Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/61

 The victory was pleasant news to my friends beyond the Atlantic. Meagher wrote to me:—

"It was a glorious licking you gave that 'baptized spaniel' and all the curs, of high and low degree, that hunted with him. Dillon and O'Gorman thoroughly unite with me in this expression of delight, and have specially requested me to say so."

I was already a member when Lucas stood for Meath, and was able to aid him by my personal presence. From Meath I went to Kilkenny, where I assisted at the election of Sergeant Shee, and from Kilkenny to Wexford, where the young priests who had aided my contest in New Ross carried the county in favour of one of my friends—Patrick M'Mahon, a barrister practising in London. John Francis Maguire, a popular journalist, was elected for Dungarvan against the influence of the Duke of Devonshire, and Tristram Kennedy for Louth against the influence of all the local gentry. Two Irishmen resident in London, Richard Swift, late Sheriff of Middlesex, and Dr. Brady, a man of large fortune, fought and won, under the sanction of the League, counties where great expenditure had become habitual. We did not attempt to displace men who had distinguished themselves in the Catholic Association, but our friends in their constituencies compelled them to accept a pledge to support Sharman Crawford's Bill, which included all the leading principles of the League but one. The original union of North and South did not create a greater surprise than the result of these labours, which secured the return of more than half the Irish members on the new principles.

When the elections were finished throughout the United Kingdom the Government and the Opposition each claimed a majority. This was the precise result we had hoped for and predicted; for now, plainly, Irish votes would prove decisive. While the new members were still under the spell of the hustings, a conference of the friends of Tenant- Right was summoned by the League, to which all the members pledged to Crawford's Bill were invited. It met on September 8th in the City Assembly House at Dublin. Upwards of forty members of Parliament, about two hundred Catholic and Presbyterian clergymen, and gentlemen farmers, traders, and