criminal causes. Its professed 
 objects were — 1st, the promotion of peace and concord; 2d, encourage- 
 ment of liberal and religious education; 3d, to ascertain the population, 
 and the number of persons belonging to each persuasion ; 4th, to build 
 churches and establish Catholic burial-grounds; 5th, to promote improve- 
 ments in science and agriculture in Ireland, and to encourage Irish man- 
 ufactures and commerce; Oth, to support an enlightened press, circulate 
 works advocating just principles, and vindicate Catholic principles 
 against slanderous attacks; 7th, to prepare full statements and au- 
 thentic refutations of the various charges made against Catholics in 
 recent hostile petitions to Parliament. Every person paying £1 as an 
 admission fee, before a certain clay, was to be enrolled as a member. 
 After that day, any one desirous to become one, in addition to that pay- 
 ment, should be proposed and seconded by a member. The new Asso- 
 ciation embraced men of all sects. O'Connell caused Counsellor Bel- 
 lew's name to be omitted from the committee of twenty-one prominent 
 Catholics appointed to frame this society, boldly casting in his teeth his 
 pensions from government for unknown services. Bellew had provoked 
 O'Connell by volunteering an opinion that Goulbourn's bill could not 
 be evaded. "The undergrowl of poor Jack Lawless," writes our hero in 
 
 , I •. . ' , I IH. ' .-lLf J » II M l' . 
 
THE LTFE OF DAKTEL O'COXXELL. 89> 
 
 ;i letter to tlie Catholics, "and his tew and foolish partisans may he. as it 
 has been, a mere source of laughter and ridicule; but Kt. William 
 Bellew stands in a very different situation... . . Mr. William Bellew 
 deserves none of your confidence. . . . He certainly has two, and I 
 tinnly believe three, pensions. . . . Who paid his fee? Who called on 
 him, a Catholic, to publish an opinion hostile certainly to Catholic 
 rights? . . . 
 
 ' Hie niger est ; hunc tu Romanc caveto.' " 
 
 (He is bkicJc-hcartcd ; do you, Roman, beware of him.) The committee 
 of twenty-one sat fifteen days and issued a report, which was adopted 
 by the Catholics of Ireland. It suggested the fourteen days' meetings, 
 which I shall notice immediately. 
 
 Meanwhile a clique, or party, that had sprung up in Dublin, called 
 the Mahon party, from one of its leaders, Nicholas Mahon the merchant, 
 continued for some time to censure O'Connell severely for the course he 
 had pursued in London respecting "the wings." At a meeting in 
 Bridge Street Chapel, in July, 1825, from which this clique (nicknamed 
 by our hero "the Bridge street gang'*) wanted to exclude all persons 
 not inhabitants of St. Audeon's parish, O'Connell suddenly appears in 
 the gallery while the discussion is going on. John Reynolds — after- 
 wards a loud Dublin demagogue, one year lord-mayor of that city, and 
 during one Parliament its representative in the House of Commons — 
 makes his political debut on this occasion as a backer of O'Connell. A 
 vote of thanks, proposed by Mr. Forde and seconded by Mr. McLoughlin, 
 gave our hero an opportunity of speaking in vindication of his public 
 conduct. He boasts of his opposition to the union and his great sacri- 
 fices; He briskly engages Nicholas Mahon and Richard O'Gorman. 
 The latter, he says, he has "detected in a mistake of £20." Here 
 Nicholas Mahon interrupts him. Nicholas will not "listen to such 
 reflections upon one of the most respectable of the parishioners. I 
 ask," says he, " Does Mr. O'Connell come here to abuse and insult us ?" 
 "I disclaim," says O'Connell, "any such intention. It is proverbial 
 that those who serve their country are invariably repaid with ingrati- 
 tude and injustice. They always find some calumniators prepared and 
 anxious to destroy their fame and injure their honor." Here Richard 
 
lakes Ills turn at interruption; he cannot digest the word "calumni- 
 ators." The flow of O'Connell' s speech is hardly checked for a moment. 
 His conduct with regard to. the forty-shilling freeholders he almost admits 
 to be blameworthy. He tells the meeting that the report of the com- 
 mittee of twenty-one is just ready, and that it condemns the introduc- 
 tion of the measure of disfranchisement. 
 
 At the aggregate meeting of Catholics which took place in Clarendon 
 Street Chapel a few days after this scene, O'Connell skilfully evaded the 
 snares of Goulbourn's act in a cautious speech. Shiel, on the other 
 hand, uttered a harangue as violent as it was eloquent, Against the 
 duke of York especially he hurled such fierce words as the following: 
 "He has inherited his father's understanding; may he never inherit his 
 throne." The duke's brothers, George the Fourth and William the 
 Fourth, never forgot or forgave this bitter invective of Shiel's. It pre- 
 vented, in the latter king's reign, the fiery-tongued little orator's ap- 
 pointment to the office of solicitor-general, which would necessarily have 
 led to his elevation to the bench ; and this in spite of some pathetic 
 rhetorical repentance spoken at the time of the duke of Yoi-kXs death. 
 
 About this period we have the exciting spectacle of a curious and 
 somewhat comical war between O'Connell and Cobbett, The latter 
 assails our hero virulentlv about " the wines." He savs it is too bad 
 that Mr. O'Connell, after having confessed himself a dupe, should be 
 suffered "to roam about the country, boasting of his long services and 
 great sacrifices, and carrying La appearance all the brains and all the 
 virtues of Ireland about in his pocket." Again Cobbett charges him 
 with corruption, and then retracts the charge. Also he says, " I impute 
 to him inordinate vanity — vanity greater than my pen can paint." 
 O'Connell, in reply, says that in a former letter he had styled Cobbett 
 "a comical miscreant, I now withdraw the appellation. Cobbett is 
 comical only when he means to be serious; when he intends to be jocose 
 he is truly doleful ; but, serious or jocose, he is at all times a miscreant, 
 In lieu of the name I thus retract, I will of my bounty bestow on him 
 another denomination, which, although conferred by me as a matter of 
 courtesy, he has most richly earned — I will call him in future ' a vile 
 vagabond.' . . . He is malignant, he is treacherous, he is false. . . . 
 He has outlived his intellect It cannot be said of him that his ' wine 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL 0C0XXELL. S95 
 
 of life is on the lees,' because wine is too generous a liquor to enter into 
 the comparison; but 'his gin of exigence is on the dregs,' and tl 
 which, while if flowed copiously and clearly, w: nd intoxi- 
 
 cating almost to madness, is now but a muddy residuum, product 
 sickness and nausea and incapable of giving one exhilarating sensation." 
 He accuses Cobbett of inventing a conversation about the Bridge-street 
 meeting. "Do not shuffle, Cobbett." After pointing out some apparent 
 contradictions in his adversary's statements, and what he calls " the un- 
 blushing effrontery of this my vile vagabond," he says, " He shall be a 
 comical miscreant again — so he shall." In spite of the fun on both 
 sides, this quarrel between the mettlesome popular chieftain of the Irish 
 and the equally combative leader of the English radicals was greatly to 
 be regretted. O'Connell used to defend his unsparing, if not unscrupu- 
 lous, use of invective oddly enough: "If I (\il not use the sledge- 
 hammer to smash opponents, I never could have succeeded." He is 
 stated to have said, in conversation with a friend of one of his biogra- 
 phers (Fagan), that it was not always irritation, that it was often calcu- 
 lation, which made him indulge in unmeasured vituperation. At all 
 events, it should be ever remembered, in palliation of his excess of irri- 
 tability and virulence, that no man was ever more frequently provoked 
 by inhuman and unfounded slanders than lie was. 
 
 But neither Cobbett' s attacks, nor those of his other enemies, in the 
 slightest degree impaired our hero's popularity — at least permanently. 
 This year, outside his own circuit, he visited Antrim, Newry, Galway 
 and Wexford. Wherever he went he moved along in triumph. His 
 entries into various towns and cities resembled those of a conqueror re- 
 turning home from some great battle. In Galway the horses were taken 
 from his carriage. In Cork his reception was flattering. In Mallow he 
 had to implore the people to let the carriage pass on quietly, in consider- 
 ation of the delicate health of Mrs. O'Connell, who was with him. Ap- 
 proaching Wexford, he was met at "the Pass" by a flotilla of boats on 
 the Slaney. He had to go on board a barge manned by first-rate rowers, 
 dressed in green and gold, and having a green ilag bearing on its folds 
 a crownless harp, in the stern. Joyous crowds lined the river-banks 
 and shouted enthusiastically as he was rowed along. Wexford town 
 was all alive and astir. Thousands stood on the quay and bridge to 
 
 57 
 
896 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 welcome him. The same evening he was entertained at a public 
 dinner. 
 
 I barely notice an unpleasant affair that occurred at the close of the 
 year 1825. O'Connell was reported to have said, when speaking at one 
 of the Catholic meetings of the attempts at proselytism of the Hibernian 
 Society in Kerry, that Mr. Leyne, a barrister and brother of that Captain 
 Leyne w T ho was afterwards made a stipendiary magistrate by our hero's 
 influence, had renounced Popery in order to inflict pain on an aged 
 father. Mr. Leyne sent a message to O'Connell, who, full of remorse on 
 account of D'Esterre's death, had by this time "registered a vow in 
 heaven," to use his own singular phrase, against duelling. O'Connell 
 could not now be goaded to fight in the face of his scruples of conscience. 
 In vain Leyne tried to offer him personal insult, and called him a liar, 
 a slanderer and a coward. O'Connell lodged informations, and had 
 Leyne bound over in large securities to keep the peace. Maurice O'Con- 
 nell, our hero's eldest hope, was willing to answer any claim Leyne 
 might have on his father. Leyne, having no quarrel with Maurice, beg- 
 ged to decline availing himself of his handsome offer. Then Maurice 
 and his brother Morgan waited near the Four Courts to meet and chas- 
 tise Leyne for his abuse of their father. They withdrew, however, on 
 being recognized by the people. As soon as O'Connell heard of the 
 intention of his sons, he lodged informations against them and his son- 
 in-law, Mr. Fitzsimon. Mr. Morgan O'Connell was arrested in the 
 theatre, Mr. Fitzsimon in our hero's own house ; Mr. Maurice O'Connell 
 had left Dublin, but shortly after was taken in Tralee. All three had to 
 find bail. 
 
 The enactment prohibiting any society for the redress of grievances 
 from holding its meetings beyond fourteen days was intended to cripple 
 the power of the Catholic movement. Its actual result was to add im- 
 mensely to the strength and influence of the agitation. When, on the 
 16th of January, 1826, one of these fourteen-day meetings commenced 
 its sittings in the Catholic Rooms, on Burgh quay, Dublin, those who 
 were indignant at seeing the Association in its former shape, imitating 
 the deliberations of the legislature, were now vexed and mortified to see 
 a much more formidable assembly debating upon all the national griev- 
 ances. In addition to the members accustomed to meet at the weekly 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 897 
 
 meetings of the Catholic body, leading men, lay and clerical, flocked up 
 to Dublin from all parts of the island and took an active part in the 
 discussions. The authority of a national convention was virtually added 
 to the Catholic assembly. It was plain that O'Connell had skilfully 
 accomplished the remarkable feat of "driving his coach-and-six through 
 the act of Parliament." It was a vain imagination on the part of min- 
 isters to think of suppressing Ireland's complaints. With violent nervous 
 gestures, and shrill voice, and vehement eloquence, Shiel descanted on 
 the Catholic's position of inferiority in the land of his fathers. At this 
 fourteen-day gathering of Catholic might, O'Connell set himself right 
 on the subject of "the wings," by a resolution, that their "petition 
 shall embrace the principle of unqualified emancipation to its fullest 
 extent," and that they deprecated "any measure tending to restrict the 
 elective franchise or interfering with the discipline or independence of 
 the Catholic Church." 
 
 This great fourteen-day meeting was followed by formidable provin- 
 cial meetings. The Catholics invited their Protestant friends to partici- 
 pate in these. All over the country the different ranks of society were 
 brought together. Mutual confidence waxed stronger. All were taught 
 to stand "shoulder to shoulder for liberty." The eloquence of the more 
 educated kindled the wrath of the masses — alike the peasantry and the 
 working-men of the towns. The deliberations on these occasions most 
 frequently lasted two days. On the third a dinner took place, at which 
 Catholics and Protestants sat side by side. The first of these provincial 
 meetings was the Limerick one — a tremendous gathering, presided over 
 by Thomas Wyse. Other immense meetings succeeded — at Waterford, 
 at Cork and elsewhere. These meetings were looked upon as important 
 events in the country, and produced far greater and more durable effects 
 in their respective localities than any similar assemblies could do in 
 Dublin. O'Connell missed none of them. He seemed ubiquitous, and 
 was now more than ever the soul of the entire Catholic movement. It 
 was idle even to dream for a moment of putting him down. 
 
 After the Dublin fourteen-days' meeting, O'Connell had a funny 
 squabble with the press. He complained that the reports of his 
 speeches were inaccurate. The Morning Register "took up the cudgels" 
 against him on behalf of the reporters: "We admit that the reports" 
 
SOS THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 {of Ms speeches) "did not in length go much beyond seventy columns." 
 They did not give all he said, for •• that would require Mr. Thwaites's 
 broad sheet. Any one who measures by a stop-watch will find that 
 Mr. O'Connell pours out about two hundred words in one minute.' 7 It 
 is only seven or eight minutes' trouble to him "to till a column of small 
 print." What are any number of minutes' speaking to Mm ? " In a five 
 hours' sitting he will contrive sometimes to be three hours on his legs; 
 and in thr.ee hours he will positively pour out twenty-two columns and 
 a quarter of oratory!" The Freeman'' s Journal was still more crusty 
 with our somewhat unreasonable orator. 
 
 This year, 1826, was signalized by several remarkable electioneering 
 triumphs of the Association. The representation of several counties 
 was wrested from great Ascendency families that had hitherto controlled 
 the elections of those districts with absolute sway. The machinery of 
 the Association, spread like a network over the country, was admirably 
 adapted for achieving conquests of this description. The great house 
 of Beresford was totally defeated in Waterford. Mr. Villiers Stuart, in 
 addressing the electors of that county, called on the Catholics to judge 
 for themselves as to their own interests. This course was deemed by 
 the insolent partisans of the Beresfords "highly ungentlemanlike" — "a 
 daring encroachment on the rights of private property." That tlie Catholic 
 voters should dream of refusing to vote for the nominees of the Ascend- 
 ency magnates amounted to "a palpable insurrection." What were the 
 forty-shilling freeholders created for but to vote at the beck of their 
 masters, the landocrats? The agents of Mr. Stuart's opponent, Lord 
 George Beresford, abused the Association, the priests and the people, 
 calling the latter superstitious slaves, and yet expecting them to vote 
 for Beresford. But the people, while they manifested their zeal for 
 Stuart by kindling bonfires on every height and crowding into towns 
 and villages to hear the harangues of his agents, naturally turned aside 
 indignantly from his rival. John Claudius Beresford, who had come 
 down to assist his kinsmen, to his own infinite mortification and thai 
 of Iiis friends, passed without a cheer through such a crowd in Port law. 
 O'Connell came down as counsel for Mr. Stuart, receiving a fee of six 
 hundred guineas, lie prevented the voters belonging to the duke of 
 Devonshire's estates from going on board a steamboat, which had been 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCOXXELL. »99 
 
 sent up the Blackwafer to Lismore to convey them to Waterford city. He 
 nicknamed the vessel "the tea-kettle," and terrified the country-people, 
 especially their female relatives, will) an exaggerated picture of the dan- 
 gers incident to steamboat voyages. At the hustings, the rage and horror 
 of Lord George Beresford and his followers rose to the highest pitch when 
 O'Connell himself was proposed as a "lit and proper person to represent 
 the county." For the lirst time since the penal laws were established, 
 a Catholic candidate for Parliamentary honors was brought forward. 
 This was an ingenious device to enable O'Connell to deliver his opinions 
 at large at the hustings. Having spoken with unusual ability for two 
 hours, he withdrew his claims in favor of Mr. Stuart, The Beresfords 
 were deserted by some of their most strenuous supporters. They were 
 even put to shame by men whom they had bribed, and who now held 
 up the purchase-money in open court. Lord George Beresford, feeling 
 himself disgracefully beaten, retired from the contest on the fifth day, 
 and Villiers Stuart was declared duly elected by an immense majority. 
 The Waterford people were delighted at the humiliation of the insolent 
 and bigoted house of Beresford. The head of that house, the marquis 
 of Waterford, was then in a dying state. He is said to have expended 
 £100,000 on this election. He bore the defection of his dependants 
 comparatively well, until even Manton, his favorite huntsman, famous 
 for wakening the echoes with his horn, deserted him. The old lord sent 
 for this attached follower of his j'outhful days. " Manton," said he, 
 feebly, "have you too abandoned me?" The faithful old huntsman 
 blessed "his honor," and wished "long life" to him, and then paused, 
 with tears in his eyes. Both were for a moment silent; then Lord 
 Waterford repeated his question. " I'd go to the world's end to sarve 
 your honor," replied the huntsman, "but — but, please your lordship, I 
 cannot vote against my counthry and my religion." This rebuff was too 
 much for the haughty old nobleman. In a few days more he caused 
 himself to be carried on board the packet Dunmore, bound forCaermar- 
 then, in Wales, and there, far from his lordly domain of Curraghmore. 
 in a common inn, he breathed his last. It is painful to be obliged to 
 add that, according to statements I have read, he was mean enough, 
 before he died, to dismiss Manton, despoiling him of his farm, and turn- 
 ing his wife and children out on the wide world. 
 
