A popular history of Ireland, from the earliest period to the Emancipation of the Catholics, Book XII, from the Union of Great Britain and Ireland to the Emancipation of the Catholics, by Thomas Starcy McGee. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. CHAPTER I. After the Union, Death of Lord Clare, Robert Emmits Emut. The plan of this brief compendium of Irish history obliges us to sketch, for some years farther on, the political and religious annals of the Irish people. Having described in what manner their distinctive political nationality was at length lost, it only remains to show how their religious liberties were finally recovered. The first striking effect of the Union was to introduce Catholic emancipation into the category of imperial difficulties and to assign it the very first place in the list. By a singular retribution, the Pitt administration, with its two hundred of a House of Commons majority, its absolute control of the lords, and its seventeen years' prescription in its favour, fell upon this very question, after they had used it to carry the Union, within a few weeks of the consummation of that Union. The cause of this crisis was the invincible obstinacy of the King, who had taken it into his head, at the time of Lord Fitzwilliam's recall from Ireland, that his coronation oath bound him in conscious to resist the Catholic claims. The suggestion of this obstacle was originally Lord Clare's, and though Lord Kenyon and Lord Stowell had declared it unfounded in law, Lord Loughborough and Lord Elden were unfortunately of a different opinion. Since George III the idea became a mono-meneic certainty, and there was no reason to doubt that he would have preferred abdication to its abandonment. The King was not for several months aware how far his Prime Minister had gone on the Catholic question in Ireland, but those who were weary of Pitt's ascendancy were of course interested in giving him this important information. The Prime Minister himself, wrapped in his austere self-reliance, did not volunteer explanations even to his sovereign, and the King broke silence very unexpectedly a few days after the first meeting of the Imperial Parliament, January 22, 1801. Stepping up to Mr. Dundas at the levee, he began in his usual manner. What's this? What's this? This that this young Lord, Castle Ray, has brought over from Ireland to throw out my head. The most jacobinical thing I ever heard of. Any man who proposes such a thing as my personal enemy. Mr. Dundas replied respectfully but firmly, and immediately communicated the conversation to Mr. Pitt. The King's remarks had been overheard by the bystanders, so that either the minister or the sovereign had now to give way. Pitt at first was resolute. The King then offered to impose silence on himself as regarded the whole subject, provided Mr. Pitt would agree to do likewise, but the haughty minister refused and tendered his resignation. On the 5th of February, within five weeks of the consummation of the Union, this tender was most reluctantly and regretfully accepted. Lord Grenville, Mr. Dundas, and others of his principal colleagues went out of office with him. Lord Cornwallis and Lord Castle Ray, following their example. Of the new Cabinet, Addington, the Speaker was Premier, with Lord Hardwick as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. By the enemies of Pitt this was looked upon as a mere administration at interim, as a concerted arrangement to enable him to evade an unfavorable peace, that of Amiens, which he saw coming, but it is only fair to say that the private letters of the period, since published, do not sanction any such imputation. It is, however, to be observed poor Contra, that three weeks after his formal resignation he had no hesitation in assuring the King, who had just recovered from one of his attacks brought on by this crisis, that he would never again urge the Catholic claims on his Majesty's notice. On this understanding he returned to office in the spring of 1804. To this compact he adhered till his death in January 1806. In Ireland the events immediately consequent upon the Union were such as might have been expected. Many of those who had been instrumental in carrying it were disappointed and discontented with their new situation in the Empire. Of these the most conspicuous and the least to be pitted was Lord Clare. That haughty, domineering spirit, accustomed to dictate with almost absolute power to the privy councillors and peerage of Ireland, experienced nothing but mortification in the Imperial House of Lords. The part he hoped to play on that wider stage he found impossible to assume. He confronted there in the aged Thurlow and the astute Longburle, Law Lords as absolutist himself, who soon made him conscious that, to a main agent of the Union, he was only a stranger in the United Legislature. The Duke of Bedford reminded him that the Union had not transferred his dictatorial powers to the Imperial Parliament. Other noble Lords were hardly less severe. Pitt was cold and Grenville ceremonious, and in the arrangements of the Addington Ministry he was not even consulted. He returned to Ireland before the first year of the Union closed, in a state of mind and temper which preyed upon his health. Before the second session of the Imperial Parliament assembled, he had been born to the grave amid the revilings and hootings of the multitude. Dublin, true to its ancient disposition, which led the townsfolk of the twelfth century to bury the ancestor of Dermond McMurray with the carcass of a dog, filled the grave of the once splendid Lord Chancellor with every description of garbage. On the other hand, Lord Castlery, younger, suckler, and more accommodating to English prejudices, rose from one cabinet office to another, until at length, in fifteen years from the Union, he directed the destinies of the Empire, as absolutely as he had molded the fate of Ireland. To Castlery and the Wellesley family, the Union was in truth an era of honour and advancement. The sons of the Spendthrift Amateur, Lord Mornington, were reserved to rule India and lead the armies of Europe, while the son of Flood's colleague in the Reform Convention of 1783 was destined to give law to Christendom at the Congress of Vienna. A career very different in all respects from those just mentioned, closed in the second year of Dublin's widowhood as Metropolis. It was the career of a young man of four and twenty, who snatched at immortal fame and obtained it, in the very agony of a public, but not for him, a shameful death. This was Robert, youngest brother of Thomas Addis Emmett, whose emote of 1803 would long since have sunk to the level of other city riots, but for the matchless, dying speech of which it was the prelude and the occasion. This young gentleman was in his twentieth year when expelled with nineteen others from Trinity College in 1798 by order of the visitors Lord Clare and Dr. Dugganon. His reputation as a scholar and debater was already established within the college walls, and the highest expectations were naturally entertained of him by his friends. One of his early college companions, Thomas More, who lived to know all the leading men of his age, declares that, of all he had ever known, he would place among the highest of the few, who combined in the greatest degree pure moral worth with intellectual power Robert Emmett. After the expatriation of his brother, young Emmett visited him at Fort George, and proceeded from thence to the continent. During the year the Union was consummated he visited Spain, and traveled through Holland, France, and Switzerland, till the peace of Amiens. Subsequently he joined his brother's family in Paris, and was taken into the full confidence of the exiles, then in direct communication with Bonaparte and Talleyrand. It was not concealed from the Irish by either the First Consul or his minister that the peace with England was likely to have a speedy termination, and accordingly they were not unprepared for the new declaration of war between the two countries, which was officially made at London and Paris in May 1803, little more than twelve months after the proclamation of the peace of Amiens. It was an expectation of this rupture and a consequent invasion of Ireland that Robert Emmett returned to Dublin in October 1802, to endeavour to re-establish in some degree the old organization of the United Irishmen. In the same expectation, McNevin, Corbett, and others of the Irish and France formed themselves, by permission of the First Consul, into a legion, under the command of Tones trusty aide de camp, McSheehy, while Thomas, Addis, Emmett, and Arthur O'Connor remained at Paris, the plenipotentaries of their countrymen. On the rupture with England, Bonaparte took up the Irish negotiations with much earnestness. He even suggested to the exiles the colours and the motto under which they were to fight, when once landed on their own soil. The flag on a tricolour ground was to have a green centre, bearing the letters R.I., Republiek, Irlandes. The legend at large was to be, L'indépendance de l'Irland, Liberté de conscience, a motto which certainly told the whole story. The First Consul also suggested the formation of an Irish committee at Paris, and the preparation of statements of Irish grievances for the monoteur and the semi-official papers. Robert Emmett seems to have been confidently of opinion soon after his return to Dublin, that nineteen out of the thirty-two counties would rise, and perhaps, if a sufficient French force had landed, his opinion might have been justified by the fact. So did not think, however, John Keough, Valentine Lawless, Lord Cloncurrie, and other close observers of the State of the Country. But Emmett was enthusiastic, and he inspired his own spirit into many. Mr. Long, a merchant, placed fourteen hundred pounds sterling at his disposal. He had himself, in consequence of the recent death of his father, stalked to the amount of fifteen hundred pounds converted into cash, and with these funds he entered actively on his preliminary preparations. His chief confidence and assistance were Thomas Russell and Matthew Dowdle, formerly prisoners at Fort George, but now permitted to return. William Putnam McCabe, the most adventurous of all the party, a prefect Proteus in disguise. Gray, a Wexford attorney, Colonel Lum of Kildare, an old friend of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Mr. Long before mentioned, Hamilton and Innis Killen Barrister, married to Russell's niece, James Hope of Temple Patrick, and Michael Dwyer, the Wicklow Outlaw, who had remained since ninety-eight uncaptured in the mountains. In the month of March, when the renewal of hostilities with France was decided on in England, the preparations of the conspirators were pushed forward with redoubled energy. The still wider conspiracy headed by Colonel Desparre in London the previous winter, the secret and the fate of which was well known to the Dublin leaders, Dowdle being Desparre's agent, did not in the least intimidate Emmett or his friends. Desparre severed death in February, with nine of his followers, but his Irish Confederates only went on with their arrangements with a more reckless resolution. Their plan was the plan of Omor and McGuire, to surprise the castle, seize the authorities, and secure the capital, but the Dublin of 1803 was in many respects very different from the Dublin of 1641. The discontent, however, arising from the recent loss of the parliament, might have turned the city's scale in Emmett's favour, had its first stroke been successful. The emissaries at work in the Lentster and Ulster counties gave besides sanguine reports of success, so that judging by the information in his possession, an older and cooler head than Robert Emmett's might well have been misled into the expectation of nineteen counties rising if the signal could only be given from Dublin Castle. If the blow could be withheld till August, there was every reason to expect a French invasion of England, which would drain away all the regular army and leave the people merely the militia and the volunteers to contend against. But all the Dublin arrangements exploded in the melancholy and moot of the twenty-third of July, 1803, in which the Chief Justice, Lord Kilwarden, passing through the disturbed quarter of the city at the time, was cruelly murdered, for which, and for his cause, Emmett suffered death on the same spot on the twentieth of September following. For the same cause the equally pure-minded and chivalrous Thomas Russell was executed at Downpatrick. Kearney, Roche, Redmond, and Howley also suffered death at Dublin. Alien, Putnam, McCabe, and Dowdle escaped to France, where the former became an officer of rank in the Army of Napoleon. Michael Dwyer, who had surrendered on condition of being allowed to emigrate to North America, died in exile in Australia, 1825. Others of Emmett's known or suspected friends, after undergoing two, three, and even four years imprisonment, were finally discharged without trial. Mr. Long, his generous banker, and James Hope, his faithful emissary, were both permitted to end their days in Ireland. The trial of Robert Emmett, from the wonderful death speech delivered at it, is perfectly well known. But injustice to a man of genius equal if not superior to his own, and Irishman, whose memory is national property, as well as Emmett's, it must be here observed that the latter never delivered, and had no justification to deliver the vulgar diatribe against Plunkett, his prosecutor, now constantly printed in the common and incorrect versions of that speech. Plunkett, as Attorney General, in 1803, had no option but to prosecute for the crown. He was a politician of a totally different school from that of Emmett. He shared all Burke and Gratton's horror of French revolutionary principles. In the fervour of his accusatory oration he may have gone too far. He may have, and in reading it now, it is clear to us that he did press too hard upon the prisoner in the dock. He might have performed his awful office with more sorrow and less vehemence, for there was no doubt about his jury. But with all he gave no fair grounds for any such retort as is falsely attributed to Emmett, the very style of which proves its falsity. It is now well known that the apostrophe in the death speech commencing U. Viper, alleged to have been addressed to Plunkett, was the interpolation many years afterwards of that literary Ishmaelite, Walter Cox of the Hibernian magazine, who through such base means endeavored to aim a blow at Plunkett's reputation. The personal reputation of the younger Emmett, the least known to his countrymen of all the United Irish leaders, except by the crowning act of his death, is safe beyond the reach of Columny, or Partizille, or Times Changes. It is embalmed in the verse of Moran Sadi, and the precious prose of Washington Irvin. Men of genius in England and America have done honour to his memory, in the annals of his own country his name deserves to stand with those youthful chiefs, equally renowned and equally ready to seal their patriotism with their blood. Sir Kehir O'Donnell and Hugh Rowe O'Donnell. CHAPTER II of Popular History of Ireland, book 12 by Thomas Darcy McGee. