He had rested on the strict legal justice of his punishment, he would have come out from his prison at the year's end, strongly armed in injury, to lay waste the country under a new term of agitation. As it was, he came out-however boastful and clamorous -in reality perplexed, anxious, and feeble. never was like himself again, except on some single occasions. He was, and he felt himself, half-way down a precipice, uncertain whether to go up or down-unable to do either. His career was now virtually over. Yet there was an external grandeur about his release. On the notification of his freedom being given him, he left the prison on foot, with his sons and a few friends. He was recognised in the street, and escorted home by a crowd, whom he dismissed with a short speech from his balcony. The next morning early he went back to his prison, to be carried home in triumph. The whole city was abroad to see; and it was two hours from the time when the procession began to leave the gates, before the car could be brought up. The car-invented for the occasion, and never seen again but at his funeral-lifted him a dozen feet over the heads of the crowd. He stood at his full height, and was crowned with the repeal-cap. He was portly, and apparently in good health; but his countenance wore the anxious expression which was now becoming habitual to it. As for the rest, the show was vulgar enough; the grandsons of the agitator being on the lower platform of the car, in 'green velvet tunics, and caps with white feathers.' The best feature was perhaps the coach in which were the lawyers in the cause, carrying the 'monster indictment.' Mr O'Connell closed the proceedings by an address from his balcony, in which he hoped it would not be necessary CHAP. VIII. O'CONNELL AS A LANDLORD-HIS DECLINE-HIS DEATH. He was to hold the Clontarf meeting,' the principle of which was vindicated by the trials. He promised to open out his further plans at the Repeal Hallwhimsically called Conciliation Hall-on the next Monday. At that meeting, which was crowded and triumphant, Mr W. Smith O'Brien rushed to the front of the platform, seized the liberator's hand, and shook it vigorously for some moments.' In return, Smith O'Brien's hand was pressed to the heart of the liberator; and the cheering and stamping were such that the very building quaked and trembled.' How soon was all this to appear a mockery! These fervent friends were soon to stand before the world as enemies-O'Brien striving to be a rival sun in the same hemisphere-O'Connell heaping contempt and foul names on O'Brien! O'Connell kept his promise of announcing plans' at Conciliation Hall. From this time, he was more fertile in 'plans' than ever; he was incessantly changing them. His language grew, if possible, bigger, his demonstrations more vulgar-with more green velvet, feathers, harps, wreaths, and old Irish costumesand his monster meetings more enormous. invited to England, and fêted there, and made use of for the anti-corn-law cause. But he was never really formidable again, and he knew it. He had no policy-no principle-nothing to repose upon; and only his ingenuity and audacity for a resource. A severe blow was struck at him towards the close of 1845-and his extreme violence shewed how it told upon his heart-by an exposure of his deficiencies as a landlord. It became known-not by any hostile gossip, but by means of a full and authorised investigation into the facts-that this liberator, whose heart was wrung by the woes of Ireland, whose life was devoted to her redemption, was a middleman, pocketing three times as much rent drawn from a squalid peasantry, as he paid to the head-landlord; while also his own tenantry were in 'a lost, wretched, and neglected condition.' While holding forth patriotically against oppression, hundreds of miles from home, and drawing away the peasantry from honest industry to hear his vapourings about freedom and prosperity, and pay their only shilling in an imaginary cause, he was receiving rent from squalid wretches who wallowed with the pig, and were chilled under his roofs by the wintry wind, and would fain have shared the food of his beagles. He was furious at this exposure; but his hard words mattered little while hard facts were against him. Then he was seen in London streets, walking slowly and stooping, while supported by two of his sons; and members of the House complained that they could not hear his now short speeches, because of the feebleness of his voice. Then rumours arose of approaching famine in Ireland, and his sinking heart could not bear them. He was disturbed at the rise of the 'Young Ireland' party-the new section of repealers and liberators who were impatient for war, while he no longer talked of battle-fields, but grew more timid and perplexed from day to day. When the Whigs succeeded to the Peel government in 1846, and he was reinstated in the commission of the peace, and supported the Russell ministry, he was harassed and shaken by the scorn and enmity of 'Young 665 Ireland,' who taunted him with having 'surrendered.' As the famine was scen surely to approach, all political action became out of the question. His physicians said he must be removed from the sight and hearing of whatever would disturb him; and, if the later portraits of him are to be trusted, this was highly necessary. It is affecting to look on the heavy eye, and the mournful and wistful expression of countenance. He went to Hastings; and he did not mend, though the newspapers had paragraphs about