 *o 
 
)00 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 The two great Ascendency aristocrats of the county Lowth — the 
 earl of Eoden, head of the family of Jocelyn, and Lord Oriel, head of 
 the Fosters — were likewise humbled. The liberal candidate for Lowth, 
 Mr. Alexander Dawson, a retired barrister, was at the head of the poll ; 
 the second member was Mr. Foster. Mr. Fortescue, Lord Eoden' s nom- 
 inee, was totally defeated. It was somewhat amusing to see how the 
 scornful confidence felt by Mr. Foster, at the commencement of the con- 
 test, paled into nervous anxiety when he saw the thousands of stout 
 peasantry who, bearing green banners and shouting and leaping exult- 
 ingly, as they flung their hats in the air and caught them again, followed 
 the friend of the Catholics as he drove into Dundalk in his old gig. 
 Foster, during the progress of this Lowth election, would constantly rush 
 into the sheriff's booth and cry out, "Soldiers, Mr. High-Sheriff! I call 
 upon you to bring out troops to protect me and my supporters. My life 
 is in peril; my brother has been just assailed; we shall be massacred, 
 if you persevere in excluding troops from the town." Shiel, however, 
 who was counsel for Dawson, was able to prevent the sheriff from yield- 
 ing to the suggestions of Mr. Foster's unreasonable alarm. In Monaghan 
 the success of the people was still more spontaneous and striking. The 
 bigoted Colonel Leslie was defeated by Colonel Westenra. Mr. Brie was 
 the liberal candidate's counsel. The thanks of the Association were 
 voted to O'Connell, Shiel and Brie. After the close of the Waterford 
 election, O'Connell hastened to Kilmainham to take part in the county 
 Dublin election. If he was vexed to find the Dublin electors less de- 
 voted and independent than those of Waterford, still the return of White 
 and Talbot, the liberal candidates, was finally secured. In short, the 
 machinery of the Association, "the rent," and the self-sacrifice of the 
 forty-shilling freeholders, applied and directed by the skill and energy 
 of O'Connell, had so triumphed during this general election of 1826, 
 that it was now plain to the world that, with most Irish constituencies, 
 candidates, who refused to pledge themselves to vote for emancipation, 
 had little chance of being returned. As for the bigots, they were in 
 consternation. It was all a diabolical plot, at the bottom of which Avere 
 the pope and the Jesuits. Sir Harcourt Lees demanded, Would Parlia- 
 ment at length give ear to his prognostications, "put down" Popery and 
 send the arch-disturber, O'Connell, to the Tower ? 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 90i 
 
 At a Catholic meeting, held in Dublin before the close of the elec- 
 tions, O'Connell said "he came to read his recantation on the subject of 
 the forty-shilling freeholders. . . . They had burst the bonds and fetters 
 which had previously held them in slavery." He thanked them for 
 their "boundless patriotism." His "delusion" was "gone for ever." 
 The error was his; the merit theirs. He moved, "that we deem it our 
 duty, publicly and solemnly, to declare that we will not accept of emanci- 
 pation accompanied by any infringement whatsoever of the forty-shilling 
 franchise." Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman, who, on this occasion, wore a 
 green coat and an orange cravat, would allow no one to second the 
 motion, in favor of "the heroic and magnanimous forty-shilling free-' 
 holders," but himself. This was the only subject on which "he had 
 ever differed with his friend O'Connell," who, "by the proposition of this 
 resolution," had achieved one of his noblest victories. Shiel then elo- 
 quently described how these degraded serfs, "driven to the hustings as 
 the beasts that perish to the shambles," had suddenly thrown off "their 
 debasement" and risen "up to the great level of full and independent 
 citizenship." O'Connell, speaking a second time, praised the nobility 
 with which a poor man in Waterford, named Casey, had spurned a bribe 
 of seventy sovereigns — riches to him. Of three thousand voters in that 
 county, the Beresfords had eight hundred registered votes "on their own 
 domains." 
 
 As soon as the elections had terminated, O'Connell took steps to 
 protect the gallant "forties" from the inveterate landlord persecution to 
 which they were sure to be exposed on account of the election victories, 
 mainly won through their devoted patriotism. This was necessary ; for 
 already had the bigoted Evening Mail begun to sound the ominous note 
 of woe to the peasantry. The Older of Liberators was established, con- 
 sisting of three grades — "The Liberators," "The Knights Grand Cross," 
 "The Knights Companions." Two acts of good service to Ireland enti- 
 tled a man to be a Knight Companion, three acts a Knight Grand 
 Cross. O'ConnelPs first claim was having served Ireland for twenty- 
 seven years ; his second, having originated the Association of 1823 ; his 
 third, the establishment of the Catholic rent. He now established, in 
 addition to the old rent, a fund for the protection of the freeholders, and 
 the increase of their strength, called "the new Catholic rent." Our 
 
002 THE LIFE OF DAKJEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 hero signed his letter to the people of Ireland on this new rent, "Daniel 
 O'Connell, of the Order of the Liberators." In this address he proposed 
 to •"advance loans to all those against wjiom the vengeance of the land- 
 ! »ids shall be directed.'' In another part he says: "Already the pcrse-r 
 cation rages. In Westineath, the tenants on the estate of that unre- 
 lenting enemy of ours, Lord Castlemaine, are distrained for the May 
 rent." "The Liberator's" call was responded to. Lord Cloncurry was 
 grand-master of the new Order; it was also intended that it should 
 have a chancellor and a prelate. 
 
 Pretty much about this time, Mr. Dominiek Eonayne of Cork tried 
 to induce O'Connell to go in heartily with the English radicals for the 
 destruction of the borough influence of the aristocracy. Konayne de- 
 nounced the sinecures, grants, pensions and other monopolies of the 
 oligarchic system that prevailed. He demanded, How would emancipa- 
 tion "diminish the burden of the overbearing Church Establishment 
 or redress the evils arising from absenteeism ? . . . Fling, then, away 
 your vain pursuit of an exclusive measure, and join those who will give 
 you the real emancipation and the true equality of the law." The blan- 
 dishments of Earl Filzuilliam, who took the chair at a Calholic meeting 
 in Wateiford, and of other members of the alarmed aristocracy, pre- 
 vented O'Connell, who always had a hankering after the great old fam- 
 ilies, from giving a favorable hearing to these views of Mr. Ponavne, 
 though, some years before, he had himself declared, at a meeting held 
 in Harold's Cross, Dublin, "that the only remedy for Irish calamities 
 was radical reform and universal suffrage." 
 
 About this period great sympathy towards Ireland began to be felt 
 in foreign lands. The Irish struggle against England was compared to 
 the struggle of the Greeks against the Turks. The self-glorifying Eng- 
 lish on the Continent were sneered at and reproached for their cruel 
 oppression of Ireland. L Etoilc, one of the organs of the French gov- 
 ernment, took up the cause of Ireland in a series of brilliant articles. 
 French tourists in Ireland, on their return to Paris, spread abroad the 
 tale of Ireland's wrongs. But friends to the Association were springing 
 up not merely in France, but in Spain, Italy, various German states, 
 even British India. Correspondence from all these countries occupied 
 a large portion of the time of the Association. The world saw with 
 
Farmtl tylSons, tn Cieth'g vjii>e of f)i*t. CL of U. S. for Soid/iertt Dirt,of N. V 
 
 KING BRIAN BEFORE THE BATTLE OF CLONTARF. 
 
THE LTFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 903 
 
 pleasure O'Connell and his powerful agitation shaking the British em- 
 pire. His sagacity and energy were in all foreign lands the theme of 
 praise. Translations of his speeches, and those of Shiel, were con- 
 stantly published in foreign journals. All this galled the proud heart 
 of England, but at the same time taught her the impossibility of delay- 
 ing emancipation much longer. 
 
 But of all the foreign nations that about this time showed interest 
 in the Catholic struggle, perhaps the most sympathetic was the great 
 American republic. Ties of consanguinity accounted for the friendly 
 feelings of myriads of American citizens towards Ireland. The love of 
 justice and indignation against oppression and wrong caused myriads 
 more to become advocates of that outraged land. So early as 1825, at 
 a meeting in New York, Judge Swanton in the chair, resolutions and 
 addresses, written by Dr. McNevin, the "United Irish" exile, and ex- 
 pressive of sympathy with Ireland and indignation against England, 
 were voted. An association with a "rent," to co-operate with the Cath- 
 olic organization in Ireland and modelled on its plan, was established. 
 The State government seems to have countenanced this movement. A 
 guarded expression of gratitude was sent out to the American body 
 from the Association in Dublin. Opinions on the bold sentiments of 
 the American address were carefully avoided. Other meetings were 
 subsequently held in the chief cities of the Union. Other friendly ad- 
 dresses to the Irish Catholics were voted. Indeed, associations, with 
 numerous offshoots, sprang up all over the States with great rapidity. 
 "Kent" was collected everywhere, and correspondence opened up by all 
 the American bodies with the model society in Dublin. 
 
 Returning to occurrences in Ireland — in defiance of the increasing 
 power of the Catholic body, and in defiance of their petition against it, 
 the Church-rates bill, which enabled Protestants to tax Catholics for 
 the building and repair of their churches, was carried this year. The 
 Ascendency was not quite prostrated yet. Still, O'Connell's fame and 
 might grew daily. When he arrived with his family at Nenagh, on the 
 12th of July, on his way to Darrynane, the people took the horses from 
 his carriage and drew him through the town. Quarter sessions were 
 going on in Nenagh at the time. But when they heard the huzzas out- 
 side, nearly all the people in the court rushed out to see "the Liberator," 
 
leaving the assistant-barrister almost -alone in his glory." Towards the 
 end of this year O'Connell was saddened by a very painful occurrence. His 
 very promising and rising young friend, Counsellor Brie, one evening got 
 into an idle altercation with a Mr. Hayes, who had just stepped off the 
 Cork mail-coach, about the merits of Mr. Callaghan, one of the candidates 
 at the Cork election, who was Mr. Hayes's relation. This gentleman had 
 overheard Mr. Brie call Callaghan "a rascal." Hot words ensued. Cards 
 were exchanged. They met, next morning, in a field near Glasnevin. 
 Mr. Brie fell at the first fire, mortally wounded. "God forgive me!" 
 cried Mr. Hayes, flinging down the fatal weapon and rushing distractedly 
 from the field. "My God!" says Brie faintly, "I believe I am shot." 
 In eight minutes he was a corpse. The death of this talented and be- 
 nevolent young man occasioned widespread grief in Dublin city. An 
 immense crowd of all religions followed his remains to the grave. He 
 was one of those clever barristers whom the Association was wont to 
 send down to the country, especially the North, to protect the Cath- 
 olics against the shameless partiality and misconduct of Ascendency 
 magistrates. If a reporter accompanied the barrister sent on such a 
 mission, the magistrate would be inspired with a still more salutary fear 
 of public opinion. In one of his speeches to the Association, in 1821, 
 we find O'Connell announcing that, "at the least possible fee that could 
 be given to professional gentlemen," Counsellor Brie and Mr. Corcoran, 
 the attorney, would attend an inquiry at New Boss, in the county AYex- 
 ford, to assist the people in bringing their wrongs "fairly before the 
 magistrate." 
 
 On the 5th of January, 1827, that royal opponent of the Catholic 
 claims, the duke of York, expired, after a long and painful illness. 
 Though a very imperfect character, still this prince was a more generous 
 and, indeed, in almost every way a better man, than the king, his brother, 
 Avhich, after all, is not saying much for him. Shiel and O'Connell had 
 incurred a good deal of odium by the fierce invectives which they had 
 uttered against him after his " so-help-me-God " harangue. O'Connell 
 had openly declared, "It is a mockery to tell me that the .people of lie- 
 land have not an interest in his ceasing to live ;" and speaking of the 
 contingency of his death, he had added, amidst laughter and cheers, 
 '' I am perfectly resigned to the will of God, and shall abide the result 
 
TIIE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 905 
 
 with the most Christian resignation." Noav, however, when the duke 
 had actually ceased to exist, both Shiel and O'Connell expressed a gen- 
 erous sorrow for his death and a keen regret for the bitter words they 
 had spoken in auger. "The Catholics of Ireland," said O'Connell, 
 "exult not at the death of the duke of York. We war not with the 
 dying or the grave. Our enmities are buried there. They expired with 
 the individual who caused them. We feel nothing but regret at seeing 
 a fellow-creature called from this earthly scene to render the great account 
 to his Maker. Whatever his royal highness may have said against us, 
 we forgive. No man ever acted with more impartiality at the head of 
 an army. He never made a distinction between a Catholic and a Prot- 
 estant." O'Connell then tells an interesting anecdote of the duke's 
 generous treatment of a Catholic officer of his acquaintance, who had 
 served in the Irish Brigade of France, and in the armies of Germany 
 and Holland. This gentleman had applied for a commission in the 
 British army. A letter came to him, asking " What his religion was ?" 
 He replied, that, having never been asked that question before, "he 
 scarcely recollected his religion; but that now, as it was put to him, he 
 was a Catholic." He expected to hear no more from the duke, "but by 
 return of post he received a commission with full pay in the British 
 service." Moore, also, in immortal verse, lamented the duke's death, 
 while referring bitterly to his hostility to emancipation. This year, too, 
 the dull prime minister, the earl of Liverpool, another bitter opponent 
 of the Catholic claims, was incapacitated by an apoplectic seizure from 
 taking any further part in public affairs. He did not survive this attack 
 many months. This timorous and narrow bigot's removal from the helm 
 of government was a source of rejoicing to the Catholics of Ireland. 
 
 I shall slightly notice an odd outrage which, one day in January, 
 1827, our hero met with at the hands of the notorious Eemigius, or 
 Remus, or Remmy Sheehan, one of the proprietors of the Dublin Evening 
 Mail, O'Connell had given this worthy more than once "a taste of the 
 quality" of the rough side of his tongue — he had called him "an apos- 
 tate." "Wrathful at such arraignment foul," the vengeful Remmy met 
 Dan in Nassau street, near Morrison's Hotel, valorously struck him 
 across the arm with an umbrella, and then, consulting "the better part 
 of valor," ran away as fast as his legs could carry him. A police-office 
 
scene ensued. Dan required that Sheehan should be bound over to keep 
 the peace, for the protection of himself and family. " I even wish it for 
 the protection of Mr. Sheehan himself." 
 
 " I want none of your protection," roared Sheehan, with redoubled 
 rage; "I am able to protect myself." When O'Connell spoke of his 
 resolution never to fight another duel, Remmy cried out, perhaps not 
 altogether unreasonably, "Bah! bah! If a man makes such a resolu- 
 tion, he should at the same time make another, not to wound the feel- 
 ings of any man." The magistrate had to curb more than once Rem- 
 lny's tendency to discursiveness. Remmy professed a lofty scorn of the 
 idea of "reconciliation" with Dan. Our hero had slandered his brother 
 and himself. His brother was "no renegade; he never was a Roman 
 Catholic." Remmy himself, " for the last twenty years, had been a 
 staunch Protestant," and wouldn't have anything to do with a paper 
 "unless it was conducted as a pure Protestant paper." With regard to 
 the assault, he added: "Well, then, I did assault him, and I did it ad- 
 visedly, and with all my heart and soul; and if the same provocation 
 were given, I should do so again."' O'Connell was bound under a pen- 
 alty of £20 to prosecute Remmy before the recorder. Remmy was con- 
 demned to "durance vile" for three months. O'Connell magnilicently 
 memorials government to release his prostrate foe. Remmy heroically 
 petitions "the powers that be" not to let him out, especially if O'Con- 
 nell were to have any hand in his release. Enough of this grotesque 
 passage of our hero's strangely diversified biography. 
 
 I pass by another fourteen-days' meeting held in Dublin in the same 
 month, during which our hero displayed his usual untiring energy. On 
 the 6th of March Sir Francis Burdctt's resolution, "That this House" 
 [of Commons) "is impressed with the expediency of taking into consid- 
 eration the laws imposing disabilities" on His Majesty's Roman Cath- 
 olic subjects, "with a view to their relief," was lost by a majority of four. 
 O'Connell deemed this a most serious defeat. Troops were poured into 
 Ireland ; five million rounds of ball-cartridges distributed through the 
 garrisons. On the 12th of March a Catholic meeting was held in the 
 Corn Exchange. Sir Thomas Esmonde, the chairman, supported by 
 Nicholas Mahon, wanted to cushion a bold letter of O'Connell's calling 
 on the people to address the king, to renew their petitions for emanci- 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL, 907 
 
 patton, and also to petition for the repeal of the union. Jack Lawless, 
 however, succeeded, after considerable altercation, in forcing the chair- 
 man to have O'Connell's letter rend to the meeting by Mr. Dwyer. 
 
 The CathoK-os soon rallied from their state of depression. Their hopes 
 even rose higher and brighter than ever. The impassioned, the eloquent, 
 the brilliant George Canning, of Irish parentage both by father and 
 mother, had been entrusted by the king with the task of forming a min- 
 istry. As he was known to have become a warm friend to emancipation, 
 Wellington, Peel, Eldon and other Tory members of the Liverpool cabinet 
 refused to take office under him. Some of the aristocrats were galled to 
 see a man without great family connections at the head of affairs. Peel, 
 while he was prepared to veer round to the cause of emancipation, was 
 determined, if possible, to have the credit of carrying the measure him- 
 self. Thus the new premier had jealousies and rancorous opposition 
 both from some of his old associates and from a section of his old polit- 
 ical opponents — in short, heart-breaking difficulties to encounter i/om 
 the outset of his administration. However, he succeeded in forming a 
 cabinet which was, upon the whole, favorable to emancipation. A laige 
 portion of the Whig party gave him their support. The marquis of 
 Anglesea, a gallant cavalry general, succeeded the Marquis Wcllesley as 
 viceroy of Ireland. His chief secretary was Lord Francis Leveson 
 Gower, afterwards nicknamed the "shave-be^sfar" by our hero. 
 
 The masses of the Irish people, who had been well trained by O'Connell 
 and the Association to understand the Catholic question and its pros- 
 pects, were now naturally in a state of the highest exultation. A great 
 aggregate meeting of the Catholics was held in Clarendon Street Chapel, 
 at which the beautiful Mrs. Wise, Lucien Bonaparte's daughter and the 
 great Napoleon's niece, was one of the ladies present. O'Connell, N. 
 P. O'Gorman and other orators expressed their satisfaction at the prom- 
 ising aspect of affairs. It was on this occasion that Shiel's voice, ring- 
 ing shrilly and triumphantly, exclaimed: "Peel is out; Bathurst is out; 
 Westmoreland is out; Wellington, the bad Irishman, is out; and, thanks 
 be to God ! the hoary champion of every abuse, the venerable supporter 
 of corruption in all its forms, the pious antagonist of every generous 
 sentiment, Eldon, procrastinating, canting, griping, whining, weeping, 
 ejaculating, protesting, money-getting and money-keeping Eldon, is out. 
 
908 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 . . . We have got rid of the jailer" (Earl Bathurst) "who presided over 
 the captivity of Napoleon, and who was so well qualified to design what 
 Sir Hudson Lowe was so eminently calculated to execute. . . . And better 
 than all — better than the presumption of Wellington, the narrow-heart- 
 edness of Bathurst, the arrogance of Westmoreland, the ostentations 
 manliness and elaborate honesty of Mr. Peel — we have got rid of Lord 
 Eldon's tears !" 
 
 Everything seemed to promise well. As the 12th of July approached, 
 Lord Anglesea forbade by proclamation the customary Orange procession 
 in Dublin and the dressing of King William's statue in College Green. 
 In Ulster, indeed, the Orangemen insolently paraded with purple and 
 orange sashes, fired shots over the houses of Catholics and played "The 
 Protestant Boys" and "Croppies, Lie Down." O'Connell lauded Can- 
 ning and called on the Kilkenny people to return to Parliament Mr. 
 Dogherty (afterwards cliief-justice of the Common Pleas), who was repre- 
 sented to be a friend of the prime-minister's. O'Connell did not then 
 foresee his subsequent altercations with Dogherty. But all these bright 
 expectations that Canning, as he had vaunted "of having given freedom 
 to the Catholics of South America," when, to use his own eloquent words, 
 "he called in the New World to redress the balance of the Old," would 
 now enfranchise the Catholics of Ireland and Great Britain, were destined 
 to be rudel* dashed to the earth by the premature and melancholy death 
 of that great and generous statesman. 
 
