CHAPTER XV. "Resolve! resolve! and to be Men aspire; Let God-like Reason from her sovereign throne THOMSON. THE time was now come when O'Connell deemed it right to abandon for ever all attempts to obtain "justice for Ireland" from the English parliament. He accordingly embarked in his final effort to procure a Repeal of the Union. On the 15th April, 1840, he founded the Repeal Association. Its first meeting was held in the Great Room of the Corn Exchange, Burgh-quay, which is capable of accommodating about five hundred persons. The room was not onefifth part filled; there was a discouraging display of empty benches-a commencement that might well have disheartened a leader less sanguine than O'Connell. He remembered the commencement of the Catholic Association, the seven men who congregated in Coyne's back-parlour in Capelstreet, and the magnificent result of that small beginning; and he confidently looked forward to a yet more brilliant termination of his new enterprise. Still the meeting had a very discouraging appearance to those who had not the sagacious forecast of the leader. It seemed as if the word Repeal had lost its potent magic. But the fact was far otherwise. The thinness of the attendance arose from no apathy as to the national cause. It arose from a strong fear on the part of the Repeal public that the new experiment was not made bona fide. Repeal had been temporarily abandoned before. Such might be again its fate. Men dreaded lest O'Connell merely meant to rattle it about the ears of the government in terrorem, as a means of compelling them to make minor concessions to Ireland. "As soon," said O'Connell, "as they begin to find out that I am thoroughly in earnest, they will come flocking in to the Association." The chair was taken by Mr. John O'Neill of Fitzwilliamsquare, a Protestant merchant of great wealth and sterling Irish representatives will be enlarged, and the rights of Irish electors improved, by Irish representatives having two shares in eleven in the direction of affairs relative to their own country only, instead of having the sole disposal of them in themselves alone." The other nine shares being in the hands of a jealous rival! Such is the Union. patriotism. He had been, in early youth, a member of the Volunteer army of 1782. "I was then," he said to me, "too young to be of much use to Ireland, and now I am too old." But, young or old, his country had always commanded his best services. That good old Protestant patriot is long since dead. He descended to the tomb full of years, and deeply honoured by his fellow-countrymen. For more than half-an-hour the few who had congregated at the Corn Exchange anxiously awaited the opening address of the Liberator; but he still lingered, apparently unwilling to commence, in the hope of a more numerous attendance. But no reinforcement came. There were manifestations of impatience amongst those who were assembled. O'Connell at length rose, and with the air of one deeply impressed with the high and solemn responsibility which he incurred, spoke as follows: "My fellow-countrymen, I rise with a deep sense of the awful importance of the step I am about to propose to the Irish people, and a full knowledge of the difficulties by which we are surrounded and the obstacles we have to contend with. I trust that my heart is pure, and my judgment on the present occasion unclouded; and I declare, in the presence of that God who is to judge me for an eternity of weal or of woe, that I have no object in view but the good of my native land, and that I feel in the deepest sense the responsibility I am about to incur. We are about to enter on a struggle that will terminate only in having the most ample justice done to Ireland by placing her on an equality with the sister country, or in the establishment of our legislative independence. The struggle commences now; it will end only then. We commence under auspices that may afford little prospect of ultimate success to some; but those who know the character of the brave, moral, religious, and patient Irish people, cannot be of that opinion. We will, no doubt, be laughed at and derided on all sides, and sneered at by friends who believe everything is impracticable, and opposed by those malignant enemies who will be delighted to find any opportunity of manifesting their hostility. But no matter. We were derided and laughed at before by persons of this description when we set about the accomplishment of that great moral revolution which won religious freedom for ourselves and others." He then referred to the small origin of the Catholic Association, its progress and triumph; exposed the delusive nature of the Union, and repeated his proofs of the anti-Irish spirit in which laws were made for Ireland by the imperial legislature. He promised perseverance: "We have assembled to take part in proceedings that will yet be memorable in the history of our country. Yes, this 15th of April will be yet memorable in the annals of Ireland. It shall be referred to as the day on which the flag of Repeal was unfurled; and I shall fearlessly, legally, and constitutionally keep it unfurled until the day of success shall have arrived, or the grave shall close over me, and on my tomb shall be inscribed, He died a Repealer.' We must be up, I say, and stirring. We can do no good by quiescence; it may do us evil, but it can do us no service. We must take counsel from the French proverb, which says, 'Help yourselves, and God will help you.' We must not forget the story of the fellow who, when the wheel of his cart stuck in the mud, prayed to Jupiter to help him. You lazy rascal,' said his godship, 'put your shoulder to the wheel, and get along out of that.' I tell you there is nothing else for us but to help ourselves; and help ourselves, with the aid of heaven, we shall." Having quoted the well-known denunciations of the Union pronounced in 1799 and 1800 by Bushe (the Chief Justice) and Plunket (the Chancellor), he continued: "These are 'Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn;' I have them here. They shall spread through the land in the course of the next week for the perusal of the youth of Ireland; not one of whom, I trust, will