Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/115

 not rather the exact thing to be expected. Roger O'Moore was denied a place on the Supreme Council of the Catholic Confederation, which but for his genius and daring would never have existed; and Wolfe Tone was in the end robbed of all authority in the United Irish Society which he created. But we rarely look at contemporary events historically. He may put us out of the Association indeed, but can he put us out of Ireland? It seems an easy task to disperse a few young men without fortune or authority, but it will not prove so easy if they are the heirs-apparent of the Ireland that is to be. They have Will and Conviction, I think, and these are the forces which have conquered the world. O'Connell said nothing to justify this suspicion suggested by Cane, but I had a mesmeric feeling while talking to him that there is storm in the air."

If any jealousy existed in O'Connell's mind it was certainly unfounded. The young men of the National movement, who by this time came to be discriminated from the ordinary following of the leader as the Young Ireland party, had no more desire or intention of disturbing O'Connell's authority than the Opposition of the day had of deposing Queen Victoria. They seconded his designs loyally, and were as proud as his. children of his gifts and his triumphs. But, unlike his Old Guard, they were not his soldiers, but the soldiers of Ireland, and if a divided duty ever arose there was no doubt which side they needs must choose. They had devoted to the deliverance of Ireland, as frankly as he had done, their lives and fortunes, and that mystic inestimable future so precious to youth, and their paths seemed destined to pass side by side to the end. On many minor points of policy O'Connell had cheerfully yielded to their wishes; on many other points they had cheerfully submitted to defeat at his hands; only one determined contest had taken place between them, and of that contest the country knew nothing. In the interval between his conviction and sentence, O'Connell suddenly proposed to the general committee, in private conference, to dissolve the Repeal Association, and to found another free from the vulnerable points attributed to the existing one in the State prosecutions. The proposal excited consternation among men who were deter-