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. CHAPTER II ADMINISTRATION OF LORD HARDWICK, 1801 to 1806, and of the Duke of Bedford, 1806 to 1808. During the five years in which Lord Hardwick was viceroy of Ireland, the habeas corpus remained suspended, and the insurrection act continued in force. These were the years in which the power of Napoleon made the most astonishing strides, the years in which he remodeled the German Empire, placed on his head the iron crown of Lombardy, on his sisters that of Etruria, and on his brothers that of Holland, when the consulate gave place to the Empire, and Dukedoms and principalities were freely distributed among the marshals of the Grand Army. During all these years Napoleon harassed England with menaces of invasion, and excited Ireland with corresponding hopes of intervention. The more far-seeing United Irishmen, however, had so little faith in these demonstrations that Emmett and Macnevan emigrated to the United States, leaving behind them in the ranks of the French army, those of their compatriots who, either from habit or preference, had become attached to a military life. It must, however, be borne in mind, for it is essential to the understanding of England's policy towards Ireland in the first twelve or fourteen years after the Union, that the wild hope of a French invasion never foresook the hearts of a large portion of the Irish people, so long as Napoleon Bonaparte continued at the head of the government of France. During the whole of that period the British government were kept in constant apprehension for Ireland. Under this feeling they kept up and increased the local militia, strengthened garrisons, and replenished magazines, constructed a chain of martello towers round the entire coast, and maintained in full rigor the Insurrection Act. They refused, indeed, to the Munster magistrates in 1803, and subsequently the power of summary convictions which they possessed in 98, but they sent special commissions of their own into the suspected counties, whose sentence to death with as little remorse as if they had been so many hydrophobic dogs. Ten, twelve, and even twenty capital executions was no uncommon result of a single sitting of one of these murderous commissions, over which Lord Norbury presided. But it must be added that there were other judges who observed not only the decencies of every day life, but who interpreted the law in mercy as well as injustice. They were a minority, it is true, but there were some such, nevertheless. The session of the Imperial Parliament of 1803 to 1804 was chiefly remarkable for its war speeches and war budget. In Ireland fifty thousand men of the regular militia were under arms and under pay. Seventy thousand volunteers were enrolled, battalioned, and ready to be called out in case of emergency, to which it was proposed to add twenty-five thousand sea pensibles. General Fox, who it was alleged had neglected taking proper precaution at the time of Robert Emmett's emote, was replaced by Lord Cathcart as Commander-in-Chief. The public reports, at least, of this officer were highly laudatory of the disciplining conduct of the Irish militia. In May 1804 Mr. Pitt returned to power as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister, when the whole Pitt policy towards Ireland, France, and America was of course resumed, a policy which continued to be acted on during the short remainder of the life of its celebrated author. The year 1805 may be called the first year of the revival of public spirit and public opinion after the Union. In that year Gratton had allowed himself to be persuaded by Fox into entering the Imperial Parliament, and his old friend Lord Fitzwilliam found a constituency for him in his Yorkshire borough of Malton. About the same time Pitt, or his colleagues, induced Plunkett to enter the same great assembly, providing him with a constituency at Midhurst in Sussex. But they did not succeed if they ever attempted to match Plunkett with Gratton. These great men were warm and close friends in the Imperial as they had been in the Irish Parliament. Very dissimilar in their genius, they were both decided anti-Jackabins, both strenuous advocates of the Catholic claims, and both proud and fond of their original country. Gratton had more poetry and Plunkett more science, but the heart of the Man of Colder Exterior opened and swelled out in one of the noblest tributes ever paid by one great order to another, when Plunkett introduced in 1821 in the Imperial Parliament his allusion to his illustrious friend, then recently deceased. Preparatory to the meeting of Parliament in 1805, the members of the old Catholic committee, who had not met for any such purpose for several years, assembled in Dublin, and prepared a petition which they authorized their chairman, Lord Fingle, to place in such hands as he might choose, for presentation in both houses. His lordship on reaching London waited on Mr. Pitt, and entreated him to take charge of the petition, but he found that the Prime Minister had promised the King one thing and the Catholics another, and therefore declined to ceding to his request. He then gave the petition into the charge of Lord Grenville and Mr. Fox, and by them the subject was brought accordingly before the Lords and Commons. This debate in the Commons was remarkable in many respects, but most of all for Gratton's debut. A lively curiosity to hear one of whom so much had been said in his own country pervaded the whole house as Gratton rose. His grotesque little figure, his eccentric action, and his strangely cadent sentences rather surprised than attracted attention. But as he warmed with the march of ideas, men of both parties warmed to the genial and enlarged philosophy, embodied in the interfused rhetoric and logic of the orator. Pitt was seen to beat time with his hand to every curiously proportioned period, and at length both sides of the house broke into hearty acknowledgments of the genius of the new member for Malton. But as yet their cheers were not followed by their votes, the division against going into committee was three hundred and thirty-six to one hundred and twenty-four. In sustaining Fox's motion Sir John Cox Hipsley had suggested the veto as a safeguard against the encroachments of Rome, which the Irish bishops would not be disposed to refuse. Archbishop Troy and Dr. Moylan, Bishop of Cork, gave considerable praise to this speech, and partly at their request it was published in pamphlet form. This brought up directly a discussion among the Catholics, which lasted until 1810, was renewed in 1813, and not finally set at rest till the passage of the Bill of 1829, without any such safeguard. Sir John C. Hipsley had modeled his proposal, he said, on the liberties of the Gallican Church. Her privileges, he added, depended on two prominent maxims, first, that the Pope had no authority to order or interfere in anything in which the civil rights of the kingdom were concerned, second, that notwithstanding the Pope's supremacy was acknowledged in cases purely spiritual, yet in other respects his power was limited by the decrees of the ancient councils of the realm. The Irish Church, therefore, was to be similarly administered to obviate the objections of the opponents of complete civil emancipation. In February 1806, on the death of Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox came into power, with an uncertain majority and a powerful opposition. In April the Duke of Bedford arrived, as viceroy at Dublin, and the Catholics presented, through Mr. Keough, a mild address, expressive of their hopes that the glorious development of their emancipation would be reserved for the new government. The Duke returned an evasive answer to the public, but privately, both at Dublin and London, the Catholics were assured that, as soon as the new Premier would convert the King, as soon as he was in a position to act, he would make their cause his own. No doubt Fox, who had great nobleness of spirit, intended to do so, but on the thirteenth of September of the same year, he followed his great rival, Pitt, to the vaults of Westminster Abbey. A few months only had intervened between the death of the rivals. Lord Gray and Grenville, during the next recess, having formed a new administration, instructed their Irish Secretary, Mr. Elliott, to put himself in communication with the Catholics, in relation to a measure making them eligible to naval and military offices. The Catholics accepted this proposal with pleasure, but at the opening of the session of 1807, in a deputation to the Irish government, again urged the question of complete emancipation. The bill in relation to the Army and Navy had originally the King's acquiescence, but early in March, after it had passed the Commons, George the Third changed his mind, if the expression may be used of him at that time. He declared he had not considered it first so important as he afterwards found it. He intimated that it could not receive his sanction. He went farther. He required a written pledge from Lord Gray and Grenville never again to bring forward such a measure, nor ever to propose anything connected with a Catholic question. This unconstitutional pledge they refused to give, hurried the bill into law, and resigned. Mr. Spencer Percival was then sent for, and what was called the No-Pope Re-Cabinant, in which Mr. Canning and Lord Castleway, where the principal secretaries of state, was formed. Thus for the second time in six years had the Catholic question made in unmade cabinets. The Catholics were a good deal dispirited in 1805 by the overwhelming majority by which their petition of that year was refused to be referred to a committee. In 1806 they contented themselves with simply addressing the Duke of Bedford on his arrival at Dublin. In 1807 the No-Pope Re-Cabinant, by the result of the elections, was placed in possession of an immense majority, a fact which excluded all prospects of another change of government. But the committee were too long accustomed to disappointments to despair even under these reverses. Early in the next session their petition was presented by Mr. Groton in the Commons, and Lord Donogmore in the Lords. The majority against going into committee was, in the Commons, 153, in the Lords, 87. Similar motions in the session of 1808, made by the same parties, were rejected by majorities somewhat reduced, and the question on the whole might be said to have recovered some of its former vantage ground, in spite of the bitter, pertinacious resistance of Mr. Percival in the One House and the Duke of Portland in the Other. The short-lived administration of Mr. Fox, though it was said to include all the talents, had been full of nothing but disappointments to his Irish supporters. The Duke of Bedford was, indeed, a great improvement on Lord Hardwick, and Mr. Pozambi on Lord Redsdale, as Chancellor, and the liberation of the political prisoners confined since 1803 did honour to the new administration. But there the measures of justice so credulously expected, both as to persons and interests, ended. Curran, whose professional claims to advancement were far beyond those of dozens of men who had been, during the past ten years lifted over his head, was neglected, and very naturally dissatisfied. Groton, never well adapted for a courtier, could not obtain even minor appointments for his oldest and staunchest adherents, while the Catholics found their wig-brands, now that they were in office, as anxious to exact the hard conditions of the veto as Castle Ray himself. In truth, the Catholic body at this period, and for a few years subsequently, was deplorably disorganised. The young generation of Catholic lawyers who had grown up since the Relief Act of 93, the young generation of Catholic lawyers who had grown up since the Relief Act of 93 through the profession open to them, were men of another stamp from the old generation of Catholic merchants, who had grown up under the Relief Act of 1778. In the ten years before the Union, the Catholic middle class was headed by men of business. In the period we have now reached, their principal spokesman came from the Four Courts. John Keough, the ableist, wisest, and firmest of the former generation, was now passing into the decline of life, was frequently absent from the committee, and, when present, frequently overruled by young grandmore ardent men. In 1808 his absence, from illness, was regretted by Mr. O'Connell in an eloquent speech addressed to the Committee on the Necessity of United Action and Incessant Petitions. Had he been present, said the young barrister, his powers of reasoning would have frightened away the captious objections to that course, and the Catholics of Ireland would again have to thank their old and useful servant for the preservation of their honour and the support of their interests. It was a strange anomaly, and one which continued for some years longer, that the statesmen of the Catholic body should be all protestants. A more generous or tolerant spirit than rotten's never existed, a clearer or more fearless intellect than plunkets was not to be found. Nobler and more disinterested friends than Posenby, Curran, Burroughs, and Wallace, no people ever had. But still they were friends from without. Men of another religion, or of no particular