Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/106

 aggressors. "We don't mean to go to war with the Government, but if the Government goes to war with us then the boys will rise." The methods and agencies of guerilla [sic] warfare were constantly in their mouths. They declared there was no want of arms in the country, and if the people were of one mind they could turn every agricultural implement into a weapon. They counted on the sympathy of the army, where nearly all the soldiers were Irishmen and every Irishman a Repealer. They denied that the Presbyterians of the North would fight against them at the bidding of their greedy and oppressive landlords. They counted upon assistance from foreign countries, and assistance in the shape of a diversion from Wales and the manufacturing districts of England. A remark invariably made was that though the affair might begin in Ireland it would not end in Ireland. The people, animated with those sentiments, he found, to his amazement, not only singularly sober, but advancing in industry, good order, and respect for the laws. Faction fights had ceased, and shillelaghs were rarely to be seen, except when they were used for firewood. When the time came for showing colours he believed the men of property who figured on Repeal platforms would side with the Government to save their estates. But he regarded it as beyond doubt that a more influential class, the Catholic clergy, had gone into the movement in the same spirit as the people. There was another estate in the Repeal organisation of the existence of which the people of England were imperfectly instructed—the young men of the capital. As far as the differences in the circumstances of the countries admitted, they answered to the "jeunes gens de Paris." They were public-spirited, enthusiastic men, possessed, as it seemed to him, of that crude information on political subjects which induced several of the Whig and Conservative leaders to be Radicals in their youth. They supplied all the good writing, the history, the poetry, and the political philosophy, such as it was, of the party. Though O'Connell was the origin and author of all this mischief, the Whig traveller regarded him as the chief reliance for the preservation of peace. He at any rate never intended fighting.