Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/197

 hard to digest. "As the policy lately adopted by the Repeal Association," he said, " and the recent expulsion of several of its independent members without cause, charge, form, or notice, seems to me to be calculated, if not designed, to perpetuate the Legislative Union, and to extinguish freedom of opinion in Ireland, I request that you will immediately remove my name from the list of members of that body." O'Connell interposed and declared it was unnecessary to read any more of these communications. A little later Mr. D'Arcy M'Gee, who had not received his card of membership since the payment of his subscription, demanded it. "Of physical force," he said, "I will say nothing. I dislike meddling with abstract principles, and I think my brother members should avoid them, as dangerous to the public cause and ruinous to their continuous existence as a corporation." He was informed that in consequence of this letter "he was not, and could not be, a member of the Association."

The country was becoming exasperated. Repeal Wardens who had resigned their office in disgust, and members who had retired, informed us that their letters had been suppressed, reminded us that the business was now being managed by a handful of paid officials, and entreated the Nation to make a public stand against this corrupt and disastrous tyranny; but I was of opinion that if we came to blows with O'Connell the cause would be ruined between us, and I desired to avoid all responsibility for that catastrophe. I explained our policy in the Nation:—

"It is not to conciliate our accusers we exercise forbearance not to get this journal taken once more into favour—emphatically we say that the Nation can do without Conciliation Hall better than Conciliation Hall can do without the Nation—but because we should feel the sin and shame lie heavy on our own souls if we were conscious that we had done an act or written a word to perpetuate or exasperate these mad quarrels. Better that the Nation, and all who contribute to it, were sunk in the Red Sea than that they should become the watchword of faction, the pretext of division, the rock whereon to make shipwreck of so noble a cause!"