infant institution by any one but O'Connell, are its most remarkable characteristics.

"CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION.-Tuesday, a meeting of the Catholic gentlemen was held at No 4, Capel Street, for the purpose of forming the deputation to present the address to his majesty, pursuant to a resolution entered in at the Aggregate meeting, held in Townsend Street Chapel on Saturday; and for the purpose of forming a committee, to make such arrangements as might be deemed necessary, relative to the Catholic Association.

"At half-past three o'clock, Lord Killeen was called to the chair.

"Some conversation ensued as to the expediency of limiting the number of gentlemen who were to compose the Association.

"Mr. O'Connell expressed himself decidely hostile to a measure of that kind. The crisis was momentous. The rancour of the faction was hourly gathering strength. The assistance of all was necessary to repel its efforts to plunge the country in anarchy and blood. Numbers would give weight to the Association, and assist in more generally diffusing its beneficial influence throughout the country.

"It was resolved that a committee of eleven should be appointed to frame regulations, and to make a report on Thursday the 22nd instant. The following gentlemen were then named:

"O'Connor Don, Sir Edward Bellew, Messrs. O'Connell, Nicholas Mahon, Eneas M'Donnel, Richard Shiel, R. Lonergan, Callaghan, Scanlan, Oldham, and Hayes.

"Mr. O'Connell proposed that a deputation be formed of Catholic peers, the sons of Catholic peers, baronets, the sons of baronets, and a considerable number of gentlemen.

"Mr. Eneas M'Donnell approved of the order in which it was proposed to form the deputation. The appointment of the peers was almost of course; but there was one peer whom he considered entitled to a more particular and prominent distinction. The merits of that nobleman obtained for him the

highest station in the Catholic body. The nobleman to whom he alluded was the Earl of Fingal.

"Mr. O'Connell moved the resolutions, pursuant to the amendment, that the deputation consist of the Right Hon. the Earl of Fingal, attended by the Catholic peers, sons of peers, baronets, sons of baronets and several gentlemen. The resolution was then put and carried unanimously."

Considering that the origin and progress of the Catholic Association may be regarded as one of the most important circumstances in the life of Mr. O'Connell, we shall give the history of it in the words of one, who was well acquainted with all its motions and operations.*

Taits Ireland and O'Connell.

CHAPTER II.

On the 25th of May 1823, thirteen persons met in a bookseller's house in Capel Street, Dublin, to consider the posture of the Catholic question: this was the future Catholic Association. There, in two little rooms-which were of that construction, that those sitting in one could not see, though they might hear, the persons in the other-were held the first meetings of an assembly, which, in its origin, progress, immediate results-and, far more, the influence of its examplestands out as one of the very foremost events in civil history. It is modern, it is Irish, it is Catholic-three circumstances which may cause some to dismiss the subject with contempt; but those persons may assure themselves, they have taken a poor measure of the direction of the age, they are very young in the great study of interpreting the future from the voice of the past, if they do not diligently and carefully weigh the causes that produced and again absorbed that singular assembly. To the statesman, it is of deep instruction-to the metaphysician, it furnishes matter for the most interesting speculation to the ethical philosopher, it is a storehouse of important laws and maxims-to the people, of whatever country or age, it is a glorious example. The friends and enemies of freedom are alike interested in tracing the means by which liberty was won from the opposition of a powerful party, headed by a haughty king, who resented political resistance as a perzonal insult, and backed by the inert but enormous mass of the prejudices, ignorance, and fears of a great nation, deluded, for a time, by the circean draught of corrupt blandishment, misrepresentation, and falsehood, which the church and the oli

garchy had offered to it, in the plenitude of their fornications. From what beginnings proceeding, the Catholic Association embraced nearly all Ireland, by what policy and instruments it formed the extraordinary organization that drew the eyes of the whole world, and some of the more obvious results of its example will be traced with as much compression as the extent of the subject will permit. At the same time, the objections made to similar national combinations will be examined.

"E parvis initiis magna momenta.

This principle is nowhere so forcibly delineated, and its truth so practically proved, as in tracing the history of Catholic Ireland, from the year 1823 to 1829; but, for the elucidation of matters, it will be necessary to look back, before we lay open the proceedings of the Catholic Association in that interval. For three centuries, "Ireland," as Grattan beautifully said, "may be tracked through the statute-book of England, like a wounded man by his blood." Curfew bills-coercionlaws dungeons, chains, and gibbets, were in the amplest requisition. The people, goaded to the heart by keen and incessant tyranny, assumed the melancholy determination of men who had no resource but in the madness of despair. Tithes were the fountain of all their bitterness and distress. They expostulated with the Minister; but they were answered with laws calculated only for the meridian of Barbary. Murder, in the ermine of the law, and justice, with the statute-book in one hand, and the dagger in the other, passed triumphant through the land. Grattan made his indignant and eloquent appeals, not unheard, but unnoticed. The Catholic Convention was established, and dissolved without effecting any permanent good. Pitt cajoled the Catholics, and afterwards betrayed them. They were, however, increasing in numbers and power. Their claims were repeatedly urged in the British House of Commons, and as often rejected; but the time was coming to mould them into a powerful people: it came—and they communicated a national sacrament at the national altar, and formed a solemn league from one end of the island to the