Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/185

 country Mr. John O'Connell will give laws to the Association as he did last year. I am afraid—there is reasonable ground to fear—that the strength of the Association will be sapped away. The evil already done is enormous, and if we let every new encroachment towards Whiggery go unresisted there will in time be nothing worth making a stand for. If you got suitable candidates named at once for all the Repeal constituencies, it would be a security against new compromises. And this may be done, if done promptly; if delayed, you may see what we have to apprehend in O'Connell's declaration yesterday that The O'Coner Don (who had become a Whig Minister) is not less a Repealer because he had never joined the Association! A time may come when it will be too late to resist Whiggery; but, if so, it will be our own fault for not resisting it when it was ashamed to show its face.

" O'Connell has done nothing more against the Nation, but he still talks threateningly. If he ruins Repeal it will be no great matter that he ruins the Nation too. Whatever his motive for refraining may be, it would not be candid to leave you under the impression that the men likely to be attacked attribute his silence to your remonstrance. One and all, they believe that, having got into this battle in your defence, you left them, when a crisis came, to take care of themselves. Neither they nor I desire to complain of this, or mean to let it influence our public conduct in the smallest degree; but, since you refer to it, it would be wholly foreign to my nature to say or do anything to mislead you as to our feelings on the subject.

"Meagher, you will perceive, was attacked for stating that Mr. Clements had taken a place; the authority for the story was no other than Mr. O'Connell, who told it in the committee, and stated that Sheil had procured it. I tell you this that you may not misconceive Meagher's conduct."

It is to the honour of O'Brien, and will help the reader better to understand his fine character, to know that he did not resent this brusque remonstrance, but took the earliest opportunity at a public dinner in his neighbourhood to separate himself from the Peace Resolutions, and express his fixed confidence in the young men assailed. On behalf of