United States or Azerbaijan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The leaders of the body, after consultation at Mr. O'Connell's residence, decided to bow to this proclamation and to meet no more as a Board; but this did not prevent them, in the following winter, from holding a new series of Aggregate meetings, far more formidable, in some respects, than the deliberative meetings which had been suppressed.
O'Connell's opinions underwent a serious and important change during the time over which these speeches range. That change was produced gradually, and not without infinite trouble on the part of his son whose inveterate zeal knew no bounds.
Then, again, an Act of Parliament was passed disfranchising the class of voters in Ireland who were called the Forty-shilling Freeholders, who formed a large proportion of O'Connell's constituents.
At the commencement of O'Connell's labors for emancipation he found the people of Ireland divided into three great classes, the Protestant or Church party, the Dissenters, and the Catholics: the Church party constituting about one tenth of the population, yet holding in possession the government and a great proportion of the landed property of Ireland, controlling church and state and law and revenue, the army, navy, magistracy, and corporations, the entire patronage of the country, holding their property and power by the favor of England, and consequently wholly devoted to her interest; the Dissenters, probably twice as numerous as the Church party, mostly engaged in trade and manufactures, sustained by their own talents and industry, Irish in feeling, partaking in no small degree of the oppression of their Catholic brethren, and among the first to resist that oppression in 1782; the Catholics constituting at least two thirds of the whole population, and almost the entire peasantry of the country, forming a large proportion of the mercantile interest, yet nearly excluded from the possession of landed property by the tyrannous operation of the penal laws.
The differences which manifested themselves in Conciliation Hall imperceptibly extended to this body. The original members constituted the committee and were self-appointed. The others had to submit to a ballot. Some few were rejected, at which Mr. O'Connell's friends took umbrage, and the rejected aspirants were sure to attribute their decision to their devotion to the "Liberator."
"It may be said," the Liberator continued, with a dignity worthy of him, "that I am here to ask money to succour Ireland in her distress: No such thing, I scorn the thought; I am here to say, Ireland has resources of her own." The Home Secretary replied; admitted O'Connell's facts, but begged of him "to leave the matter in the hands of the responsible advisers of the Crown."
Shane O'Connell, looking into her honest gray eyes, knew that he could trust her. Slowly brokenly tensely, he told her how he had killed Red McGurk, and why. The corridors were full of shadows when Althea Beekman put her hands on Shane O'Connell's shoulders and bade him good night.
The "Times" actually gloated over what appeared to be the impending extinction of our race. Young as I then was, but learning my weekly lessons from the "Nation," I can remember how my blood boiled one day when I saw in a shop window a cartoon of "Punch" a large potato, which was a caricature of O'Connell's head and face, with the title "The Real Potato Blight."
And Sheil was content to be O'Connell's organizer. Without O'Connell's voice or presence, he was his rhetorical superior, excelling in irony and the by-plays of speech for which O'Connell was too exuberant. Shell's speeches touch exquisite though not the deep notes of O'Connell, whom he criticized for "throwing out broods of sturdy young ideas upon the world without a rag to cover them."
As to Mr O'Connell's other remedies extension of municipal reform, and increase of representation grant them, and what could the change effect? They are all at his beck, "good men and true." What more would he have? What more could any alteration in the law effect for him?
Word Of The Day