religion, advising and guiding an eminently religious people in their struggle for religious liberty. This could not always last. It was not natural. It was not desirable that it should last, though some years more were to pass away before a Catholic emancipation was to be accomplished by the Union, the energy and the strategy of the Catholics themselves. CHAPTER III. ADMINISTRATION OF THE DUCK OF RICHMOND, 1807-1813 Charles IV Duke of Richmond succeeded the Duke of Bedford as Vice Roy in April 1807, with Lord Manners as Lord Chancellor, John Foster, Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the separate Exchequer of Island continued to exist until 1820, and Sir Arthur Wellesley as Chief Secretary. Of these names the two lasts were already familiar to their countrymen, in connection with the history of their own Parliament. But the new Chief Secretary had lately returned home covered with Indian laurels and full of the promise of other honours and victories to come. The spirit of this administration was repressive, anti-Catholic and high Tory. To maintain and strengthen British power, to keep the Catholics quiet, to get possession of the Irish representation and convert it into a means of support for the Tory Party in England, these were the leading objects of the Seven Years Administration of the Duke of Richmond. Long afterwards, when the Chief Secretary of 1807 had become the most high, mighty and noble Prince, whom all England and nearly all Europe delighted to honour, he defended the Irish administration of which he had formed apart, for its habitual use of corrupt means and influences, in arguments which do more credit to his frankness than his morality. He had to turn the moral weakness of individuals to good account, such was his argument. He stoutly denied that the whole nation is or ever was corrupt, but as almost every man of Mark has his price, the Chief Secretary was obliged to use corrupt influences to command a majority in favour of order. However, the particular kinds of influence employed might go against his grain, he had, as he contended, no other alternative but to employ them. With the exception of a two months' campaign in Denmark, July to September 1807, Sir Arthur Wellesley continued to fill the office of Chief Secretary until his departure for the peninsula in July 1808. Even then he was expressly requested to retain the nominal office, with power to appoint a deputy, and to receive, meanwhile, the very handsome salary of eight thousand pounds sterling a year. In the wonderful military events in which, during the next seven years Sir Arthur was to play a leading part, the comparatively unimportant particulars of his Irish secretariat have been long sits forgotten. We have already described the general spirit of that administration. It is only just to add that the dispassionate and resolute secretary, though he never shrank from his share of jobery done daily at the castle, repressed with as much firmness the overzeal of those he calls red-hot Protestants as he showed it resisting at that period what he considered the unconstitutional pretensions of the Catholics. An instance of the impartiality to which he was capable of rising, when influenced by partisans or religious prejudices, is afforded by his letter of dissuading the Wexford Yeomanry from celebrating the anniversary of the Battle of Vinegar Hill. He regarded such a celebration as certain to exasperate party spirit, and to hurt the feelings of others. He therefore, in the name of the Lord Lieutenant, strongly discouraged it, and the intention was accordingly abandoned. It is to be regretted that the same judicious rule was not at the same time enforced by government as to the celebration of the much more obsolete and much more invidious anniversaries of Aggrim and the Boine. The general election which followed the death of Fox in November 1806 was the first great trial of political strength under the Union. As was right and proper, Mr. Grotten no longer indebted for a seat to an English patron, however liberal, was returned at the head of the poll for the city of Dublin. His associate, however, the banker, Latush, was defeated, the second member-elect being Mr. Robert Shaw, the orange candidate. The Catholic electors to a man, and under the vigorous prompting of John Keough and his friends, polled their votes for the Protestant advocate. They did more. They subscribed the sum of four thousand pounds sterling to pay the expenses of the contest. But this sum, Mr. Grotten, induced the treasurer to return to the neighbors. Ever watchful for her husband's honour, that admirable woman, as ardent a patriot as himself, refused the generous tender of the Catholics of Dublin. Although his several elections had cost Mr. Grotten above fifty-four thousand pounds, more than the whole national grant of 1782, she would not, in this case, that any one else should bear the cost of his last triumph in the widowed capital of his own country. The great issue tried in the selection of 1807, in those of 1812, 1818, and 1826, was still the Catholic question. All other Irish, and most other imperial domestic matters were subordinate to this. In one shape or another, it came up in every session of Parliament. It entered into the calculations of every statesman of every party. It continued to make and unmake cabinets. In the press, and in every society, it was the principal topic of discussion. While tracing therefore its progress from year to year, we do but follow the mainstream of national history. All other branches come back again to this centre, or exhaust themselves in secondary and forgotten results. The Catholics themselves, deprived in Ireland of a Parliament on which they could act directly, were driven more and more into permanent association, as the only means of operating a change in the imperial legislature. The value of a legal, popular, systematic, and continuous combination of the people, acting within the law, by means of meetings, resolutions, correspondence, and petitions, was not made suddenly, nor by all the party interested, at one and the same time. On the minds of the more sagacious, however, and impression, favourable to such organised action, grew deeper year by year, and at last settled into a certainty which was justified by success. In May 1809 the Catholic Committee had been reconstructed, and its numbers enlarged. In a series of resolutions it was agreed that the Catholic Lords, the surviving delegates of 1793, the Committee which had managed the petitions of 1805 and 1807, and such persons as shall distinctly appear to them to possess the confidence of the Catholic body, do form henceforth the General Committee. It was proposed by O'Connell to avoid the Convention Act, that the noblemen and gentlemen aforesaid are not representatives of the Catholic body, or any portion thereof. The Committee were authorised to collect funds for defraying expenses. A treasurer was chosen, and a permanent secretary, Mr. Edward Hay, the historian of the Wexford Rebellion, an active and intelligent officer. The new Committee acted with great judgment in 1810, but in 1811 Lord Fingal and his friends projected a General Assembly of the leading Catholics, contrary to the Convention Act, and to the resolution just cited. O'Connell was opposed to this proposition, yet the Assembly met and were dispersed by the authorities. The Chairman, Lord Fingal, and Dr. Sheridan and Kirwan, secretaries, were arrested. Lord Fingal, however, was not prosecuted, but the secretaries were, and one of them expiated by two years imprisonment his own violation of the Act. To get rid of the very pretext of illegality, the Catholic Committee dissolved, but only to reappear under a less vulnerable form as the Catholic Board. It is from the year 1810 that we must date the rise, among the Catholics themselves, of a distinctive line of policy, suited to the circumstances of the present century, and the first appearance of a group of public men, capable of maintaining and enforcing that policy. Not that the ancient leaders of that body were found efficient, in former times, either in foresight or determination, but new times called for new men. The Irish Catholics were now to seek their emancipation from the Imperial Government. New tactics and new combinations were necessary to success. And in brief, instead of being liberated from their bonds at the goodwill and pleasure of benevolent Protestants, it was now to be tested whether they were capable of contributing to their own emancipation, whether they were willing and able to assist their friends and punish their enemies. Though the Irish Catholics could not legally meet in convention any more than their Protestant fellow countrymen, there was nothing to prevent them assembling, voluntarily, from every part of the kingdom, without claim to delegation. With whom the happy idea of the aggregate meetings originated is not certainly known, but to O'Connell and the younger set of leading spirits this was a machinery capable of being worked with good effect. No longer confined to a select committee, composed mainly of a few aged and cautious, though distinguished persons, the fearless agitators, as they now began to be called, stood face to face with the body of the people themselves. The disused theatre in Finch-Shamble Street was their habitual place of meeting in Dublin, and there, in 1811 and 1812, the orders met to criticize the conduct of the Duke of Richmond to denounce Mr. Wellesley Pole, to attack Secretaries of State and Prime Ministers, to return thanks to Lords Gray and Granville for refusing to give the unconstitutional anti-Catholic pledge required by the King, and to memorial the Prince Regent. From those meetings, especially in the year 1812, the leadership of O'Connell must be dated. After seven years of weariness and probation, after enduring seven years the envy and collumny of many, who, as they were his fellow labourers, should have been his friends, after demonstrating for seven years that his judgment and his courage were equal to his eloquence, the successful Kerry Barrister, then in his 37th year, was at length generally recognized as the counsellor of his co-religionists, as the veritable man of the people. Dangerous delays and difficulties lay thick and dark in the future, but from the year, when in Dublin, Cork, and Limerick, the voice of the famous advocate was recognized as the voice of the Catholics of Ireland, their cause was taken out of the category of merely ministerial measures, and exhibited in its true light as a great national contest, entered into by the people themselves for complete civil and religious freedom. Sir Arthur Wellesley had been succeeded in 1810 in the secretarieship by his brother, Mr. Wellesley Pohl, who chiefly signalized his administration by his circular against conventions, and the prosecution of Sheridan and Kirwin in 1811. He was in turn succeeded by a much more able and memorable person, Mr., afterwards Sir Robert Peel. The names of Peel and Wellington come thus into juxtaposition in Irish politics in 1812, as they will be found in juxtaposition on the same subject twenty and thirty years later. Early in the session of 1812, Mr. Percival, the Premier, had been assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons by Bellingham, and a new political crisis was precipitated on the country. In the government which followed, Lord Liverpool became the chief, with Castle Ray and Canning as members of his administration. In the general election which followed, Mr. Grotten was again returned for Dublin, and Mr. Plunkett was elected for Trinity College, but Mr. Curran was defeated at Newry, and Mr. Christopher Healy Hutchinson, the Liberal candidate at Cork. Upon the whole, however, the result was favourable to the Catholic cause, and the question was certain to have several additional Irish supporters in the New House of Commons. In the administrative changes that followed, Mr. Peel, though only in his twenty-fourth year, was appointed to the important post of Chief Secretary. The son of the first baronet of the name, this youthful statesman, had first been elected for Castle almost as soon as he came of age in 1809. He continued Chief Secretary for six years, from the twenty-fourth to the thirtieth year of his age. He distinguished himself in the House of Commons almost as soon as he entered it, and the predictions of his future premiership were not, even then, confined to the members of his own family. No English statesman, since the death of William Pitt, has wielded so great a power in Irish affairs as Sir Robert Peel, and it is therefore important to consider under what influence and by what maxims he regulated his public conduct during the time he filled the most important administrative office in the country. Sir Robert Peel brought to the Irish government, notwithstanding his Oxford education and the advantages of foreign travel which he had enjoyed, prejudices the most illiberal on the subject of all others on which a statesman should be most free from prejudice, religion. An anti-Catholic of the school of Mr. Percival and Lord Eldon, he at once constituted himself the principal opponent of Groton's annual motion in favour of Catholic emancipation. That older men, born in the evil time, should be bigots and defenders of the penal code, was hardly wonderful. But a young statesman, exhibiting at that late day such studied and active hostility to so large a body of his fellow subjects, naturally drew upon his head the excretions of all those whose enfranchisement he stubbornly resisted. Even his great abilities were the most absurdly denied under this passionate feeling of wrong and injustice. His constabulary and his stipendiary majesty were resisted, ridiculed and denounced, as outrage is on the liberty of the subject, and assaults on the independence of the bench. The term peeler became synonymous with spy, informer, and traitor, and the chief secretary was detested not only for the illiberal sentiments he had expressed, but for the machinery of order he had established. After half a century's experience we may safely say that the Irish constabulary have shown themselves to be a most valuable police, and as little deserving of popular ill as any such body can ever expect to be. But