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mately so far weakened and impaired, that their state of exasperation, to use the language of Mr. Canning, may afford to the enemies of England an opportunity of assailing the empire in a very vulnerable point. The Secretary for Foreign Affairs has intimated this probability, and stated that the attention of the Continental powers was fixed upon this country. I, therefore, do no more than amplify and expand the sentiment of the ministerno more than he considered it consistent with official delicacy to do. Should the anticipation of Mr. Canning come to pass, what sort of spectacle would this country present? I do verily believe that every man, who had any sort of stake in the country-every respectable Roman Catholic, would be induced to sacrifice his wrongs and his antipathies to his sense of moral and religious duty, and would adhere to his vow of allegiance. But the great body of the people would, I fear, be under the influence of very powerful temptation, and adventurers and men of desperate fortunes and aspiring minds (and they are to be found in every country) might yield to the suggestions of a wild and criminal ambition, and give a loose to their passions. In my judgment, such an enterprise would ultimately fail, because the power of England, unless she sustained very great reverses, would prevent rebellion from being ever sanctified by its result. But supposing that the event would be what every good subject and good Christian should legally and piously desire, still through what dreadful scenes the country would have to pass before that salutary consummation could be attained. I do not deny that many would derive, from the confiscation of Catholic property, some consolatory compensations for the national misfortunes. But must not every man of ordinary feeling and humanity, no matter to what party he may belong, shudder at the thought of all the misery, both public and domestic, with which such a state of things would be attended ?"

A complimentary vote having been passed to the distinguished strangers who were present,

The Duke de Montebello, in returning thanks, expressed the sympathy which the liberal party in France entertained for the political disinheritance of the majority of the Irish people. "They had not enjoyed liberty long enough in France to have forgotten the time when they were struggling for it, but they had struggled and they had gained it at last. Civil and religious liberty had been there achieved by that glorious revolution which had been so little understood and so much abused by those who had only looked at its excesses; and those rights were so deeply impressed on their hearts, that if the Protestant faith were injured, they would rise with as much indignation at a Catholic as his hearers did at a Protestant ascendency."

Nor were these professions groundless. After the Restoration, many attempts were made by the Ultra-Royalist party to re-introduce in legislation the exclusive and intolerant spirit which, under the Republic and the Empire, was believed to have been extinguished for ever. The wise and just disposition of Louis XVIII. led him to resist every suggestion of the kind; but his resistance would have availed but little had it not been for the courage and constancy wherewith the liberal minority in the Chambers opposed the partisans of retrogression.

CHAPTER X.

1827.

Speech on the death of the Duke of York-Theobald Wolfe Tone-Articles in l'Etoile-Prosecution of Mr. Sheil-Mr. Staunton-Defiance of the Government—The Times—Attempt to obtain evidence-Conduct of Mr. Hughes-True bills found.

MR. SHEIL's position as a public man was daily becoming more recognised and defined. The ambition of his life had gradually come to be realized. His earliest dreams in boyhood had been of oratoric fame. While at Stoneyhurst, the hours of relaxation which his companions spent in active sports, had been by him frequently devoted to supernumerary studies in the art of rhetoric. The sense of great natural deficiencies had early been forced upon him by his failure in the recitations that formed part of the ordinary school exercises. He could neither restrain his voluble impetuosity nor modulate the harsh intona

tions of his voice. When appointed on one occasion to read aloud the letter of Pliny describing his uncle's fate, "Sheil's exhibition," says one of his class-fellows, "I can never forget. His pronunciation of the Latin was French; his voice was pitched at the highest treble, and sustained there throughout; and excited probably by the subject of the letter, he rushed through it with the fervour and energy of one actually engaged in the scene described, and without a particle of modulation or inflection of voice from beginning to end; so that when he delivered the last word of the letter-vale! his voice, instead of being lowered, as at the end of a sentence, was still at its highest pitch, as if in the middle of one, and the word was accented broadly on the final syllable. As might be expected from such an audience, the reading of the letter was accompanied by continual laughter, which did not appear to have the slightest effect upon the reader, who was so thoroughly possessed by his subject as to be insensible to all disturbing influences. But when he delivered the final word, the burst of laughter was unbounded; and the effect of the performance was to obtain for Sheil the sobriquet of 'Vale,' which he bore long afterwards. Incidents like these forced upon him the consciousness of his defects, and

made him feel the humiliation of inferiority occasioned thereby. It was not in his nature to acquiesce in the continuance of such a condition; and he had a still stronger motive to exertion operating in the same direction. He had always, as long as I can recollect, been in the habit of speaking of eloquence as beyond all other objects of admiration; and to become a great public speaker was, from the outset, the professed object of his ambition. Aware as he soon became of the obstacles to its attainment in his striking defects of voice, utterance, personal appearance, and manner, he went to work to correct them all with an undoubting faith in his success, and a determination to spare no toil or effort to accomplish it. The course he pursued was to practise declamation, accompanied by gesture and reading aloud. He would often apply to me and others to criticise his performance, and bespeak our candid opinion of its merits or defects; and the earnestness with which he courted and entreated the most unmitigated exposure of his faults, and the thankful spirit in which he welcomed it, were not the least remarkable or least interesting traits of his character. The fact was, he was throughout sustained by the thorough conviction that he was destined to become one day a great orator; and I am satisfied

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