Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/57

. I had not the deep-chest and wide shoulders they need who undertake that exhausting career. But I longed to try the experiment of independent opposition which I had urged on the Confederation, and to have the tragic story of the Irish tenantry told before the faces of their oppressors. We sought to strengthen our party by bringing into it a great Englishman, John Stuart Mill, whose opinions we largely shared, and failed only for reasons which he has specified in his memoirs. The first contest befell at New Ross, where I defeated Sir Thomas Redington, Under-Secretary to Lord Clarendon, and his active agent during my long contest with him, and who, although a Catholic, had continued to hold office under Lord john Russell while he passed the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. This election was one of the most interesting and significant incidents in my life. But I have described it in a former book, and I must not repeat the story here. A bird’s-eye view of the transaction, however, is indispensable to my memoir. New Ross asked a candidate from the League, and the Council sent me, accompanied by Father Tom O’Shea and S. H. Bindon, the secretary. The most influential member of the Election Committee was well understood to be Father Doyle, the senior curate of the town. We saw him immediately, and while sharing his evening meal he frankly told me that I had no~chance of success. The committee were nearly all Old Irelanders, and he was persuaded they would accept no Young Irelander. I induced him to call them together that I might face their objections.

Next morning the committee, which consisted of about two dozen persons, mustered eighteen or twenty, and Father Doyle, who was suffering from influenza, arrived, wrapped in a heavy cloak and muffler, to look on, he said, but not prepared to take part in the proceedings. Three or four members who would not consent to pay me the courtesy of listening to me came to the door and stared in for a minute or two as at some strange animal, and then took their departure. I had formed a resolution during a sleepless night to make that day a cardinal one in my life; it might be one of discomfiture and disaster; but at any rate it should be signal and decisive.