they were judged very differently during the secretarieship of their founder, for at that time, being new and intrusive, they may no doubt have deserved many of the hard and bitter things which were generally said of them. The first session of the new Parliament in the year 1813, the last of the Duke of Richmond's vice-royalty, was remarkable for the most important debate which had yet arisen on the Catholic question. In the previous year a motion of cannings in favour of a final and conciliatory adjustment, which was carried by an unexpected majority of 235 to 106, encouraged Groton to pervert a detailed emancipation bill, instead of making his usual annual motion of referring the Catholic petitions to the consideration of the committee. This bill recited the establishment of the Protestant secession to the crown, and the establishment of the Protestant religion in the state. It then proceeded to provide that Roman Catholics might sit and vote in Parliament, might hold all offices, civil and military, accept the offices of Chancellor or Keeper of the Great Seal in England, or Lord Lieutenant, Lord Deputy, or Chancellor of Ireland. Another section threw open to Roman Catholics all lay corporations, while a proviso excluded them from either holding or bestowing offices in the established church. Such was the Emancipation Act of 1813, proposed by Groton, an act far less comprehensive than introduced by the same statesman in 1795 into the Parliament of Ireland, but still in many of its provisions a long stride in advance. Restricted and conditioned as this measure was, it still did not meet the objections of the opponents of the question in giving the crown a veto in the appointment of the bishops. Sir John Hipsley's pernicious suggestion reviving a very old traditional policy was embodied by Canning in one set of amendments and by Castle Ray in another. Canning's amendments, as summarized by the eminent Catholic jurist Charles Butler, were to this effect. He first appointed a certain number of commissioners who were to profess the Catholic religion and to be lay peers of Great Britain or Scotland, possessing a freehold estate of one thousand pounds a year, to be filled up from time to time by his majesty, his heirs or successors. The commissioners were to take an oath for the faithful discharge of their office, and the observance of secrecy in all matters not thereby required to be disclosed, with power to appoint a secretary with salary, proposed to be five hundred pounds a year, payable out of the consolidated fund. The secretary was to take an oath similar to that of the commissioners. It was then provided that every person elected to the discharge of Roman Catholic Episcopal functions in Great Britain or Scotland should, previously to the discharge of his office, notify his then election to the secretary, that the secretary should notify it to the commissioners and they to the privy council, with a certificate that they did not know or believe anything of the person nominated, which tended to impeach his loyalty or peaceable conduct, unless they had knowledge of the contrary, in which case they should refuse their certificate. Persons obtaining such a certificate were rendered capable of exercising Episcopal functions within the United Kingdom. If they exercised them without a certificate, they were to be considered guilty of a misdemeanor and liable to be sent out of the kingdom. Similar provisions respecting Ireland were then introduced. The second set of clauses, says Mr. Butler, was suggested by Lord Castleway and provided that the commissioners under the preceding clauses, with the addition as to Great Britain of the Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper, or first commissioner of the Great Seal for the time being, and one of his majesty's principal secretaries of state, being a Protestant, or such other Protestant member of his privy council as his majesty should appoint, and with a similar addition in respect to Ireland, and with the further addition as to Great Britain of the person then exercising Episcopal functions among the Catholics in London, and in respect to Ireland of the titular Roman Catholic Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin, should be commissioners for the purposes therein after mentioned. The commissioners thus appointed were to take an oath for the discharge of their office, and observance of secrecy, similar to the former, and employ the same secretary, three of them were to form a quorum. The bill then provided that subjects of his majesty receiving any bull, dispensation, or other instrument from the Sea of Rome, or any persons in foreign parts, acting under the authority of that sea, should within six weeks send a copy of it, signed with his name to the secretary of the commissioners, who should transmit the same to them. But with a proviso, that if the person receiving the same should deliver to the secretary of the commission within the time before prescribed, a writing under his hand certifying the fact of his having received such a bull, dispensation, or other instrument, and accompanying his certificate with an oath, declaring that it related wholly and exclusively to spiritual concerns, and that it did not contain or refer to any matter or thing which did or could, directly or indirectly, affect or interfere with the duty and allegiance which he owed to his majesty's sacred person in government, or with the temporal, civil, or social rights, properties, or duties of any other of his majesty's subjects, then the commissioners were, in their discretion, to receive such certificate and oath in lieu of a copy of the bull, dispensation, or other instruments. Persons conforming to these provisions were to be exempted from all pains and penalties, to which they would be liable under the existing statutes, otherwise they were to be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and in lieu of the pains and penalties under the former statutes, be liable to be sent out of the kingdom. The third set of clauses provided that, within a time to be specified, the commissioners were to meet and appoint their secretary, and give notice of it to his majesty's principal secretaries of state in Great Britain and Ireland, and the provisions of the act were to be enforced from that time. On the second reading, in May, the committee of Parliament, on motion of the speaker, then on the floor, struck out the clause enabling Catholics to sit and vote in either house of Parliament, by a majority of four votes, two hundred and fifty one against two hundred and forty seven. Mr. Posenby immediately rose, and observing that, as the bill without the clause was unworthy both of the Catholics and its authors, he moved the chairman due leave the chair. The committee rose without a division, and the Emancipation Bill of eighteen thirteen was abandoned. Unhappily the contest in relation to the veto, which had originated in the House of Commons, was extended to the Catholic body at large. Several of the noblemen, members of the board, were not adverse to granting some such power as was claimed to the Crown. Some of the professional class, more anxious to be emancipated than particular as to the means, favored the same view. The bishops at the time of the Union were known to have entertained the idea, and Sir John Hipsley had published their letters, which certainly did not discourage his proposal. But the second order of the clergy, the immense majority of the laity, and all the new prelates, called to preside over the vacant seas in the first decade of the century, were strongly opposed to any such connection with the head of the state. Of this party, Mr. O'Connell was the uncompromising organ, and perhaps it was his course on this very subject of the veto more than anything else which established his pretensions to be considered the leader of the Catholic body. Under the prompting of the majority, the Catholic prelates met and passed a resolution declaring that they could not accept the bill of 1813 as a satisfactory settlement. This resolution they formally communicated to the Catholic board, who voted them on O'Connell's motion enthusiastic thanks. The minority of the board were silent rather than satisfied, and their dissatisfaction was shown rather by their absence from the board meetings than by open opposition. Mr. O'Connell's position from this period forward may be best understood from the tone which he was spoken of in the debates of Parliament. At the beginning of the session of 1815 we find the Chief Secretary, Mr. Peel, stating that he possesses more influence than any other person with the Irish Catholics, and that no meeting of that body was considered complete unless a vote of thanks to Mr. O'Connell was among the resolutions. While the veto controversy was carried into the press and the parliamentary debates, the extraordinary events of the last years of Napoleon's reign became of such extreme interest as to cast into the shade all questions of domestic policy. The parliamentary fortunes of the Catholic question varied with the fortunes of the war and the remoteness of external danger. Thus, in 1815, Sir Henry Parnell's motion for a committee was rejected by a majority of 228 to 147. In 1816, on Mr. Groton's similar motion, the vote was 172 to 141. In 1817, Mr. Groton was again defeated by 245 to 221. In this season, an act exempting officers in the Army and Navy from for swearing transubstantiation passed and became law. The internal condition of the Catholic body, both in England and Ireland during all those years, was far from enviable. In England there were Cisalpine and Ultramontan factions. In Ireland, vetoists and anti-vetoists. The learned and nameable Charles Butler, among jurists, the ornament of his order, was fiercely opposed to the no less learned Dr. Milner, author of the End of Controversy and Letters to a Pre-Bendary. In Ireland, a very young barrister, who had hardly seen the second anniversary of his majority, electrified the aggregate meetings with the new Franco-Irish order of eloquence, naturally enough employed in the maintenance of the Gallican ideas of church and government. This was Richard Le Horchile, the author of two or three successful tragedies, and the man next to O'Connell, who wielded the largest Tribunitian power over the Irish populace during the whole of the subsequent agitation. Educated at Stonyhurst, he imbibed from refugee professors, French idioms, and a French standard of taste, while strangely enough O'Connell, to whom he was at first opposed, and of whom he became afterwards the first Lieutenant, educated in France by British refugees, acquired the cumbersome English style of the Douay Bible and the Rem Testament. The contrast between the two men was in every way extreme, physically, mentally, and politically, but it is pleasant to know that their differences never degenerated into distrust, envy, or malice, that in fact Daniel O'Connell had throughout all his afterlife no more steadfast personal friend than Richard Le Horchile. In the progress of the Catholic agitation, the next memorable incident was O'Connell's direct attack on the Prince Regent. That powerful personage, the de facto sovereign of the realm, had long amused the Irish Catholics with promises and pledges of being favourable to their cause. At an aggregate meeting, in June 1812, Mr. O'Connell maintained that there were four distinct pledges of this description in existence. One. One given in 1806, through the Duke of Bedford, then Lord Lieutenant, to induce the Catholics to withhold their petitions for a time. Two. Another given the same year in the Prince's name by Mr. Posenby, then Chancellor. Three. A pledge given to Lord Kenmar in writing, when at Cheltenham. Four. A verbal pledge given to Lord Fingle, in the presence of Lords Clifford and Peter, and reduced to writing and signed by these three noblemen, soon after quitting the Prince's presence. Over the meeting at which this indictment was preferred, Lord Fingle presided and the celebrated witchery resolutions, referring to the influence then exercised on the Prince by Lady Hartford, were proposed by his Lordship's son, Lord Colleen. It may therefore be fairly assumed that the existence of the fourth pledge was proved. The first and second were never denied, and as to the third, that given to Lord Kenmar, the only correction ever made was that the Prince's message was delivered verbally by his private secretary, Colonel McMahon, and not in writing. Lord Kenmar, who died in the autumn of 1812, could not be induced, from a motive of delicacy, to reduce his recollection of this message to writing, but he never denied that he had received it, and O'Connell, therefore, during the following years, always held the Prince accountable for this, as for his other promises. Much difference of opinion arose as to the wisdom of attacking a person in the position of the Prince, but O'Connell, fully persuaded of the utter worthlessness of the declarations made in that quarter, decided for himself that the bold course was the wise course. The effect already was various. The English wigs, the Prince's early and constant friends, who had followed him to links that honour could hardly sanction, and who had experienced his hollow-heartedness when lately called to govern during his father's illness, they, of course, were not sorry to see him held up to Odium in Ireland, as a dishonoured gentleman and a false friend. The Irish wigs, of whom Lord Moira and Mr. Pausenby were the leaders, and to whom Mr. Groton might be said to be attached rather than to belong, saw the rupture with regret, but considered it inevitable. Among the Prince's friends the attacks upon him in the Dublin meetings were regarded as little short of treason, while by himself it is well known that the witchery resolutions of 1812 were neither forgotten nor forgiven. The political position of the Holy See at this period was such as to induce and enable an indirect English influence to be exercised, through that channel upon the Irish Catholic movement. Pope Pius VII, a prisoner in France, had delegated to several persons at Rome certain vicarious powers to be exercised in his name in case of necessity. Of these more than one had followed him into exile, so that the position of his representative devolved at length upon Monsignor Quarantati, who early in 1814 addressed a rescript to Dr. Pointer, vicar apostolic of the London District, commendatory of the Bill of 1813, including the veto and the ecclesiastical commission proposed by Canning and Casselray. Against these dangerous concessions, as they considered them, the Irish Catholics dispatched their remonstrances to Rome, through the agency of the celebrated Wexford Franciscan, Father Richard Hayes. But this clergyman, having spoken with too great freedom, was arrested and suffered several months confinement in the Eternal City. A subsequent embassy of Dr. Murray, co-ajuded to the Archbishop of Dublin, on behalf of his brother Prelitz, was attended with no greater advantage, though the envoy himself was more properly treated. On his return to Ireland, at a meeting held to hear his report, several strong resolutions were unanimously adopted, of which the spirit may be judged from the following, the concluding one of the series. 