however, than Feargus himself could be on appropriate occasions. In Dublin lived a Mr. Patrick O'Higgins, who got up a nibbling opposition to O'Connell, and devoted a room at the back of his house to the reception of a few discontented deserters from O'Connellism. Mr. O'Higgins professed himself an ally of Feargus, and promised to propagate Chartism in Dublin. Feargus acknowledged his merits in the Star, and ended an eloquent eulogium by exclaiming, "Rome had her Brutus-Ireland has her O'Higgins."

When Joseph Sturge, the Quaker, was candidate for Nottingham on the principles of moral force Chartism, Feargus gave him active assistance in the preliminary agitation. An affray took place in the market square of Nottingham, in which Feargus displayed strength and valour worthy of the descendant of the Ardrigh Roderick; for although beset by numbers upon every side, he knocked all down right and left. Next day twenty-one men swore that Feargus had severally knocked each of them down in the riot. The Univers translated the English accounts of the transaction into French, heading the narrative," Meurs Electorales Anglaises."

At one of the meetings for the Nottingham election Feargus exclaimed, "Hurrah for Sturge and Nottingham! or for the Devil, if he supports the Charter." I should like to have seen the quiet Quaker-face of honest Joseph Sturge, on being thus hypothetically coupled with the prince of darkness by his reckless ally. Perhaps the hurrah for the Devil was intended as a compliment to Dr. MacDouall, who asserted the diabolical derivation of his patronymic.

The reports of O'Connor's meetings and speeches in the Star are full of traits illustrating that wild energy which formed so marked a feature in his character. We are told how he sat down after a two hours speech so exhausted that the perspiration oozed through his dress; how he said he would work the flesh off his bones, or have the Charter; how he cheered his followers by declaring that he was 66 as strong as ten bulls;" how he described Lane-End as the place "where the lads beat the cavalry and made them retreat," adding, "in this town all the people are born marksmen. I learn that a lad of fourteen or fifteen could kill a crow flying with a stone." He was resolved to lose nothing by unnecessary modesty. In one of his addresses to his followers he thus stated his achievements and his consequent responsibilities: "I have made the mind of England, and it is my duty now to guide it." He was ambitious of the reputation of possessing classical

and scientific knowledge, as appears by the following extract from the Manchester Guardian: "Mr. O'Connor next referred to the charge of the Times, that he did not know how to spell ; and challenged any editor of that paper to be examined with him by any fellow from one of the colleges in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Geometry, Algebra, Arithmetic, &c., and if he (Mr. O'Connor) did not beat him, he would consent to be banished from the country for life."

In 1847 he was returned to parliament for Nottingham, defeating Sir John Hobhouse by a majority of over 600. In 1848 an enormous Chartist demonstration, in which Feargus was of course the principal hero, took place in London. Serious disturbances were apprehended, and among the special constables then sworn in, it is said that the present Emperor of the French was enrolled.

Feargus had instituted a land scheme, which elicited a vast number of five pound subscriptions from members of the Chartist body who believed that the payment of that sum would entitle them to profitable settlements on four-acre allotments. The scheme broke down, and with it broke down its author's intellect. His insanity displayed itself in a number of strange freaks in the House of Commons and its immediate precincts. He was confined, by order of the House, in one of its apartments for some days. During that period the newspapers gave constant accounts of his condition and his actions. From one of those accounts I take the following: "He still indulges in rapid, rambling aberrations; reciting to his attendants snatches of what he states to be his own poetical compositions-uttering now and then an éloge on the late Sir Robert Peel, abruptly broken off to descant on the disasters of an old woman and her pig in the bogs of Ballinhassig-of a stud of some twenty long-tailed black horses his brother kept in Ireland-all whimsically interwoven with such canticles as are heard at the Coal-Hole, or by the recital of a litany, interlarded with tears, on the failure of the unfortunate land scheme."

The exhibition was at once grotesque and melancholy. We discern amidst the shattered fragments of his once strong intellect, faint traces of the facetious humour which in his better days had rendered him an entertaining companion. He was removed to the asylum kept by Dr. Tuke at Chiswick, and thence, in 1855, to lodgings at Notting Hill-terrace, where he died on the 31st August of that year, in the sixtieth year of his age. The Chartists of London gave him a grand public

funeral. He was buried at Kensall-green cemetery. His admirers at Nottingham have erected a statue to his memory.

O'Connell preserved the Irish Repealers from the alliance with the Chartists which Feargus wanted to effect. O'Connell had no confidence in the leaders, and he condemned the unfair and intolerant policy repeatedly practised by the party, of violently obstructing all meetings held for any other political object than the attainment of the Charter.

CHAPTER XII.

"Justice hath done her unrelenting part,

If she indeed be justice, who drives on,
Bloody and blind, the chariot-wheels of death."

SOUTHEY.

We are constantly told, in this year of grace 1867, to expect vast benefits for Ireland from the English legislature when it shall be popularised by the pending measures of Reform. We had been told, in like manner, to expect great benefits for Ireland from the Reform bills of 1831. Our experience of that period does not encourage us to entertain sanguine hopes on the present occasion. The proceedings of the first reformed parliament furnished a conclusive answer to those Irish whigliberals who opposed Repeal on the plea that reform in the English legislature would supersede the necessity for domestic legislation for Ireland.

