XI. Love the things that God created, XII. Thus, my brother, grow and flourish, He shall climb, and never crawl: Two things fashion their own channel- The next is a song of triumph at the union of all Irishmen: Orange and Green shall carry the day! Such were the strains that aroused the spirit of Young Ireland-and of Old Ireland also. Their moral was self-reliance, internal union, and the extinction of sectarian animosities. In that moral I thoroughly concurred. We had in the Repeal Association many Protestant members, of whose conscientious attachment to their own religious belief I never entertained the least doubt. Those men had a noble, generous, and well deserved trust in their Catholic countrymen. Enemies themselves to the political ascendancy of Protestantism, they felt no fears of Catholic ascendancy in the event of Repeal. Their principle, and ours, was the thorough political equality of all. For myself, I may be permitted to say this: I am a Catholic, deeply convinced of the truth of the Catholic faith, and claiming for Catholics the fullest equality of citizenship with Protestants. Yet, while recognising the infinite importance of the Catholic faith in a spiritual point of view, I feel that, in a temporal aspect, home-government is so much more important than Catholic privilege, that if I were reduced to the alternative, I should greatly prefer to have Ireland governed by an exclusively Protestant Irish parliament than by an exclusively Catholic English or imperial legislature. On a balance of advantages and disadvantages, the scale would be immensely depressed in favour of self-legislation, even although clogged with the drawback of Catholic disability. Should any theological enthusiast find fault with this opinion, I would remind him that the aggregate Catholic meeting held in Dublin, in 1795, unanimously declared that they would resist even their own emancipation if offered as the price of an Union. And O'Connell said something not dissimilar when he announced on the 13th January, 1800, that he would prefer "the penal code in all its pristine horrors to the Union, as the lesser and more sufferable evil." Young Ireland was ardent and eager. Her fiery vehemence was a useful ingredient in our great constitutional warfare, so long as it was tempered with the judgment and experience of her elder friend and namesake. Old Ireland had seen much and struggled much. Old Ireland had been the victor in one prolonged and hard-fought contest-a triumph due to her wisdom, her virtue, and her perseverance. The sagacity of the one, restraining, but not extinguishing, the impetuous ardour of the other, produced a combination of qualities which would have been resistless in their union, if the demons of jealousy and division, followed by the crushing evils of the famine, had not dashed the councils and paralysed the strength of men whose movement, so long as they acted in concert with each other, had so fair a promise of success. The Nation first appeared on the 15th October, 1842. John O'Connell had, I think, returned to town, but Mr. Ray and I were still pursuing our missionary avocations. The result of the missions on the Repeal rent was remarkable. The week before we set forth to the provinces the rent was £45 14s. 8d. The week after our return it reached £235. CHAPTER XIX. Acres.-By my valour, then, Sir Lucius, forty yards is a good distance. I tell you, Sir Lucius, the farther off he is, the cooler I shall take my aim. Sir Lucius.-Faith, then, I suppose you would aim at him best if he were out of sight. Acres.-No, Sir Lucius-but I should think forty, or eight-and-thirty yards-Do, my dear Sir Lucius, let me bring him down at a long shot. THE RIVALS. O'CONNELL'S next step was to bring the Repeal question into the Dublin Corporation. Early in February, 1843, he gave notice that on Tuesday the 21st of the month he would move a resolution affirmatory of the right of Ireland to a resident parliament, and the necessity of repealing the Union. Shortly prior to the 21st, he suddenly announced the postponement of his motion for a week. The Tory members of the Corporation complained of being unfairly treated. Alderman Butt declared that he had remained in town at much personal inconvenience in order to oppose the motion, and strongly remonstrated against the postponement. O'Connell, however, was inexorable; whereupon there was a sort of triumphant growl amongst the opposite party, who said that he only manoeuvred to get Butt out of town, from a well grounded fear of discussing the merits of Repeal with so able an adversary. The postponement was useful. Had the discussion taken place on the day originally fixed, it would have passed off as a matter of course, without exciting half the interest it afterwards created. But by putting it off, an additional fillip was given to the public mind. The anti-Repealers alleged that O'Connell was shrinking from Butt; the Repealers indignantly denied the accusation. People upon both sides were thus set talking over the matter, and the public curiosity was wound up to a pitch of intensity when the day for the discussion arrived. O'Connell had planned this, in order to give additional éclat to the discomfiture he intended for the anti-Repealers. And a signal triumph he achieved. The Unionists had long been in the habit of saying, "O'Connell and his party have always kept out of the way of discussing this questionif we had them face to face we could expose their delusions." They had now got an opportunity of realising their boast. The Assembly House in William-street was crowded to the utmost. A vast concourse of people thronged the streets without, unable to obtain admittance, yet rooted to the spot by the interest which the question awakened in all breasts. Twice or thrice in the course of the day I passed through the crowd, and the people invariably asked me how Repeal was going on? and who was speaking now? with as eager an anxiety as if the success of the Repeal in the Dublin Corporation would secure its final and immediate triumph. O'Connell's opening speech occupied four hours and ten minutes. He had arranged the whole subject under nine distinct propositions. These were, I. The capability and capacity of the Irish nation for an independent legislature. II. The perfect right of Ireland to have a domestic parliament. III. That that right was fully established by the transactions of 1782. IV. That the most beneficial effects to Ireland resulted from her parliamentary independence. V. The utter incompetence of the Irish parliament to annihilate the Irish Constitution by the Union. VI. That the Union was no contract or bargain; that it was carried by the grossest corruption and bribery, added to force, fraud, and terror. VII. That the Union produced the most disastrous results to Ireland. VIII. That the Union can be abolished by peaceable and constitutional means, without the violation of law, and without the destruction of property or life. IX. That the most salutary results, and none other, must arise from a Repeal of the Union. "These," said O'Connell, "are the nine propositions which I came here to-day to demonstrate. I say to demonstrate, not as relying on any intellectual powers of my own, or any force of talent, but from the truth and plainness of the propositions themselves. His speech was luminous and masterly. Notwithstanding its length, the physical vigour of the orator continued unimpaired to the end. The Nation's description is so accurate and discriminating that I cannot do better than quote it: "O'Connell," says that journal, "may have made more eloquent speeches-speeches more calculated to heat the blood and stir the passions, but he never excelled this one as an elaborate and masterly statement of a great case. The arrangement he adopted was remarkably skilful and judicious. He threw down, as it were, a single proof, and heaped others in succession upon the top of it, till they grew up to a gigantic pyramid which all the world might recognise. The effect of |