mity might not have been averted, when I saw, in that country, two Universities having none of the provisions on which O'Connell insisted, where the students attend classes together and live where they think fit without ecclesiastical or academic supervision, where there are no separate professors and no separate class of studies, and where on the council of each University there was a Catholic Archbishop. A fairer and better system than the one accepted in Australia might assuredly have been obtained in Ireland in 1845.

Peel's third Irish measure was still more unfortunate than the second. It was spoiled by the advice of his Irish supporters; so hopeless is it to effect good through agents to whom the right is odious and intolerable. Lord Stanley proposed a Land Bill which remedied none of the serious evils the Commission had disclosed. It did not recognise in any manner the costly improvements which the tenantry had already created, and it proposed to grant compensation in the future merely for drains and farm buildings, and this compensation was to be claimable only in case of ejectment. By inference it abolished the Tenant Right of the North. Davis prepared a report on the scheme, and strongly advised O'Connell and O'Brien to take up the interest of the Northern farmers, and thereby gain their good will and finally their co-operation. But before anything was undertaken the measure, which was received with a shout of disapprobation North and South, was withdrawn. Lord Stanley had not succeeded in legislating on the question; but it is probable that he obtained an

insight into the unjust and untenable character of the land system in Ireland, for after he succeeded to the management of the family property, he solved the difficulty for himself by selling his Irish estates.

At this period Davis proposed, for the first time, to go circuit, and the news was not received by his friends with unanimous assent. Dillon wrote to me :

"If Davis will not attend two public dinners, I would much rather he would select Sligo than Galway. Tell him I will write to him from Sligo, and as I would say the same things to both of you, that letter will do for you, and you can shew him this. I was greatly annoyed at hearing a report that he was going circuit. That I think would be altogether ruinous. Every one would say that he was driven out of politics. I have been thinking that he and you ought to start a penny magazine, and conduct it yourselves, making use of James Duffy to circulate it. If you would join in the speculation I am certain it should necessarily succeed, and it would be a powerful engine. It stands you upon' to work against the powerful confederacy that has been formed to crush you, and in your person everything that is upright and independent in the country. May God defend the right."

On the other hand Denny Lane approved of the design:

"I am very glad," he wrote to Davis, "to hear that you are coming down to the Assizes. The going circuit I think more than any thing else can make a man acquainted with the provincial mind of Ireland, which is really of much greater proportionate power than the ex-metropolitan mind of any other country. In fact we have no metropolis-neither the court of claret-coloured coats, nor that of wigs and gowns is enough to make Dublin anything but a country town. We have no theatre, no periodical literature, no gathering of artists, no great merchants,

above all no legislative assembly collecting into a focus every ray of intellect and enterprise in the country. In fact we have nothing of what makes Paris or other capitals the 'governor' of the great engine of a nation."

During the Colleges controversy a project of earlier date was carried out. The State Prisoners held a Levée in the Rotunda on the anniversary of their imprisonment. In the historic Round Room, festive with flags and decorations, O'Connell and his late fellow prisoners, standing on an elevated dais and surrounded by the élite of the national party, received the felicitations of an organised nation. Deputations from the great Municipalities, from the Commissioners and Guardians of the lesser towns, from the associated trades, and from the clergy and laity of numerous districts were presented thanking them for their past fidelity, and promising to co-operate with them to the end, in the struggle for nationality. A pledge proposed by Smith O'Brien and seconded by Henry Grattan was adopted, declaring that the men there assembled (who were in effect a National Convention) would never cease seeking the Repeal of the Union by all peaceful moral and constitutional agencies till a native Parliament was restored.*

But Ireland by this time had had demonstrations and pronunciamentos enough and to spare. Perhaps indeed she "protested too much," and became liable to

The meeting on Friday was all our press describes it-by far the greatest popular display I ever witnessed under and outside the Rotunda. O'C. interrupted me on Monday week to confuse me, but he only roused and served me. I was famously heard and we are great political friends now.-Davis to Maddyn.

the suspicion which the same exuberance of sentiment suggested in the case of the tragedy Queen.

One good result however the Levée produced; the best men of the national party scattered throughout the four provinces were brought together for a moment in the Capital. They had witnessed O'Connell's assault upon Davis with feelings akin to the despair of the Dutch Protestants when Maurice of Orange, the sword of the Reformation, struck at John of Barnvelt, its brain. They desired to negotiate a permanent peace, and were profuse in good advice to both parties. But they probably took too little account of one agent, without whom peace was now impossible-Mr. John O'Connell.*

*The literary projects were pressed on without regard to the controversies in the Association. MacNevin wrote to Lane:-"The country is bristling with books on all sides, Protestant, Orange, mitigated purple, bright green, dark green, and invisible green. We are all writing books such as they are, and all about the dear little isle.' Now if wealth and national learning go on together, the devil cannot arrest the progress of our cause-for I observed in reading our history, that at every period when fair play was given for a moment to the national mind, it rushed to freedom with a very noble instinct."

CHAPTER IX.

THE VICE-TRIBUNATE OF JOHN O'CONNELL.

WHEN the bill passed Autumn had arrived, and in Autumn it was as hopeless to keep the national leaders in Dublin as to keep the House of Commons in Session. O'Connell retired to Darrynane, O'Brien to Cahermoyle, and their principal associates set out for the Rhine or Mont Blanc, or on political expeditions beyond the Bann or the Shannon. Davis had volunteered to allow me a holiday, by taking my place in the Nation office, and my holiday was employed in an excursion through Ulster from Rostrevor to Donegal. An Orange meeting on a scale of unusual magnitude was projected at Enniskillen to impeach Peel for his desertion of Protestant ascendancy; and in company with two or three friends I resolved to see this muster of faithful Protestants. My companions were John O'Hagan and two provincial adherents of the Young Ireland party who now first come distinctly into view. During a residence in Belfast from 1839 to 1842, I had made the acquaintance of John Mitchel, a solicitor residing at Banbridge, who impressed me by the vigour and liberality of his opinions, as well as by his culture and suavity. He was the son of a Unitarian Minister, had