Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/116

 never to retreat. The Association was the heir of the monster meetings; it had enrolled two million adherents; it had negotiated on equal terms with France and America; and its policy had moved every party in the Empire to sympathy or resistance. Its fall would be regarded in the Old World and the New as the collapse of the National movement. Besides, such a submission to the arbitray [sic] law of the Queen's Bench would render a writ of error futile and ridiculous. The young men respectfully and courteously, but unequivocally, declined to sanction the measure by their votes; and, if it were adopted, they intimated they would not feel at liberty to enter the new Association. O'Connell, whom experience had taught when to yield, abandoned his proposal, and it was never heard of outside of Conciliation Hall. But it must be now judged in connection with the events which speedily followed it, and there can be no serious doubt that it was a move towards the new policy on which O'Connell had secretly determined in Richmond Prison, to reconcile himself with the Whig party and let the national enthusiasm evaporate.

It may well seem impossible that the honoured and adored leader of the Irish people could sell the mighty space of his large honours for any Whig trash of boons or patronage. It is a painful, and in its consequences an intensely tragic story, which I would gladly put away from me, but it is impossible, for it explains all that followed for many years in Ireland. I will simply state the facts; they are so marvellous and so painful that the reader, I repeat, is only expected to accept them if the evidence prove irresistible. I cannot too earnestly exhort the reader to remember that O'Connell was old, infirm, and in the first stage of a disease under which he sank, and it may well be that he believed Repeal impossible in his lifetime; but it was open to him to proclaim his new conviction, and declare he would get all he could for Ireland before he departed. The best men in the Association (who were not overtaken by age or infirmity) would, no doubt, have refused to follow him into a compromise, but many from custom and reverence would have accepted his decision as necessarily wisest and best, and at any rate his conscience would be clear and his head erect. What he unfortunately determined