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 resolutions and the very energetic memorial presented on our behalf, and so ably supported by our deputy, the most reverend 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 resolutions were transmitted to Rome, signed by the two Archbishops present, by Dr. Everard, the co-ajuder of the Archbishop of Casual, by Dr. Murray, the co-ajuder of the Archbishop of Dublin, by the bishops of Mieh, Cloyne, Clonford, Kerry, Waterford, Derry, Archenry, Calala, Kililow, Kilmore, Ferns, Limerick, Elphin, Cork, Down and Conner, Osary, Raphaux, Clogger, Dromore, Kildare and Leyland, Ardog, and the Warden of Galway. Dr. Murray and Dr. Murphy, Bishop of Cork, were commissioned to carry this new remonstrance to Rome, and the greatest anxiety was felt for the result of their mission. A strange result of this new imbroglio in the Catholic cause was that it put the people on the defensive for their religious liberties, not so much against England as against home. The unlucky Italian Monsignor who had volunteered his sanction of the veto fared scarcely better at the popular gatherings than Lord Castleray or Mr. Peel. Monsieur Forty-eight, as he was nicknamed, in reference to some strange story of his ancestor taking his name from a lucky lottery ticket of that number, was declared to be no better than a common orangeman, and if the bitter denunciations uttered against him, on the Liffey and the Shannon, had only been translated into Italian, the courtly prelate must have been exceedingly amazed at the democratic fury of the Catholic population, as orthodox as himself, but much more jealous of state interference with things spiritual. The second order of the clergy were hardly behind the laity, in the fervor of their opposition to the rescript of 1814. Then, entire body, secular and regular, residing in and about Dublin, published a very strong protest against it, headed by Dr. Blake, afterwards Bishop of Dromor, in which it was denounced as pregnant with mischief, an entirely non-obligatory upon the Catholic Church in Ireland. The several ecclesiastical provinces followed up these declarations with a surprising unanimity, and although a vetoistical address to his holiness was dispatched by the Sassalpine Club in England, the Irish ideas of Church government triumphed at Rome. Drs. Murray and Milner were recieved with his habitual kindness by Pius VII. The illustrious Cardinal Gonsalvi was appointed by the Pope to draw up an explanatory rescript, and Monsignor Quarantati was removed from his official position. The firmness manifested at that critical period by the Irish Church has since been known with many ecumeniums by all the successors of Pope Pius VII. The Irish government under the new viceroy, Lord Whitworth, the former ambassador to Napoleon, conceiving that the time had come, in the summer of 1814, to suppress the Catholic Board, a proclamation forbidding his majesty's subjects to attend future meetings of that body issued from Dublin Castle on the 3rd of June. The leaders of the body, after consultation at Mr. O'Connell's residence, decided to bow to this proclamation and to meet no more as a Board, but this did not prevent them, in the following winter, from holding a new series of aggregate meetings, far more formidable, in some respects, than the deliberative meetings which had been suppressed. In the vigorous and somewhat aggressive tone taken at these meetings, Lord Fingal, the chief of the Catholic peerage, did not concur, and he accordingly withdrew for some years from the agitation, Mr. Shield, the Belews, Mr. Ball, Mr. Wise of Waterford, and a few others, following his example. With O'Connell remained the O'Connor Don, Messrs. Finley and Ludwell, Protestants, Purcell O'Gorman, and other popular persons, but the cause sustained a heavy blow in the temporary retirement of Lord Fingal and his friends, and an attempt to form a Catholic association in 1815, without their cooperation, signally failed. During the next five years, the fortunes of the great Irish question fluctuated with the exigencies of imperial parties. The Second American War had closed, if not gloriously, at least without considerable loss to England. Napoleon had exchanged Elba for St. Helena, Wellington was the Achilles of the Empire, and Castle Ray its Ulysses. Yet it was not in the nature of those free islanders the danger and pressure of foreign war removed to remain always indifferent to the two great questions of domestic policy, Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform. In the session of 1816, a motion of Sir John Newport's to inquire into the State of Ireland was successfully resisted by Sir Robert Peale, but the condition and State of Public Feeling in England could not be as well ignored by a Parliament sitting in London. In returning from the opening of the Houses in January, 1817, the regent was hooded in the street, and his carriage riddled with stones. A reward of one thousand pounds issued for the apprehension of the ring leaders only gave additional a clot to the fact without leading to the apprehension of the assailants. The personal unpopularity of the regent seems to have increased in proportion as death removed him from all those who stood nearest to the throne. In November, 1817, his oldest child, the Princess Charlotte, married to Leopold, since King of Belgium, died in child bed. In 1818, the aged Queen Charlotte died. In January, 1820, the Old King, in the 82nd year of his age, departed this life. Immediately afterwards the former Princess of Wales, long separated from her profligate husband, returned from the Continent to claim her rightful position as Queen Concert. The disgraceful accusations brought against her, the trial before the House of Lords which followed, the courage and eloquence of her Council, Bragham and Denham, the eagerness with which the people made her cause their own, are all well remembered events, and all beside the purpose of this history. The unfortunate lady died after a short illness on the 7th of August, 1821, the same month in which his Majesty, George the Fourth, departed on that Irish journey, so satarised in the undying verse of Moor and Byron. Two other deaths, far more affecting than any among the mortalities of royalty, marked the period at which we have arrived. These were the death of Curran in 1817, and the death of Grotten in 1820. Curran, after his failure to be returned for Newrey in 1812, had never again attempted public life. He remained in his office of Master of Roles, but his health began to fail sensibly. During the summers of 1816 and 17 he sought for recreation in Scotland, England and France, but the charm which travel could not give, the charm of a cheerful spirit, was wanting. In October 1817 his friend, Charles Phillips, was suddenly called to his bedside at Brompton, near London, and found him with one side of his face and body paralysed cold. And this was all, says his friend, that remained of Curran, the light of society, the glory of the Forum, the fabricius of the Senate, the idol of his country. Yes, even to less than this was he soon to sink. On the evening of the 14th of October he expired, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, leaving a public reputation as free from blemish as ever did any man who had acted a leading part in times like those through which he had passed. He was interred in London, but twenty years afterwards the committee of the Glesnevan Cemetery near Dublin obtained permission of his representatives to remove his ashes to their grounds, where they now finally repose. A tomb modeled from the tomb of Scipio covers the grave, bearing the simple but sufficient inscription, Curran. Thus was fulfilled the words he had uttered long before. The last duties will be paid by that country on which they were devolved, nor will it be for charity that a little earth will be given to my bones. Tenderly will those duties be paid, as the dead of well-earned affection and of gratitude not ashamed of her tears. Gratton's last days were characteristic of his whole life. As the session of 1820 progressed, though suffering from his last struggle with disease, he was stirred by an irresistible desire to make his way to London and present once more the petition of the Catholics. Since the defeat of his relief bill of 1813, there had been some estrangement between him and the more advanced section of the agitators, headed by O'Connell. This he was anxious perhaps to heal or to overcome. He thought moreover that even if he should die in the effort it would be, as he said himself, a good end. Amid the trees which a nation had given and which bowed as if each brought a new civic crown to his head, he consulted with the Catholic delegates early in May. O'Connell was the spokesman and the scene may yet be rendered immortal by some great national artist. All present felt that the aged patriot was dying, but still he would go once more to London to fall, as he said at his post. In leaving Ireland he gave to his oldest friend's directions for his funeral that he might be buried in the little churchyard of Moiana on the estate the people gave him in 1782. He reached London by slow stages at the end of May and proposed to be in his place in the house on the Fourth of June. But this gratification was not permitted him. On the morning of the Fourth at six o'clock he called his son to his bedside and ordered him to bring a paper containing his last political opinions. Add to it, he said, with all his old love of antithesis, that I die with a love of liberty in my heart and this declaration in favour of my country in my hand. So worthily ended the mortal career of Henry Gratton. He was interred by the side of his old friend Charles James Pox in Westminster Abbey. The mourners included the highest imperial statesmen and the Catholic orphan children. His eulogium was pronounced in the House of Commons by William Coiningham Plunkett and in the Irish capital by Daniel O'Connell. In the last days of George II a chief justice was bold enough to declare that the laws did not presume a papus to exist in the kingdom. But under the sway of his successor, though much against that successor's will, they advanced from one constitutional victory to another, till they stood in the person of the Earl Marshall on the very steps of the throne. In the towns and cities the Catholic Lady, once admitted to commerce and the professions, rose rapidly to wealth and honour. A Dublin papist was at the head of the wine trade, another was the wealthiest grazier in the kingdom, a third at Cork was the largest provision merchant. With wealth came social ambition and the heirs of these enfranchised merchants were by a natural consequence the judges and legislators of the next generation. The ecclesiastical organisation of Ireland, as described in 1800 by the bishops in answer to queries of the chief secretary, was simple and inexpensive. The four archbishops and twenty bishops were sustained by having certain parishes attached to their cathedrals in Commendem, other Cathridoticum, there seems to have been none. Armagh had then three hundred and fifty parish priests, Tom two hundred and six, Cashel three hundred and fourteen, and Dublin one hundred and fifty-six, in all one thousand one hundred and twenty-six. The number of curates or co-ajuders was at least equal to that of the parish priests, while of the regulars then returned the number did not exceed four hundred and fifty. This large body of religious, twenty-four prelates, nearly three thousand clergy, exclusive of female religious, were then and have ever since been sustained by the voluntary contributions of the laity, paid chiefly at the two great festivals of Christmas and Easter, or by customary offerings made at the close of the ceremonies of marriages, baptisms, and death. Though the income of some of the churches was considerable, in the great majority of cases the amount received barely suffice to fulfill the injunction of St. Patrick's to his disciples, that the lamp should take, but that were with it was fed. The Presbyterian clergy, though in some respects more dependent on their congregations than the Catholics were, did not always, nor in all cases, depend on the voluntary principle for their maintenance. The Irish supply bill contained an annual item before the union of seven thousand seven hundred pounds for the Antrim Synod, and some other dissenting bodies. The Regium Donum was not, indeed, general, but that it might be made so was one of the inducements held out to many of that clergy to secure their countenance for the legislative union. The established church continued, of course, to monopolize university honors and to enjoy its princely revenues and all political advantages. Trinity College continued annually to farm its two hundred thousand acres at a rental averaging one hundred thousand pounds sterling. Its wealth and the uses to which it is put are thus described by a recent writer. Some of Trinity's senior fellows enjoy higher incomes than cabinet ministers. Many of her tutors have revenues above those of Cardinals and Junior Fellows of a few days standing, frequently declined, some of her thirty-one church livings with benefits which would shame the poverty of scores