Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/204

 took occasion to remark that the infidel philosophers who heralded the French Revolution began in the same manner. He did not know whether they would succeed as well as Voltaire, Rousseau, and others had done.

The tradesmen of Dublin who had been so cruelly maligned determined to hold a public meeting to justify themselves. The great hall of the Rotunda was engaged, and the 1,500 presented themselves to the public gaze. Some of the artisans spoke of their past love of O'Connell in terms so simple and pathetic that the fountain of tears was touched in their audience, but there were fiercer strings struck. Father Kenyon, who had written in the Nation with a vigour which recalled Swift, was the spokesman of sympathisers with the Remonstrance:—

"If O'Connell's character could be kept separate from the bad faith and base policy which reigned in Conciliation Hall, it would be a joy to preserve it from shame which an old man could not hope to outlive. But his unprincipled intimates and hungry dependents, supplemented by true but inconsiderate friends, made it impossible. The vile arts of the interested had been plied with fatal assiduity; large bodies of Irishmen in whose minds O'Connell had long been associated with the purest ideal of patriotism, forgetting the effects of age and other less excusable influences, were induced to profess unabated confidence in his counsels. Certain bishops, mistakenly associating the interests of the Catholic religion with his fatal policy, published similar professions; and it was a psychological fact worthy of note that whenever a bishop was so minded he was sure to be supported by the bulk of the clergy. Thus a false standard of opinion was fabricated by a grovelling Press, and the lacerated hearts and hopes of honest and brave men were offered week after week in disgusting sacrifice. When at length the intelligent citizens of Cork sought to rouse O'Connell from his lethargy and haply reclaim him for his country, he was so far gone in delusion as to laugh in their faces. He was grateful to O'Connell, but he could not, in the language of Swift, ' ruin his country to show his gratitude.' Neither would he pass over in silence offences calculated to entail danger and dishonour to the nation and its