Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/99

 against the wrongs he assailed. At this date he had nearly reached his 70th year, but his vigorous frame showed no symptoms of decay. He was as erect, alert, and vigilant as at forty. He spoke at every meeting of the Association for an hour or more, and his voice was as resonant and expressive as of old. His ordinary speech was homely and colloquial, and would often have been bald but that his position clothed his words with authority. Flashes of passion and gleams of wrath came at times to light up his narrative or exhortation, and a happy anecdote or homely proverb to put his audience in good humour. When there was need of the heavier artillery of controversy it was still forthcoming. He stated a case with a clearness and precision which seemed to amount to a demonstration, and he smashed a fallacy with sudden strokes, as with Thor's hammer. His trusted lieutenant was his son John, a feeble, conceited young man, who believed he had inherited with his name the splendid endowments of his father. And from an early date his father was possessed with the hopeless project of making John his successor in the popular tribunate.

The year '43 saw a marvellous change in public opinion. The case on which Ireland relied for repealing the Union was stated by O'Connell before the Dublin Corporation with singular lucidity and force. From that time a tide began to flow which increased in volume from week to week. The bulk of the Catholic Episcopacy joined the Association from which they had hitherto held aloof. The Repeal rent increased prodigiously, exceeding the weekly amount received by the Catholic Association on the eve of the Catholic Relief Act. Men of station and importance declared themselves Repealers. County meetings were summoned to be held in succession in every county in the island, and the people attended in such unexpected force that they became known as monster meetings. At some of them the assemblage was so great it was estimated that so many men were not engaged on both sides in all the battles extending over centuries fought on Irish soil since the Norman Conquest. It was said a new soul had come into Ireland with the Nation, and it made itself felt in every fibre of the national character.

The Irish gentry became alarmed, and insisted that the