Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/102

 but aid it in every way; and that the English aristocracy would have to crush two nations instead of one.

From this time everything was changed. The pace of the movement, so languid at the outset, assumed the stride of a revolution. The monster meetings grew in force, the language became fiercer and more confident. The Government were besought by the Irish landlords to interpose, and they tardily consented; but every stroke they struck proved a coup manquè. An English lawyer, who was Lord Chancellor in Ireland, removed Lord Ffrench and his sons from the Commission of the Peace for attending a Repeal Meeting, and immediately a number of the most respectable magistrates in Ireland, Repealers and non-Repealers, answered this challenge by flinging their commissions at his feet. Twenty members of the Irish Bar joined the Association in a day to express their reprobation of the Chancellor's law. The flame spread from Ireland to the Irish race abroad. Immense meetings, continuing from day to day for more than a week, were held in New York and Philadelphia; large sums were subscribed towards the Repeal Fund; and men of high political importance, including the President of the United States, Mr. Seward, afterwards Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State; General Cass; and Horace Greely, the darling of the people, sanctioned the movement. Irish merchants of great opulence declared that they were ready to help Ireland in her peaceful struggle, and if an arbitrary Government forced her over the frontiers of legality to follow her unto new fields.

If Ireland were invaded by England, the loss of Canada, it was declared, would be the certain penalty. An address was sent to the Democrats of France, asking the generous people who had helped America in her struggle with England to help Ireland. Paris responded by a meeting sanctioned by Lamartine and Victor Hugo, and addressed by Ledru Rollin, Marast, and others, who before five years sat in the Provisional Government of a French Republic, proffering sympathy and aid in the struggle in which Irish Nationalists were engaged, whether it took a civil or military form.