his improving health, or health which needed no improvement. He desired that the newspapers might be kept from him, and all tidings of Ireland. No one was to be admitted who would speak of Ireland. He so watched the countenance of his physician when looking at his tongue, and was so alarmed by any gravity of countenance at the moment, that his physician had to remember to look cheerful and pleased. Next, he went abroad, hoping to reach Rome, and die under the blessing of the pope. But he sank too rapidly for this. He was carried to Paris, Marseille, Genoa; and then he could go no further. The final symptoms consequent on a long decay of the digestive functions came on, in May 1847; and on the 15th of that month, he died, his latest anxieties being lest he should be buried alive. He gave repeated warnings to his physicians and servant against this danger. His melancholy deepened to the last; and his only interest seemed to be in dependence on his confessor, and in repeating the prayers enjoined. On examination, the state of the brain explained his later moods. It was extensively diseased; and the discase, both there and elsewhere, must have been of long standing. This was a natural close of the life he had led-a life of strong passions, and intense and unremitted excitement, without the repose of a simple integrity; but it is not the less profoundly melancholy. Those who could least pretend to lament his disappearance from his mischievous position in Ireland, could not see without emotion the progress of the old triumphal-car through the streets of Dublin, bearing the silent remains of him whom multitudes still called by the name of liberator. The name has died already, and will be henceforth met with only in the chronicles of a past time. It is difficult now to find an educated Irishman who speaks of O'Connell with respect, or who denies that he set back Ireland half a century by his political action after 1829. But his name was a spell upon the Catholic peasantry; and when the charm was dissolved, and the idol broken, there was no heart that was not aware of the melancholy which always attends the breaking of idols. During the years when the repeal agitation was strongest, there were things doing in and for Ireland which afforded some hope on her behalf, even to those who saw most clearly the mischiefs of O'Connell's course, and were most indignant at them. The most essential good that could be rendered to Ireland-that which at least must precede every other -was an exposure of the fact that her miseries proceeded from moral and social, and not political causes. The famine was coming which was to do this good work in a harsh manner. While the famine was not foreseen, there was something extremely disheartening in O'Connell's pernicious mode of action, and in the rise of Young Ireland, with its political ignorance, its slaughter-house talk, and its bullying boasts-all so vulgar in the presence of the mournful greatness of the cause it professed to monopolise. But violence and ignorance and folly are, in their own nature, short-lived; and there was a lasting life in some institutions and methods and proposals on behalf of Ireland which were not extinguished by the repeal agitation. The county of Derry was shewing, according to its wont, what could be done by the application of industry and capital, among a mixed population of Catholics and Protestants, and under the muchabused union. On the estates of the London companies were seen 'good farmhouses, large squared fields, good fences, and abundant crops,' at the same date when, under an invited visitation, an inquirer was compelled to report: 'In no part of the United Kingdom is such neglected wretchedness-such filth, such squalor, such misery of every kind—to be seen, as I saw that day on Mr O'Connell's estate, in the presence of Mr Maurice O'Connell.' At the same date, Dr Kane was asking whence such contrasts arise, and avowing 'the fault is not in the country, but in ourselves;' and he adds: 'We do not want activity; we are not deficient in mental power, but we want special industrial knowledge. This want was considered and met in the introduction of agricultural schools, whose benefits would be spreading over the land when the union was no more talked of than it is in Scotland now. From the Templemoyle seminary, for one, young men were going forth every year, to reclaim or improve the land about their homes, and command good labour, and train to good habits, and produce conspicuous crops, and occupy the minds of the peasantry round them with something better than showy processions, and visions of battle-fields that would never be fought. It was already apparent that where these young men settled down, the quality of labour and of produce improved, the peasantry were better fed and lodged, and crime so diminished as that the police and soldiery went almost out of sight. Then there were agricultural associations which kept up the interest of the gentry, though they never sufficiently engaged the attention of the farmers. There was also the Irish Waste Land Improvement Society, which did more good to the peasantry, by compelling patient improvement of the soil, and patient learning how to improve it. An important measure-a measure calculated to heal religious dissensions, and redress Catholic grievances-passed the legislature in the session of 1844-a measure for the better security and administration of charitable and religious trusts. It was introduced in the Lords, where it met with