 From the commencement of his administration he was baited and 
 circumvented by an unholy combination of jealous rivals. The aristo- 
 cratic section of the Whigs, headed by Earl Gray, who is said not to 
 have forgotten or forgiven some satirical sallies of Canning's wicked wit, 
 that had caused him to smart years before, combined against the new 
 minister with the more inveterate portion of the Tory party. That 
 Pecksnifiian statesman, Peel, however, had the chief share in the venom- 
 ous work of " hounding him to death." This is the phrase of Lord George 
 Bentinck, who, years later, avenged him by helping to overthrow Peel's 
 power. Meanwhile, Sir Robert assailed the great orator for going over 
 to the Catholic side, while he was even then fully resolved to do the 
 same tiling himself, whenever an opportunity to advance his views of 
 ambition by such a change of tactics should arise. This was a favorite 
 
TIIE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 909 
 
 policy with Sir Robert Pool through life — to oppose certain measures 
 vehemently, when out of office, and then, having once attained power, 
 to bring forward the same measures, thereby obliging his adversaries to 
 swell his majorities with their votes. The duke of Wellington's oppo- 
 sition to Canning, if fully vindictive as Peel's, was at least more honest, 
 Between them all, though he continued to the last to face the hatred 
 that surrounded and raged against him, night after night, with the un- 
 shrinking courage and defiance of a lion at bay, Canning's sensitive 
 heart was broken. He died in August, 1827. "They have killed him," 
 said the duke of Clarence, afterwards King William the Fourth ; " I 
 knew they would kill him." His death occasioned deep sorrow in Ire- 
 land. O'Connell pronounced an eloquent panegyric on the deceased 
 statesman. Referring to the helping hand which he had extended to 
 Greece and South America struggling for freedom, he said : " There is in 
 struggling Greece many a gallant spirit that will long to demonstrate 
 the sincerity of his grief for Canning's departure by sacrificing at his 
 tomb whole hecatombs of the enemies of Christianity. In South" 
 (Spanish?) "America, too — in Mexico, in Peru, in Chili and in La Plata, 
 and, more than all, in Colombia— will his death be followed by mourn- 
 ing. The great, the immortal Bolivar will shed tears of bitter anguish ; 
 the sounds of sorrow will ascend to the summits of the Andes; and 
 throughout all the nations of the earth the name of Canning will be 
 consecrated in the grief of every worthy breast," 
 
 I shall briefly notice the religious controversy that this year kept 
 Dublin in a state of ferment for several days. In the Rotundo, Mr. 
 Pope, a practiced controversialist, and the famous Father Tom Maguire, 
 a Leitrim parish-priest, who now for the first time became known as an 
 able logician, a powerful wielder of syllogistic sledge-hammers, met in 
 wordy strife — the former as champion of the creed of the Protestants, 
 the latter in defence of that of the Roman Catholics. The reverend 
 disputants wrangled together with commendable courtesy. Though 
 many were entertained with the ingenious oratory of the learned theo- 
 logians, nobody on either side was converted or profited in the least by 
 it. Both parties claimed the victory. On the first day of the debate 
 O'Connell took the chair. Other inflammatory discussions, like this one, 
 took place in Ireland about the same time. This whole movement seems 
 
910 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 f'V 
 
 to have been a spasmodic attempt on the part of the Ascendency 
 bigots to revive the "new reformation" business, in order to stem the 
 tide which was running fast in favor of "a compromise with Jezebel/ 
 or " Popery." However, Dr. Doyle and other Catholic prelates very 
 properly discountenanced such unedifying encounters. As for Fathei 
 Tom, a certain Miss Anne McGaraghan shortly after accused him of 
 seducing her. An action was taken by her father, a farmer and publican, 
 in the Dublin courts of law. The jury brought in a verdict for Fathei 
 Tom. The whole affair wore the ugly appearance of a conspiracy got 
 up to ruin his moral reputation. O'Connell was Father Tom's leading 
 counsel, and the speech delivered by him on this occasion was one of his 
 ablest forensic efforts. 
 
 The year 1828 opened with a novel and extraordinary display of 
 Catholic might, In accordance with a suggestion of Shiel's, on the 
 same day, the 13th of January, and the same hour, the whole Catholic 
 people of Ireland met in their several parishes all through the island. 
 When the session of Parliament opened the Association had a petition 
 ready, signed by eight hundred thousand Catholics, praying not for their 
 own relief, but for repeal of the Test Act and the Corporation Act, which 
 had excluded Protestant Dissenters from office for a century and a half. 
 This petition, which had been suggested by O'Connell, was written by 
 Father L'Estrange. "This," says Mr. Mitchel, "was an incident well 
 calculated to produce a fine dramatic effect — the proscribed and op- 
 pressed Catholics petitioning for the rights of the much less proscribed 
 and oppressed nonconformists." On the other hand, there were many 
 petitions from Protestants in favor of Catholics; though, unhappily, too, 
 numbers of influential Protestant petitions — from the British universi- 
 ties, for example, from various corporations of towns and cities, espe- 
 cially that of Dublin — deprecated all concessions to Catholics. 
 
 Anglesea remained viceroy under the feeble and short-lived ministry 
 of Lord Goderich, and also when the duke of Wellington became prime 
 minister, on the 22d of January, 1828. Contrary to the hopes of the 
 bigots, Anglesea became a favorite with the good-natured, credulous 
 Irish people. He played the role of a conciliatory viceroy. In spite of 
 his perverse politics at a later period, he seems to have been a well- 
 intentioned man, frank and manly. O'Connell afterwards said of him • 
 
TTTE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. 'Jll 
 
 '■ Poor Anglcsea! tlic unfortunate man -was not wicked, but misguided." 
 It appears that Anglesea said to O'Gorman precisely the same thing of 
 Dan: "That unfortunate O'Connell means well, but lie is misguided." 
 . iglesea foolishly said that O'Connell had no influence in Ireland. 
 Peel was home secretary, Goulbourne chancellor of the exchequer. 
 That time-server, Palmerston, had a seat in the cabinet. It also 
 contained, to use O'Connell's ludicrous nicknames, "Booby Bexley, 
 Doodle Dudley, Squeaky Wynne and Mawworin Grant." Wellington's 
 elevation to power, so far from daunting them, inspired O'Connell and 
 the Catholics with an unprecedented spirit of unanimity and energy. 
 In February, thev resolved, at an aggregate meeting in Dublin, "That 
 we will consider any member an enemy to the peace of Ireland who 
 shall support any administration not making emancipation a cabinet 
 measure.'' This year O'Connell also established Catholic churchwardens, 
 to forward to the Association reports about "the rent," the census, amount 
 of tithes and church-cess, Kildare Place schools and proselytism. 
 
 Continental governments began to watch the progress of affairs in 
 Ireland. The due de Montebello, the marquis do Dalmatie, M. Duver- 
 gier, and other French travellers visited the island ; their reports of 
 what they saw made a deep impression on the mind of Franco. Sym- 
 pathy for Ireland prevailed on the Continent, This year a great meet- 
 ing at. Clonmel lasted three days. Fifty thousand peasants, wearing 
 green cockades and green uniforms made of calico, gave the assembly 
 the appearance of a patriotic host. The military spirit of the nation 
 was kindling last. This year, too, a measure for Catholic relief passed 
 the Commons by a majority of six; but it was defeated by a majority 
 of forty-four in the Lords. However, Lord John Russell's bill for the 
 repeal of the Test and Corporation acts became law. Peel gave it only 
 a faint opposition. This was a sign of the times. The day of Catholic 
 emancipation was coming fast. After straggling Tor twenty-eight years. 
 O'Connell at length had victory in his grasp!* 
 
 ♦Authorities: Mitcliel's "History;" "Life of O'Connell," published by Mullany; Daunt's 
 "Recollections;" McNevin's "Life and Speeches of Sliiel ;" Shiel's "Sketches;" Kennedy's "Remi- 
 niscences;" Wise's "Association;" Fagan; "Irish Quarterly Review;" "Annual Register;" Twiss's 
 "Life of Eldon;" Prince Puckler Muskau's "Travels in Ireland;" "O'Conuell's Speeches," edited 
 by his son; Fitzpatrick's "Life of Dr. Doyle;" Alison's "Europe;" etc. 
 
 oS 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 preparations for the clare election — o'connell offers himself to the electors as 
 a candidate for parliamentary honors — sets out for clare ; his triumphal 
 progress — Exciting canvass in Clare — Steel, O'Gorman Mahox, Shiel, Father 
 Murphy, Father Tom Maguire, Jack Lawless all canvassixg for O'Coxnell — 
 Indignation of the landlords — The election — Sheriff Malony and O'Gorman 
 Mahox — Sir Edward O'Brien's tears — Speeches of the two candidates, Vesey 
 Fitzgerald and O'Coxnell — Exciting scexes — The humors of an iRisn election 
 forty-three years ago — "The first max in the county" — A bill of ixdictmext 
 against a priest's physiognomy — Colonel Vaxdei.eur deserted by his voters — "The 
 wolf is ox the walk " — devotion of the peasantry — defeat of the cabinet min- 
 ister axd the aristocracy — gexerous feeling of o'connell ; magnanimity of vesey 
 Fitzgerald — "The max of the people" the member for Clare — He is chaired ix 
 Exnis; his triumphal progress to Dublin — Lawless at Ballibay — Revolutionary 
 measures proposed in the association - — aristocratic meeting at tne rotunda in 
 
 FAVOR OF EMANCIPATION — " DeRRY DaWSON's" SPEECH — "BRUNSWICK CLUBS " — THE 
 VICEROY, ANGLESEA, FAVORABLE TO EMANCIPATION — He IS RECALLED; VAST CROWDS 
 ATTEND HIM TO KlNGSTOWX — THE IRISH SOLDIERY IN FAVOR OF O'CoNNELL — EMANCIPA- 
 TION BROUGHT FORWARD IX PARLIAMENT BY WELLINGTON AND PEEL— THE ASSOCIATION 
 
 is dissolved — Bigoted opposition to the relief measure — The king stkuggi.es 
 against it — it passes both houses — george the fourth reluctantly signs the 
 bill — Its provisions — Disfranchisement of the forty-shilling freeholders — O'Cox- 
 nell AT THE BAR OF THE COMMONS; HE IS MEANLY REFUSED HIS SEAT — HlS ENTHUSI- 
 ASTIC reception in Ireland — Irish gratitude — Odd squabbles — O'Connell is re- 
 elected FOR CLARE — REFLECTIONS OX THE GREAT CATHOLIC VICTORY. 
 
 HWlE^HE proximate cause of Catholic emancipation was the cele- 
 "W brated Clare election. That extraordinary event came to pass 
 
 in this way. Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, having been advanced to a 
 I® seat in the Wellington cabinet as president of the Board of Trade, 
 f§ was obliged to vacate his seat in Parliament for the county Clare. 
 As he had always been favorable to emancipation ; as he possessed great 
 influence in Clare with all classes from his personal merits, his liberal 
 distribution of government patronage and his family connections; as his 
 father, Prime-Sergeant Fitzgerald, had gained the love of the people b\ 
 voting against the union at the sacrifice of his office, there seemed to be 
 no doubt that Vesey Fitzgerald would be immediately re-elected. Lord 
 John Russell, pleading that the duke of Wellington had acted so uobl} 
 
 912 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 913 
 
 in the case of the repeal of the Test and Corporation acts as to entitle 
 him to tlie gratitude of "the liberals," begged O'Connell by letter to 
 procure the reversal of the resolution, passed by the Association, that 
 they should strive to prevent the return of every candidate not pledged 
 to oppose the duke's administration. O'Connell was at first weakly 
 inclined to comply with this request, in the interest of the Whigs, but 
 his proposal to suspend the resolution met with a stormy opposition, 
 which showed the strong dislike felt by Irish Catholics towards Wel- 
 lington and Peel. The resolution remained in force ; and soon O'Connell 
 had good reason to rejoice that his compliance was of no avail. 
 
 When the Association came to the determination of contesting Clare, 
 they first thought of putting forward as their candidate the popular 
 Major McNamara. As, however, several days passed over without 
 bringing any response to their call from the major, they began to doubt 
 that he would come forward. Doubts, also, were entertained as to the 
 zeal of the Clare priests, especially of the influential Dean O'Shaugh- 
 nessy of Ennis, who was a distant relative of Mr. Fitzgerald. Nor, 
 when the dean, glancing around with " his bright authoritative eye," 
 unexpectedly entered the room where the Association sat in council, was 
 there much in his ambiguous discourse to restore confidence. Still, the 
 members present, far from being downcast, decided that £5000 of the 
 Catholic rent should be appropriated to the expenses of the election, 
 with a view to smooth any difficulties that pecuniary considerations 
 might place in the way of the major's acceptance of the offered candi- 
 dature. At the same time Mr. O'Gorman Mahon and Mr. Steele, two 
 Clare gentlemen of considerable property, who, on the appearance of 
 signs of panic, had insisted that the people of Clare might be roused 
 and that the priests were not lukewarm, were sent post to Clare to learn 
 the real feelings of the people and to see the major. In two days O'Gor- 
 man came back with the major's refusal ; his family were under such obli- 
 gations to Mr. Fitzgerald that he could not honorably oppose him. All 
 seemed lost. Not merely the Ascendency party, but the liberal Prot- 
 estants, were already hard at work for Fitzgerald. The former, indeed, 
 vaunted that no Clare gentleman would stoop so low as to accept the pa- 
 tronage of the Association. Pride, however, was doomed to get a speedy fall. 
 
 Just when every one was settling down into the belief that further 
 
914 THE LIFE OF DAKIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 opposition to the cabinet minister was hopeless, universal Ireland — nol 
 to say the whole British empire — was electrified by the appearance, in 
 the Dublin Evening Post, of an address to the electors of Clare, solicit- 
 ing their votes, from O'Coimell himself. How did this come about? A 
 Tory friend of our hero, Sir David Roose, meeting Vincent Fitzpatrick 
 (the son of Hugh the publisher) in Nassau street, said to him, "O'Con- 
 nell ought to offer himself as a candidate for Clare." Fitzpatrick was 
 staggered at the remark, but in a moment he exclaimed, "You are 
 right." He at once called to mind that John Keogh of Mount Jerome 
 had observed to him. when a boy, that the English would never concede 
 emancipation until a Catholic was relumed to Parliament; that the 
 English middle classes, in spite of their stupid prejudices against the 
 Irish Catholics, would look on the exclusion from his seat of a member 
 duly elected as an outrageous violation of the constitutional privileges 
 of 1 he subject. Fitzpatrick flew to O'Coimell. Our hero heard him 
 coldly at first, but finally adopted his suggestion with warmth. He 
 went with him to the office of the Post without delay. A coolness had 
 arisen between our hero and Conway, the successor of Magce. O'Con- 
 nell, advancing with his "smile of witchery" and proffered hand, said 
 to Conway, "Let us be friends.*' The coolness vanished in a moment. 
 Our hero, in the public office (noise was no disturbance to him, so he 
 refused to go into the quiet inner room), dashed off his address. "Mod- 
 ify it as you please," said he; but Conway could sec nothing in it that 
 required change. It was printed at once. While stating his claims to 
 their suffrages, in this document he declares that he will never take the 
 oath that the mass is idolatrous, "for the authority which created those 
 oaths can abrogate them; and I entertain a confident hope that, if you 
 elect me, the most bigoted of our enemies tvill see the necessity of remov- 
 ing from the chosen representative of the people an obstacle which would 
 prevent him from doing his duty to his king and to his country." In 
 truth, he had at last found out the true way to wrest emancipation from 
 the enemy's grasp. 
 
 As our hero was at this time pressed by pecuniary embarrassments 
 (he always lived extravagantly), he sent Vincent Fitzpatrick to see if the 
 wealthy Catholics would supply funds for the contest. Andrew Ennis, 
 Cornelius McLousdilin and John Power put their own names down for 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONKELL. 915 
 
 £100 each and solicited others to subscribe. In one day they obtained 
 £1000. Within a week the country contributed £14,000. In addition 
 to this sum, Cork alone subscribed £1000, of which Jeremiah Murphy 
 gave £300. In truth, the excitement was at the highest throughout 
 the island. James Power, afterwards member for Waterfowl, said to 
 Fitzpatrick, "I never was so excited in my life as on reading that 
 address." He promised that himself and his father would subscribe tc 
 the election fund. 
 
 Before O'Connell set out for Clare, several gentlemen were sent from 
 the Association to excite the minds of the people and to prepare the 
 way for his coming. The priests, too, were to be stirred up to use 
 their influence with the tenantry. The aristocracy — the O'Briens, 
 McNamaras, Fitzareralds, Vandeleurs and others — never dreamt that 
 their "serf-freeholders would dare to vote contrary to their mandates. 
 It was then a principle amongst the Irish gentry that, if any gentleman 
 canvassed the tenants of another with a view to induce them to vote 
 contrary to the will of their landlord, such interference was to be looked 
 on as a personal insult. Hence the magnates were no doubt startled 
 and furious, when Mr. Thomas Steele amiably declared his perfect read- 
 iness to fight any landlord who should think himself aggrieved by inter- 
 ference with his tenants, and then, assisted by his friend, Mr. O'Gorman 
 Mahon, commenced operations by setting to work and canvassing the 
 county. These two gentlemen were probably the most active of all the 
 emissaries of the Association. They traversed Clare incessantly, vehe- 
 mently appealing to the people on the hill-side, in the market-places, at 
 the altars after mass. The people, excitable and imaginative, were soon 
 roused to such a pitch of patriotic and religious enthusiasm that they 
 were even prepared to brave the power and vengeance of their landlords 
 in vindicating what they deemed the cause of their country. The gentry 
 were almost stupefied with amazement, 
 
 Tom Steele was, no doubt, aimost as much in his element during this 
 Clare election as he had been when, during Riego's revolution, like a 
 generous knight-errant as he was, he combated for Spanish constitutional 
 liberty against the invading host of the French Bourbons. In addition 
 to his vehement, but grotesque and exaggerated, declamations and the 
 harangues of the somewhat fantastic and self-confident, but gallant. 
 
