Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/132

 education which might have been made a strength and a blessing to Ireland. I have encountered hundreds of young Irishmen of bright and intelligent natures, but without practical training, and who for want of it fell into the humblest pursuits; and on the other hand there was in Melbourne and Sydney a University where students of all religious denominations are educated together without ampler provisions for their morals and religion than Peel was willing to make in Ireland, and on the Senate of each there was a Catholic archbishop; and while these pages are being written I see with satisfaction that the Sovereign Pontiff is sanctioning rules for the education of Catholic students at Oxford. The sacrifice of Peel's proposal was made to the low ambition of Mr. John O'Connell, and unfortunately it was not the last nor most serious sacrifice demanded for that pitiful result. It was now whispered among the followers of the Young Liberator that the friends of mixed education ought to retire from Conciliation Hall, or if they did not retire ought to be expelled. Davis wrote to Smith O'Brien:—

"O'Loghlen (Sir Colman) and all whom I have consulted are firm against secession. O'Loghlen proposes, and I agree with him fully, that if O'Connell on his return should force the question on Conciliation Hall an amendment should be moved that the introduction of such a question against the wish of a numerous and respectable portion of the committee is contrary to the principles of the Association and likely to injure the cause of Repeal. A steady, elaborate discussion for a number of days would end in the withdrawal of the motion and amendment, or in rendering the motion, if carried, powerless. An explanation would follow, and—the cause would still be safe."

A little later he renewed the subject with his friend:—

"I will not interfere again till an attempt be made to pledge the Association to vile resolutions. If the O'Connells wish, they can ruin the agitation (not the country) in spite of any one. Between unaccounted-for funds, bigotry, Billingsgate, Tom Steele missions, crude and contradictory dogmas, and unrelieved stupidity, any cause and any system could be ruined. America, too, from whence arose 'the cloud in the west' which alarmed Peel, has been deeply offended, and but for