four men and twelve hundred pounds, King George and one hundred and fifty thousand of the best troops in Europe-with finances unlimited." 2

It was in 1808, as before mentioned, that O'Connell first got marked prominence in Irish affairs. In that year Fox and Greville, in the British Parliament, had sought to remove a few of the smaller restrictions under which the banned Catholics laboured. It was a belated pretence at redeeming the bribe-promise made them in '99 that after the Union the British Parliament would emancipate them. But even the very sorry bill of Fox and Greville, which only emphasised their slavery by essaying to hack away some of the loose links that dangled from their chains, aroused a no-popery wave which overswept England, engulfed Fox, Greville and their Parliament, and put in power a no-popery party. This dashed the hopes of the Catholic Committee of Ireland-a committee which almost entirely represented the aristocratic Catholics, the bishops and the wealthy merchant and professional class. It was then that the former Catholic leader, Keogh, now an old man, recommended as the best policy for the Catholics "dignified silence." But O'Connell, with the bounding blood of youth, caught the ear and the mind of the country at large, by hotly opposing this servile policy, and urging agitation for their commonest rights. All the more thoroughly did he arouse the country by hammering on the fact that the aristocrats and their fellows were willing to give the English government a veto upon the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland in exchange for the few beggarly crumbs with which Fox had tempted them.

When it was now disclosed that in '99 ten bishop trustees of Maynooth College had secretly agreed to the veto, O'Connell so roused the country and evoked such an outburst of wrath as compelled twenty-six bishops in council to repudiate the offer, and swing into the popular camp. And then the nation, which since the cataclysm of 1798-1800 had been pitifully drifting, joyfully hailed a new captain!

up

But several years were yet to pass before the new captain called in his people's hearts the extraordinary confidence and the pride

2 This is one of the many instances we have of the astonishing nearsightedness of a very great man. Emmet's failure in Dublin was a more permanent, more far-reaching success than Wellington's triumph at Waterloo-for, more than a hundred years after, the memory of his heroism, his patriotism, and his faith was enthusing, inspiring, stimulating and sustaining one of the world's smallest nations in its unending struggle against earth's most powerful Empire. But Daniel O'Conne throughout his wonderful career was always the lawyer or politician, who could only be convinced by immediate results.

that were to make him the mightiest power in the nation. His defence of John Magee in '13 was to put him on a unique pedestal, and, a little later, the tidal wave of enthusiasm created by his victory over D'Esterre was to sweep him into the popular heart and there enthrone him.

But before those golden milestones were reached the people had learnt to know his great qualities as he fought shoulder to shoulder with them in the Catholic cause. The demure Catholic Board he turned into a Board of such boldness that the Government suppressed it in 1811. And, beginning the legal and political strategy that was to be, later, his staple manoeuvre, he re-formed the association under the name of a General Committee of the Catholics of Ireland. And henceforward, through his career, immediately his organisation under one title was suppressed, he was ready to re-start it next day under a new name.

But, leading his people in the desert now, he had not only to fight the oppressor without but also the aristocratic and reactionary element within. And when in '13 those Protestant champions of Catholic Emancipation, Grattan and Plunkett, had introduced in Parliament a Catholic Relief Bill which had every chance of passing, and which had the approval of the Irish Catholic aristocratic party and the English Catholics, O'Connell aroused Ireland against it because it was saddled with the objectionable veto and also gave to the British the right to supervise all documents passing between Rome and the Roman Catholic hierarchy in these islands.

The British Government got Quarantotti, Secretary and VicePrefect of the Sacred College who was then, so to speak, acting Pope Pius the Seventh being a prisoner of Napoleon-to approve the veto and the supervision right, and issue a rescript to the Irish bishops to that effect. Then was precipitated turmoil in Ireland. From the altar steps of the chapel of the Friars in Clarendon Street, Dublin, O'Connell denounced the rescript to an excited gathering. He threatened the prelates and threatened the secular clergy, that, if they signed themselves over to England, the people, refusing their ministrations, would import poor friars from the continent of Europe, and willingly revert to the deprivations and sufferings of the worst of the penal days.

And a little later, when the Pope had returned to Rome, and there were rumours that he was bargaining with England, Dan boldly rang out his defiance to the Pope himself if he dared to bargain away Ireland's traditional rights and the national rights of the Church. "Though I am a Catholic," he thundered, "I am

no Papist! And I deny temporal rights to the Pope in this island." And prelates who, in synod assembled, had previously sent to Quarantotti a respectful, very firm, remonstrance, not to say threat, now for Pius' behoof and warning, unanimously passed this resolution:

"Though we sincerely venerate the supreme Pontiff as Visible Head of the church we do not conceive that our apprehensions for the safety of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland can, or ought to be, removed by any determination of His Holiness, adopted or intended to be adopted, not only without our concurrence but in direct opposition to our repeated behest, and so ably supported by our deputy, the most Rev. Dr. Murray, who in that quality was more competent to inform His Holiness of the real state and interests of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland than any other with whom he is said to have consulted."