916 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 dashing and handsome 0' Gorman Malion, oratorical stimulants were 
 now administered profusely to the peasantry by other noted characters. 
 Jack Lawless, with his shaggy brow, aquiline nose, fiercely-glaring eye, 
 erect attitude, deep voice, fluent diction and honesty of purpose, together 
 with the famous Father Tom Maguire, with his shrewd homely face, his 
 plain, vigorous, trenchant rhetoric and dexterously-used syllogisms, took 
 an active part in the campaign. The latter gave a somewhat religious 
 character to the contest, His chief exploit was the overthrow of Mr. 
 Augustine Butler, an extensive landed proprietor in Clare and the lineal 
 descendant of the celebrated Catholic lawyer, Sir Toby Butler, of whom 
 some notice is taken in the chapter on the penal laws. Mr. Butler 
 boldly encountered Father Tom in the chapel where his freeholders were 
 assembled. But "Father Tom," says Shiel, "appealed to the memory 
 of his celebrated Catholic ancestor, of whom Mr. Butler is justly proud. 
 . . . What Sir Toby Butler had been, Mr. O'Connell was; and he ad- 
 jured him " not to oppose one "whom he was bound to sustain by a sort 
 of hereditary obligation." Father Tom triumphed, and secured one 
 hundred and fifty votes for O'Connell. Counsellor Dominick Ronayne's 
 mastery of the Irish language helped to achieve this signal success. 
 "Throwing an educated mind into the powerful idiom of the country," 
 Mr. lionayne deeply stirred the passions of the people. 
 
 Shiel, who was employed as O'Connell's counsel before the assessor, 
 having arrived in Clare the day before the election, proceeded at once to 
 the mountain village of Corofin. In the parish of that name Sir Edward 
 O'Brien (Smith O'Brien's lather), the most opulent resident landlord of 
 the counly, had three hundred voters, Sir Edward resolved to antici- 
 pate the agitator, and set out in his splendid equipage, drawn by four 
 horses, for the mountains. On his way he met his tenantry, who had 
 descended from their rocky homes, inarching along "in large bands, 
 waving green boughs and preceded by fifes and pipers." For the first 
 time, probably, in all his life, the popular landlord was passed by his 
 heretofore devoted tenantry in sullen and ominous silence. But when 
 they met the brilliant orator of the Association, their enthusiasm knew 
 no bounds. Sir Edward's resolution gave way at sight of this mortify- 
 ing contrast. Instead of going to the Catholic chapel, he went to the 
 church of the Establishment, leaving his carriage just opposite the 
 
chapel door, a circumstance which reminded the people of the Protest- 
 antism of this Milesian magnate. As Shiel approached with the mul- 
 titude, the tall, slender, emaciated form of the parish priest, Father 
 Murphy, his face pale and sunken, but "illuminated witli eyes blazing 
 witli all the lire of genius and Ihc enthusiasm of religion," his eyebrows 
 black, his long, lank hair of the same hue, appeared at the door of the 
 rude chapel. Mr. Shiel says that an artist would have found in him 
 rather a study for the fervid Macbriar, the Covenanting preacher in 
 "Old Mortality," than "a realization of the familiar notions of a clergy- 
 man of the Church of Rome." The brilliant sun rendered more con- 
 spicuous this strange figure, with which the wild, desolate, craggy, vcr- 
 dureless scenery around was in harmony. With "voice of subterraneous 
 thunder," the priest imposed silence on the people. Having welcomed 
 Shiel to the good work, he proceeded to the wooden altar, rude and 
 clumsy as the chapel itself, where he recited mass to the "deeply atten- 
 tive people," most of whom "had prayer-books in their hands," with 
 "just emphasis," and with "fervency, simplicity and unaffected piety," 
 going through all the forms with " propriety and grace." After mass, 
 combining the politician with the priest, Father Murphy spoke to his 
 ilock in Irish. " His actions and attitudes" were worthy of " an accom- 
 plished actor," his intonations, now soft, now denunciatory, varied with 
 the varying passions of his discourse. Generally he was " impassioned 
 and solemn," but at times "the tinest spirit of sarcasm gleamed over 
 his features, and shouts of laughter attended his description of a miser- 
 able, recreant Catholic." who should sacrifice his country to his landlord. 
 Towards the close of his harangue, inflamed by his emotions, his eyes 
 blazing, thick drops falling down his face, raising himself to his full 
 height, " he laid one hand on the altar and shook the other in the spirit 
 of almost prophetic admonition." His appeal to the people, "to vote 
 for O'Connell in the name of their country and of their religion," was 
 irresistible. That hour it was easy to foresee that Father Murphy would 
 march into Ennis at the head of Sir Edward's tenantry, "and poll them 
 to a man in favor of Daniel O'Connell." 
 
 With the exception of Dean O'Shaughnessy, Fitzgerald's kinsman, 
 and Father Coffey, whose congregation deserted him, the priests were all 
 on the side of O'Connell. The day our hero made his entry into Ennis, 
 
918 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 you might meet a priest in every street who would pledge himself that 
 the battle should be won. Thirty thousand people, crowded into the 
 streets of Ennis, welcomed "the man of the people" with incessant 
 acclamations. Banners hung from every window. "Women;" s;iys 
 Shiel, "of great beauty were everywhere seen waving handkerchiefs, 
 with the figure of the patriot stamped upon them. Processions of free- 
 holders, with their parish priests at their head, marched like troops to 
 different quarters of the city." No one was intoxicated ; vintners re- 
 fused money offered for drink ; order prevailed ; the occupation of the 
 police was gone. Such organization was the sure herald of victory. 
 
 Similar enthusiasm had welcomed O'Connell in Nenagh, Limerick, 
 and the other towns through which he had passed on his way to Clare. 
 On the day of his departure from Dublin, too, when he left the Court of 
 Exchequer to get into his carriage, which waited for him in the east yard 
 of the Four Courts, the news having got abroad that he was about to 
 start for Clare, barristers in wigs and gowns, flocking from all the courts, 
 surrounded him in the hall. A multitude rilled the yard likewise. He, 
 N". P. O'Gorman and two other gentlemen, who accompanied him, could 
 hardly get through the crowd to the carriage. At last, however, they 
 drove off, our hero uncovering his head and bowing in acknowledgment 
 of the enthusiastic cheers and blessings, warm from the heart, that 
 followed him on his way. 
 
 While O'Connell's supporters were thus eager in his cause, some of 
 Fitzgerald's friends backed up their candidate with a zeal worthy of a 
 better cause. To aid in defraying his election expenses, £4000 were 
 subscribed by live of the aristocracy. One of Fitzgerald's partisans, 
 named Hickman, who had been an old acquaintance of our hero's, said 
 to him angrily one day, in the streets of Ennis, "Hallo! O'Connell, 
 mark my words; if you canvass one of my tenants, Ell shoot you." 
 O'Connell, smiling, replied, " Pll canvass every one of them." And it 
 appears he really did so. 
 
 The scene in the Ennis court-house, at the opening of this memorable 
 election, was novel and striking. On the left side of Mr. Malony, the 
 high -sheriff, stood the cabinet minister surrounded by the aristocracy of 
 Clare. An expression of wounded pride, bitterness and rage was stamped 
 on the faces of these lords of the soil. The small Protestant proprietors, 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 919 
 
 indeed, swelling themselves into gentry upon the credit of voting for the 
 minister, affected to look big. On the right of the sheriff stood O'Con- 
 nell, with scarcely a gentleman by his side. Most even of the Catholic 
 proprietors opposed him. His strength was in the devoted peasantry, 
 who, with a sprinkling of priests, filled the body of the hall. A whim- 
 sical incident occurred before the proceedings commenced. The sheriff, 
 a. solemn, dingy-faced, prim-looking individual, who had spent most of his 
 life at Canton, in the service of the East India Company, and had appar- 
 ently acquired his chief notions of magisterial demeanor and authority 
 from the contemplation of mandarins, — this strange functionary, look- 
 ing up at the gallery, saw a fantastically attired gentleman perched in 
 a singular and even perilous position. " Instead of sitting on one of the 
 seats in the gallery, he had leaped over it, and, suspending himself above 
 the crowd" on a ledge, astonished the whole assembly. If his position 
 was outlandish, his costume was unique. A coat of Irish tabinet, trow- 
 sers of the same material, no vest, a blue shirt, lined with streaks of 
 white, open at the neck, a broad green sash, with a medal of "the Order 
 of Liberators" at the end of it, hanging over his breast — such was the 
 costume of "the aerial gentleman," whose "handsome and expressive 
 countenance" boasted bushy whiskers and was shadowed by "a pro- 
 fusion of black curls curiously festooned about his temples." "Who, 
 sir, are you?" demanded the sheriff, imperiously. This great function- 
 ary, it may be remarked, pronounced his English on the model of the 
 monosyllabic Chinese, "imparting the cadences of "Wesley to the accent- 
 uation of Confucius." The fantastic-looking gentleman at once replied, 
 with an agreeable air of assurance, "My name is O'Gorman Mahon." 
 "I tell that gentleman," said the mighty Malony, "to take off that 
 badge." There was a moment's pause, when the "chivalrous dandy" 
 "slowly and articulately," answered: "This gentleman" {laying his 
 hand on his breast) "tells that gentleman" (pointing with the other to the 
 sheriff), "that if that gentleman presumes to touch this gentleman, that 
 this gentleman will defend himself against that gentleman or an) - other 
 gentleman, while he has got the arm of a gentleman to protect him.' 1 
 At the close of this singular address, a burst of applause shook the 
 court-house. The pompous sheriff looked aghast, and, after a pause of 
 irresolution, sat down quite discomfited. O'Gorman Mahon pressed the 
 
920 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 
 
 medal to his heart. O'Connell looked admiringly at his lieutenant. As. 
 Shiel says, "the first blow was struck." 
 
 Sir Edward O'Brien proposed Mr. Fitzgerald "as a fit and proper 
 person to serve in Parliament." Some doubted the sincerity of his zeal 
 for Mr. Fitzgerald, as a feud had on former occasions existed between 
 them, and a pitched battle even had once been fought between the ten- 
 antry of their two houses. Besides, Sir Edward's second son, William 
 Smith O'Brien, then member for Ennis, destined to be the leader of the 
 Young Ireland attempt at insurrection in '48 for which he received sen- 
 tence of death, "was a member of the Catholic Association, and had 
 recently made a vigorous speech in Parliament in defence of that body." 
 But the mortification of his feudal pride, caused by the defection of his 
 vassals, irritated Sir Edward against the opponents of Fitzgerald. The 
 " squat, bluff, impassioned," good-natured, though choleric, old Milesian 
 magnate, ever full of recollections of his royal ancestor, Briain Boi- 
 roimhe, wept (he once produced a great effect in the House of Commons 
 by bursting into tears while describing the misery of the Clare people) 
 as " he complained that he had been deserted by his tenants, although 
 he had deserved well at their hands, and exclaimed that the country 
 was not one fit for a gentleman to reside in, when property lost all its 
 influence and things were brought to such a pass." Sir A. Fitzgerald 
 seconded Mr. Fitzgerald in a few words. Mr. Gore, an extensive landed 
 proprietor, supposed by the people to be the descendant of a Cromwell- 
 ian nailor, also spoke in favor of the cabinet minister. Then O'Gorman 
 Mahon, a Catholic, proposed, and Tom Steele, a Protestant, seconded, 
 Daniel O'Connell. 
 
 The rival candidates had now to address the assembly. Mr. Fitz- 
 gerald, a man of the most prepossessing appearance, a graceful, amiable, 
 self-possessed, accomplished gentleman, and an equally accomplished 
 speaker, "delivered," says Shiel, "one of the most effective and dexterous 
 speeches which it has ever been my good fortune to hear." His lace 
 showed pain and fear and the marks of anxious vigils. He refrained, 
 however, from all exasperating expressions. " He spoke at first with a 
 graceful melancholy." Had not the Association displayed a rigorous 
 policy in throwing overboard one who, through his whole political life, 
 had been a warm advocate of their cause ? He referred to his various 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 921 
 
 services to the Catholics. He became impassioned when he referred to 
 his father, who, at that moment, was supposed to be at the point of 
 death. " Efforts had been made to conceal from the old man the contest 
 in which his son was involved." The speaker's grief was genuine. All 
 sympathized with him when lie turned aside to wipe away the tears 
 that gushed into his eyes. Though the majority of those present were 
 his opponents and O'Connell's enthusiastic partisans, yet, when he 
 ceased to speak, "a loud and unanimous burst of acclamation" shook 
 the court-house. 
 
 All, who understood the workings of O'Connell's face, saw, as he rose 
 to reply, that he was collecting all his might for a great effort to do away 
 with the impression produced by the rival candidate. He bore Mr. 
 Fitzgerald not the slightest ill-will, but he resolved, in a struggle where 
 such vital interests were at stake, not to spare even the tenclerest feel- 
 ings of his antagonist, and to employ against him without scruple his 
 boundless powers of vituperation. In fact, as Shiel says, it was "requi- 
 site to render him for the moment odious." It was no case for delicate 
 fencing. First he roused the popular passions by attacking Fitzgerald's 
 allies. Without direct reference to the tradition that Mr. Gore's ancestor 
 was a Puritan nailor, "O'Connell," says Shiel, "used a set of metaphors, 
 such as 'striking the nail on the head,' 'putting a nail into a coffin,' which 
 at once recalled the associations" attached to his name; "and roars of 
 laughter assailed that gentleman on every side." Gore was said to be 
 as stingy as he was rich. Extreme prudence in money-matters is un- 
 popular in Ireland. O'Connell covered him with such derision on this 
 point and on his assumed ancestry that in a few minutes he was com- 
 pletely crushed. O'Connell followed up his first success by at once 
 making a savage onslaught on Mr. Fitzgerald himself. Having drawn 
 an odious picture of the murdered prime-minister Perceval, he turned 
 round fiercely and asked his opponent with what face could he call him- 
 self their friend, when the first act of his public life was to enlist under 
 the banner of "the bloody Perceval." The furious vehemence of voice 
 and gesture with which he sent this epithet home to the hearts of the 
 people turned the tide of feeling against Mr. Fitzgerald. "This, too," 
 said O'Connell, "is the friend of Peel — the bloody Perceval and the 
 candid and manly Mr. Peel; and he is our friend! and he is everybody's 
 
922 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COKNELL. 
 
 friend ! The friend of the Catholic was the friend of the bloody Perceval, 
 and is the friend of the candid and manly Mr. Peel!" 
 
 This terrible speech galled Mr. Fitzgerald to the core. Often he 
 would mutter, "Is this fair?" Above all, he felt stung to the quick 
 when O'Connell, in ruthless mockery of his allusion to the almost hope- 
 less illness of his aged father, said, "I never shed tears in public." 
 
 On the second day the polling commenced. On that day the votes 
 were nearly equal, owing to the sharp tactics of Fitzgerald's committee. 
 In strict law, Catholics could not vote at elections without making a dec- 
 laration on oath regarding their religious opinions, and getting a magis- 
 trate's certificate of their having done so. This oath was usually dispensed 
 with by consent of both candidates. Now Fitzgerald's committee insisted 
 on its being administered, thereby completely taking O'Connell's by sur- 
 prise. Next day, however, batches of freeholders were sworn at once. 
 They were brought into a yard bounded by four walls. Twenty-five were 
 placed against each wall. Twenty-five at a time were sworn. If this 
 process of wholesale swearing made a mockery of the solemnity of 
 oaths, the British legislature which imposed on Catholics the obli- 
 gation of taking this absurd oath, chiefly relating "to the Pretender," 
 deserved all the odium due to those who force people "to take the name 
 of God in vain." 
 
 Soon it became clear that Mr. Fitzgerald had not the slightest chance 
 of being returned. That gentleman would fain have withdrawn from 
 the contest, but his friends insisted on polling to their last man. The 
 humors of this strange election were many and diverting. The high- 
 sheriff, who was always in solemn tones of unconscious burlesque an- 
 nouncing that he was "the first man in the county," became the butt 
 of the lawyers. Playing on this lunatic's fantastic vanity, they would 
 preface every legal argument with the words, " I feel that I address 
 myself to the first man in the county." Blind to their ill-eoncealed 
 mockery, the official noodle would smile and bow with what Shiel styles 
 "an air of Malvolio condescension." Then some noise would be heard 
 in the adjoining booths, on which he would start up in wrath and cry, 
 " I declare, I do not think that I am treated with proper respect. Verily, 
 I'll go forth and quell this tumult; I'll show them I am the first man in 
 the county, and I'll commit somebodv." Soon, however, Dogberry would 
 
THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'CONNELL. 923 
 
 return with a good-humored expression of face, saying, "It was only Mr. 
 O'Connell ; and I must say, when I remonstrated witli him, lie paid me 
 proper respect. He is quite a different person from what I had heard. 
 But let nobody imagine that I was afraid of him ; I'd commit him, or 
 Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, if I was not treated with proper respect, for, by 
 virtue of my office, I am the first man in the county." 
 
 A young gentleman, named Whyte, one of O'Connell's agents, made 
 good and diverting use of his talent for mimicry. More than once he 
 frightened and confounded a deputy-sheriff, hostile to O'Connell, when 
 about to commit some partisan of our hero's, by exclaiming, "in adeath- 
 bell voice," like the high-sheriff's, "Silence, Mr. Deputy; you are exceed- 
 ingly disorderly. Silence !" Sometimes charges of undue influence were 
 brought forward. Father Murphy of Corofin was called before the sheriff. 
 "With a smile of ghastly derision," he asked, What was the charge 
 against him? "You were looking at my voters," cries the accusing 
 attorney. "But I said nothing; and I suppose that I am to be permit- 
 ted to look at my parishioners." "Not with such a face as that," cries 
 Dogherty, one of Fitzgerald's counsel. There was a roar of laughter at 
 this sally, for terrible, in truth, was the solemn and spectral aspect of 
 Father Murphy. "Lotus see," says Shiel, O'Connell's counsel, "if there 
 be an act of Parliament which prescribes that a Jesuit shall wear a 
 mask." At this instant, one of O'Connell's agents rushes in excitedly. 
 "Mr. Sheriff," he cries, "we have no fair play. Mr. Singleton is fright- 
 ening his tenants; he caught hold of one of them just now, and threat- 
 ened vengeance against him." This was apropos. "What!" cries Shiel; 
 "is this to be endured? Do we live in a free country, and under a con- 
 stitution ? Is a landlord to commit a battery with impunity, and is a 
 priest to be indicted for his physiognomy and to be found guilty of a 
 look?" After a long wrangle, the assessor decided that either priest or 
 landlord actually interrupting the poll should be committed, but he 
 " thought the present a case only for admonition." 
 
