as guards of honour; and ere their horses tired down, other waiting ones on horses fresh sprang out to do their part.

It was two o'clock on Monday morning when O'Connell's coach dashed into Ennis, which, blazing with lights, had its streets even at that hour jammed with the wildly joyous, and frantically cheering, multitude.

O'Connell and Fitzgerald were that day nominated. And, on Tuesday morning began the tug of war. The crux of the situa

tion lay in the voting of the forty shilling freeholders. These men had been technically given votes which were really meant as endowment to their landlords. No sane politician ever thought that they would dare exercise choice as to the candidate for whom their vote would be cast. They had always voted in platoons under the landlord's orders. Only, in the recent general election, for the first time in their existence, the Forties as they were called, had showed unmistakable signs of revolt in places where their landlords were supporters of the unpopular candidate.

But in this great Clare election, in which every landlord stood behind Fitzgerald, the Forties finally and completely broke the shackles of tradition and landlord control, and went cheering to the polls for O'Connell. Exciting was the scene when they came into Ennis in bodies, sometimes openly proclaiming their new freedom, sometimes seemingly submissive and demure under leadership of their landlord, and herded by his bailiffs and understrappers. But when the suitable moment arrived these demure ones, breaking away, rent the skies with shouts for O'Connell, and rushed to the poll, for the first time in their lives to vote as their hearts prompted. The priests of Clare played a prominent part. Their sermons on Sunday had been impassioned appeals and heartreaching exhortations to their congregations to quit their landlords for their God, and vote for O'Connell and Catholic Emancipation. Where they succeeded in driving out of the hearts of their flock the terror of the landlord, they headed their flocks to Ennis. In cases where the landlord, still retaining his hold, led in his platoon of voters, they were met at the town's entrance by priests inspired with holy zeal, who, with crucifix held aloft, barred the way and in torrential eloquence urged the people by the sufferings of Him who died for man not to play traitor to their faith in this supreme hour. And the embittered, deserted, landlord often had to stand aside and curse, as he beheld his tenants burst their bonds, and with great shout follow their priest to the polling booth. The tens of thousands who thronged there that week not only filled the streets and the houses but encamped in the meadows.

and along the roadside, for miles around. There was no drinking, there was no fighting; there was no disorder. The people had been put on a vow most sacred to bring no disgrace on the cause, but conduct themselves with the decorum that they would at church. And in the face of opportunity and provocation before unequalled, they amazed friend and enemy by exercising a restraint that was marvellous. The anecdote is told of Sheedy MacNamara, a man who would welcome a fight more warmly than a fortune, being openly and most provokingly insulted in the streets by one of the enemy, and, instead of knocking the fellow down, taking him gently aside and saying to him in the sweetest way: "I have just one little pig at home, and I'll promise you the price of it if you'll repeat them same words to me the day after the election."

At the end of the first day of the polling O'Connell was a little ahead of Fitzgerald. On Wednesday night his lead was larger, and his majority went on progressing, during Thursday and Friday. Till on Saturday night, when the poll closed, he was, by two to one, elected member of Parliament for Clare.

A few months before the Clare election the English Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, had emphatically declared in the House of Commons: "I can not consent to widen the door of political power to Roman Catholics. I can not consent to give them the same civil rights and privileges as those possessed by their Protestant fellow-countrymen.' But, a few months after the Clare election he prepared to pipe to another tune: "In the course of the last six months England, at peace with the world, has had fivesixths of her infantry force occupied in maintaining peace in Ireland. I consider such a state of things much worse than rebellion." And the king's speech in Parliament in the February following asked his faithful Commons to consider the unrest in Ireland and review the laws causing it. County Clare had conquered England.

Says Lecky: "The population was in ferment, the army itself was affected. The influence of the landed aristocracy gave way. Ministers, feeling further resistance hopeless, brought in the Emancipation Bill confessedly because to withhold it might kindle a rebellion extending over the length and the breadth of the land."

Lord Wellington, in the Lords, excused his promoting the Bill on the ground that it might be less evil than civil war, which, if the bill were refused, would surely be precipitated in Ireland. Fear of the consequences, not the injustice, was the only reason offered by any of its English promoters, for pressing the measure.

The Emancipation Bill was brought in-and passed-but not

without fierce opposition. The Lords also felt constrained to allow it-though one can easily imagine the bitter aversion with which they did so. The Duke of Brunswick (brother to King George) and Lord Eldon, the most violent opponents of the measure, then went to the king, to entreat, threaten, and coerce him into refusing his signature. And they succeeded in breaking him down so that when the Government leaders, Peel of the Commons, and Wellington of the Lords, brought him the Bill, he would not sign it. They argued with him for five hours, but with no avail. He alternately stormed and wept. They handed him their resignations. He called them back, kissed them, and cried again. When he found himself unable to form a new ministry, he sent again for Wellington and Peel, signed the bill, and in a fit of rage smashed on the floor the pen with which he had, as he believed, betrayed his trust to God and the English people.1

In the House of Lords the Archbishop of Canterbury moved to reject the bill, and was seconded by the Protestant Primate of Ireland, Beresford. Every bishop except one, Dr. Lloyd of Oxford, voted against Catholics getting citizen rights in their own country.