of continental, not to say Irish, Catholic archbishops. Even eminent judges hold her professorships. Some of her chairs are vacated for the Episcopal bench only, and majors and field officers would acquire increased pay by being promoted to the rank of head porter, first menial, in Trinity College. Apart from her princely fellowships and professorships, her seventy foundation and sixteen non-foundation scholarships, her thirty scissorships, and her fourteen valuable student ships, she has at her disposal an aggregate by bequests, benefactions, and various endowments of one hundred and seventeen permanent exhibitions, amounting to upwards of two thousand pounds per annum. The splendor of the highest Protestant dignitaries may be inferred from what has been said formerly of the Bishop of Derry of the Era of Independence. The state maintained by the Chief Bishop, Primit Robinson, who ruled our mug from seventeen sixty-five to seventeen ninety-five, is thus described by Mr. Cumberland in his memoirs. I accompanied him, says Cumberland, on a Sunday forenoon to his cathedral. We went in his chariot of six horses attended by three footmen behind, whilst my wife and daughters, with Sir William Robinson, the Primit's elder brother, followed in my father's coach, which he lent me for the journey. At our approach the great western door was thrown open, and my friend, in person one of the finest men that could be seen, entered, like another archbishop-lod in high political state, preceded by his officers and ministers of the Church, conducting him in files to the roving chamber and back again to the throne. It may well be conceived with what invidious eyes the barely tolerated papus of the city of St. Patrick must have looked on all this pageantry, and their feelings were no doubt those in some degree of all their co-religionists throughout the kingdom. The Irish establishment, during the reign of George III, numbered among its prelates and clergymen many able and amiable men. At the period of the Union the two most distinguished were Dr. O'Burn, Bishop of Mieth, an ex-priest, and Dr. Young, Bishop of Clonford, a former fellow of Trinity College. As a Bible scholar Dr. Young ranked deservedly high, but as a variously accomplished writer Dr. O'Burn was the first man of his order.  His contributions to general literature, such as his paper on Tannistry and Valancy's Colectanea, show how much greater things still he was capable of. It is not a little striking that the most imminent bishop, as well as the most celebrated Anglican preacher of that age in Ireland, Dean Kerwin, should both have been ordained as Catholic priests. The national literature which we have noted a century earlier as changing gradually its tongue was now mainly, indeed we might almost say, solely expressed in English. It is true the songs of Caroline the Blind were sung in Gaelic by the Longford Firesides, where the author of the deserted village listened to their exquisite melody, molding his young ear to a sense of harmony, full as exquisite. But the glory of the Gaelic muse was passed. He, too, unpromising as was his exterior, was to be one of the bright harbingers of another great era of hibernal English literature. When, within two generations, out of the same exceedingly restricted class of educated Irishmen and women, we count the names of Goldsmith, Samuel Madden, Arthur Murphy, Henry Brooks, Charles Macklin, Sheridan, Burke, Edmund Malone, Maria Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, Psyche Tiggie, and Thomas Moore, it is impossible not to entertain a very high opinion of the mental resources of that population, if only they were fairly wrought and kindly valued by the world. One memorable incident of literary history, the Oceanic Outbreak of 1760, aided powerfully, though indirectly, in the revival of the study of ancient Celtic history of Scotland and Ireland. Something was done, then, by the Royal Irish Academy to meet that storm of Anglo-Norman incredulity and indignation, much more has been done since, to place the original records of the three kingdoms on a sound critical basis. The dogmatism of the unbelievers in the existence of a genuine body of ancient Celtic literature has been rebuked, and the folly of the theorists who, upon imaginary grounds, constructed pretentious systems has been exposed. The exact originals of McPherson's oads have not been found, after a century of research, and may be given up as non-existent, but the better opinion seems now to be by those who have studied the fragments of undoubted antiquity attributed to the son of the warrior Pheon, that whatever the modern translator may have invented, he certainly did not invent Asean. To the stage, within the same range of time, Ireland gave some celebrated names, Quinn, Barry, Sheridan, Mrs. Waffington, Mrs. Jordan, and Miss O'Neill, and to painting one preeminent name, the eccentric, honest, and original James Barry. But of all the arts that in which the Irish of the Georgian era won the highest and most various triumphs was the art of oratory, what is now usually spoken of as the Irish School of Eloquence may be considered to have taken its rise from the growth of the Patriot Party and Parliament in the last years of George II. Every contemporary account agrees in placing its first great name, Anthony Malone, on the same level with Chatham and Mansfield. There were great men before Malone as before Agamemnon, such as Sir Toby Butler, Baron Rice and Patrick Darcy, but he was the first of our later succession of masters. After him came Flood and John Healy Hutchinson, then Groton and Curran, then Plunkett and Bush, then O'Connell and Shield. In England at the same time, Burke, Barr, Sheridan, and Sir Philip Francis upheld the reputation of Irish oratory, a reputation generously acknowledged by all parties as it was illustrated in the ranks of all. The Tories, within our own recollection, applauded as heartily the Irish wit and fervor of Canning, Croker, and North as the Whigs did the exhibition of similar qualities in their emancipation allies. Nothing can be less correct than to pronounce judgment on the Irish School, either of praise or blame, in sweeping general terms. Though a certain family resemblance may be traced among its great masters, no two of them will be found nearly alike. There are no echoes, no servile imitators among them. In vigorous argumentation and severe simplicity Plunkett resembled Flood, but the temperament of the two men, and oratory as nearly as much a matter of temperament as of intellect, was widely different. Flood's movement was dramatic, while Plunkett's was mathematical. Instructural arrangement, Shield, occasionally, very occasionally, reminds us of Groton, but if he is not the wonderful condensation of thought, neither has he the frequent antithetical abuses of that great orator. Burke and Sheridan are as distinguishable as any other two of their contemporaries. Curran stands alone, O'Connell never had a model, and never had an imitator who rose above mimicry. Every combination of powers, every description of excellence, and every variety of style and character, may be found among the masterpieces of this great school. Of their works many will live forever. Most of Burke's, many of Groton's, and one or two of Curran's have reached us in such preservation as promises immortality. Selections from Flood, Sheridan, Canning, Plunkett, and O'Connell will survive. Shield will be more fortunate, for he was more artistic and more watchful of his own fame. His exquisite finish will do for him what the higher efforts of men, more indifferent to the audience of posterity, will have forfeited for them. It is to be observed farther that the inspiration of all these men was drawn from the very hearts of the people among whom they grew. With one or two exceptions, son of humble peasants, of actors, of at most middle-class men, they were true, through every change of personal position, to the general interests of the people, to the common wheel. From generous thoughts and alofty scorn of falsehood, fanaticism, and tyranny, they took their inspiration, and as they were true to human nature, so will mankind, through successive ages, dwell fondly on their works and guard lovingly their tunes. The fontanacity with which the large numbers of the Irish people who have established themselves in foreign states have always clung to their native country, the act of sympathy they have personally shown for their relatives at home, the repeated efforts they have made against the Irish and Ireland, in all their public undertakings, requires that, as an element in O'Connell's final and successful struggle for Catholic emancipation, we should take a summary view of the position of the Irish abroad. While the immigrants of that country to America naturally pursued the paths of peace, those who from choice or necessity found their way to the European continent, were, with few exceptions, employed mainly in two departments, war and diplomacy. An Irish abbey, like the celebrated preacher McCarthy, or an Irish merchant firm, such as the house of the same name at Bordeaux, might be met with, but most of those who attained any distinction did so by the sword or the pen, in the field or in the cabinet. In France, under the revolutionary governments from 91 to 99, the Irish were, with their old world notions of God and the devil, wholly out of place. But under the consulate and the empire, they rose to many employments of the second class and a few of the very first. From the ranks of the expatriated of 98, Bonaparte promoted Arthur O'Connell and William Corbett to the rank of general, where, alien, burn, the younger tone and keating to that of Colonel. As individuals, the emperor was certainly a benefactor to many Irishmen, but as a nation, it was one of them, most foolish delusions, to expect in him a deliverer. On the restoration of the Bourbons, the Irish officers who had acquired distinction under Napoleon adhered generally to his fortunes, and tendered their resignations. In their place a new group of Franco-Irish descendants of the old brigadesmen began to show themselves in the salons of Paris and the bureaus of the ministers. The last swords drawn for the legitimate branch in 91 was by Count Dillon and his friend Count Wall. Their last defender in 1830 was General Wall of the same family. Though the Irish in France, especially those resident at Paris, exercised the greatest influence in favor of their original country, and influence which met all travelled Englishmen, wherever the French language was understood, their compatriots in Spain and Austria had also contributed their share to range continental opinion on the side of Ireland. Three times during the century, Spain was represented at London by men of Irish birth, or Irish origin. The British merchant who found Alexander O'Reilly, Governor of Cadiz, or the diplomatist who met him as a Spanish ambassador at the court of Louis XVI, could hardly look in with his uninstructed eyes upon the lot of his humblest namesake in Cavan. This family, indeed, produced a secession of eminent men, both in Spain and Austria. It is strange, observed Napoleon to those around him, on his second entry into Vienna in 1809, that on each occasion, in November 1805, as this day, on arriving in the Austrian capital, I found myself in treaty and in intercourse with the respectable Count O'Reilly. Napoleon had other reasons for remembering this officer. It was his Dragrun regiment which saved the remnant of the Austrians at Austerlitz. In the Austrian army list at that period, when she was the ally of England, there were above forty Irish names, from the grading of Colonel up to that of Field Marshall. In almost every field of the peninsula, Wellington and Anglesey learned the value of George II's implication on the penal cold, which deprived him of such soldiers as conquered at Fontenoy. It cannot be doubted that even the constant repetition of the names of the Blakes, O'Donnells, and Sarsfields in the bulletins sent home to England tended to enforce reflections of that description on the statesmen in the nation, to in spirit and sustain the struggling Catholics. A powerful argument for throwing open the British army and navy to men of all religions was drawn from these foreign experiences, and if such men were worthy to hold military commissions, why not also to sit in parliament and on the bench? The fortunes of the Irish in America, though less brilliant for the few, were more advantageous as to the many. They were, during the War of the Revolution and the War of 1812, a very considerable element in the American Republic. It was a violent exaggeration to say, as Lord Mountjoy did, in moving for the repeal of the penal laws, that England lost America by Ireland, but it is very certain that Washington placed great weight on the active aid of the Gallant Pennsylvania, Maryland, and southern Irish troops, and the sturdy Scotch Irish of New Hampshire. Franklin, in his visit to Ireland before the rupture, and Jefferson in his correspondence always enumerates the Irish as one element of reliance in the contest between the colonies and the empire. In the immediate cause of the War of 1812, this people were peculiarly interested. If the doctrines of the rite of search and once a subject always a subject were to prevail, no Irish immigrant could hope to become, or having become, could hope to enjoy the protection of, an American citizen. It was therefore natural that men of that origin should take a deep interest in the War, and it seems something more than a fortuitous circumstance, when we find in the Chairman of the Senatorial Committee of 1812, which authorised the President to raise the necessary levies, an Irish immigrant, John Smiley, and in the Secretariat War, who acted under the powers thus granted, the son of an Irish immigrant, John Caldwell Calhoun. On the Canadian frontier, during the war which followed, we find in post of importance Brady, Mulaney, McComb, Krogan and Riley, on the lakes Commodore McDonough, and on the ocean Commodore Shaw and Stewart, all Irish. On the Mississippi, another son of Irish immigrant parents, with his favourite lieutenants, Carroll, Coffey and Butler, brought the war to a close by their brilliant defence of