Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/55

 would fall submissively into his projects. He gave him a subscription for the League, and thought it might do good if it held altogether aloof from rash counsels and temerarious projects, of which he believed I was a focus. But Lucas understood the era and the country better than the Primate, and held on his course steadily with the League. The Irish landlords determined to turn this sectarian feud to their purpose. The Grand Orange Lodge published an exhortation to good Protestants to rally round their menaced institutions, and a great landlord meeting was held in Dublin to kindle the No-Popery feeling of the country anew. No greater danger than this could assail the recent union of North and South, but the Northerners stood firm, and minister after minister at League meetings declared that the clamour of the landlords, and probably of Lord John Russell, was mainly designed to break up the blessed harmony which existed in Ireland.

Dr. Cullen, zealous for religion and indifferent to everything else, formed a Catholic Defence Association in Ireland, and chose as his principal colleagues and exponents Mr. William Keogh, Mr. John Sadleir, and Mr. John Reynolds, three men whose names need no addition to any reader who has lived in the same generation. Lucas, as a Catholic journalist, necessarily entered into this new Association. I declined to do so, because I was committed to a work of far higher importance, failing which another million of the Irish people would be shovelled into pauper graves. Mr. Keogh was a vigorous speaker, and his confederate, John Sadleir, though never heard in debate, was skilled in the wiles and devices by which political dupes are enlisted. These two men saw the opportunity the religious struggles gave them to better their Parliamentary position, for the Peelites under Mr. Gladstone and the Free Traders under Mr. Cobden opposed the new penal law by which Lord John Russell designed to strike the Catholic episcopacy. A considerable opposition was created in the House of Commons, and Mr. Keogh, who had rarely given an honest vote or uttered an honest sentiment, returned to Ireland as the champion of the Church and of the country. He wanted a political organisation at his back, and a Catholic Defence Association furnished it. It cannot be denied that the agitation if wisely conducted was