Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/152

 that the Primate was unable to attend a conference of bishops at Maynooth, being unhappily subject to an attack of lunacy, the Primate being in fact at that moment chairman of the conference in question, and in perfect health. It is not a safe sport in Ireland to belie an archbishop, and Mr. Barrett was immediately subjected to a cannonade of fierce and contemptuous contradictions by the clergy of the Archiepiscopal diocese, under which a sensitive man might have expired. Frederick Lucas, an acknowledged authority on questions of morals, who was on the same side as O'Connell on the colleges question, declared that Mr. Barrett, who was guilty of forgery in the case of the Nation, and a falsehood in the case of the Archbishop, was a disgrace to the Catholic cause, and he hoped so good a cause might be speedily purged of so shameless an ally. Thus we were disembarrassed for a time of our most persistent slanderer, and almost the only one heard in public; but no word of censure on the offender was ever uttered in Conciliation Hall.

A recruit whom I greatly desired was now at liberty to join the Nation, and I welcomed him cordially. M'Gee sent me this letter some months after my original application to him:

" "April 13, 1846. ",—I have ceased, from Saturday night last, to be connected with the Freeman. When Dr. Gray came here a fortnight ago he asked me if I knew who wrote the 'Letters from London' in the Nation, which I at once told him I did. In a note to me on Saturday evening he announced that he and his 'co-directors' considered that fact sufficient cause to 'determine our connection.' I must tell you that when he first spoke to me on the subject I told him that I wrote the letters in question. He expressed astonishment, on which I said, 'If you think I have wronged you, or broken any engagement given or implied, in making this use of my leisure, I have only to add that I do not, and I would wish from this moment to resign all connection with you, supposing you think as I say.' He then said something of a