no obstruction. In the Commons, it was disputed, chiefly by the hot-headed Irish repeal members, who talked as usual of 'insult' and 'injustice' to Ireland; while their calmer comrades, and everybody else, saw that it was conceived and framed in a just and kind spirit, and must work benignly. At the beginning of the century, a board was appointed to administer charitable trusts; and the members were almost exclusively Protestants, while nearly threefourths of the bequests placed under its jurisdiction were Roman Catholic endowments. By the new bill, three members of the board were to be dignitaries of the law, two of whom might be Catholics; and ten more commissioners were to be appointed by the crown, five of whom were to be Protestants, and five Catholics. Various imperfections of the existing law were so redressed as to give a preponderance at the board to the Catholic section where Catholic bequests were concerned. Mr O'Connell injured himself much with the most enlightened part of his Catholic countrymen by his opposition to this bill-an opposition which he grounded on his fears of the consequences of sending Catholics to the castle, and of sanctioning a connection of the Catholic Church with the state. On occasion of the third reading, Mr Maurice J. O'Connell said, that 'he was bound to express his conviction that when the present heats had subsided, the bill would be found a substantial benefit to the people of Ireland, raising the condition of their clergymen, without shackling the influence exercised by them over their flocks.' In August, Mr O'Connell declared that all befitting means should be taken to prevent the act going into execution, and intimated that it could never take effect if Roman Catholics refused the office of commissioners; yet, on the 21st of November, the Dublin Evening Freeman announced 'the first blow at the independence of the Catholic Church'-the rumour that Catholic prelates and laymen of respectability had consented to become commissioners. It was even so. The Catholic Primate of Ireland, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, and three more Catholics of respectability,' were gazetted as commissioners in December, together with four prelates and laymen of the Established Church, and one Presbyterian divine. The success of this healing measure, which brought the heads of the two churches together to watch over the interests of religion and charity, was a sore addition to Mr O'Connell's perplexities, and a severe blow to his influence, by forcing him into collision with the chiefpriests of his own communion. The During the same session, the lord chancellor united with a Catholic peer, Lord Beaumont, in obtaining the abolition of various penal acts against the Romanists, which, though obsolete, were an offence as they stood in the statute-book. abolition of the office of lord-lieutenant was proposed, as a means of bringing Ireland into the same close union as exists between England and Scotland. Mr Hume had striven for this object twenty years before, and he was as fully convinced as ever that the assignment of a viceregal government to Ireland gave that country a colonial appearance which was highly disadvantageous. The frequent changes of administration in Dublin were a serious drawback upon good government. Instead of a responsible minister of the crown residing in London, there had been sixteen chief-secretaries for Ireland in the first thirty years after the union. A smaller consideration, but not an unimportant one, was the economy of the change. Mr Hume moved an address to the queen, requesting her to consider of the abolition CHAP. VIII.] ENDOWMENT OF CATHOLIC CLERGY-MAYNOOTH GRANT. 667 of the viceroyalty. The answer of Lord Eliot, the Irish secretary, was that the change would be inconvenient; that the Irish people did not desire it; and that the office was six hundred years old, whereas none such had existed in Scotland. Lord John Russell, upon this, pointed out that it had been in contemplation to appoint a separate council for Scotland; but that Lord Somers had maintained that such a council would prevent the union from ever being complete. There was opposition enough to induce Mr Hume to withdraw his motion. His object will probably be carried out in an easy and natural manner-by such improvements in science and the arts as are already bridging the narrow sea, and bringing London and Dublin within easy hail of each other. When the English, from the queen to the commercial traveller, can visit Ireland as easily as Scotland, and London news can be heard as soon in Dublin as in Edinburgh, and a secretary of state in London can govern and protect the one as well as the other, it is pretty certain that the whole apparatus of the viceroyalty, about which the affections of the Catholic Irish certainly do not cling, will be swept away; and there will be one reminder the less of the tenure of conquest under which this special machinery of government was set down in the midst of the Irish people. The subject of endowing the Roman Catholic clergy was much discussed throughout the country at this time. Loud and vehement declarations were uttered by the Irish political leaders in the name of the priests, and by many of the priests themselves, that nothing would ever induce them to accept of a shilling of endowment from Protestant hands; but numbers of thoughtful men believed then, as numbers of thoughtful men believe at this day, that, with time and patience, such a scheme would work. The