Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/227

 Under these untoward circumstances came the opportunity to which all Repealers who had any confidence in constitutional methods relied for advancing the National cause, a General Election, but nothing was prepared. The long-delayed funeral kept up the public irritation, and in truth O'Connell's death had created a startling revulsion of opinion. In the towns there was an immovable party who adhered to the Confederates, but in the rural districts all their popularity was forgotten in a moment. The Munster peasantry, who have the romance and vehemence of meridionals, would remember only the services of the lost leader. They flew, indeed, into one of the mad rages which nations sometimes suffer for their sins. They believed that the Young Irelanders had killed their leader, and they would not hear of them as candidates. Meagher tried his native city, and was beaten by a nominal Repealer, whose public services had consisted in smuggling a dozen of his relations into the Civil Service. O'Gorman was proposed at Limerick, and his proposer, Father Kenyon, was with difficulty rescued by brother priests from the savage violence of the mob. Here and there our friends intimated that they could secure the election of a new man recommended by the Confederation, but that the candidates they would prefer were for the present impossible. Smith O'Brien brought us a group of young men from whom he believed much might reasonably be expected. They were Englishmen for the most part, but men of cultured capacity, and unequivocal Repealers. Their leader was David Urquhart, who had already addressed an English constituency as a Repealer. One of his aides-de-camp was Ross of Bladensburg, a kinsman of Lord Massarene and Lord Dufferin. Mr. Chisholm Anstey, a barrister of Tasmanian birth, was Urquhart's chief reliance for a Parliamentary campaign. After much consultation he was sent to Mallow, and got elected. Smith O'Brien, whose old constituency would not desert him, and this English candidate were the only members of the Confederation sent to Parliament.

John O'Connell and the mass of the old Repeal Association had no money and no suitable candidates. New men who had only joined the Association a few days and paid a subscription of £5 (known in those days as "Five-pound