The passion of O'Connell, the people, and the prelates had the desired effect. The rights of the Irish church were no longer to be considered a negotiable security at Rome.

CHAPTER LXIII

O'CONNELL THE IDOL

IN 1813 occurred the John Magee trial which lifted O'Connell on a mighty wave of popular favour. Magee, a Dublin Presbyterian of staunch Irish principle, owned The Evening Post, one of the only two or three journals (out of a dozen) in Dublin which the Government could not corrupt. When in May of '13 the Duke of Richmond resigned the Viceroyalty, he and his administration left a bad taste in the public mouth; and The Evening Post published a scathing article on the occasion. Of various previous administrations it said, "They insulted, they oppressed, they murdered the profligate unprincipled Westmoreland, the cold-hearted and cruel Camden, the artful treacherous Cornwallis, left Ireland more depressed and divided than they found her. They increased coercion and corruption, and uniformly employed them against the liberties of the people." But bad as they were, he said, "Richmond out-matched the worst of them."

The Government immediately instituted proceedings against Magee. Attorney General Saurin, a bitter, Irish-hating Orangeman, had charge of the prosecution. Magee engaged O'Connell for his chief counsel, and both sides girded themselves for the battle of the age. But of course Saurin held the cards, and dealt them unscrupulously. In choosing the jury every man who was suspected of the possibility of entertaining the most remote regard for Irish liberties, was set aside. A solidly Orange jury, every man of them a noted bigot, was picked. The Bench was occupied by Lord Chief Justice Downes, who was clay in the hands of the administration, and three other judges of the same quality.

O'Connell, recognising that his clients had as much chance of escape from the Bench of Tory tools and the Box of bigots, as would a sparrow in a field of hawks, resolved to use the opportunity, not to seek justice in a court of manifest injustice, but to fire the already excited nation by pillorying the mockery of justice to which the British Government treated them.

In all his career O'Connell made no more popular speech than

his pretended "defence" of Magee-and made few that had more far-reaching effect. Peel who had come to Ireland as Chief Secretary, and who was present in a court that was crammed and surrounded by masses of men who could not get near the doorPeel wrote to the Viceroy that O'Connell's speech was an infinitely more atrocious libel upon the Government and the administration of justice in Ireland than the gross libel which he professed to defend. O'Connell browbeat and insulted the jury in the box, and the judges on the bench, flaying the Chief Justice himself more cruelly than any of them; besides arraigning, denouncing, defying, and scarifying the Government and all its works, its hangers-on and tools, and the whole vulture tribe which formed the British administration in Ireland. "I have unfeigned respect,' he said, to the Orange jury, "for the form of Christian faith you profess. Would that its preaching were deeply impressed on your mind that its substance rather than forms and temporal advantages appealed to you. Then should I not address you in the cheerless and hopeless despondency which now clouds my mind. I respect and venerate your religion-but I despise your prejudices as much as the Attorney General has cultivated them. There are amongst you men of great religious zeal-of much public piety. Are you sincere? Do you believe what you profess? With all this zeal, with all this piety, is there any conscience amongst you? Is there any terror of violating your oaths? Be ye hypocrites, or does genuine religion inspire you? If you be sincere, if you have consciences, if your oaths can control your prejudice-then Mr. Magee confidently expects an acquittal. If amongst you there be cherished one ray of pure religion, if amongst you there glows a single spark of liberty, if I have alarmed the passion of religious liberty, or roused the spirit of political freedom in one breast amongst you, Mr. Magee is safe, his country is served. But if there be none-if you be slaves and hypocrites, he will await your verdict and despise it."

With astounding audacity he taunted, mimicked, scoffed to his face, and whipped, the squirming Lord Chief Justice, cowering on the bench in his scarlet and his ermine before the inspired man who spoke for an outraged people. "At some future period, my lord," he mocked him, "some man may attain the first place on the Bench by the reputation, which is easily acquired, of a certain degree of church-wardening piety, added to a great gravity and maidenly decorum of manners. Such a man may reach the Bench -for I am putting a purely imaginary case. He may be a man without passions, and therefore without vices. He may, my lord,