 Shortly after, Mr. Vandeleur arrives from Kilrush, followed by a 
 hundred of his tenants. He stands behind a carriage, with his hat off, 
 vehemently addressing his serfs. He stamps, waves his hat, shakes his 
 clenched hands. Thousands of voices from the crowd through which 
 they pass shout aloud, "Vote for your country, boys! Vote for the old 
 
924 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 religion! Three cheers for liberty ! Down with Vesey, and hurrah for 
 O'Connell!" At length they reach the house where O'Connell lodges. 
 Through the window of his apartment he rushes out on the temporary 
 platform, canopied over with boughs, that had been erected in front of 
 the house. He raises aloft his stalwart arm. A tremendous shout soars 
 heavenward. The serfs become independent voters. Vandeleur is de- 
 serted. That one wave of O'Connell's arm deprives him of all his fol- 
 lowing. On this platform twenty or thirty can stand together. Here 
 Lawless, Father Maguire, Father Sheehan from Waterford, who had 
 helped to overthrow the Beresfords, Dr. Kenny, a Waterford surgeon, 
 the whole troop of orators in short, in turn performed their parts. Here 
 the people are entertained with declamation, good stories, mimicry and 
 fun. The habits and costume of Father Coffey, who had given his sup- 
 port to Fitzgerald, are derided. Obvious puns on his name convulse 
 the people with laughter. "The scorn and detestation,'' says Richard 
 Lalor Shiel, "with which he was treated by the mob, clearly proved that 
 a priest has no influence over them when he attempts to run counter to 
 their political passions." Shiel heard a priest on this platform say some- 
 thing to the populace in Irish. In a moment ten thousand peasants 
 knelt and prayed. It was for the repose of the soul of a bribed voter 
 of Fitzgerald's, who had just died. He had taken the bribery oath. 
 
 Thus the day passed. At night, in a small room of a mean tavern, 
 all the leading patriots and "divers interloping partakers of electioneer- 
 ing hospitalities" would assemble to refresh exhausted nature. Huge 
 piles of food were strewed on the deal boards and hungrily devoured. 
 Then toasts were drunk, and exulting "hip, hip, hurras" followed. 
 Whyte would mimic the high-sheriff riding on an elephant in Calcutta. 
 The tears of Sir Edward O'Brien and the blank looks of Hickman. Fitz- 
 gerald's conducting agent, gave food for endless mockery and mirth. 
 But now Father Murphy's sepulchral voice would startle the revellers: 
 " The wolf, the wolf is on the walk ! Shepherds of the people, what do 
 you here? Is it meet that you should sit in joyance while the free- 
 holders remain unprovided, and temptation, in the shape of famine, is 
 amongst them? Arise, I say, arise; the wolf is on the walk." Shiel 
 tells us that "Nothing was comparable to the aspect of Father Murphy 
 upon these occasions, except the physiognomy of Mr. Lawless. . . . The 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 925 
 
 look of despair with which he surveyed this unrelenting foe to convivial- 
 ity was almost as ghastly as that of his merciless disturber." Mean- 
 while, below stairs the priests were employed in giving the peasant- 
 voters, who lived too far from Ennis to return home, orders to victuallers 
 and tavern-keepers to furnish the bearers with meat and beer. The use 
 of whisky was sternly interdicted. Nothing could exceed the assiduity of 
 the priests in the performance of this duty, which sometimes lasted far into 
 the morning, save the patience with which the peasants, some of whom 
 had not tasted food for twenty-four hours, waited each for his turn to 
 speak to "his reverence." In truth, the self-denial of the Clare peas- 
 antry, their spurning the temptation of bribes, above all their devotion 
 and moral courage in braving the vengeance of their offended landlords, 
 at whose mercy most of them lay so completely, appealed forcibly to 
 every generous heart. The soldiery began to feel the deepest sympathy 
 with them. The British empire w.as in manifest danger. In truth, the 
 Clare election was a tremendous event. The day it ended Catholic 
 emancipation was virtually won ! 
 
 And at length the poll did close. For O'Connell, there were two 
 thousand and fifty-seven votes; for Fitzgerald, one thousand and seventy- 
 five. It was argued before the assessor, Mr. Keatinge, that a Catholic 
 could not be legally returned. But the objection was overruled, as it 
 rested with the House of Commons itself to exclude a representative, if 
 he refused the oath tendered to him. Wherefore O'Connell was declared 
 duly elected. Our hero seems to have arrived at the conclusion that, 
 though a Catholic was legally excluded from the Irish Parliament and 
 from the English Parliament, no law existed to prevent him from taking 
 his seat in the Imperial Parliament, 
 
 On the final day of the election the court-house was once more 
 crowded. Mr. Fitzgerald appeared at the head of the baffled and 
 beaten aristocracy of Clare. He made no effort to hide the pain he 
 felt, but he gained the respect alike of friends and foes by the high-bred 
 calmness with which he bore his overthrow. O'Connell made a speech 
 full of generous feeling and admirable taste ; he begged Mr. Fitzgerald 
 to forgive him for any offence he might have given him the first day. 
 Mr. Fitzgerald unaffectedly assured him that whatever was said should 
 be forgotten. " He was again hailed," says Shiel, " with universal ac- 
 
926 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 
 
 elamation, and delivered a speech which could not surpass in good judg- 
 ment and persuasiveness that with which he had opened the contest, 
 but was not inferior to it." Mr. Shiel also tells us that during the con- 
 test Mr. Fitzgerald could not conceal his astonishment and gloomy fore- 
 bodings. At moments he would wholly forget himself and seem lost in 
 melancholy reflections on the possibility of terrible events to come. 
 "Where is all this to end?" was a question frequently put in his pres- 
 ence, from replying to which he seemed to shrink. At the close of the 
 poll, Mr. Shiel himself delivered an eloquent, generous and wise speech. 
 
 Such was the memorable Clare election — perhaps the most important 
 one in the entire history of English, Irish and Scotch elections. Two 
 elections only can for a moment stand in comparison with it — the Mid- 
 dlesex election in the last century, in which the demagogue Jack Wilkes 
 is the prominent figure, and that Tipperary election which returned 
 0"I)onovan (Rossa), an Irish rebel suffering penal servitude under the 
 treason-felony act, to the British House of Commons. The Clare elec- 
 tion is certainly far more historically noteworthy than that of Middlesex. 
 But should Ireland ever shake off the dominion of Great Britain, it will 
 hardly be considered a more momentous event than the Tipperary elec- 
 tion of 1869. However, at the time it occurred, the Clare election was 
 pronounced in England "the most extraordinary event that had ever 
 occurred under a system of popular representation." It was also said 
 that, by this stroke, O'Connell had effected more in one day for the lib- 
 eration of Ireland "than had been done in forty years by all other men." 
 Of course, the infuriated aristocracy hated him now more inveterately 
 than ever. 
 
 When the election was over, O'Connell was chaired through Ennis. 
 Sixty thousand men (probably this is exaggeration) are said to have 
 surrounded and followed him, bearing green boughs. Houses, great and 
 small, were decorated with evergreens or other boughs. In Limerick 
 he was received enthusiastically. His whole progress to Dublin was a 
 triumphal march. Vast crowds of horsemen (the numbers stated are 
 hardly credible) formed his escort on the way. Numbers of persons got 
 him to frank letters for them. These letters demonstrated everywhere 
 that "the man of the people" was the member for Clare. It is impos- 
 sible to give any adequate idea of the intensity of the joy and triumph 
 
THE LIFE OF DAXIEL OTOXXELL. 
 
 027 
 
 with which the nation's heart beat high. In one week the rent reached 
 a sum not much less than £3000. 
 
 Much about the same time Jack Lawless was on his way to the 
 North, attended, in every district he passed through, by a vast escort 
 of peasantry. When lie was approaching Ballibay in Monaghan, an 
 immense force of Orangemen assembled there to attack him and his 
 followers. These last were in no way desirous of avoiding the encounter. 
 Indeed, it required the exertions of the clergy and the friendly remon- 
 strances of the military commandant of the district, General Thornton, 
 to prevent a collision. Lawless, to the chagrin and anger of his nume- 
 rous followers, who wanted to advance, left his carriage, took horse and 
 turned back. He does not seem to have merited the reproach which 
 this retreat brought on his head. His conduct arose not from any lack 
 of courage, but from a humane disinclination to countenance useless 
 bloodshed. It was on this occasion that the Orange partisan, Sam 
 Gray, so notorious for years in Ireland, first signalized himself and won 
 the nickname of General Gray. 
 
 The Association was becoming more formidable than ever. Thomas 
 Wyse of Waterford planned a new arrangement. "Liberal clubs" were 
 established all over the island. The Association was the principal club. 
 In every county and again in every parish similar clubs, under its con- 
 trol, were established. To be able to read was a necessary condition of 
 admission to the parish club. The subscription was trifling. The parish 
 club elected its own president, secretary and treasurer. The secretary 
 of the county club directed it. Later this year (in November) a solicitor, 
 named Forde, proposed, with the sanction of O'Connell, a system of ex- 
 clusive dealing; that the people should not "deal with notorious Orange- 
 men ; and further, that a preference in dealing should be given by Eoman 
 Catholics to those who dissent from them in religion, but who may have 
 proved by their acts that they are friendly to civil and religious liberty." 
 Lord Cloncurry argued against this. N. P. O'Gorman, too, opposed it. 
 It was finally negatived. Forde's resolution was to have been followed 
 up by a run on the banks. Wyse says it would, if carried, have disor- 
 ganized Irish society speedily, "and reduced the minister to the alterna- 
 tive of a war of extermination or a hurried and reluctant concession of 
 Catholic claims." In truth, it was the mere menace of these revolution- 
 
928 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 aiy measures which, in all probability, caused that emancipation meet- 
 ing in the Rotunda which was presided over by the duke of Leinster, 
 and based on a declaration in favor of emancipation, signed by two 
 dukes, twenty-seven earls, two counts, eleven viscounts, twenty-two 
 barons and the same number of baronets. Certainly, this meeting 
 greatly tended to make Wellington and Peel see the necessity of conced- 
 ing the relief bill of April, 1829. O'Connell is said to have given that 
 meeting the credit of being the immediate cause of the concession to 
 the demands of the Catholics. 
 
 Shortly after the Clare election another occurrence took place, which 
 was regarded by many as an infallible sign that emancipation was fast 
 approaching. This was the speech delivered at Deny by " Deny Daw- 
 son," as he was styled, Peel's brother-in-law and a member of the gov- 
 ernment. The Orangemen, of Deny were furious when they heard this 
 trusted Orange leader admitting at once the vast power of the Catholic 
 Association and the necessity of disarming it by settling the Catholic 
 question. He repudiated any return to the penal-law system. The 
 bigots, who listened to him, tried his temper by interruptions of every 
 kind. His novel sentiments of toleration made them frantic. They 
 hissed and hooted when he regretted "the degraded state of his Catholic 
 countrymen." Nothing would content them but the violent suppression 
 of the Association. Dawson was, at length, goaded to say, "I cannot 
 express too strongly the contempt I feel for the persons who thus attempt 
 to put me down." He would not "condescend to ask their votes though 
 their suffrages would secure his return." Dawson lost his seat in Par- 
 liament, in consequence of this oration. The Orange party never forgave 
 his backslidings, his compromise with "Jezebel." It was believed at 
 the time by many that his speech was made to order; that his crafty 
 brother-in-law had desired him to make it as "a feeler," thereby to test 
 the spirit in which ministerial concessions to the Catholics would be 
 received by the Ascendency faction. Much about the same time, at 
 Manchester, Peel evaded speaking to the toast of "Protestant ascend- 
 ency." 
 
 The bigots made a last desperate rally. "Bninswick clubs" were 
 established in numerous localities. At Ennis a meeting, called by the 
 high-sheriff, assembled, to form one. O'Gomian Mahon went to Ennis 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COICNELL. 920 
 
 to oppose it, but he was refused admittance to the meeting. The sheriff 
 and magistrates, fearing that their proceedings might cause disturbance, 
 had summoned to Ennis a detachment of troops from Clare Castle. 
 O'Gorman Mahon expressed his opinions pretty freely to the officer in 
 command, Wellington was indignant with Lord Anglesea for not dis- 
 missing from the magistracy O'Gorman Mahon, for this conversation 
 with the officer, and Tom Steele for adjuring his auditors, on one occa- 
 sion, " by their allegiance to the Association, to be tranquil." The duke 
 also blamed the marquis for giving interviews to O'Connell, Lawless 
 and others. The viceroy gave what appear to me satisfactory expla- 
 nations of his conduct. O'Gorman Mahon's "breach of decorum'' was 
 not indictable. Steele's expressions had not been deposed to. The 
 interviews really amounted to nothing. It appears that the miserable 
 king was terribly vexed at the notion of the viceroy having granted 
 interviews to those desperate conspirators and violators of peace, law 
 and order — the agitators. Lord Anglesea Avas every day becoming more 
 and more disinclined to use military violence against the Irish people. 
 He was fast growing alarmed, too, at the increasing excitement of public 
 feeling, and coming to the conclusion that it was hopeless to think of 
 subduing the Association. "The carrying of party flags is illegal. Put 
 them down, and what do you gain by it? . . . The meetings will con- 
 tinue." "The Brunswick clubs" embarrass him as much as the Asso- 
 ciation. He is in dread of an insurrection. He writes to Lord Leveson 
 Gower: "The final success of the Catholics is inevitable; no power 
 under heaven can avert its progress." Even by suppressing a rebellion 
 they would only "put off the day of compromise." Elsewhere he says: 
 "No coercive legislative measures will get rid of existing evils unaccom- 
 panied by concession." One of Anglesea's sons and some of his staff 
 visited a meeting of the Association, where they were recognized. This 
 indiscretion gave great offence to "the powers that be." A letter written 
 by the marquis to the Catholic primate, Dr. Curtis, in some unaccount- 
 able way came to light. In this letter he gives his opinion as to what 
 the Catholics should do in the most sympathetic way. He does not 
 agree with the duke of Wellington, who, in a letter to Dr. Curtis, had 
 expressed a wish that the question could be buried in oblivion for a 
 short time. On the contrary, Anglesea thinks the Catholics should not 
 
980 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 for a moment lose sight of their cause, but resort to every legal means 
 "to forward'' it. It is not wonderful that his lordship was recalled in 
 January, 1829. As this dashing soldier had become a great favorite 
 with the Irish people, enormous crowds accompanied him to Kingstown 
 to bid him farewell. He was a sort of popular idol for a time with the 
 credulous Irish. Indeed, he was naturally a good man. His letter to 
 Lord Cloncurry, in which he consults him as to the means he should 
 take to recommend himself to the Irish, is immeasurably droll, though 
 the writer was probably unconscious of the fun: "I see a subscription 
 for the distressed manufacturers of Dublin. Should I subscribe? What 
 would be handsome? Or shall I order live waistcoats?" 
 
 It is no wonder that the marquis doubted the policy of employing 
 military force against the Irish cause, for the troops could not be de- 
 pended on in such a conflict. The national sympathies and feelings of 
 the Irish troops were being fast excited by the agitation. Soldiers were 
 continually, at great risk to themselves, shouting for O'Connell, or call- 
 ing on him to pay him their enthusiastic homage. After the Clare elec- 
 tion, one of O'Connell's processions encountered a marching detachment. 
 The sergeant, a young man named Ryan — according to our hero, " as 
 handsome a fellow as ever he saw'' — walked away from his men and 
 asked "the Liberator" to shake hands with him. " In acting as I now 
 do," said the sergeant, " I am infringing military discipline. Perhaps 1 
 maybe flogged for it; but I don't care. Let them punish me in any 
 way they please — let them send me back to the ranks; I have had the 
 satisfaction of shaking the hand of the father of my country." O'Con- 
 nell says: "As to my enthusiastic young friend the sergeant, I after- 
 wards understood that his little escapade was overlooked; .and right 
 glad I was to find that his devotion to me entailed no punishment on 
 him." At a military station in Enuland. in 1829, the soldierv, it is said, 
 turned out to do O'Connell honor. -'There are two ways of firing," said 
 a soldier about this time, "at a man and over a man; and if we were 
 called out against O'Connell and our country, I think we should know 
 the difference." It was plainly time for Wellington to concede emanci- 
 pation. 
 
 In June, 1828, O'Connell laid the first stone of the Christian Brothers 
 schools. I can only afford space simply to notice the incident. 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 931 
 
 Parliament met in February, 1829. The hour of emancipation had at last 
 arrived. Though Wellington a short time previously had declared that "he could 
 not comprehend the possibility of placing Roman Catholics in a Protestant legis- 
 lature with any kind of safety, as his personal knowledge told him that no king, 
 however Catholic, could govern his Catholic subjects without the aid of the 
 pope," he had now determined that emancipation should be conceded. After 
 the Rotundo meeting of the aristocracy he had been closeted with the king 
 more than once, and had with considerable difficulty wrung a reluctant con- 
 scut to the introduction of the relief measure, as a ministerial question, from 
 that worthless ami worn-out profligate, who now in his old age added bigotry 
 to those vices that survived his youth and manhood. The king complained 
 of his position to Lord Eldon in these words : " I am in the state of a person 
 with a pistol presented to his breast. My ministers threatened to resign if the 
 measure were not proceeded with, and I said to them, 'Go on!' when I knew 
 not how to relieve myself from the state in which I was placed." He also said. 
 " I hardly knew what I was about, when, after several hours' talk, I said, 'Go on !' " 
 Lord Eldon's account of the old sinner's demeanor at this crisis is, indeed, whethei 
 intended to be so or not, highly amusing: " His Majesty, at these interviews, was 
 sometimes silent, apparently uneasy, occasionally stating his distress — the hard 
 usage he received — his wish to extricate himself — that he did not know what to 
 look to, what to fall back upon — that he was miserable beyond what he could 
 express." He also romanced about leaving England : " If I do give my consent," 
 quoth this highly comic old gentleman, "I'll go to the baths abroad, and from thence 
 to Hanover. I'll return to England no more." Other ravings were, " Let them 
 get Clarence" (his brother and successor, William the Fourth) " for a king ;" " I'll 
 create no Catholic peers." Lord Eldon does not seem to have felt anything like 
 implicit belief in the sincerity of His Majesty's jeremiads. Once the king read 
 him a letter which he said he had written. It would seem as if Eldon had consider- 
 able doubts whether what his royal master read to him were really written at all. 
 
