Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/134

. Is that the spirit of municipal freedom? Oh Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, and Anvers!"

I have described elsewhere the disastrous results which followed the attempts of this modern Phaeton to drive his father's chariot of flame:—

"Week after week new outrages were committed against the fundamental principles on which the national confederacy rested. It was open to Irishmen of all political opinions who desired the repeal of the Union; but it was suddenly pledged to a Whig- Radical programme of measures to be obtained at Westminster. It was bound to cultivate the goodwill of friendly nations; but the two most friendly nations in the world, the only two which took any genuine interest in our affairs, were wantonly insulted. O'Connell himself, as we have seen, declared that he would not accept Repeal if it were to be obtained with the assistance of such a people as the French, and on another occasion he proffered England Irish assistance in a conflict with the United States to pluck down the stripes and stars! That the Association should be free from sectarian controversy was a condition of its existence; but week after week harangues were delivered on the German Catholic Church, and the holy coat of Treves. Richard Scott, one of the most respectable men in the movement, an adherent of O'Connell from the Clare election down to that day, was asked by the Young Liberator 'how he dared' to come to the Association to remonstrate against the attacks on America as unwise and unnecessary.

"The move towards Whig- Radicalism greatly alarmed Smith O'Brien who counted on Tory adhesions. He wrote to Davis:—

"'Having received lately intimations of support of the Repeal cause from quarters in which I did not in the least expect to find it, I am doubly disappointed in rinding that the policy about to be adopted by the leaders of the Association is such as to destroy all my hopes of immediate progress.'

"Of the attack on America, Dillon wrote to Davis:—

"'In Dublin everybody is indignant at O'Connell meddling in the business. His talk about bringing down the pride of the American Eagle, if England would pay us sufficiently, is not merely foolish, but false and base. Such talk must be