The ministerial and English journals generally were loud in their glorifications. Spring Rice's speech they pronounced to be an unanswerable manual. No Repealer could in future dare to raise his voice against the demonstrations, clear as light, of the infinite benefits the Union had conferred upon Ireland. The question, they said, was finally set at rest; and they added much more to the same purpose.

Meanwhile, the result of the debate upon the Irish people was precisely what any man who knew the country and its inhabitants must expect. They saw in the division a fresh proof of English hostility to their rights and of English indifference to their grievances. Mr. Rice's tabular dexterities— his "giant-stride prosperity" on paper, seemed a heartless and insolent mockery to a people of whom every fourth individual was a destitute pauper. The alacrity and fervour with which the House applauded the most hollow fallacies, afforded, to the minds of the Irish nation, fresh evidence of its total ignorance of their condition and its consequent incapacity to legislate for their advantage. Our people felt that the constitution of Ireland was the indisputable property of the nation, and not of its parliament, which consequently had no authority to sell it in 1800. Their resolve to struggle for the Repeal, to seize whatever opportunities God might send for its achievement, was thenceforth more firmly fixed than ever.

Both Houses had addressed the king, who replied in an echo of their joint address. The address and the reply contained a promise to uphold the Union; but at the same time a pledge to remove all just causes of complaint, and to sanction all well-considered measures of improvement."

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The Irish people were not so foolish as to place the least faith in this pledge of King, Lords, and Commons; but they acquiesced in O'Connell's policy of testing their truth by the celebrated six-years' experiment, at the end of which, as the pledges were demonstratively proved to have been mere delusions, the Repeal Association was established, and the agitation directed once more into its natural and legitimate channel. I shall pass over the six years of Whig ascendancy, and the fruitless struggles for that chimera, Equality with England under the Union.* There was, to do the Whigs justice, a fair administration of the law, and their legal appointments were excellent.

*In the Anti-Union, a most interesting periodical commenced on the 27th Dec., 1798, and which reckoned Saurin among its contributors, I find at page 63 the following: "It has been asserted that the powers of

CHAPTER XV.

"Resolve! resolve! and to be Men aspire;

Let God-like Reason from her sovereign throne
Speak the commanding word, 'I will,' and it is done."

THOMSON.

THE time was now come when O'Connell deemed it right to abandon for ever all attempts to obtain "justice for Ireland” from the English parliament. He accordingly embarked in his final effort to procure a Repeal of the Union.

On the 15th April, 1840, he founded the Repeal Association. Its first meeting was held in the Great Room of the Corn Exchange, Burgh-quay, which is capable of accommodating about five hundred persons. The room was not onefifth part filled; there was a discouraging display of empty benches-a commencement that might well have disheartened a leader less sanguine than O'Connell. He remembered the commencement of the Catholic Association, the seven men who congregated in Coyne's back-parlour in Capelstreet, and the magnificent result of that small beginning; and he confidently looked forward to a yet more brilliant termination of his new enterprise.

Still the meeting had a very discouraging appearance to those who had not the sagacious forecast of the leader. It seemed as if the word Repeal had lost its potent magic. But the fact was far otherwise. The thinness of the attendance arose from no apathy as to the national cause. It arose from a strong fear on the part of the Repeal public that the new experiment was not made bona fide. Repeal had been temporarily abandoned before. Such might be again its fate. Men dreaded lest O'Connell merely meant to rattle it about the ears of the government in terrorem, as a means of compelling them to make minor concessions to Ireland.

"As soon," said O'Connell, "as they begin to find out that I am thoroughly in earnest, they will come flocking in to the Association."

The chair was taken by Mr. John O'Neill of Fitzwilliamsquare, a Protestant merchant of great wealth and sterling Irish representatives will be enlarged, and the rights of Irish electors improved, by Irish representatives having two shares in eleven in the direction of affairs relative to their own country only, instead of having the sole disposal of them in themselves alone." The other nine shares being in the hands of a jealous rival! Such is the Union.

patriotism. He had been, in early youth, a member of the Volunteer army of 1782. "I was then," he said to me, "too young to be of much use to Ireland, and now I am too old." But, young or old, his country had always commanded his best services. That good old Protestant patriot is long since dead. He descended to the tomb full of years, and deeply honoured by his fellow-countrymen.

For more than half-an-hour the few who had congregated at the Corn Exchange anxiously awaited the opening address of the Liberator; but he still lingered, apparently unwilling to commence, in the hope of a more numerous attendance. But no reinforcement came. There were manifestations of impatience amongst those who were assembled.

