Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/126

 When the new proposal was mentioned in the general committee there was universal congratulation, till John O'Connell entered and declared that it was an abominable attempt to undermine religion and morality in Ireland. Amid the wonder and contempt this criticism created his father arrived, and echoed the objections of his son. Hitherto O'Connell had always advocated the education of Irish youth in the same colleges that they might become good citizens and good patriots; but he broke with his past opinions on this occasion, as peremptorily as he had broken with the Mallow Defiance. Under these circumstances Davis besought him to keep the question out of the Association. Members had been invited to join' as Repealers whatever were their opinions on other .questions, and it would not be fair to compel them to take sides in a controversy like this. By crossing the street it could be discussed outside of the Association, and good faith with their colleagues preserved. O'Connell peremptorily refused this concession. At the next meeting of the Association he and his son assailed the Bill without stint, and Davis and Dillon defended it. Next day a requisition was privately presented to O'Connell asking that the subject might be mentioned no more till the Catholic bishops, who were about to hold a conference on the Bill, should have spoken; as the requisition was signed by forty members of the general committee, including all the barristers and country gentlemen, and indeed every man of education outside the O'Connell family, he thought fit to consent. The respective parties were to be at liberty, during the truce, to urge their views on the country outside the Association; Davis and I wrote largely on the subject in the Nation. O'Connell sent several articles anonymously to the Freeman's Journal, and Mr. John O'Connell interpreted the truce as authorising him to use the machinery of the Association to get petitions signed for the total rejection of a measure of which the bulk of the governing body approved.

Why did O'Connell break with his past life, and insist on the utter rejection of a measure which might have been amended into a consummate system of middle-class education? At the time we knew only half the truth. He had never shaken himself free of Whig entanglements. It was