was not one man of moral energy amongst them; for all they were capable of doing, or believed that they could do, disability might have attached to their creed to the end of time. Their utmost idea of agitation consisted in the annual reiteration of complaint in petitions to Parliament, worded with such scrupulous care, lest any phrase should offend their condescending advocates in either branch of the legislature, that they seemed almost designed to prove with what entire impunity great wrongs might be inflicted. Every outburst of impatience was reproved by them as injudicious; every word that savoured of menace was anxiously disclaimed as liable to be misconstrued into disloyalty. The history of past relaxations of the penal code, had for the Catholic aristocracy been written in vain. All the concessions hitherto obtained had been wrung from the fears of domination in its hours of need; while to the meanness of meek importunity, little, if anything, had yet been yielded. No one saw their weakness or understood its causes better than the young and ambitious advocate, who shrunk not from bearding the popular favourite when he recommended hot or hazardous measures; and no one strove more sedulously to infuse a worthier spirit into their timid counsels. But they continued to pe

haunted by dreams of compromise; and they asked, with the force of seeming truth, if they should alienate, by a change of tone, the friends who now pleaded their cause in Parliament, what was there to fall back upon for support in Ireland?

There was indeed a multitudinous peasantry in the southern counties, and a pauperized populace in the capital and other large towns; but a people there was none. Every institution-fiscal, judicial, municipal, educational—was in the exclusive keeping of the hereditary garrison; and thus every means by which in England during the worst of times public sentiment has found legally recognized expression, was denied to the professors of the outlawed creed. And general combination was a thing unknown. Secret association would have naturally involved the ideas and the dangers of conspiracy; and public yet peaceable agitation, with multitudinous membership, a permanent directory, and a national exchequer, was a riddle yet unsolved. The need of its solution, indeed, O'Connell felt to be indispensable. Yet he likewise felt the importance, if not the necessity, of combining the upper classes with the lower in any movement for their common liberation. Two things then were essential, that the moderate party should be induced to confide in the single

ness of the object and the safety of the means proposed, and that the more volatile and inflammable elements of popular passion should be concentrated and directed by him whom they were already accustomed to obey. How were these requisites to be reconciled? No one knew. O'Connell chafed at the thought of indefinite delay, and looked around eagerly, but in vain, for some party already formed or forming, with whom the more democratic section of the Catholics might enter into alliance. Sometimes he imagined it possible that the middle and the working classes of his Protestant fellow-countrymen might be re-animated with the feelings of resentment they had shown at the time of the Union, and be persuaded to join in a cry for its repeal. Again he turned towards the Radicals of England, and was ready to co-operate and combine with them for the attainment of Parliamentary Reform.

In his annual address to the Catholics of Ireland, on the 1st January, 1821, he excited considerable surprise by counselling them to postpone the question of Emancipation for that of Reform. The retirement of Mr. Canning had reduced, he said, their friends in the cabinet to a hopeless minority. It was vain to expect from Parliament, as then constituted, any

effectual measure of relief; and as the petition entrusted to Lord Donoughmore and Mr. Plunket had not been presented in the previous session, he objected to its being considered that of the Catholic body in that of 1821. The promulgation of these sentiments naturally excited much surprise, and by many they were deemed alike inexpedient and unsound. Reform as yet commanded but an inconsiderable minority in the Commons, while in the Lords its name was never heard. The cabinet might be unequally divided regarding Emancipation, but against Reform its members were unanimously agreed. Would it not, therefore, be in the last degree impolitic to adjourn the pursuit of a cause to which already were committed the highest names in the legislature and in the administration itself, for the distant and difficult attainment of an entire change in the representative system? So thought Mr. Plunket and all who acted with him at the time in Parliament. So thought likewise what were termed the moderate party among the Catholics themselves. Mr. Sheil undertook to express their sentiments and his own; and he did so in the following letter:

"TO THE CATHOLICS OF IRELAND.

"Mr. O'Connell has published his accustomed

annual invocation at the commencement of the new year. To demonstrate the fallacy of his reasoning, and to point out the pernicious tendency of his advice, is my object in addressing you. The concern of every Roman Catholic in our national cause supersedes the sensitiveness with which, upon ordinary occasions, an individual ought to shrink from the public contact. To Mr. O'Connell's address is annexed the authority of his name. I trust that I shall be able to supply any absence of comparative personal importance upon my part, by the weight of argument and of fact; and from the high sense which I entertain of Mr. O'Connell's authority, I cannot refrain from making use of it against himself

'Nil æquale fuit homini illi!'

I shall state to you the substance of his letter, as well as it can be reduced to coherence and shape. This annual eruption, in which he has flung out such a flaming fragment of declamation, is accompanied with a considerable obscuration, arising from the shower of volatile opinion with which it is attended, nor is it easy to analyse the lava which is compounded out of such a variety of heterogeneous materials.

"Upon his preliminary observations on our grievances