porting the Union. He afterwards wrote the remarkable essay on the military capacity of Ireland for self-defence, which was published under the sig nature of "Philip Roche Fermoy." The year 1834 was rendered remarkable by the introduction of the Repeal question into the House of Commons. O'Connell told me he was forced to take this step, bitterly against his will. "I felt," said he, “like a man who was going to jump into a cold bath, but I was obliged to take the plunge." His speech was certainly an an able one, but very inferior to the masterly oration in which he introduced the same question, in 1843, into the Dublin corporation. Notwithstanding the obstacles thrown by the Coercion Act in the way of petitions to the legislature, O'Connell was backed, on this occasion, by more than half a million of signatures to petitions in favour of Repeal. House It is told of him, that on the day he was going down to the Commons to make his motion on Repeal, he stopped opposite King Henry the Seventh's chapel, took off his hat, and blessed himself, saying aloud, "The Lord Almighty be merciful to your soul, Henry the Seventh, who left us so magnificent a monument of your piety. You left provision at your decease to have perpetual masses offered up for your soul; but from the time that ever execrable brute, Henry the Eighth, seized on the revenues of the church, and of course laid hands on that endowment with the rest, perhaps no human being recollected to aspirate the words 'the Lord have mercy on your soul,' until it struck the humble person who now offers that prayer with the utmost sincerity."* Cork Seathern Reports The Repeal debate, of 1834, is fresh in the memory of the reader. Spring Rice, as being an Irishman, and an expert financial juggler, was selected by government as the most appropriate assailant of his country's rights. His fallacies, absurdities, and falsehoods, were affirmed by an imperial majority of 525 to 40. In January, 1835, there was a general election. The number of Repealers returned to Parliament was not so numerous as in 1832. Some of the Repeal members did not offer themselves again to their constituencies; others did, and were defeated. The anti-Repeal landlords wreaked terrible vengeance on the electors who had voted at the previous election for Repealers. Those landlords are now paying a bitter penalty for their short-sighted * I take this anecdote from the "Cork Southern Reporter," of October 2, 1847. wickedness, in the ruin entailed upon so many of their order by the Union. Much popular inaction was caused by O'Connell's postponement of Repeal for the celebrated "six years' experiment" on which he had embarked. The people of Ireland never entered with any heartiness into that experiment. They had a strong instinctive feeling that it would not succeed. And they thought, that were it even successful, no amount of minor acquisitions could supply to Ireland the want of a resident Parliament. That such was also O'Connell's own conviction is evident, from the following passage in a private letter, quoted by Mr. Fagan, M.P. for Cork, in his "Life and Times of O'Connell." "But," asks the Liberator, "may not the Repeal be dispensed with if we get beneficial measures without it? This is a serious question, and one upon which good men may differ; but it is my duty to make up my mind upon it, and I have made up my mind accordingly, that there can be no safety, no permanent prosperity for Ireland without a Repeal of the Union. This is my firm, my unalterable conviction." I need scarcely add that it is also the firm and unalterable conviction of the Irish people. In the beginning of 1838, the Liberator gave a proof of his indifference to all popularity which was not founded on the only just title to public favourhonesty of purpose united with practical utility. Combinations of workmen to compel their employers to increase their wages had become general in Dublin. The results were necessarily ruinous to the short-sighted combinators themselves. The shipwrights were the greatest sufferers; the ship-building trade having nearly been destroyed in Dublin by this foolish and fatal policy. O'Connell denounced the combination system as being unjust in its principle and ruinous in its results. Amongst the combinators were hundreds of his warmest political adherents. They instantly mutinied against him; and for several successive days he was mobbed and hooted at the Royal Exchange. He continued his opposition, undaunted by the outcry; and calmly awaited the period when the combinators should return to their senses; indifferent as to the tenure of any popularity which could be endangered by honest perseverance in the cause of truth and public usefulness. He was taxed with having theretofore charged the decay of trade in Dublin on the Union; "whereas now,” said his accusers, "you charge it on our combination." "Both causes operate," was his reply. "If a man suffers from a headache, that is no reason why he |