last ten years and upwards, whenever the ballot has been brought forward, we have been told that for corruption, for intimidation, for every evil, public opinion would supply the cure-that marvellous and wonder-working principle, that sedative of the pas sions, that minister to the diseases of the mind, that alterative of the heart, was to extinguish cupidity, was to coerce ambition, allay the fears of the slave, mitigate the ferocity of the tyrant, and over all the imperfections of our nature to extend its soft and salutary sway. Well, how has it worked? Public opinion, so far as bribery is concerned, is given up. Few except the members for the University of Oxford and the University of Dublin, those amiable gentlemen among whose virtues a peculiar indulgence for Parliamentary frailties is conspicuous, would recommend that Southampton and Belfast, and the rest of the delinquent boroughs, should be consigned to public opinion. But if for bribery public opinion has lost all its sanative operation, is it, in the name of common consistency, for intimidation that this specific is to be reserved? Upon bribery, of the two, public opinion would have the greater influence. To bribery there is attached some sort of discredit; but intimidation is not only openly practised but ostentatiously avowed. Men do not deny, but take pride in it; they applaud themselves, too, for the wholesome severity which they have exercised and the salutary examples they have made. So far indeed is the principle of intimidation carried, that a regular theory of coercion has been established, and the great patricians of the land compress their notions of their privileges into a phrase to lay down the dogmas of despotism in some trite saying, and in some familiar sentence to propound the aphorisms of domination. When these doctrines are unrecanted in language, and in conduct are unrecalled-when such doctrines are defended, vindicated and applauded-when they are acted upon to an extent so vast that it is almost difficult to suggest where they have not been applied-how long, how much longer, are we to look to public opinion as the corrective of those evils which, without the application of some more

potent remedy, it is almost an imposture to deplore? Show me a remedy beside the ballot, and I will at once accede to it. Show me any other means by which the tenants of your estates and the retailers of your commerce, and all those whose dependence is so multifariously diversified, can be protected,-show me any other means by which a few men of property, confederated in the segment of a divided county, shall be frustrated in conspiring to return your fractional county members-show me any other means by which this new scheme of nomination shall be baffled and defeated-show me any other means by which a few leading gentlemen in the vicinage of almost every agricultural borough shall be foiled in their dictation to those small tradesmen whose vote and interest are demanded in all the forms of peremptory solicitation. Show me this, and I give up the ballot. But if you cannot show me this-for the sake of your country, for the sake of your high fame; upon every motive personal and public; from every consideration national and individual-pause before you repudiate the means, the only means, by which the spirit of coercion now carried into a system shall be restrained, by which the enjoyment of the franchise shall be associated with the will, by which the country shall be saved from all the suffering, the affliction and the debasement with which a general election is now attended; and without which, to a state of things most calamitous and most degrading, there is not a glimpse of hope, not a chance the most remote, that the slightest palliative will be applied."

CHAPTER XX.

1843-1846.

Irish State trials-France and Morocco-Provincial CollegesNew Zealand-Voyage to Madeira-Death of his sonRepeal of the Corn Laws-Return to England-Review of Peel's policy to Ireland-Change of Ministry.

DURING the summer of 1843, the memorable assemblies designated monster meetings took place in different parts of Ireland. Hundreds of thousands peaceably met to pronounce in favour of a Repeal of the Union, and as peaceably dispersed. Their avowed object was by the demonstration of popular numbers, acting together in perfect subordination to one guiding will, to overawe resistance on the part of the Legislature to the concession of their demand. By O'Connell this was termed "moral force;" by those

in authority it was called a menace of "physical force." For several months however no interference took place, and the language of intimidation held by the principal speakers on these occasions, increased in openness and vehemence daily. At length, upon the 7th of October, a proclamation by the Lord-Lieutenant in council appeared, prohibiting a meeting which had been appointed to take place at Clontarf on the following day. Military preparations were taken to enforce acquiescence; but the masses who had congregated at the appointed scene, conformed to the advice given them by their leaders, and dispersed quietly. Some days afterwards, O'Connell, his son, and six other persons, were arrested on a charge of conspiracy; and having been admitted to bail, bills of indictment were found against them by the grand jury at the ensuing term. Then began the monster proceedings, as from their voluminous pleading and interminable prolixity of argument, they were justly styled, ending in a trial before Chief Justice Pennefather and a special jury, on the 12th of February, 1844. Each of the defendants claimed his right to be heard by separate counsel; and Mr. Sheil appeared on behalf of Mr. John O'Connell.

For some weeks previous to the trial he had been

labouring under an attack of gout. He sought to escape the pain and prostration incident to a malady which peculiarly incapacitates its victims from continuous intellectual exertion, by resorting to the use of colchicum. But while he thus obtained liberation of his mind from the bondage of suffering, his physical frame remained for the most part a close prisoner, and his limbs were seldom released from their flannel swathings. In this state he set about preparing his speech to evidence. Two days previous to that fixed for its delivery in the Court of Queen's Bench, an application was made to him by some of the gentlemen engaged in reporting the proceedings in the State trials for the London press, respecting the best mode of obtaining a correct copy for the purpose they had in view. Owing to the then existing postal arrangements, they calculated that it would be impossible to give the speech correctly yet so as to be in time for publication in the London morning papers of a particular day, if it were taken in short-hand as it was spoken, and transmitted after transcription at a late hour of the night. In a word, they were anxious to obtain beforehand a copy of what they supposed he had written. Great was their disappointment at being told that, though he had the speech in his head,