New Orleans. The moral of that victory was not lost upon England. The life of Andrew Jackson, with the dedication to the people of Ireland, was published at London and Dublin by the most generally popular writer of that day, William Cobbett. In the cause of South American independence, the Irish under O'Higgins and McKenna in Chile, and under Bolivar and San Martin in Columbia and Peru, were largely engaged and honourably distinguished. Colonel O'Connor, nephew to Arthur, was San Martin's chief of staff. General Devereux, with his Irish legion, rendered distinguished services to Bolivar and Don Bernando. O'Higgins was hailed as the liberator of Chile. During that long ten-year struggle, which ended with the evacuation of Caracas in 1823, Irish names are conspicuous on almost every field of action. Bolivar's generous heart was warmly attached to persons of that nation. The doctor who constantly attends him, says the English general, Miller, is Dr. Moore, an Irishman, who had followed the liberator from Venezuela to Peru. He is a man of great skill in his profession, and devotedly attached to the person of the liberator. Bolivar's first aide to camp, Colonel O'Leary, is a nephew of the celebrated father O'Leary. In 1818 he embarked, at the age of seventeen, in the cause of South American independence, in which he has served with high distinction, having been present at almost every general action fought in Colombia, and has received several wounds. He has been often employed on diplomatic missions, and in charges of great responsibility, in which he has always acquitted himself with great ability. That these achievements of the Irish abroad produced a favorable influence on the situation of the Irish at home, we know from many collateral sources. We know it also from the fact that when O'Connell succeeded in founding a really national organization, subscriptions and words of encouragement poured in on him, not only from France, Spain, and Austria, but from North and South America, not only from the Irish residents in those countries, but from their native inhabitants, soldiers and statesmen, of the first consideration. The services and virtues of her distinguished children in foreign climes stood to the mother country instead of treaties and alliances. CHAPTER VII. O'Connell's Leadership, the Catholic Association, 1821-1826. At the beginning of the year 1821, O'Connell, during the intervals of his laborious occupations in court and on circuit, addressed a series of stirring letters to the people of Ireland, remarkable as containing some of the best and most trenching of his political writings. His object was to induce the postponement of the annual petition for emancipation, and the substitution instead of a general agitation for parliamentary reform in conjunction with the English reformers. Against this conclusion, which he ridiculed as the fashion for January 1821, Mr. Shield published a bitter, clever, rhetorical reply, to which O'Connell at once sent forth a severe and rather contemptuous rejoinder. Shield was quite content to have Mr. Plunkin continue Groton's annual motion, with all its conditions and securities. O'Connell declared that he had no hope in petitions except from a reformed parliament, and he therefore was opposed to such motions altogether, especially as put by Mr. Plunkin and the other advocates of a veto. Another session was lost in this controversy, and when parliament rose it was announced that George IV was coming to Ireland on a mission of conciliation. On this announcement Mr. O'Connell advised that the Catholics should take advantage of his Majesty's presence to assemble and consider the state of their affairs, but a protest against connecting in any manner the King's visit with Catholic affairs was circulated by Lords Fingle, Netterville, Gormanston, and Killeen, Messers Baggett, Shield, Weiss, and other commoners. O'Connell yielded, as he often did, for the sake of unanimity. The King's visit led to many meetings and arrangements, in some of which his advice was taken, while in others he was outvoted or overruled. Nothing could exceed the patience he exhibited at this period of his life, when his natural impetuous temperament was still far from being subdued by the frosts of age. Many liberal Protestants at this period, the King's brief visit, were so moved with admiration of the judicious and proper conduct of the Catholic leaders that a new but short-lived organization, called the Conciliation Committee, was formed. The ultra-orange zealots, however, were not to be restrained even by the presence of the sovereign for whom they pervest so much devotion. In the midst of the preparations for his landing, they celebrated, with all its offensive accompaniments, the Twelfth of July, and at the Dublin dinner to the King, though after he had left the room, they gave their charter toast of the glorious pious and immortal memory. The Committee of Conciliation soon dwindled away, and like the visit of George IV, left no good result behind. The year 1822 was most remarkable, at its commencement, for the arrival of the Marquis of Wellesley, as Lord Lieutenant, and at its close for the assault committed on him in the theatre by the Dublin Orangemen. Though the Marquis had declined to interfere in preventing the annual Orange celebration, he was well known to be friendly to the Catholics. Their advocate, Mr. Plunkett, was his attorney general, and many of their leaders were cordially welcomed at the castle. These proofs were sufficient for the secret tribunals which sat upon his conduct, and when his lordship presented himself, on the night of the 14th of December at the theatre, he was assailed by an organized mob, one of whom flung a heavy piece of wood and another a quart bottle towards the state box. Three Orangemen, mechanics, were arrested and tried for the offence, but acquitted on a technical defect of evidence. A general feeling of indignation was excited among all classes and consequence, and it is questionable if Orangeism in Dublin ever recovered the disgust occasioned by that dastardly outrage. The great unfortunate event, however, for the Catholics was the foundation of their new association, which was finally resolved upon at an aggregate meeting held in Townsend Street, Chapel, on the 10th of May, 1823. This meeting had been called by an imposing requisition signed with singular unanimity by all the principal Catholic gentlemen. Lord Colleen presided. Mr. O'Connell moved the formation of the association. Sir Thomas Esmond seconded the motion. Mr. Scheele, lately and sincerely reconciled to O'Connell, sustained it. The plan was simple and popular. The association was to consist of members paying a guinea a year, and associates paying a shilling. A standing committee was to form the government. The regular meetings were to be weekly, every Saturday, and the business to consist of organization, correspondence, public discussions, and petitions. It was, in effect, to be a sort of extern and unauthorized parliament, acting always within the constitution, with a view to the modification of the existing laws, by means not prohibited in those laws themselves. It was a design, subtle in conception but simple in form, a natural design for a lawyer-liberator to form, and for a people strongly prepossessed in his favor to adopt, but one at the same time which would require a rare combination of circumstances to sustain for any great length of time, under a leader less expert, inventive, and resolute. The parliamentary position of the Catholic question, at the moment of the formation of the association, had undergone another strange alteration. Lord Castleray, having attained the highest honors of the Empire, died by his own hand the previous year. Lord Liverpool remained Premier. Lord Elden, Chancellor. Mr. Canning became Foreign Secretary, with Mr. Peel, Home Secretary, the Duke of Wellington continuing Master General of the Ordinance. To this Cabinet, so largely anti-Catholic, the chosen organ of the Irish Catholics, Mr. Plunkett, was necessarily associated as Irish Attorney General. His situation, therefore, was in the session of 1823 one of great difficulty. This Sir Francis Burdette and the radical reformers at once perceived, and in the debates which followed, pressed him unmercifully. They quoted against him his own language denouncing Cabinet compromises on so vital a question in 1813, and to sow their indignation, when he rose to reply, they left the house in a body. His speech, as always, was most able, but the house, when he sat down, broke into an uproar of confusion. Party spirit ran exceedingly high. The possibility of advancing the question during the session was doubtful, and a motion to adjourn prevailed. A fortnight later, at the first meeting of the Catholic Association, a very cordial vote of thanks to Plunkett was carried by acclamation. The new Catholic organization was laboring hard to merit popular favour. Within the year of its organization, we find the Saturday meetings engaged with such questions as church rates, secret societies, correspondence with members of both houses, voting public thanks to Mr. Braga, the penal laws relating to the rights of sepulcher, the purchase of a Catholic cemetery near Dublin, the commutation of tithes, the admission of Catholic freemen into corporations, the extension of the association into every county in Ireland, and other more incidental subjects. The business-like air of the weekly meetings at this early period is remarkable. They were certainly anything but mere occasions for rhetorical display. But though little could be objected against, and so much might be said in favour of, the labours of the association, it was not till nearly twelve months after its organization, when O'Connell proposed and carried his system of monthly penny subscriptions to the Catholic rent, that it took a firm and far reaching hold on the common people, and began to excite the serious apprehensions of the oligarchical factions in Ireland and England. This bold, and at this time much ridiculed step, infused new life in a system hitherto unknown into the Catholic population. The parish collectors, corresponding directly with Dublin, established local agency, co-extensive with the kingdom, the smallest contributor felt himself personally embarked in the contest, and the movement became in consequence what it had not been before, an eminently popular one. During the next six months the receipts from penny subscriptions exceeded one hundred pounds sterling per month, representing twenty-four thousand subscribers. During the next year they averaged above five hundred pounds a week, representing nearly half a million enrolled associates. With the additional means at the disposal of the finance committee of the association, its power rose rapidly. A morning and an evening journal were at its command in Dublin, many thousands of pounds were expended in defending the people in the courts, and prosecuting their orange and other enemies. Annual subsidies, of five thousand pounds each, were voted for the Catholic poor schools and education of missionary priests for America. The expenses for parliamentary and electioneering agents were also heavy. But for all these purposes the Catholic rent of a penny per month from each associate was found amply sufficient. At the close of eighteen twenty-four the government, really alarmed at the formidable proportions assumed by the agitation, caused criminal information to be filed against Mr. O'Connell for an alleged seditious allusion to the example of Bolivar, the liberator of South America. But the Dublin grand jury ignored the bills of indictment founded on these informations. Early in the following session, however, a bill to suppress unlawful associations in Ireland was introduced by Mr. Goldburn, who had succeeded Sir Robert Peele as Chief Secretary, and was supported by Plunkett, a confirmed enemy of all extra-legal combinations. It was aimed directly at the Catholic Association and passed both houses, but O'Connell found means to drive, as he said, a coach and six through it. The existing association dissolved on the passage of the Act. Another, called the New Catholic Association, was formed for charitable and other purposes, and the agitators proceeded with their organization, with one word added to the then title, and immensely additional accolade and success. In Parliament the measure thus defeated was followed by another, the long-promised relief bill. It passed in the Commons in May, accompanied by two clauses, or as they were called, wings, most unsatisfactory to the Catholic body. One clause disenfranchised the whole class of electors known as the Forty Shilling Freeholders. The other provided a scale of state maintenance for the Catholic clergy. A bishop was to have one thousand pounds per annum, a dean three hundred pounds, a parish priest two hundred pounds, a curate sixty pounds. This measure was thrown out by the House of Lords, greatly to the satisfaction, at least, of the Irish Catholics. It was during this debate in the Upper House that the Duke of York, presumptive heir to the throne, made what was called his aether speech, from his habit of dosing himself with that stimulant on trying occasions. In this speech he declared that so help him God he would never, never consent to acknowledge the claims put forward by the Catholics. Before two years were over, death had removed him to the presence of that awful being whose name he had so rashly invoked, and his brother, the Duke of Clarence, assumed his position as next in secession to the throne. The Catholic delegates, Lord Killeen, Sir Thomas Esmond, Lawless and Sheil, were in London at the time the Duke of York made his memorable declaration. If on the one hand they were regarded with dislike amounting to hatred, on the other they were welcomed with cordiality by all the leaders of the Liberal Party. The venerable Earl Fitzwilliam emerged from his retirement to do them honour, the gifted and energetic Braggum entertained them with all hospitality. At Norfolk House they were banqueted in the room in which George III was born, the millionaire demagogue, Burdette, the courtly, Liberal Lord Gray, and the flower of the Catholic nobility were invited to meet them. The delegates were naturally cheered and gratified.  