Protestant Church in Ireland is felt to be an intolerable grievance, in its existing preponderance. All attempts to reduce it to its fair proportions, and settle it in its true function, have failed; and the easiest way now seems to be to raise the depressed Church of the majority into a greater fitness for its function. As a missionary church, the Establishment has failed, and will evidently continue to fail. If the Catholic majority of the Irish people do not, and will not, enter it, the way which remains to enlighten and improve them is to elevate and improve the quality of their priesthood; a priesthood hitherto kept ignorant and dependent by the meagreness of their means of education, and by their absolute dependence on their flocks for subsistence. If a provision were once made for them by law, and the arrangement placed beyond dispute—if an annual sum for every priest were known to be lying at the banker's-it was the belief of the advocates of the endowment that the priests would take it; and there could be nothing in receiving a provision thus which could subject the recipients to any dangers of dependence comparable to those amidst which they were actually living. The example of foreign countries shewed that there is no abstract objection in the minds of a Catholic priesthood to endowment by a Protestant state. The difficulty in the Irish case was purely political; and therefore likely to give way under a liberal and kindly political management. The proposal of an increased grant to Maynooth College was regarded by many as a first step towards the object, though it might perfectly well stand by itself, as having important merits of its own. It was a great thing to provide for the improved education of the priesthood, whether or not this advantage was to be followed up by making them less dependent for subsistence on their peasant flocks. It was a great thing to raise them by education above the wish for vulgar and dangerous power over the people, whether or not the sordid part of the temptation was to be afterwards obviated. Sir R. Peel had the courage to propose, on the 3d of April 1845, that the parliamentary grant to Maynooth College should be enlarged so as, in some degree, to bear out the purpose of making any grant at all. The institution had always been most meagrely supplied with comforts, and even with the necessaries of life; the professors were paid less than counting-house clerks; and at present the distress of the times had materially reduced the contributions of the middle classes, who paid for the education of their sons. It would be better to withdraw all pretence of government support than to let the college go on in this way; and it was a question how money could be better spent than in really educating the students who were to be-whether well or ill qualified-the future guides and guardians of the Catholic population of Ireland. It seems as if no great courage could be required to propose such an augmentation of the annual grant to Maynooth as to make it worth while to award any grant at all. But it did require great courage; and there was scarcely any act of his bold administration for which the premier was more vituperated than for this. It was the great political controversy of the year-the subject on which society seemed to be going mad. It was not the extent of the grant that was deprecated; but the advance in that direction at all. Hitherto, the grant had been £9000; and the trustees had been authorised to hold land to the amount of £1000 per annum; but this could never be done, because the trustees were never incorporated. They were now to be incorporated, and permitted to hold land to the amount of £3000 per annum. The sum of £6000 was to be granted for professors' salaries, which would henceforth be large enough to yield comfort and respectability, and therefore to secure a higher order of qualification than could hitherto be commanded. At present, the number of students was 440. It was proposed to make adequate allowances to 500 students. The annual grant would thus be raised from £9000 to £26,360. As it would be necessary to enlarge the college, and it was most desirable to render it more comfortable and cheerful than at present, the sum of £30,000 was asked for, as a special grant, the needful repairs being henceforth provided for by an annual vote. There was nothing in this that ought to have alarmed a people and parliament accustomed to make an annual grant to Maynooth. It seems a matter of mere prudence to provide thus far for the decent education and bare comfort of a body of 500 priests, who were certain to have more influence over the Irish people than all other persons together. Yet the public consternation was excessive. The Dissenters pushed an opposition almost as loud and formidable as on the factory-education clauses. Public meetings to remonstrate against the measure were held over the whole kingdom-a violent one at the London Tavern leading the way. Upwards of a hundred of the merchants, bankers, and traders of London signed the requisition for this meeting. The first resolution declared the proposed grant to be a renunciation of the Protestantism under which the empire had flourished; and the mover took upon him to declare that the grant was 'directly opposed to the revealed will of the Creator.' The Dublin Protestant Operative Association demanded the impeachment of the prime-minister. Some members of parliament were called on by their constituents to resign their seats; and the table