 In spite, however, of all this vexation, whether real or simulated, the royal 
 speech, which opened the session of Parliament, recommended the suppression of 
 the Catholic Association and the subsequent consideration of Catholic disabilities 
 with a view to their removal. The Catholic Association, having now thoroughly 
 done its work, determined to anticipate the action of the law and dissolve itself. 
 Shiel, who had been privately talked to on the subject by George Frederick Vil- 
 liers, afterwards earl of Clarendon, and viceroy in '48, with whose views he was 
 easily induced to concur, made an able speech in favor of dissolution. O'Connell 
 and the bishops also sanctioned this course. Before the Association dissolved, 
 however, a vote of thanks was passed, in which the members stated, " That, as the 
 
932 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 
 
 last act of this body, we do declare that we are indebted to Daniel O'Connell 
 beyond all other men for its original creation and snstainment, and that he is 
 entitled, for the achievement of its freedom, to the everlasting gratitude of Ire- 
 land." In spite of this nominal dissolution, had a necessity arisen demanding 
 such a course, the organization could easily have resumed its action. Its essential 
 vigor was only dormant. O'Connell has been falsely accused of having promised 
 not to commence any similar agitation, if emancipation were conceded. He only 
 promised that the Association should be dissolved, and that, in seeking for tbe 
 redress of other grievances, all exclusively Catholic agitation should be avoided. 
 Such an object as repeal, for example, could only be won by a national move- 
 ment representing Irishmen of all races and of every sect and denomination. 
 Even now, in his moment of triumph, with emancipation within his grasp, O'Con- 
 nell exclaimed : " To accomplish repeal, I would give up every other measure, and 
 my exertions for such an object would meet with the co-operation of all sects and 
 parties in Ireland." 
 
 On the oth of March, 1829, Peel moved for a committee of the whole House 
 " for consideration of the civil disabilities of His Majesty's Roman Catholic sub- 
 jects." The motion was carried by a large majority after a warm debate. "And 
 now," says Mr. Mitchel, "arose the most tremendous clamor of alarmed Protest- 
 antism that had been heard in the three kingdoms since the days of James the 
 Second — the last king who had ever dreamed of placing Catholics and Protestants 
 on something like an approach to equality. Multitudinous petitions, not only 
 from Irish Protestants, but from Scottish presbyteries, from English universities, 
 from corporations of British towns, from private individuals, came pouring into 
 Parliament, praying that the great and noble Protestant state of England should 
 not be handed over a prey to the Jesuits, the Inquisitors and the Propaganda. 
 Never was such a jumble of various topics, sacred and profane, as in those peti- 
 tions — vested interests; idolatry of the mass; principles of the Hanoverian suc- 
 cession; the inquisition; eternal privileges of Protestant tailors or Protestant 
 lightermen ; our holy religion ; French principles ; tithes ; and the beast of the 
 Apocalypse — all were urged with vehement eloquence upon the enlightened 
 legislators of Great Britain." 
 
 Some of these alarmed petitioners were no doubt sincere in their fanaticism. 
 Dr. Jebb, Protestant bishop of Limerick, had written to Sir Robert Peel on the 
 11th of February. In this letter he says earnestly: "Infinitely more difficulties 
 and dangers will attach to concession than to uncomjiromising resistance. ... In 
 defence of all that is dear to British Protestants, I am cheerfully prepared, if 
 necessary, as many of my order have formerly done, to lay down life itself." 
 Contrast with this Dr. Doyle's prayer for the success of O'Connell, setting out for 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 93C 
 
 the Clare election: "May the God of truth and justice protect and prosper you !" 
 Mr. Mitehel naturally exclaims : " What very different, what very opposite, ideas 
 of truth and justice had these two excellent prelates!" 
 
 The wretched king struggled hard to withhold justice from his Catholic sub- 
 jects. He tried even to form a new ministry and rid himself of the Wellington 
 cabinet, but, finding his sinister efforts all in vain, at a late hour on the evening 
 of March the 4th, he wrote to the duke, desiring him and his colleagues to with- 
 draw their resignation, and giving them liberty to proceed with the measures of 
 which notice had been given to Parliament. Meanwhile O'Connell, seeing that 
 emancipation was now assuredly about to become law, though he had arrived in 
 London to claim his seat for Clare, decided on not urging his claim for the present, 
 lest he should embarrass the government. 
 
 And now at last, almost one hundred and thirty-seven years after the treaty 
 of Limerick, the Catholics were emancipated. Peel introduced the relief measure 
 into the Commons. After violent debates, characterized by the utmost bitterness 
 of religious fanaticism, the bill passed, on the 30th of March, by a majority of 
 thirty-six. Peel, in a letter to Bishop Jebb, says: "I can with truth affirm, that 
 in advising and promoting the measures of 1829, I was swayed by no fear, except 
 the fear of public calamity." On the 31st, the bill was sent up to the House of 
 Lords. On the 2d of April, the duke of Wellington moved the second reading. 
 He urged the necessity of passing it in order to " avert civil war." Thus it was 
 conceded not in a spirit of enlightened justice, not to redress intolerable wrong, 
 but merely as a state necessity. In a word, it was wrested from the British gov- 
 ernment merely by the force of circumstances. Hence it is no wonder that suc- 
 ceeding English cabinets have endeavored to elude its spirit and make it as little 
 beneficial to the Irish people as possible. However, such as it was, after violent 
 debates it passed the Lords by a majority of one hundred and four. On the 13th 
 of April the ignoble monarch, after a most theatric display of reluctance, after 
 delays and tears, after breaking and trampling on the first pen handed to him 
 (poor, petulant, diseased worm of humanity, destined never to see the close of the 
 ensuing year), signed the bill, and Catholic emancipation became the law of the 
 so-called United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland ! 
 
 The very day the king signed this bill "the sword brandished in the hand of 
 Walker's statue, standing upon a lofty column on a bastion of Derry walls, fell 
 with a crash and was shivered to pieces." To the bigots all seemed for ever lost. 
 The reign of chaos had come again. If, indeed, people would only have agreed 
 with Sir Harcourt Lees that the time had come to " put down Popery" by act of 
 Parliament and send "the arch-agitator" to the Tower, there might have been yet 
 some hope for the empire and mankind. The estimable king, if he had possessed 
 
 .j 
 
934 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 
 
 the power, might have adopted the views of the sage baronet. He said, " There 
 are three kings in this country — King Arthur" (Wellington), "King George and 
 King Dan ; but King Dan is the most powerful, and will oust the other two." 
 Wellington observed, that of the Catholic question "the king never heard or 
 spoke without being disturbed." The fanatics, both of Great Britain and Ireland, 
 in their rage, seemed to believe Wellington and Peel mere agents cf the pope. 
 During the excitement kindled by the struggle, the earl of Winchelsea even went 
 so far as to call the duke a traitor to his king and country. He absurdly accused 
 the great captain of having had a design all along to break down the constitution 
 of England and insidiously to introduce "Popery" into every department of the 
 state. The duke challenged this intemperate nobleman, and they met in Battersea 
 Fields. Lord AVinchelsea, having by this time become somewhat sensible of the 
 outrageous nature of his conduct, after manfully standing a shot from the prime 
 minister, fired in the air and apologized. The duke bowed and walked off the 
 field. The carl also wrote a creditable letter of retractation. 
 
 The whole series of measures that, in '29, terminated the memorable struggle 
 for emancipation consisted of three acts of Parliament : " 1st. An act for the sup- 
 pression of the Association, as an illegal and dangerous body. 2d. A fatal act 
 for the suppression of the forty-shilling freeholders in Ireland. In England the 
 forty-shilling qualification was not abolished. 3d. What was properly called the 
 Emancipation or Relief Act. It was saddled with neither a veto clause nor with 
 any provision for pensioning the clergy. It abolished the old oath against tran- 
 substantiation, and substituted another long-winded one for the exclusive use of 
 Catholics, on taking which any member of that persuasion might, if elected, take 
 his seat in Parliament. Catholics, on taking it, might also be members of any lay 
 body corporate, and do corporate acts and vote at corporate elections, but not join 
 in a vote for presentation to a benefice in the gift of any corporation. The Church 
 of England still remained the established religion of Ireland. Any one taking 
 the new oath had to swear allegiance to the Crown — promising to maintain the 
 Hanoverian settlement and succession; declaring that it is no article of the Cath- 
 olic faith "that princes excommunicated by the pope may be deposed or murdered 
 by their subjects ; that neither the pope nor any other foreign prince has any 
 temporal or civil jurisdiction within the realm ; promising to defend the settlement 
 of property as established by law ; solemnly disclaiming, disavowing and abjuring 
 ' any intention to subvert the present Church Establishment as settled by law;' 
 and engaging never to exercise any privilege conferred by that act 'to disturb or 
 weaken the Protestant religion or Protestant government.' " The act further pro- 
 vides that no Catholic shall be lord-lieutenant or lord-chancellor. The latter 
 functionary regulates the guardianship of minors and decides in what religion 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 935 
 
 they shall be trained in the absence of express directions left by their parents. 
 He also controls and cancels at his pleasure the commissions of magistrates. A 
 Catholic, however, can to-day be chancellor. Lord O'Hagan, the present Irish 
 chancellor, is the first Catholic who has attained that dignity for many a long 
 generation. Since Mr. Gladstone's accession to the office of prime minister the 
 Church of England has ceased to be the established religion of Ireland. Provis- 
 ions against monastic institutions, and menacing nuns and friars with severe pen- 
 alties, also accompanied emancipation ; but these provisions, from that day to this, 
 have remained without force. 
 
 The act disestablishing the forty-shilling freeholders almost neutralized the 
 benefits of emancipation. A county qualification live times as great as that of 
 England was now required in Ireland Peel pretended that the forty-shilling 
 franchise caused the landlords to subdivide their lands too minutely, that it had 
 given them before, and that it now gave the priests, too much control over elec- 
 tions. The abolition of this franchise took away the motive, which had hitherto 
 prompted the landlords to give leases to small farmers, and the restraint which 
 kept them from taking advantage of the new and cheap ejectment laws in carry- 
 ing out wholesale evictions of their tenantry. And now commenced that fell 
 system of " extermination," as it is styled in Ireland, that has driven so many 
 myriads of the Irish race to seek new homes and a happier lot across the wild 
 waters of the broad Atlantic. It was in vain that Lord Duncannon, Lord Pal- 
 merston and Mr. Huskisson argued that, " if the forty-shilling freeholders had 
 been corrupt, like those of Penrhyn, their disfranchisement might be defended ; 
 but the only offence of the persons against whom the bill was directed had been 
 that they exercised their privilege honestly and independently, according to their 
 conscience." Mr. Mitchel says : " It is singular that O'Connell said not a word 
 at any meeting, nor wrote any letter, protesting against this wholesale abolition of 
 the civil and political rights of those to whom he owed his election for Clare. He 
 thus consented by his silence to see cut away from under his own feet the very 
 groundwork and material of all effective political action in Ireland." O'Connell 
 has been much and severely condemned for not battling vigorously against this dis- 
 franchisement, which helped to make his best efforts for the advancement of the 
 interests of his country impotent and futile, and which he often lamented bitterly. 
 The writer of the clever life of O'Connell, published by Mullany of Dublin, 
 makes a statement somewhat at variance with the passage just quoted from Mr. 
 Mitchel. He says: "Against this bill" {that of disfranchisement) "O'Connell, 
 then in London, protested and agitated in the most vehement manner. With his 
 own hand he drew out a petition against the measure, and proclaimed, at a meet- 
 ing at the ' Thatched House,' his willingness to forfeit emancipation rather than 
 
936 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 see the freeholders disfranchised. Unfortunately, O'Connell's efforts were counter- 
 acted by Lord Cloncurry, etc." 
 
 A petition had been presented against the return of O'Connell for Clare. 
 But, after due investigation, the committee having reported him duly elected, he 
 considered himself entitled to take his seat, subject only to the new oaths. He was 
 fortified in this view by the opinions of some of the most able lawyers of England. 
 On the 15th of May he proceeded to the House to assert his right. Crowds filled 
 the public ways from Charing Cross to St. Stephen's, anxious to see the great Irish 
 agitator. The House of Commons was crowded in every part. The galleries 
 were full of spectators. Eager groups were on all sides discussing the one absorb- 
 ing topic of the day — the new act. A great number of peers wcve present. In 
 a word, the excitement was unprecedented. O'Connell was introduced in the usual 
 form by Lords Ebrington and Duncannon. At length the Speaker said, " The 
 member to be sworn will be pleased to come to the table and take the oaths." 
 The interest of the scene was now at its highest point. The abrogated oaths were 
 presented to him by the clerk of the House — one, the oath of supremacy, to the 
 effect that the king is the head of the Church ; the other, " that the sacrifice of 
 the mass is impious and abominable." Peel, baffled and beaten on the grand 
 question, in order to gratify his mean spite against his old antagonist, had cun- 
 ningly and dexterously inserted a clause in the relief bill admitting only such 
 Catholics, as should "after the commencement of that act be returned as members 
 of the House of Commons," to take their seats under the new oaths. Of course, 
 O'Connell refused to take the old oaths. He waved away the pasteboards on 
 which they were fixed. " You will be good enough to inform the Speaker that I 
 do not think I am bound to take these oaths." As he persisted in his refusal, the 
 Speaker courteously, but firmly, ordered him to retire. O'Connell looked eagerly 
 round the House, bowed and still stood opposite the Speaker, but without making 
 any remark. Brougham rose to speak, upon which the Speaker called out 
 " Order !" and repeated to O'Connell that he must withdraw. The latter bowed 
 respectfully and withdrew in silence. 
 
 On the 18th of May, Peel moved that O'Connell should be heard at the bar 
 of the House. This was agreed to. Advancing to the bar, attended by a brother- 
 Kerryman, Pierce Mahony the attorney, O'Connell asserted his claim in a long 
 and powerful argument. His temperate address produced a favorable effect on the 
 minds of his hearers. He said, at the close, that it was his desire to address thai 
 House with befitting courtesy, but that still he was there to demand his seat as a 
 right. After the close of his speech, the question was argued by the ablest lawyers 
 of England. Though their arguments were ingenious and powerful, they have 
 now little interest for the general reader. Suffice it to say, O'Connell and his 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 937 
 
 advocates alike pleaded in vain. His claim to sit under the new oaths was rejected. 
 The duke of Orleans, afterwards the astute King Louis Philippe, and his amiable 
 eldest son, doomed to a shocking and untimely death by accident, were among the 
 spectators of this scene. On the next day our hero appeared for the third time 
 at the bar of the Commons. After announcing the decision of the House to him, 
 the Speaker said, "Are you willing to take the oath of supremacy?" "Allow me 
 to look at it ?" replied O'Connell. When he had glanced at it for a few moments, 
 he looked up and said : "In this oath I see one assertion as to a matter of fact, 
 which I know to be false. I see a second assertion as to a matter of opinion, which 
 I do not believe to be true." Once more O'Connell retired. Forthwith a writ 
 was issued to hold a fresh election for the county Clare. That very night O'Con- 
 nell, who had vainly offered Sir Edward Denny £3000 if he would nominate 
 him to his pocket-borough, prepared a second address to the j^eople of Clare. He 
 appealed to Clare, insulted in his person, from the unjust decision of the House 
 of Commons. To the people of Clare was due the glory of converting Peel and 
 conquering Wellington. They had achieved the religious liberty of Ireland. 
 Another victory in Clare was necessary to defeat " the insidious policy of those 
 men who, false to their own party" {the Tories), "can never be true to us, and 
 who have yielded not to reason, but to necessity, in granting us freedom of con- 
 science." He hoped to be the instrument of erasing from the statute-book " that 
 paltry institution of French Jacobinism," the clause against " the monastic orders." 
 He would struggle for the repeal of the disfranchisement act, which was " a direct 
 violation of the union," of the subletting act, which made " the destitute more 
 miserable," and of the vestry bill. He would attack "grand-jury jobbing and 
 grand-jury assessment." He would seek to procure an equitable distribution ot 
 church property between the poor and the working clergy, also law reform and 
 parliamentary reform. He expresses disapproval of the English system of poor- 
 laws. It is said that this addreis was submitted to Lord Anglesea and other 
 members of the aristocracy, who struck out some of the bolder passages, particu- 
 larly such as referred to the repeal of the union. 
 
 It is almost needless to say that the gratitude of the Irish people to O'Connell 
 for his glorious achievement was boundless. He was now indeed their " liberator" 
 and idolized hero. As a grand testimonial of the nation's gratitude a sum of nut 
 less, it is said, than £50,000 was presented to him. To this sum Cornelius 
 McLoughlin of Dublin subscribed £500, Jeremiah Murphy of Cork £300, Denis 
 Scully £100 For twenty-nine years O'Connell had served the people without 
 fee or reward. But every succeeding year of his life, up to the days of the 
 famine, a large voluntary tribute was given to him by his countrymen. One day 
 in the year a collection was made in all the chapels throughout the island, to be 
 
938 THE LIFE UK DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 devoted to the private requirements of " the Liberator." He now gradually gave 
 up his regular practice at the bar with its large remuneration. His services hence- 
 forth belonged almost exclusively to the Irish people. This tribute was absolutely 
 necessary to keep him free from a state of constant embarrassment, for he was at 
 no period of his life prudent in pecuniary matters. He entirely lacked the art 
 of husbanding his private resources. 
 
 Nothing could equal the enthusiasm with which O'Connell was received on his 
 return to Ireland. Thousands, on foot, and on horseback, and in carriages, met 
 him in Kingstown. This, I think, is the reception which I remember witnessing, 
 with childish enthusiasm, from a hotel-window in that town, when I was a very 
 little boy. Thousands filled Merrion Square to hear " the Liberator " speak from 
 his balcony. At an aggregate meeting, £5000, still remaining in the coffers of the 
 Association, were voted in aid of his second canvass. His journey from Dublin 
 to Ennis was one wondrous triumphal progress. Every town through which he 
 passed was a confusion of multitudinous masses of human beings, of green boughs, 
 shouts of rejoicing and wild excitement. Nenagh was illuminated. It was eight 
 in the morning when he arrived in Limerick. Being fatigued, he slept till two in 
 thti afternoon. Meanwhile the crowds in the street talked in low tones lest, they 
 should disturb his repose. At the same time a huge tree with fresh green boughs 
 was planted in front of his hotel. And now musicians sitting on the branches 
 played national tunes. When O'Connell came forth, a tremendous cheer greeted 
 him. He addressed the populace from his carriage. The trades of Limerick, 
 with banners flying, escorted him out of their city. He entered Ennis in a 
 triumphal car, in the midst of exulting thousands. 
 