The Irish agitation in 1881-2 was not opposed by the Whig government so long as it could be considered auxiliary to the English agitation for Reform. But as soon as the triumph of Reform was certain, and the Irish agitators were no longer required to subserve English purposes, prosecutions were threatened; Lord Anglesea proclaimed down meetings; and the sailor-king was instructed by his ministers in 1833 to express from the throne his "surprise" and "indignation" at the efforts of the Irish to obtain a restoration of the national legislature, of which they had been deprived by a system of Machiavellian fraud and diabolic crime.

O'Connell denounced the king's speech as 66 a brutal and bloody speech-a declaration of war against Ireland." The address, echoing the royal speech, was of course carried by an enormous majority. The Coercion Bill, for restricting the people of Ireland from meeting to petition parliament, was shortly afterwards introduced. There was a very full muster

of Irish and English members on the night of its introduction. Expectation was on tiptoe; it had been announced that disclosures of an appalling nature would be made to justify its enactment. Lord Althorp (afterwards Earl Spencer) opened the case for the government. His delivery was heavy, hesitating, and unimpressive. He laboured under a disadvantage which in an impartial assembly would have been fatal-namely, that of requiring implicit belief in a tale of Irish outrages and horrors, in which the names of the informers were to a great extent suppressed. The House was called upon to ground coercive legislation upon unauthenticated charges; and the pretext for withholding the authentication was, that to publish the names of the informers would expose them to personal outrage from their lawless neighbours.

The House was perfectly ready to ground coercive legislation for Ireland upon anonymous information. It was not nice as to pretexts. It was boldly alleged that prædial outrages were the result of political agitation, and that in order to put down the former the latter should be suppressed. Any other origin of prædial outrages than political agitation appeared to be ignored by the friends of coercion.

Lord Althorp's speech was a failure. O'Connell left the House immediately on its conclusion, and remained for some minutes in the lobby, offering triumphant congratulations to all the anti-coercion members whom he met, on the wretched exhibition of his lordship. "Did you ever hear anything more miserable? Why, the government have literally got no case at all. Bad as the House is, it will be impossible to get them to pass the bill on such statements. Hurrah!" Thus did the Great Dan cheer the members of the Tail and his friends in general, expressing in the most sanguine terms his conviction that the government must be defeated.

He en

By-and-by Mr. Stanley (now Lord Derby) rose. joyed one great advantage-he had an audience strongly predisposed in his favour. But in other respects he laboured under difficulties. He had, in fact, to repair Lord Althorp's failure. He had to re-state a series of allegations which had fallen, feeble and dull, from the incompetent lips of the blundering leader. And well did he perform his task. Before he had spoken for five minutes, the attention of friend and foe alike was riveted in admiration of the orator's abilities. Clear, rapid, and animated, he scathed the Liberals with the fire of his sarcasm, and combated their arguments with his showy and plausible parliamentary logic. The natural graces

of his unconstrained and easy action, the vivid glances of his eagle eye, the air of bold and well-sustained defiance which no one could better assume, greatly enhanced the effect of his eloquence. He had gathered up some of the unconsidered sayings of his Irish antagonists, and paraded them before the House with wicked ingenuity as indicative of seditious intentions. He closed with a ferocious invective against O'Connell personally, and sat down amidst thunders of Whig and Tory plaudits.

Well did he merit the cheers of his party. The rickety and misshapen bantling of Lord Althorp was moulded by the plastic powers of Mr. Stanley into showy proportions and apparent strength.

The bill was obstinately contested. Mr. O'Connell led the opposition, and displayed all the qualities of a great parliamentary debater. An Irish Conservative exclaimed with astonishment to the present writer as the House adjourned one night, "How stoutly Dan battles it out among these English !" O'Connell had, in the course of the evening, thus concluded a fiery invective against the Whigs: "You have brains of lead, and hearts of stone, and fangs of iron." He displayed inimitable tact and dexterity in defence, promptitude and vigour in assault, and knocked about Whigs and Tories with an easy exercise of strength which astonished the members who had not previously witnessed such a brilliant display of his abilities.

Despite the opposition of the friends of Ireland, the bill finally passed, and the constitutional privileges that yet remained to the Irish people were temporarily invaded-ostensibly to check prædial disturbances, but in reality to thwart the agitation for Repeal. Mr. Stanley had boasted that he would make his government feared before it should be loved. He did not make it either feared or loved-he only succeeded in making it hated.

The crime thus committed against Ireland was aggravated by the fact that it emanated from the English Reformers in the full flush and heyday of their triumph. The first use the friends of English liberty made of their great victory was to crush the constitutional freedom of their Irish fellow-subjects. What a pregnant lesson to Irishmen! What a practical commentary on the doctrine of imperial identification! At the present moment there is a section of Irish politicians who tell us to accept Mr. Gladstone as the leader destined to conduct Ireland to greatness and prosperity. Mr. Gladstone has mer