of the House groaned under the mass of petitions against the measure. The truth was, this measure was an express discountenancing of the Protestant ascendency' in Ireland; while in England it at once provoked the fears of the vast body of Dissenters about the spread of the Romish faith, and their jealousy about government endowments of religion. Not a few advocates of the measure were heard to say that it was now becoming necessary to endow all ministers of every faith and denomination. The external agitation was reflected within the walls of parliament in a debate of three nights in the Lords, and six in the Commons, on the second reading of the bill. It passed, however, on the 16th of June, amidst protests from five bishops and three lay peers, who objected to it on the grounds that it provided for the maintenance of religious error, and for opposition to the Reformation; and that it countenanced the notion that religious truth was a matter of indifference to the state. A more important measure, tending to the great object of abating religious rancour in Ireland, met with resistance from an opposite quarter. In the royal speech at the opening of the session, the sovereign recommended to the best consideration of parliament'the policy of improving and extending the opportunities for academical education in Ireland.' The ministers were prepared with their plan, which was brought forward by Sir James Graham, on the 9th of May. The national education system in Ireland was working well; but its host of 400,000 pupils included only children, and, as yet, children of the poorer classes, though it was extending upwards. It was desirable to enable those who had sat side by side on the school-benches, as yet untouched by the religious bigotry which was the curse of the country, to continue the education which had begun so favourably; and also to provide for the same harmony being extended to all classes of society. The government therefore proposed the establishment of three colleges, in the north, west, and south of Ireland, in which a liberal and comprehensive academical education should be opened to young men of every religious denomination, without distinction. There could, of course, be no theological professorships founded by the government; but every facility was afforded for the voluntary establishment of such in connection with the colleges. As for the question whether these new colleges should be incorporated into a new university, or whether Trinity College, Dublin, should, without invasion of her present Protestant rights, be enabled to admit the new colleges into incorporation with her as a university-this was for parliament to decide upon. After much debate, earnest but less violent than that on the Maynooth question, the measure was carried, by a vote of 177 to 26 in the Commons, and without a division in the Lords-the question of the university arrangements being left over till the views of the governing powers of all the colleges could be obtained. The bigots among the Catholic clergy were the foes in this case. The cry about 'godless' education was loud, and has been long. The new institutions have ever since gone by the name of the 'godless' colleges among the fanatics of the Romish faith, and some few of the Protestant Church; and, by much painstaking, and prodigious misrepresentation, the less enlightened of the Catholic priesthood at length obtained from the conscientious but weak pope, Pius IX., a rescript against these colleges, as places of education of the Catholic youth of Ireland. The measure was, and is, however, allimportant as throwing the onus of religious exclusiveness on the Catholic portion of society in Ireland; and as a distinct pledge that the imperial government was at last exercising an impartial sway over its subjects of differing faiths. The sum proposed for the erection of the three colleges was £100,000; for their maintenance-that is, the salaries of officers, and the prizes for the encouragement of learning— £18,000 per annum. In each college there was to be a principal, with a salary of £1000; and ten or twelve professors, with salaries of £300 a year. Residences were not provided; but the principal of each college would live within the walls; and the modes of residence of the students were to be under safe regulation, under the act. The power of appointment and removal of the professors was to rest with the crown, as was obviously fitting in a case which involved party-feelings to so great an extent. The preparations for these new institutions were immediately begun. It must be left for time to shew how they work. In February of this year, a report was presented by the commissioners of inquiry, sent out in 1843, to investigate the law and practice in respect to the occupation of land in Ireland. Much expectation was excited by the appointment of the Devon commission-as it was called, from the Earl of Devon being at the head of it-and the expectation was kept up by the eagerness of multitudes of persons connected with the proprietorship and occupation of land in Ireland, to give evidence before the commission. They came in crowds to tell what they knew, and thought, and felt; and it was hoped that now, at last, light would be obtained as to what was to be hoped and feared, and what could be done. The information obtained was extensive and valuable; and large practical use might soon have been made of it, in the form of proposed legislation, but that the famine was approaching, which put aside all |