The Emancipation Bill was passed, the commonest citizen rights from which Irish people had hitherto been debarred, because they were heretics and idolaters, were now permitted by law. And civil offices from which they had been, for their crime, shut out, were supposedly thrown open to them. Technically these reforms were instituted by the passing of the Act--“The manacles," said O'Connell, "are riven from our limbs after we had gone near to breaking them on the heads of our enemies." But practically speaking Irish Catholics continued, for many decades after, to labour under their former disability. And in many parts of Ireland, even down to a short generation ago, they were in practice still shut out from all offices except the most menial.

1 Three months after, when King George at one of his levees caught sight of O'Connell, he muttered, "There is O'Connell, G-- d the scoundrel!"

O'Connell did not present himself in the House of Commons until the Bill had been passed-though not yet gone into effect. Every member was in his place on the day and at the hour that O'Connell was expected. In the Strangers' Gallery were crowded the nobility of England and the diplomats of many foreign countries. When the objectionable oath was presented to O'Connell he of course refused to take it. He was told by the speakers that under the circumstances he could not take his seat, and he marched out of the House of Commons again-and went back to Clare where he was re-elected without opposition.

When the Emancipation Act went into effect, it of course eliminated the objectionable oath; and the several Catholics who were returned from various parts of Ireland at the next general election, were permitted to seat themselves in the House.

CHAPTER LXV

O'CONNELL'S POWER AND POPULARITY

THOUGH it was in his character as political leader that he was greatest to his people, it was undeniably in his capacity as lawyer that Daniel O'Connell-"Dan" as they affectionately called him -got nearest to their hearts. They who had always been condemned before they were heard, were accorded human rights in the courts of law after O'Connell had successfully stormed those citadels of injustice. To the regular Crown prosecutors he made his name a name of fear. And indeed it was not much less a terror to those irregular Crown prosecutors who, on the Bench, masqueraded as judges.

He was one of the most powerful pleaders that the Bar ever knew. His enemy, Peel, once said that if he wanted an efficient and eloquent advocate, he would readily barter all the best of the English Bar for the Irish O'Connell. In conducting an important case he called into play all of his wonderful faculties. He went from grave to gay, from the sublime to the ludicrous. He played with ease upon every human feeling. He carried away the judge, the jury, the witness that he was handling, and the very prisoner himself in the dock. He could in a few minutes' cross-examination tear the ablest witness to shreds, and show the pitying court the paltry stuff he was made of. He might at first play his man, go with him, blarney him, flatter him, convince him that Dan O'Connell had become his most enthusiastic admirer and dearest friend. And when he had thus taken him off his guard, led him by hand into a trap, the Counsellor (another of the people's titles for O'Connell) would come down upon his man with a crash that stunned and shattered him and left him a piteous victim at the great cross-examiner's feet. And to judge and jury and the whole court it was now the witness, not the prisoner in the dock, who was on trial for his life.

He had a most disconcerting way of passing pungent viva voce remarks, when the prosecuting lawyer was making his speech or examining his witness, which provoked the prosecutor to wrath,

lost him his train of thought, and often spoiled him his case. If the judges' protection was invoked by the enraged prosecutor, the wise potentate on the Bench usually considered discretion the better part of valour. Baron McClellan trying a case in a Kerry court was annoyed to find O'Connell interjecting remarks in a case in which he felt his interest enlisted. "Mr. O'Connell," asked McClellan, cuttingly, "are you engaged in this case?" "I am not, my lord, but I shall be." "When I was at the Bar," said the judge, in his most crushing manner, "it was not my habit to anticipate briefs." "When your lordship was at the Bar," answered O'Connell, "I never chose you for a model. And now that you are on the Bench I shall not submit to your dictation.

Once when O'Connell found himself in possession of absolutely no case, in defending a prisoner who was on trial for his life before a newly-appointed, timid, and scrupulous judge, O'Connell deliberately proceeded with a line of argument which-as he intended-compelled reprimands from the judge again and again; then giving way to an outburst of apparently terrible indignation, he said: "Since your lordship will not permit me to defend this man whose life is in the balance, I withdraw from the case, and throw the prisoner upon the tender mercies of an evidently hostile court. If he is condemned, on your head, my lord, be his blood." Then he slammed down his brief and left the court. The frightened judge, finding himself compelled to act the part of Counsel for the defence, cross-examined for the prisoner, charged for him -and sent him out of the court a free man.

The Doneraile conspiracy case, in October, 1829, memorably exemplified O'Connell's power. The Government, making a grand sweep at Doneraile, gathered in many men charged with conspiracy to murder savage landlords and unjust magistrates. The greatest importance was attached to the case. A Special Commission was sent down to Cork to try the conspirators. "Long John" Doherty, the Solicitor-General, a bitterly anti-popular official, went down himself to prosecute. They were to be tried in batches. The first four were put forward, found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged. At this result the remaining prisoners and their assembled friends were thrown into panic. It was then Saturday afternoon. The next batch would be put on trial on Monday morning. A cry went up for Dan O'Connell. Dan was then resting at Derrynane-ninety Irish miles away. That he could be got to the trial in time, even if he consented to come, was hardly possible. But in desperation the forlorn hope must be chanced. A messenger, William Burke, set out from Cork on a fast horse, on Satur