be found, whose eye will not glisten with fire, whose young heart will not burn with indignation at the spoliation resorted to by our enemies. There was a bargain, forsooth! Why, is not the Chief Justice* still living? and is he not a witness for me? Is not the Lord Chancellor of Ireland,† with all his Asdrubals or Hannibals, living also to bear his testimony? What care I whether he has changed his opinion or no? He was honest then, because he had no sons to quarter on the State. Let him change now if he wish. In his day of virtue he felt and spoke those sentiments which I have read for you. Let him now change them in the day of his power and authority." In the opening passage of O'Connell's speech, he had mentioned "justice to Ireland" as an alternative. But how visionary he deemed the prospect of obtaining that justice is evident from the following passage: "If we get the justice we desire, *Charles Kendal Bushe. + William Conyngham Plunket. then our Repeal Association is at an end; but I know we will not get that justice, and that there is nothing left for us but to pursue vigorously the course we have commenced this day. Why should we for a moment deceive ourselves? This justice will not be done to Ireland, and we will at once set ourselves right by declaring that there is a Repeal Association, and that unless the moral miracle be performed of having justice done to us by England, we will never cease until we have a parliament established in College-green.* "Not one single benefit has the Union conferred upon Ireland, but, on the contrary, it has brought in its train poverty, degradation, and sorrow. When once the public mind is aroused, and the evils which we have suffered pointed out to the people, the Union cannot continue. It is not the writing of a single letter, nor the delivery of a single speech, that can effect the Repeal; it is the concentration of public opinion, directed as a galvanic battery, that will have that effect. That opinion will then become powerful as the lightnings of heaven, destroying everything that may impede its course." He concluded by moving the adoption of a set of rules; the seconder of the motion being Mr. John Redmond, a patriotic citizen. So ended the first day's meeting. The Whig liberals did their best to throw contempt and ridicule on the proceedings. The paucity of the attendance was pointed out with scorn. Those gentlemen said to their acquaintances as they met in the streets, "Dan will never work this question-he is not in me. * As this passage appeared to contain an admission, even although a hypothetical one, that justice from England could supersede the necessity of Repeal, O'Connell guarded himself against such an objection in a subsequent speech, delivered on the 1st May, 1840. He explained his meaning, in still retaining the semblance of an alternative, to be this: "I have declared for the Repeal, and from this declaration nothing ever shall take It has been said that even in the formation of this society, I held out the alternative of justice. Let them do us justice; let them increase our representatives to 150 in number-let them remove the church grievance-let them increase the franchise-let them do all this, and though they will not have convinced me that Repeal is unnecessary, they will deprive me of the forces by which I hope to succeed. But who supposes that they ever will be brought to do us justice? Not even a dreamer who dreamed soundly in his sleep; no one short of an idiot could be brought to believe it. Why, it is absurd as the vulgar saying, 'to stop the tide with a pitchfork.' I hold out the alternative, to be sure; but it is to the English members of parliament-the alternative is not for me; it is for them." earnest the people don't care about it" (this was a very favourite allegation)-" he won't be able to get over the priests to help him.' The word "Repealer" was pronounced with a derisive curl of the lip by the "genteel" liberals, who religiously abhorred all treason against whiggery. More sagacious men, however, knew the question was workable. They remembered the popular enthusiasm of 1832, and they did not believe that enthusiasm to be a mere fever fit. O'Connell was accused, as a matter of course, of embarking in what he knew and intended to be a delusive agitation. To create an impression that the leader was insincere, was a dexterous mode of damaging the cause. O'Connell, however, had the most intense conviction that success was possible, provided that the parties who were interested in its attainment would apply their whole strength to the task. Those parties were the people of Ireland. He had great faith in the manifest truth and common sense of his statements and arguments. When dictating reports and addresses to Mr. Ray, the able and excellent secretary of the Association, he would say, "Well, Ray, I am acquitting my conscience; I am giving the people of Ireland an opportunity to have their parliament restored, and if they do not aid me the fault is their own." He held that the Act of Union (which Saurin had pronounced to be destitute of any other sanction than coercive force), did not need a formal act of the imperial parliament for its repeal; and he published in May, 1840, a masterly argument to show that her majesty possesses the constitutional right of convoking the Irish parliament in Dublin, notwithstanding the iniquitous suppression of that body by the transaction of 1800.* And he believed that it was not impossible to create a condition of public affairs in which her Majesty's advisers might deem such exercise of her constitutional prerogative expedient. For a good while after the establishment of the Repeal Association, the English press was wholly, or nearly, silent on the subject. By-and-by, the English journalists condescended. to laugh at the Repealers. After their wit was exhausted at our expense, they began to be abusive. The Repealers were - denounced as political criminals of the worst description, and floods of coarse vituperation were poured on them from the * I have published O'Connell's argument, which he supports by historical references, in the sixteenth chapter of my "Personal Recollections" of him. |