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will eventually gain for him equal power in Great Britain may be doubted. Ireland, groaning under her oppressive wrongs heaped upon her by England, required an advocate, the people of England require not an advocate, they want a representative. The qualities required for these two characters are distinct and ought not to be confounded. An advocate has a cause, to which he sacrifices every thing; he implores, he deprecates, he threatens, he glosses over opposing circumstances; he artfully colours; he suppreses and disturbs truths that tell against him, he exaggerates every thing in his favour. The representative deliberates, his sole end is truth. He is a philosopher, brought into action for the benefit of a nation. It behoves Mr. O'Connell, now that he seeks to enlarge the sphere of his utility, to make himself master of this very broad and marked distinction. He has now placed the cause of Ireland in so commanding a position; he has so linked her destinies with those of England, and so impressed the people of England with the belief that justice must be done to Ireland, that he may now forego the character of the advocate, and assume the more elevated office of a representative of the whole empire.

It must not be expected, however, that the influence of any man in England can ever equal that of Mr. O'Connell in Ireland. The different situations of the two countries preclude the possibility of such an event. The comparatively calm, sedate, and inquiring nature of the English people, their love of truth, for truth's sake renders it impossible for them to evince or to feel the same enthusiastic rdour in favour of any one individual, as that now felt towards Mr. O'Connell by the people of Ireland. The English are a great and powerful people; they have no superior, and dread no oppressor. The difficulties which in their government they have to conquer, are difficulties springing from the very nature of man, and must attend on every society, at every stage of its existence. They feel no wild desire of revenge, no frantic hate, no passionate love for old and long cherished, because contemned and persecuted opinions. They march onward as a sovereign people; the Irish have hitherto advanced as a conquered pro

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vince. We have leaders whom we respect, and would respect them still more, if they had not basely and slavishly truckled to the dominant power of a bloated aristocracy, who, if they could, would trample upon the rights and privileges of the English people, in the same manner that they withhold from Ireland those advantages, to which she has a positive claim, as an integral part of the British empire. It is admitted that the English have no advocate whom they blindly and passionately adore; the respect they pay, is that which an equal pays to an equal, who has rendered him service. The Irish offer a wild and passionate gratitude to the man, who has rescued them from destruction.

With this exordial sketch of the character of Mr. O'Connell, we shall proceed to an exhibition of the early circumstances of his life, each of which possesses a peculiar interest, as being illustrative of the rise and growth of those high intellectual powers, which have procured for him an ascendancy over the entire population of his country, equal to that which any crowned potentate ever held over his subjects.

Daniel O'Connell was born in the year 1776, near Cahirsiveen in the county of Kerry, and the house in which this event occurred, is now shown as an historical curiosity, and a hallowed spot to travellers. He is descended from a line of ancestors, who once enjoyed regal sway in that part of Ireland, now known as the county of Kerry. His family are to the present day extensive proprietors of land in that province, having in this respect distinguished themselves from many Irish families, who have neither retained their ancient patrimony, nor received for it any reasonable equivalent. The province of Kerry was once the kingdom of Iveragh, the traditional throne of which, is now occupied by Mr. O'Connell. This uncrowned sovereign of Iveragh enjoys a territorial revenue of between four or five thousand pounds a year, and which has descended in regular succession from heir to heir for many centuries.

The father of Mr. O'Connell was Morgan O'Connell of Carhen in the barony of Iveragh in Kerry, who was married to Ca

therine daughter of John O'Mullane of Whitchurch in the county of Cork. The parents of the elder Mr. O'Connell had twenty-two children, of whom, upwards of one half lived to or beyond the age of eighty. Mr. O'Connell is at the head of one of those great Irish septs, whose fabulous history is carried through a vast procession of shadowy kings to the days of the great Milesius, and whose real origin, is like that of all the great families in Europe, involved in obscurity, which obscurity, however, is highly prized by the lovers of ancient descent, as like the Welsh genealogies, it can be carried back in imagination to the great progenitor of the human race. The Scotch clans and the Irish septs bear a strong resemblance to each other, and in the earliest periods of the history of those countries, we find the people included in those national communities, subject to the authority of some chieftain or petty sovereign, who exercised over them all the power and influence, generally vested in an hereditary monarch. Thus the head of the family of O'Connell was originally, it would appear, the chief or petty king of upper and lower Conelloe, in the county of Limerick, and afterwards of a portion of the county of Kerry, whence by the rebellion of 1641, they were driven to the county of Clare. The history of the family is pretty distinctly carried back to the commencement of the 15th century, a period beyond which few Irish families can penetrate by those legal documents, by which genealogy is best authenticated. On referring, however, to the history of Ireland, preserved in the British Museum, in the original manuscript of one of the O'Connell family, written in the Irish language, we there find mention made of the family of the O'Connell's as far back as 1245, although the actual root of their genealogical tree does not exhibit itself. We, however, there read of a Daniel O'Connell, who proceeded to the north of Ireland, at the head of a considerable body of men, to repel the incursions of an invading force from the land

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We have good reason to believe that the O'Connell family are ignorant of the existence of this document. It is beautifully written, and may tend to throw considerable light upon the early history of their family, which is at present involved in obscurity.

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