O'Connell at length rose, and with the air of one deeply impressed with the high and solemn responsibility which he incurred, spoke as follows:

"My fellow-countrymen, I rise with a deep sense of the awful importance of the step I am about to propose to the Irish people, and a full knowledge of the difficulties by which we are surrounded and the obstacles we have to contend with. I trust that my heart is pure, and my judgment on the present occasion unclouded; and I declare, in the presence of that God who is to judge me for an eternity of weal or of woe, that I have no object in view but the good of my native land, and that I feel in the deepest sense the responsibility I am about to incur. We are about to enter on a struggle that will terminate only in having the most ample justice done to Ireland by placing her on an equality with the sister country, or in the establishment of our legislative independence. The struggle commences now; it will end only then. We commence under auspices that may afford little prospect of ultimate success to some; but those who know the character of the brave, moral, religious, and patient Irish people, cannot be of that opinion. We will, no doubt, be laughed at and derided on all sides, and sneered at by friends.who believe everything is impracticable, and opposed by those malignant enemies who will be delighted to find any opportunity of manifesting their hostility. But no matter. We were derided and laughed at before by persons of this description when we set about the accomplishment of that great moral revolution which won religious freedom for ourselves and others."

He then referred to the small origin of the Catholic Association, its progress and triumph; exposed the delusive nature of the Union, and repeated his proofs of the anti-Irish spirit

in which laws were made for Ireland by the imperial legislature. He promised perseverance:

"We have assembled to take part in proceedings that will yet be memorable in the history of our country. Yes, this 15th of April will be yet memorable in the annals of Ireland. It shall be referred to as the day on which the flag of Repeal was unfurled; and I shall fearlessly, legally, and constitutionally keep it unfurled until the day of success shall have arrived, or the grave shall close over me, and on my tomb shall be inscribed, He died a Repealer.' We

must be up, I say, and stirring. We can do no good by quiescence; it may do us evil, but it can do us no service. We must take counsel from the French proverb, which says, 'Help yourselves, and God will help you.' We must not forget the story of the fellow who, when the wheel of his cart stuck in the mud, prayed to Jupiter to help him. You lazy rascal,' said his godship, 'put your shoulder to the wheel, and get along out of that.' I tell you there is nothing else for us but to help ourselves; and help ourselves, with the aid of heaven, we shall."

Having quoted the well-known denunciations of the Union pronounced in 1799 and 1800 by Bushe (the Chief Justice) and Plunket (the Chancellor), he continued: "These are

'Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn;'

I have them here. They shall spread through the land in the course of the next week for the perusal of the youth of Ireland; not one of whom, I trust, will be found, whose eye will not glisten with fire, whose young heart will not burn with indignation at the spoliation resorted to by our enemies. There was a bargain, forsooth! Why, is not the Chief Justice* still living? and is he not a witness for me? Is not the Lord Chancellor of Ireland,† with all his Asdrubals or Hannibals, living also to bear his testimony? What care I whether he has changed his opinion or no? He was honest then, because he had no sons to quarter on the State. Let him change now if he wish. In his day of virtue he felt and spoke those sentiments which I have read for you. Let him now change them in the day of his power and authority."

In the opening passage of O'Connell's speech, he had mentioned "justice to Ireland" as an alternative. But how visionary he deemed the prospect of obtaining that justice is evident from the following passage: "If we get the justice we desire,

*Charles Kendal Bushe.

† William Conyngham Plunket.

then our Repeal Association is at an end; but I know we will not get that justice, and that there is nothing left for us but to pursue vigorously the course we have commenced this day. Why should we for a moment deceive ourselves? This justice will not be done to Ireland, and we will at once set ourselves right by declaring that there is a Repeal Association, and that unless the moral miracle be performed of having justice done to us by England, we will never cease until we have a parliament established in College-green.

"Not one single benefit has the Union conferred upon Ireland, but, on the contrary, it has brought in its train poverty, degradation, and sorrow. When once the public mind is aroused, and the evils which we have suffered pointed out to the people, the Union cannot continue. It is not the writing of a single letter, nor the delivery of a single speech, that can effect the Repeal; it is the concentration of public opinion, directed as a galvanic battery, that will have that effect. That opinion will then become powerful as the lightnings of heaven, destroying everything that may impede its course.

He concluded by moving the adoption of a set of rules; the seconder of the motion being Mr. John Redmond, a patriotic citizen.

So ended the first day's meeting. The Whig liberals did their best to throw contempt and ridicule on the proceedings. The paucity of the attendance was pointed out with scorn. Those gentlemen said to their acquaintances as they met in the streets, "Dan will never work this question-he is not in

me.

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* As this passage appeared to contain an admission, even although a hypothetical one, that justice from England could supersede the necessity of Repeal, O'Connell guarded himself against such an objection in a subsequent speech, delivered on the 1st May, 1840. He explained his meaning, in still retaining the semblance of an alternative, to be this: “I have declared for the Repeal, and from this declaration nothing ever shall take It has been said that even in the formation of this society, I held out the alternative of justice. Let them do us justice; let them increase our representatives to 150 in number-let them remove the church grievance-let them increase the franchise-let them do all this, and though they will not have convinced me that Repeal is unnecessary, they will deprive me of the forces by which I hope to succeed. But who supposes that they ever will be brought to do us justice? Not even a dreamer who dreamed soundly in his sleep; no one short of an idiot could be brought to believe it. Why, it is absurd as the vulgar saying, 'to stop the tide with a pitchfork.' I hold out the alternative, to be sure; but it is to the English members of parliament-the alternative is not for me; it is for them."