Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/163

 secretly determined to destroy the journal, and push all the men connected with it out of Conciliation Hall.

The chief motive for writing history, or for reading it, is to learn from the past how errors may be averted or success promoted in the future; but we can have neither benefit except on conditions of strict fidelity to the facts. I desire to present a narrative and adopt a theory as generous to the Irish leader as the fact would justify. It is written for a people who are liable to commit the same errors generation after generation, and who more than any people in Christendom need the light of history to save their feet from perpetual pitfalls. To the best of my knowledge and judgment this is what happened. Shiel, Pigot, and the other managers of the Whig interest in Ireland urged on O'Connell: "You are wasting your life for what you cannot attain; if Repeal is ever to come, which we altogether doubt, it will not come in your lifetime, whereas something as good or better is within your reach. Lay Repeal aside, and the Government of Lord John, when he comes in, will repair Irish wrongs and raise the country to a perfect equality with England. Public employments which are habitually bestowed on the enemies of the country will be bestowed only on its friends, especially such friends as you recommend, and you will see the tap-root of Protestant ascendancy stubbed out and subdued."

If these promises could have been fulfilled, they would have been a poor substitute for self-government, but it is conceivable that to an old man on the brink of the grave they may have seemed preferable. Had O'Connell frankly stated this change of purpose, it is certain many Irishmen would have still adhered to him. Many would have abandoned and scorned him, but his conscience would have been at ease and his front unabashed. Unfortunately what he determined to do was to accept this Whig alliance, to push out of the Association any men who would not follow him; to declare that they were thwarting his National policy; to proceed apparently as of old in Conciliation Hall, and in secret to hand over the popular constituencies to the Government. I shall not argue this painful and deplorable thesis, but state such facts as seem to me to justify it. His motive in not