 About this time William Smith O'Brien, afterwards O'Connell's political associ- . 
 ate in the repeal movement, wrote a strange letter, which spoke of our hero's "extrav- 
 agant pretensions" regarding emancipation, and told the people that it had long 
 been a question with "the most attentive observers . . . whether his intemperance 
 had not been the chief cause of its delay." O'Connell called this letter "a very fool- 
 ish and somewhat ferocious address ;" also, "an apish and presumptuous manifesto." 
 He revenged himself by discovering an absurd pedigree for Smith O'Brien. The 
 four baronets, his progenitors, were a tinker's apprentice, a horse-jockey, a jdace- 
 man and a hypocrite. All this is surely very lamentable. Nor did the matter 
 end here. O'Brien stated in this address that O'Connell was not supported by 
 any of the gentry of Clare. Now Steele and O'Gorman Mahon were natives of 
 Clare. Accordingly, the fiery Tom Steele wrote an angry reply, which drew forth 
 a challenge from Smith O'Brien. They met in Kilburn Meadows, near London, 
 in June, 1829. O'Brien's second was a gentleman rejoicing in what Lord Byron 
 would call "the grim cognomen" of Woronzow Greig. Steele was accompanied 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. Urj'J 
 
 by O'Gonnan Mahon, who intended, when Steele's affair should be decided, to 
 send a friend to O'Brien on his own account. Steele was resolved not to run 
 short of ammunition at all events, for he brought a flask of powder and a bag of 
 bullets to the ground. After an exchange ot shots, Mr. Greig declared that Mr. 
 O'Brien was quite satisfied. Nothing could exceed the ludicrous dismay of the 
 future Head Pacificator, Steele, at this pacific announcement. " My God ! I hope 
 Mr. O'Brien is not seriously hurt," quoth Tom, who thought nothing short of a 
 dreadful wound could account for Mr. O'Brien's foregoing the pleasure of another 
 shot. But Mr. O'Brien was safe and sound, and very properly quite satisfied. 
 When O'Gonnan Mahon's friend politely intimated that his principal, as a Clare 
 gentleman, expected satisfaction from Mr. O'Brien, that gentleman at once said, 
 " My language did not apply to Mr. Mahon." 
 
 O'Connell visited Dublin before his second Clare election. A public banquet 
 was given to him. Something he said on this occasion irritated a little crazy 
 attorney, named Toby Glascock. This individual swore he would shoot O'Connell 
 " through the white liver without touching his black heart." He roamed about 
 like an eccentric wild beast, seeking " that ruffian O'Connell." Finally his servant 
 should flog O'Connell through the streets. O'Connell thought it high time to 
 have this fire-breathing foe bound over to keep the peace. In the police-office, 
 when our hero spoke of the threat that the servant should perform the work of 
 flagellation, Toby said all Europe would grin at his learned adversary's statement. 
 Then he untied his attorney's bag, from which a little grinning black servant, in 
 green livery, came forth — the terror of " the Colossus." All present were con- 
 vulsed with mirth. " This," said Toby, " is my servant, who has caused so much 
 alarm to the great Agitator." This time the laugh was most assuredly against 
 our humorous hero, who looked, if not exactly foolish, at least like a man more or 
 less discomfited. 
 
 Making another triumphal journey to Ennis, O'Connell, on the 30th of July, 
 was re-elected for Clare without opposition, to the intense delight of the Irish 
 nation. In vain Peel had hurried on the new registration, with a view, if pos- 
 sible, to defeat him. O'Connell began to speak of repeal of the union. Ah ! if 
 the Irish people had only then been a united j)eople, what might not O'Connell 
 at that crisis have achieved ? Perhaps even our national independence ! But, 
 alas ! the Orange faction were utterly irreconcilable. * 
 
 One good result of emancipation was that the patronizing airs of Protestants 
 to Catholics gradually ceased. There was no longer any need of servile deference 
 from the Catholic to the Protestant gentleman who was good enough to join the 
 Catholic movement, and who was too often treated as though he were a small demi- 
 god. It was no longer necessary to purchase the assistance and advocacy of gra- 
 
940 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 cious Parliamentary patrons by allowing them to use " a tone of condescension 
 and generous protection and patronage, not a little galling to some of the proud 
 spirits" among the Catholics. O'Connell and others chafed under "these assump- 
 tions of exalted superiority, and longed for ' emancipation ' from this petty degra- 
 dation and annoyance as heartily and earnestly" as from the yoke of British 
 bigotry. I have here quoted some expressions from John O'Connell. O'Neill 
 Daunt speaks to the same purpose. 
 
 In spite of the greatness of his achievement, however, O'Connell and his more 
 thoughtful friends were dissatisfied. Catholics were still looked on by law as 
 civilly and politically inferior to Protestants. By the Crown lawyers, Catholics 
 were still, in violation of law, shamefully excluded from juries. More, in short, 
 was required to make the victory complete. At Ennis and Youghal, O'Connell 
 enforced the necessity of repeal of the union, promising never to rest till it 
 should be won — " a pledge which, indeed," says Mr. Mitchel, " he labored all his 
 life to redeem." Even in the very year of triumph, '29, the country was full of 
 agrarian troubles. Tithes were rigorously extorted, and consequently some tithe- 
 proctors were made to eat their processes and had their ears cut off. Alarmed 
 magistrates called for the application of the " Insurrection Act." The agricultural 
 produce of the people was ever} 1 - day carried off in ships; no custom-house accounts 
 of the amount borne away from Ireland were kept, for in 1826 the export of agri- 
 cultural produce had been cunningly placed on the footing of a coasling-trade. 
 Chairmen of quarter sessions, sheriffs and bailiffs were then, as since, busy with 
 ejectments. Is it any wonder, then, that agrarian crime is perennial in Ireland ? 
 It is, indeed, some slight consolation that the murders in Ireland are usually agra- 
 rian, such as are looked on by the people as deeds of irregular warfare agains-t 
 oppressors ; that those murders banned by the common morality of mankind — 
 such as " murders for money, from jealousy, or in personal quarrel — have been at 
 all times much more rare in Ireland than in England." Mr. Mitchel omits men- 
 tioning, in the passage I quote from, the laudanum-poisonings of children and the 
 wife-murderings, by poison or otherwise, so common in that model country. 
 
 It is no wonder, then, that the Liberator himself, at some of the triumphal ban- 
 quets given to him, almost denounced the Emancipation Act for its flaws and 
 shortcomings. He observes : " The Catholic Association, consisting of 1400 Prot- 
 estant members and 13,000 Catholic members, forced the ministers to grant eman- 
 cipation, and the ministers put the Association down. . . . The details of this bill 
 are ludicrous — particularly Mr. Leslie Foster's clause, the twenty-seventh, where 
 a Catholic judge — Michael O'Loghlen, for instance — can go to mass, but his wig and 
 gown must stay at home. The judge may continue a Catholic, but the powdered 
 wig and gown must still remain Protestant. The mayor may also be a Catholic, 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 941 
 
 but such is the sage, grave and profound legislation of Leslie Foster that his mace 
 must be a Protestant mace." (Laugliter.) Lord Macaulay, in his Essay on Sir 
 William Temple, I think, speaks contemptuously of this miserable meanness of 
 the small emancipators. A great man, he says, might, indeed, extirpate the 
 Catholics, root and branch, but a great man would never emancipate them and, at 
 the same time, be so little in his j>olicy as to deny them the petty privileges just 
 referred to. 
 
 I shall conclude this chapter with the substance of a portion of the article 
 called " '82 and '29," which I wrote for the first number of the Dublin Irish 
 People, in 1863, to show that England, in making concessions to Ireland, has 
 always a sinister policy in view. I have already, in this work, quoted from this 
 article, and I promised to refer to it again at the close of my narrative of 
 emancipation : 
 
 " If the English government had not conceded emancipation quietly, the Irish 
 Catholics would, at length, have taken up arms to fight for their religious liberties. 
 The liberal Protestants would have joined them, and the struggle would have 
 finally expanded into the grand proportions of a war of independence. Ireland 
 would probably now be a country rejoicing in the blessings of independence, rich 
 in the memories of a heroic national struggle, strong with the dignity, self-respect 
 and energy which result from success in such a struggle ; instead of being to-day 
 a by-word and a mockery among the nations, she might be, in very deed, the 
 freest, the most prosperous, the most glorious island of the sea ! . . . But England, 
 insidiously and fatally for Ireland, conceded it" {emancipation) "ere a blow was 
 struck." This deprived it of many " ennobling associations of sacrifice and 
 heroism." Its being gained separately from national independence was also an 
 unlucky feature. " Being won peacefully, this was a matter of course." It chiefly 
 benefited " the upper and middle classes of Catholics." Leaving the masses in 
 miserjr, it "and the subsequent corporation reforms opened up the paths of profes- 
 sional and parliamentary distinction to the wealthy and educated Catholics ; in 
 short, completely satisfied their ambition. This was a serious blow to the national 
 hopes of Ireland. Those intelligent and educated Catholics, who ought to form 
 the leaders, guides, champions and rallying-points of the people in any struggle 
 for social and national regeneration, are separated from them ever since. Having 
 gained their own point, having secured their own interests, gratified their own 
 sordid ambition, they take no further part in struggles for country or countrymen. 
 It is, in short, always an insidious and fatal boon, when the claims of what are 
 styled the upper classes of a community are conceded separately from the rights 
 of the people at large. The class gratified is, thereby, bought over from the 
 struggle for the general weal. Thus, emancipation in Ireland, separated from the 
 
042 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 cause of independence, has afforded a means to the foreign government of Eng- 
 land of bribing and corrupting wealthy or educated Catholics — of seducing them 
 from the national ranks." These denationalizing effects would not be compen- 
 sated for even if the fact of our having Catholic judges and magistrates secured 
 a fairer administration of justice. But "as long as Ireland's present connection 
 with England lasts, whenever a Catholic peasant or patriot is arraigned before 
 him on political or agrarian charges, the Catholic judge will prove as supple an 
 instrument of tyranny as the most bigoted Orange partisan could be. Truly, it 
 can afford slender consolation to the Catholic victim of landlordism to know that 
 the special commissioner, who sentences him so impressively to be hanged, is of 
 the same creed with himself." 
 
 One other drawback to emancipation is that, appearing to have removed 
 greater grievances and " ignominy from the people than it really did, it takes 
 away certain healthy elements of wrath against British rule from the minds of the 
 people, who unfortunately are, in most cases, more influenced by shows than by 
 realities. To benefit Ireland thoroughly, emancipation should never have been 
 separated from the general national cause. It and Ireland's independence should 
 have sunk or swum together, and it should have been won by the sword !" * 
 
 * Authorities: Mitchel's "History ;" "Life of O'Connell" published by Mullany; Darcy Magce's 
 " O'Connell ;" " O'Connell's Speeches," etc., by John O'Connell ; Daunt's " Recollections " and " Ire- 
 land and her Agitators;" Wyse's "Association;" "Memoirs" by Sir It. Peel; Twiss'fi "Life of 
 Eldon ;" " Life of Wellington ;" Shiel's " Sketch of the Clare Election :" Macaulay's " Essays ;" 
 Alison's " Europe ;" " Dublin Irish People," 1863 ; Lord Anglesea's Correspondence, etc. 
 
x£h 
 
 CONCLUDING SUMMARY. 
 
 O'CONNELL AT DaRRYXAXE — VARIETIES — PARLIAMENTARY CAREER — LAST RePEAJ AGITATION 
 
 — The Famine — O'Connell's last illness and death — His character. 
 
 HE space at my disposal does not admit of my giving any detailed account of the sub- 
 sequent years of O'Connell's life. It was, indeed, at first, my intention to relate at 
 some length the story of his last repeal agitation; but, on mature reflection, I arrived 
 at the conclusion that, being limited in space, I should better succeed in presenting 
 5gj) the reader with a complete and vivid picture of O'Connell in all his greatness by confining 
 0f?* myself almost exclusively to a full and detailed account of the grand, triumphant achieve- 
 ment of his life. If I had tried to accomplish everything by overcrowding my canvas, I 
 should probably have succeeded in doing nothing well. I am the more reconciled to the plan I 
 have adopted when I consider that, up to the victory of emancipation, O'Connell's life, like the 
 history of Cortes up to the final capture of the city of Mexico, possesses something like the unity 
 of an epic poem. After emancipation, just as with the closing years of the career of Cortes, the 
 unity of O'Connell's life is at an end. Many of the incidents of these closing years of his life are, 
 •'o doubt, interesting, but many of them also have something of the sameness of a twice-told tale. 
 The same features are constantly reappearing. Besides, in his career in the British Parliament, up 
 to the commencement of the final repeal agitation, we recognize comparatively few of the distin- 
 guishing characteristics of the great Irish agitator— he becomes more like the British politician. 
 In the last repeal agitation, indeed, he is something like the O'Connell of his palmy days, his aspi- 
 rations are perhaps nobler than ever, but his policy is less bold. Some fatal mistakes are made. 
 The movement is not only incomplete, but absolutely a failure; his death takes place before the 
 melancholy national drama of repeal reaches its ignominious close. This biography, then, only 
 professes to give a detailed history of the triumphant period of "the Liberator's" career. 
 
 A very slight sketch, however, of his latter days is due to the curiosity of the reader. Let us 
 first, however, glance at him in his moments of relaxation, at Darrynane Abbey, after the glorious 
 fatigues of his last emancipation campaign. There by the wild sea-shore, sheltered by mountains, 
 in his quaint old house, buiit piecemeal at different times, without any regard to uniformity of plan, 
 but quite capable of accommodating the numerous guests his warm-hearted hospitality gathers 
 around him, he is as happy and beloved in the bosom of his family and people as any patriarchal 
 chieftain of the old days. Nothing could equal the love he bore his children and grandchildren 
 save their affection for him. Once Peter Hussey said to him, " Dan, you should not bring in your 
 children after dinner; it is a heavy tax upon the admiration of the company." "Never mind, 
 Peter," said O'Connell, gayly; "I admire them so much myself, that I don't require any one to 
 help me." His eldest daughter playfully said she was afraid he should spoil her Mary. His reply 
 was, " I don't think I shall ; I know I did my best to spoil you, my love, and I could not succeed." 
 In a speech at Belfast, in January, 1841, from which I have quoted already, he talks of his "angel 
 daughters," always "dutiful and kind" to him, whose "affection soothes every harsher moment of 
 his life." He also calls them "attendant angels waiting about him." In the same speech hr 
 
 BO 943 
 
944 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 speaks of "the chirping of his darling granddaughters sounding sweetly in his ears," and says thai 
 ■whenever they appeal to him, right or wrong, he decides in their favor. Nothing can be more en- 
 gaging than the picture of O'Connell's home-life at Darrynane. His children and grandchildrer. 
 were merry and happy as the day was long. All his dependants were enthusiastically attached to 
 him. 
 
 It was glorious to see him hare-hunting in the mountains even before breakfast, using his leap- 
 ing-pole with a young man's activity, joyously drinking in the full cry of the shaggy Irish beagles 
 and the enlivening shouts of men and boys, sent back by the myriad echoes of the hills. The 
 huntsmen, in their gay red jackets, were not more alive and merry than O'Connell himself. There 
 he was, now eagerly bounding along from rock to rock to keep the chase in view, anon pouring 
 forth a stream of anecdote and jest, or laughing, as he quizzed some London guests, unaccustomed 
 to mountain-life, for their lack of agility. Then after the chase, with appetites sharpened by the 
 sport and the mountain air, the whole company would breakfast on a fragment of rock, in a shel- 
 tered nook, a glorious sky overhead, wildly-magnificent scenery around. The delight which 
 O'Connell took in the natural beauties of his native Kerry is well described by himself in an elo- 
 quent letter written in October, 1838, to Walter Savage Laudor, the poet, in which he says that 
 the man "so often called a ferocious demagogue is, in truth, a gentle lover of nature." 
 
 O'Connell's domestic chaplain said mass every morning at nine o'clock. The ordinary break- 
 fast took place at ten. O'Connell sat at table in his dressing-gown and tasselled cap reading his 
 letters and the papers. At dinner there was generally a numerous company. No sectarian topics 
 marred the harmony of that festive board. Men of all shades of religious and political opinion 
 were welcome to Darrynane. Though O'Connell was zealous about his religion, even fond of con- 
 troversy — as shown by his encounters with the Kil dare-street people and with Noel and Gordon, 
 already described, and, on another occasion, by his stout refutation of certain attacks on the evi- 
 dences of Christianity, made in his presence by Count Maceroni, a scientific Neapolitan, who had 
 been aide-de-camp to King Joachim Murat, and had published something about experiments he had 
 made in the art of flying — in spite of this occasional interest in controversial subjects, O'Connell 
 was not in the least a bigot. In fact, the extent of his liberality would displease some of the nar- 
 row zealots of the present day. When a bigoted Catholic said that it was impossible any Prot- 
 estant could have the plea of "invincible ignorance," O'Connell remarked, "The fellow has no 
 right to judge his neighbor's conscience ; he does not know what goes to constitute invincible ignor- 
 ance." O'Connell was unwilling that his eldest son's wife, a Protestant lady, should conform to 
 Catholicity unless she really believed in the Catholic doctrines. He was shocked when his friend, 
 Mr. Daunt, seemed to doubt the efficacy of a deathbed repentance. He was very fond of Quakers, 
 and, on the other hand, some of the most eminent members of that persuasion had the highest 
 respect for him, as had also the celebrated Scotch Presbyterian divine, Dr. Chalmers, who, in spite 
 of their very different religious and political creeds, said of him, " He is a noble fellow, with the 
 gallant and kindly, as well as the wily, genius of Ireland." 
 
 In Darrynane he enjoyed himself more than anywhere else. In his garden, picturesquely sit- 
 uated amongst rocks, with its fine old hollies, he had a favorite walk. There was a circular turret, 
 too, perched high on an ivy-festooned rock in the middle of the shrubbery, which commanded a 
 wide prospect of the ocean and the neighboring hills, to which he oft retired to meditate in solitudo 
 u pon his political schemes. In Darrynane he was comparatively free from various classes of bores 
 that were wont to pester him elsewhere. Among these were gossiping visitors, who seemed to think 
 his time their property; rapturous and patriotic admirers belonging to that sex, which in his gallant 
 moods he used to call " the fairer and better " one (" How I hate to have those women pelting in upon 
 me!" he once exclaimed on the exit of a talkative dame of this class); male savans, like him who 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 946 
 
 interrupted him on one of his most busy days with a long and elaborate disquisition upon an 
 ancient Egyptian festival; loquacious chairmen at meetings and banquets; persons who bored him 
 to sit for his portrait or to give his autograph. Wilkie and Du Val found it very hard to get him to 
 give formal sittings. Of autographs he was liberal enough till age made writing an irksome task. 
 Shortly before his death he asked Mr. Daunt if he wished for any. Mr. Daunt said, he did, 
 Upon which O'Connell said, laughing, " Very well, I'll desire my secretary to write as many as 
 you want." To the despot of Russia, Nicholas, he sternly refused to give his autograph. He was; 
 more complaisant to Louis, the poe'eal king of Bavaria, who himself wrote a letter in English to 
 Mr. O'Meara, in which he says, " I request you to say my thanks especially to Mr. D. O'Connell. 
 for his kindness in fulfilling my desire in such an obliging way." To conclude this brief account 
 of our hero's " bores :" a modest priest, who was in difiicult circumstances, on the strength of 
 having been once introduced to him on the deck of a steamer, begged O'Connell to allow himself 
 and his two sisters " to make Darrynaue their home until more prosperous times." He trusted to 
 '"the Liberator's' well-known benevolence." O'Connell said he had not the honor of his acquaint- 
 ance. His reverence then reminded him of their introduction. 
 