Committees of both houses, to inquire into the State of Ireland, had sat during a great part of this session, and among the witnesses were the principal delegates with Drs. Murray, Curtis, Kelly, and Doyle. The evidence of the latter, the eminent prelate of Kildare and Leglin, attracted most attention. His readiness of resource, clearness of statement, and wide range of information inspired many of his questioners with a feeling of respect, such as they had never before entertained for any of his order. His writings had already made him honourably distinguished among literary men. His examination before the committees made him equally so among statesmen. From that period he could reckon the marqueses of Anglesey and Wellesley, Lord Lansdown and Mr. Brogum, among his correspondence and friends, and what he valued even more, among the friends of his cause. Mr. O'Connell, on the other hand, certainly lost ground in Ireland by his London journey. He had unquestionably given his assent to both wings in 1825, as he did to the remaining one in 1828, and thereby greatly injured his own popularity. His frank and full recantation of his error on his return soon restored him to the favour of the multitude, and enabled him to employ, with the best effect, the enormous influence which he showed he possessed at the general elections of 1826. By him mainly the Beresfords were beaten in Waterford, the Fosters in Louth, and the Lesleys in Monaghan. The independence of Limerick City, of Tipperary, Cork, Kilkenny, Longford, and other important constituencies was secured. The parish machinery of the association was found invaluable for the purpose of bringing up the electors, and the people's treasury was fortunately able to protect, to some extent, the fearless voter, who, in despite of his landlord, voted according to the dictates of his own heart. The effect of these elections on the empire at large was very great. When, early in the following spring, Lord Liverpool, after fifteen years' possession of power, died unexpectedly, George IV sent for Canning and gave him carte blanche to form a cabinet, without accepting the question of emancipation. That high-spirited and really liberal statesman associated with himself a ministry, three-fourths of whom were in favour of granting the Catholic claims. This was in the month of April, but to the consternation of those whose hopes were now so justly raised, the gifted Premier held office only four months, his lamented death, causing another crisis, and one more postponement of the Catholic question. CHAPTER VIII. O'Connell's Leadership. The Clare Election. Emancipation of the Catholics. A very little reflection will enable us to judge, even at this day, the magnitude of the contest in which O'Connell was the great popular leader during the reign of George IV. In Great Britain, a very considerable section of the ancient perige and gentry, with the Earl Marshal at their head, were to be restored to political existence by the act of emancipation. A missionary and a barely tolerated clergy were to be clothed in their own country, with the commonest rights of British subjects, protection to life and property. In Ireland, seven eights of the people, one-third of the gentry, the whole of the Catholic clergy, the numerous and distinguished array of the Catholic bar, and all the Catholic townsmen, taxed but unrepresented in the corporate bodies, were to enter on a new civil and social condition, on the passage of the act. In the colonies except Canada, where that church was protected by treaty, the change of imperial policy towards Catholics was to be felt in every relation of life, civil, military, and ecclesiastical, by all persons professing that religion. Some years ago a bishop of Southern Africa declared that until O'Connell's time it was impossible for Catholics to obtain any consideration from the officials at the Cape of Good Hope. Could there be a more striking illustration of the magnitude of the movement, which rising in the latitude of Ireland flung its outermost wave of influence on the shores of the Indian ocean? The adverse hosts to be encountered in this great contest included a large majority of the rank and wealth of both kingdoms. The king, who had been a wig in his youth, had grown into a Tory in his old age. The House of Lords were strongly hostile to the measure, as were also the universities, both in England and Ireland. The Tory Party, in and out of Parliament, the Orange Organization in Ireland, the civil and military authorities generally, with the great bulk of the royal majesty and the municipal authorities. The power to overcome this power should be indeed formidable, well organized, and wisely directed. The Lord Lieutenant selected by Mr. Canning was the Marquis of Anglesey, a Frank soldier, as little accustomed to play the politician as any man of his order and distinction could be. He came to Ireland, in many respects, the very opposite of Lord Wellesley, no orator certainly, and so far as he had spoken formerly an enemy rather than a friend to the Catholics. But he had not been three months in office when he began to modify his views. He was the first to prohibit in Dublin the annual Orange Outrage on the 12th of July, and by subsequent, though slow degrees, he became fully convinced that the Catholic claims could be settled only by concession. Lord Francis Levinson Gower, afterwards Earl of Ellesmere, accompanied the Marquis as Chief Secretary. The accession to office of a Prime Minister friendly to the Catholics was the signal for a new attempt to raise that no potpourri cry, which had already given twenty years of political supremacy to Mr. Percival and Lord Liverpool. In Ireland this feeling appeared under the guise of what was called the New Reformation, which during the summer of 1827 raged with all the proverbial violence of the odium theologicum from court to dairy. Priests and Parsons, laymen and lawyers, took part in this general political-religious controversy in which every possible subject of difference between Catholic and Protestant was publicly discussed. Archbishop McGee of Dublin, the Reverend Sir Harcourt Lees, son of a former English placement at the castle, and the Reverend Mr. Pope, were the clerical leaders in this crusade. Exeter Hall sent over to assist them the Honourable and Reverend Baptist Noel, Mr. Wolf, and Captain Gordon, a descendant of the hero of the London Riot of 1798. At Derry, Dublin, Carlo and Cork, the challenged agreed to defend their doctrines. Father McGinn, McGuire, Mehar, McSweeney, and some others accepted these challenges. Messers O'Connell, Sheil, and other laymen assisted, and the oral discussion of the theological and historical questions became as common as town-talk in every Irish community. Whether in any case these debates conducted to conversion is doubtful, but they certainly supplied the Catholic Lady with a body of facts and arguments very necessary at that time, and which hardly any other occasion could have presented. The right Reverend Dr. Doyle, however, considered them far from beneficial to the cause of true religion, and though he tolerated a first discussion in his diocese, he positively forbade a second. The Archbishop of Armog and other prelates issued their mandates to the clergy to refrain from these oral disputes, and the practice fell into disuse. The notoriety of the Second Reformation was chiefly due to the ostentatious patronage of it by the lay chiefs of the Irish oligarchy. Mr. Singe, in Clare, Lord Lorten, and Mr. McClintock in Dundalk were indefatagable in their evangelizing exertions. The Earl of Rodin, to show his entire dependency on the translated Bible, threw all his other books into a fish pond on his estate. Lord Farnham was even more conspicuous in the revival. He spared neither patronage nor writs of ejectment to convert his tenetry. The reports of conversions upon his Lordship's estates and throughout his county attracted so much notice that Drs. Curtis, Crawley, McGarran, O'Reilly, and McHale met on the 9th of December, 1826, at Coven, to inquire into the facts. They found, while there had been much exaggeration on the part of the Reformers, that some hundreds of the peasantry had, by various powerful temptations, been led to change their former religion. The bishops received back some of the converts, and a jubilee established among them completed their reconversion. The honourable Mr. Noel and Captain Gordon posted to Coven with a challenge to discussion for their Lordships. Of course, their challenge was not accepted. Thomas Moore's inimitable satire was the most effective weapon against such fanatics. The energetic literature of the Catholic agitation attracted much more attention than its oral polemics. Joined to a bright army of Catholic writers, including Dr. Doyle, Thomas Moore, Thomas Furlong, and Charles Butler, there was the powerful phalanx of the Edinburgh Review led by Geoffrey and Sidney Smith, and the English liberal press headed by William Cobbett. Thomas Campbell, the poet of Hope, always and everywhere the friend of freedom, threw open his new monthly to Sheil, and William Henry Curran, who sketches of the Irish bar and bench of Dublin politics and the county elections of 1826, will live as long as any periodical papers of the day. The intrafitagable Sheil, writing French as fluently as English, contributed besides to the Gazette de France, a series of papers which were read with great interest on the Continent. These articles were the precursors of many others which made the Catholic question at length a European question. An incident quite unimportant in itself gave additional zest to these French articles. The Duke de Montabello, with two of his friends, Messrs. du Vergier and Therre, visited Ireland in 1826. Du Vergier wrote a series of very interesting letters on the State of Ireland, which at the time went through several editions. At a Catholic meeting at Balinislow, the Duke had some compliments paid him which he gracefully acknowledged, expressing his wishes for the success of their cause. This simple act excited a great deal of criticism in England. The Paris press was roused in consequence, and the French Catholics, becoming more and more interested, voted an address and subscription to the Catholic Association. The Bavarian Catholics followed their example, and similar communications were received from Spain and Italy. But the movement abroad did not end in Europe. An address from British India contained a contribution of three thousand pounds sterling. From the West Indies in Canada, generous assistance was rendered. In the United States, sympathetic feeling was most active. New York felt almost as much interested in the cause as Dublin. In 1826 and 1827, associations of Friends of Ireland were formed at New York, Boston, Washington, Norfolk, Charleston, Augusta, Louisville, and Bardston. Addresses in English and French were prepared for these societies, chiefly by Dr. McNevin at New York and Bishop England at Charleston. The American, like the French press, became interested in the subject, and eloquent illusions were made to it in Congress. On the 20th of January, 1828, the veteran McNevin wrote to Mr. O'Connell, Public opinion in America is deep and strong and universal in your behalf. This predilection prevails over the broad bosom of our extensive continent. Associations similar to ours are everywhere starting into existence, in our largest and wealthiest cities, in our hamlets and our villages, in our most remote sections, and at this moment, the propriety of convening at Washington, delegates of the Friends of Ireland, of all the states, is under serious deliberation. A fund will ere long be delivered from American patriotism in the United States, which will astonish your haughtiest opponents. The parliamentary fortunes of the great question were at the same time brightening. The elections of 1826 had, upon the whole, given a large increase of strength to its advocates. In England and Scotland, under the influence of the no-popery cry, they had lost some ground, but in Ireland they had had an immense triumph. The death of the generous-hearted canning, hastened as it was by anti-Catholic intrigues, gave a momentary check to the progress of liberal ideas, but they were retarded only to acquire a fresh impulse destined to bear them in the next few years, farther than they had before advanced in an entire century. The ad interim administration of Lord Guterich gave way by its own internal discords in January 1828 to the Wellington and Peel administration. The Duke was Premier, the baronet leader of the House of Commons, with Mr. Huskison, Lord Palmerston in the Cabinet, Lord Anglesey remained as Lord Lieutenant. But this coalition with the Friends of Canning was not destined to outlive the session of 1828. The lieutenants of the late Premier were doomed for some time longer to suffer for their devotion to its principles. This session of 1828 is, in the history of religious liberty, the most important and interesting in the annals of the British Parliament. Almost at its opening the extraordinary spectacle was exhibited of a petition signed by eight hundred thousand Irish Catholics praying for the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts enacted on the restoration of Charles II against the nonconformists. Monster petitions, both for and against the repeal of these Acts, as well as for and against Catholic emancipation, soon became of common occurrence. Protestants of all sects petitioned for, but still more petitioned against, equal rights for Catholics, while Catholics petitioned for the rights of Protestant dissenters. It is a spectacle to look back upon with admiration and instruction, exhibiting, as it does, so much of a truly tolerant spirit in Christians of all creeds, worthy of honor and imitation. In April the Corporation and Test Acts were repealed. In May the Canningites seceded from the Duke's government, and one of the gentlemen brought into fill a vacant seat in the cabinets, Mr. Vesse Fitzgerald, a member for Clair, issued his address to his electors, asking a renewal of their confidence. Out of this event grew another, which finally and successfully brought to an issue the century-old Catholic question.