 At Darrynaue, on days when he did not hunt, he spent two hours after breakfast at newspapers 
 and letters. Then he would stroll for a while on the beach or in the garden, or retire to his turret. 
 Mr. Daunt tells us O'Connell sometimes took a lively interest in pointing out to him with minute- 
 ness, among the surrounding rocks, the course of some hunt, the various turns of the hare and the 
 exploits of the dogs. On returning to the house, he would remain in his study till dinner, at which 
 meal he was generally talkative and jocular. He would sit for about an hour after dinner, and 
 then return to the study, nor leave it till bed-time. In this study Mr. Daunt once found him read- 
 ing Gerald Griffin's "Collegians," which was his favorite work of fiction. He had been counsel for 
 Scanlau, the man from whom the Hardress Cregan of the novel was drawn, and had "knocked up " 
 the principal witness against him. " But all would not do ; there were proofs enough besides to 
 convict him. - ' O'Connell was very fond of novels. Dickens was a great favorite with him. He 
 followed the fortunes of little Nell, in "The Curiosity Shop," with intense interest. On coming to 
 her death, however, he angrily threw away the book and exclaimed, "I'll never read another line 
 that Boz writes! The fellow hadn't talent enough to keep up Nell's adventures with interest and 
 bring them to a happy issue, so he kills her to get rid of the difficulty." Scott he seems to have 
 thought the best of novelists, but alco a great bigot. He praises Bulwer's " Night and Morning," 
 but his acuteness detects that author's legal blunder in supposing that Philip Beaufort, the hero, 
 had "no mode of establishing his own legitimacy except by producing the certificate, or the registry, 
 of his parent's marriage. . . . Philip's mother would have been a sufficient witness in her son's 
 behalf. Philip need only have levied distress on the estate for his rents. . . . This comes of men 
 writing of matters they know nothing about. Sir Walter Scott was a lawyer, and always avoided 
 
 such errors." He also says, "This is the only one of Bulwer's novels in which a w does not 
 
 figure as one of the leading characters." O'Connell sometimes ingeniously sustained the erroneous 
 opinion that Burke was the writer of " Junius's Letters." Byron was a great favorite with him, 
 and he was a passionate admirer of Moore's Melodies. One evening during the repeal agitation, at 
 the Victoria Hotel, Killarney, he had Gansy, the famous piper, playing Scotch and Irish airs for 
 his party. When one of Moore's Melodies would be played, O'Connell, at the conclusion, would 
 repeat Moore's words. He also greatly liked Father Prout's ballad, "The Bells of Shandon," 
 which he got off by heart, declaring it (a slight exaggeration) to be the best ballad ever written. 
 At Darrynane, O'Connell astonished a visitor, a " rough Northern lawyer," by his power of attend- 
 ing to two or three intricate subjects at the same time; his memory, too, was something extraor- 
 dinary. 
 
946 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Shortly after emancipation we find O'Connell again in active political strife. In a letter "to the 
 people of Ireland" about that time he says: "I do not remember any period of my life in which 
 so much and such varied pains were taken to calumniate me, and I really think there never was a 
 period in which the pretext for abusing me was so trivial. There seems to be a common accord 
 among the enemies of Ireland to run me down if they can." His enemies were wrathful at seeing 
 that, instead of sitting down content with emancipation and seeking office, he was determined still 
 to struggle on for Ireland's rights. Accordingly, we hear of the Times hurling three hundred of its 
 thunderbolts, in the shape of scurrilous articles, against him. Bravely he struggles against all foi.-s. 
 From Darrynane he is suddenly called to Cork, where he successfully defends the so-called Done- 
 raile conspirators, tells Solicitor-General Dogherty that what he says is not law, and mocks his dan- 
 dified accent to his face. In Parliament, his audacity and power force a hostile audience to admit 
 his merit. He is applauded at meetings of English radicals. Like Napoleon before a campaign, he 
 announces his designs — the numerous reforms he intends to seek. He has stirring times ; quarrels 
 with friends and foes; has misunderstandings with O'Gorman Mahon and Major McNamara; en- 
 counters in the House with Dogherty and Lord Leveson Gowcr, the latter of whom he calls "the 
 shave-beggar." The stout soldier, Sir Henry Hardinge, he stiugs by calling him "the chance 
 child of fortune and of war." If he had accepted the challenges of all those anxious to fight, he 
 should have had at least a dozen lives. He denounces Anglesea's policy. In spite of the sup- 
 pression of one society by government and the Leinster House declaration of the aristocracy against 
 repeal, he founds another society called "Volunteers for the Repeal of the Union." Their break- 
 fasts are suppressed and he is arrested, but the Algerine Act, under which the arrest takes place, 
 expires. In 1831 he helps the Whigs to carry the Reform Bill. In 1833, ten Irish bishoprics and 
 church rates are abolished. He defends the tithe conspirators in the days of the tithe war; denounces 
 and combats, inch by inch, "Scorpion" Stanley's coercion bill. He is great all through life at nick- 
 names ; for example, " Spinning Jenny Peel," " Surface Peel," "Lord Mountgoose" (Spring Rice, 
 Lord Monteagle), "Peter Piggery Purcell," the patron of agricultural shows. Wellington he called 
 "a stunted corporal," Burdett, "a foolish and fading gentleman." "How stoutly," says a stranger 
 to Mr. Daunt, "Dan fights it out among these English !" He calls the Dublin reporters, when they 
 band against him, "a parcel of nibbling mice." " Do you call me a mouse?" demands the rene- 
 gade Elrington. "No," retorts Dan, " if I called you anything, I should call you a rat." He 
 even brings the London reporters, who garble his speeches, to reason, by moving their expulsion 
 from the gallery of the House. 
 
 In 1S34 he is forced prematurely to bring the question of repeal before the House. Shiel and 
 eccentric, half-mad Fergus O'Connor, afterwards leader of the English Chartists, support him. 
 Peel, Spring Rice, Emmerson Tennaut and others oppose him. Of course, repeal is defeated by a 
 large majority. In 1835 he makes an engagement with the Whigs under Lord Melbourne and 
 Lord John Russell, known in history as " the Litchfield House compact." Those Irish members, 
 led by O'Connell, are nicknamed his "tail." He has great influence now in the disposal of Irish 
 patronage. This is the period of the popular viceroyalty of Earl Mulgrave, The Whigs promise 
 justice to Ireland, but the Lords defeat bills favorable to Ireland. O'Connell denounces them in 
 the towns of England and Scotland ; calls Lord Alvanley a "bloated buffoon." Alvanley sends a 
 message to Dan, who does not deign to notice him. Morgan O'Connell, however, obliges Alvanley 
 by taking up his father's quarrel. The duellists exchange three shots without a hit. Benjamin 
 Disraeli ( not long since prime minister of England) next assailed Dan most wantonly, at Taunton ; 
 but Dau speedily gave him far more than he bargained fox - . He not merely calls Benjamin "a 
 miscreant,' - whose life is "a living lie," "a disgrace to his species," but he insists that he is the de- 
 scendant of "the impenitent thief," whose "qualities he possesses." Dan concludes his speed , amid 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 947 
 
 groat laughter, with these words : "And with the impression that lie in, I now forgive the heir-at-law 
 of the blasphemous thief who died upon the cross !" Is it any wonder that luckless Disraeli was 
 almost frenzied? He challenged Morgan O'Connell, who declined meeting him, to fight, and raved 
 about "the inextinguishable hatred with which he should pursue O'Conuell's existence. - ' 
 
 Subsequently another Jew in race, named Raphael, gave O'Conuell's agents £2000 for the ex- 
 penses of his return for Carlow county. His election was declared illegal. He became clamorous 
 about his money. O'Connell, who was declared blameless in the matter by a committee of the Com- 
 mons, felt himself constrained to denounce Raphael as "the most incomprehensible of all imagin- 
 able vagabonds." 
 
 'Twere long to tell all the curious quarrel?, both with enemies and old associates, and other inci- 
 dents of O'Conuell's life during the years between emancipation and the last repeal agitation. In 
 1836, his beloved wife (beloved as few wives are loved) died at Darrynane. In 1838 he was 
 hooted from a meeting and threatened with assassination for opposing the trades' unions and their 
 exclusive apprentice laws. He was also reprimanded by the Commons, on the motion of Lord 
 Maidstone, for having said at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, amid great cheering, "and reiterated 
 iu the House of Commons," that Ireland was not safe from the perjury of English and Scotch 
 members. O'Oonnell made no real retractation ; in the eud he had far the best of this affair with 
 the House. In 1838 the tithe-commutation bill passed. O'Connell opposed the Poor-Law Bill 
 this year. 
 
 O'Connell frequently wavered on the subject of repeal ; he often said he would be content if 
 Ireland were put on a footing of equality with England. The Tories, while calling Catholic law- 
 yers of far inferior talent to the inner bar, had meanly refused him his silk gown. But the Whigs 
 had subsequently made him a king's counsel with a patent of precedence. However, he was always 
 proof against the temptations of office. He refused this year the great position of lord chief baron. 
 After his long trial of the Whigs, he founds the " Precursor Society." The Whigs, alarmed, pass the 
 Irish corporate reform bill ; but O'Connell is now determined to go on with the repeal agitation. In 
 '41 he becomes lord-mayor of Dublin, acts with great impartiality in that office, and in '42 revises 
 the burgess roll. Iu this year he publishes his " Memoir of Ireland" and his " Letter to the Earl 
 of Shrewsbury," which the late Frederick Lucas considered his ablest literary effort. Father 
 Mathew's tee-total movement had now been in existence for some time; O'Connell admired it and 
 deemed it ancillary to repeal. In 1843 the famous debate on repeal took place in the Dublin 
 corporation. O'Connell, on this occasion, delivered one of his greatest orations. Isauc Butt, now 
 the leader of the " home-rule movement," feebly opposed him. This was the great repeal year. 
 Soon multitudinous repeal meetings took place all over the country; these were the "monster meet- 
 ings," of which that at Tara and the one at Mullaghmast, where Hogan the sculptor crowned O'Con- 
 nell, were the greatest. O'Connell sternly refused the contributions of American slaveholders. 
 At Mallow he defied the government, who were now fast pouring troops into the island. But still 
 he discountenanced French sympathizers. He also set his face against the Chartists. The Nation 
 newspaper was now firing the youth of the country with eloquent articles and noble war-ballads. 
 Its writers also preached down pernicious sectarianism. Davis, Duffy, Dillon, Doheny, McNevin 
 and others had formed " the Young Ireland party." Later, John Mitchel became the most conspicu- 
 ous member of it. Father Kenyon and James Fintau Lalor also became prominent at a period later 
 than '43. When, at length, O'Connell was cast into prison (the government, frightened at the vast 
 meetings, their semi-warlike aspect, O'Connell's arbitration courts and the martial literature of 
 " Young Ireland," had proclaimed the Clontarf meeting and arrested O'Connell and several others), 
 at this crisis Smith O'Brien chivalrously joined the movement and became the leader of the " Young 
 Ireland" section. O'Connell is now found guilty of conspiracy and sentenced to a year's imprison- 
 
 -J i 
 _ J 
 
mcnt, but he is let out on a writ of error in three months. This is in '44. The '82 Club is shortly 
 after established; nothing, however, comes of it. All along, too, the Convention Act has stood in 
 the way of his favorite project of summoning a national council of three hundred. In '45 the 
 generous and enlightened Davis, the thinker of the " Young Ireland party," dies prematurely. 
 O'Connell is deeply grieved, though from the first he has mistrusted and feared the warlike tend- 
 encies of that party. Now come misunderstandings on the education question between "Old" and 
 "\oung Ireland." The latter party are for mixed education; finally the split takes place on the 
 abstract principle mentioned at the commencement of this biography. Divisions have at length 
 rent asunder the imposing might of the repeal cause. Narrow, sordid, poor-souled John O'Conuell 
 is the evil genius of his sire, who is now fast breaking down in mind and body. 
 
 But in this fatal year, 1846, a dread national calamity is at hand. The potato crop fails a 
 second time. Famine and pestilence are at the people's doors. O'Connell's jests and familiar 
 speech are at an end for ever. Never again will he make Ids countrymen laugh by saying " Na- 
 bocklish;" "Moryah;" "Thank you for nothing, says the gallipot;" "Stick a wisp of hay in that 
 calf's mouth ;" " They accuse me of having promised the repeal in six months ; I did, and here 
 I am again to promise it in six months more;" "This is a great day for Ireland,'" etc. The most 
 jovial of men now at length bowed his head in Conciliation Hall and wept. He was powerless iu 
 Dublin. He was powerless in London. His people died in thousands and in myriads, and numbers 
 were buried without coffins. "The uncrowned king" becomes weak in body and his buoyant spirits 
 desert him for ever. In 1847 he is ordered to a warmer climate. His old antagonist, Disraeli, 
 in his life of Lord George Bentinck, gives a touching picture of "the Liberator's" last appearance 
 in the House of Commons — his feebleness of frame and voice as, for the last time, he besought aid 
 for his hapless countrymen. As he passed through Paris, on his way to the city of the pontiff, he 
 received the visits of the illustrious advocate Berryer and Count Montalembert. To the former 
 he said, on welcoming him, " I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of pressing your hand." But he 
 was unable to converse. To a Catholic society headed by the latter he said, in French, " Sickness 
 and emotion close my lips. I should require the eloquence of your president to express to you all 
 my gratitude." Mr. J. P. Leonard, who was continually with him during his stay in Paris, has 
 recently sent me, from that city, a short but most interesting sketch, entitled "O'Connell in Paris," 
 which I regret I did not receive earlier, so that I might have reserved space for its insertion in this 
 biography. He says that even then, in the expression of O'Connell's "gray eyes, there was a power 
 that dazzled, attracted and awed — a something that once seen could never be forgotten." Like most 
 great men in a dying state, he disliked to confess weakness. His drive from the railway terminus 
 had fatigued him. A "young priest brought cushions to prop him up and make him more com- 
 fortable, but he declined the offer rather roughly, saying, ' I have no need of those things, I assure 
 you.' He still wore the repeal cap and button, and a long green coat with pockets cut at each 
 side. He looked thoughtful and sad." Mr. Leonard also says that there "was no apparent cause 
 for his speedy dissolution ; medical skill could discern no organic affection." The state of his 
 mind was preying on his existence. " He left Paris with a sad heart, hopeless of the future." To 
 his admirers there the news of his death could bring no surprise. In Lyons, Professor Bonnet 
 thought congestion of the brain had set in. " The illustrious patient's mind was clear, but not 
 active, and it was a continual prey to sad reflections." His figure had so shrunk that he said, "I 
 am but the shadow of what I was, and I can scarcely recognize myself." He had now a presenti- 
 ment of fast-coming death. His right hand trembled ; his left hand and left foot were cold. His 
 step was faltering. Masses were said for him in all the churches of Lyons. Anxious inquirers 
 besieged his hotel. Everywhere the deepest veneration was shown for "the great liberator of Ire- 
 hind." As he passed from the hotel to the steamboat, cro\\ds in the streets of Lyons uncovered 
 
THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 949 
 
 and bowed before him. But he took no notice of them. He no longer felt any interest in earthly 
 honors. He had already said to one who tried to cheer him, "Do not deceive yourself; I may not 
 live three days." The fatal disease was softening of the brain. On his voyage down the river Rhone 
 he seemed for a moment to revive under the genial warmth of the southern sun. News that he was 
 recovering reached Dublin. But the hopes thus raised were illusory and fleeting. The last scene 
 took place in "Genoa the Proud." On the loth of May, 1847, at three in the afternoon, he called 
 his valet and thanked him ,for his faithful services. That evening he breathed his last, in his 
 seventy-second year. He had vainly desired to live till he could reach Rome and receive the 
 pontiff's blessing. Not long before he expired, after being motionless for hours, he had sat up and 
 said, in a hollow voice, " I shall have the appearance of death before life is really departed. You 
 must take care not to bury me until quite sure that I am dead." His friends looked on awestruck. 
 His youngest son, Daniel, and Father Miley, who were with him when he died, in compliance with 
 his request, brought his heart to Rome. Pius the Ninth embraced his sou: "Since," said His 
 Holiness, "the pleasure of seeing and embracing the hero of Catholicity was not reserved for me, 
 let me have the consolation of embracing his son." Grand funeral solemnities were observed in 
 Genoa and Rome. In Ireland his funeral was a vast and imposing spectacle. His poor son John 
 refused to allow the "Young Irelanders" to take part in it. Funeral orations were delivered in 
 his praise by the greatest preachers of Italy and France — Fathers Ventura and Lacordaire. 
 Father Miley preached his funeral sermon in Dublin. A round tower has been erected to his 
 memory in Glasnevin Cemetery, near that city. 
 
 Such were the life and death of Daniel O'Connell — a man of majestic form, large of heart, and 
 of colossal intellect. His character, like the grand scenery of his native mountains, was irregular 
 and full of startling contrasts. He was good-natured, yet irritable; now courteous and compliment- 
 ary, now vituperative to excess. Generous, even at times forgiving and magnanimous, he was yet 
 capable of nursing vindictive passions. While he doated on his wife and children, he is said to have 
 not unfrequently forgotten his marriage vows. He sought after money eagerly, yet his "liberal hand 
 and open heart" scattered it again profusely. He had the moral courage of a statesman and was 
 personally brave in the face of physical danger, but he lacked the peculiar enterprise of the mil- 
 itary character. He was defiant, yet capable of submission. He removed badges of ignominy 
 from the Irish race, but the results of his policy were in many respects injurious to their fortunes. 
 He longed for the independence of Ireland, yet in the end drew aside the national efforts into 
 wrong paths. He inspired the people with courage to face their enemies, yet, if we are to believe 
 some generally sound thinkers, he taught them to like political dodging. When he died, the 
 masses of his people were most miserable. In the long run, however, good will certainly accrue 
 from his career. He was one of the greatest popular orators that ever lived, but also one of the 
 most unfinished. His voice was in the highest degree seductive, in spite of the broadest Kerry 
 brogue. His inimitable humor and fun sometimes degenerated into arrant buffoonery. He found 
 it hard to keep his exuberant animal spirits within reasonable bounds. He was, at times, frank, 
 outspoken, imprudent even to rashness, but more frequently cautious. A man of impulse, yet 
 prone to deliberate. A sincere believer in revelation, yet hardly pious. Grand of soul, but occa- 
 sionally descending to littlenesses. In fine, Irish to the heart's core, and, with all his faults, the 
 greatest of Irish political leaders. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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