While ministers were tinkering on the affairs of Ireland, without lofty purpose or sense of justice or enlightened reason even, the gigantic figure of O’Connell appeared in striking contrast with the statesmen who opposed him and tried in vain to intimidate him.  The great agitator had made his power felt long before the stormy debates in favor of reform took place, which called out the energies of Brougham,—­the only man in England to be compared with O’Connell in genius, in eloquence, in intellect, and in wrath, but inferior to him in the power of moving the passions of an audience, yet again vastly superior to him in learning.  While Brougham was thundering in the senate in behalf of reform,—­the most influential and the most feared of all its members, without whose aid nothing could be done,—­O’Connell was haranguing the whole Catholic population of Ireland in favor of a repeal of the Union, looking upon the evils which ground down his countrymen as beyond a remedy under the English government.  He also made his voice ring with startling vehemence in the English Parliament, as soon as the Catholic Emancipation bill enabled him to enter it as the member from Clare, always advocating justice and humanity, whatever the subject under consideration might be.  So long as O’Connell was “king of Ireland,” as William IV declared him to be, nothing could be done by English ministers on Irish matters.  His agitations were tremendous, and yet he kept within the laws.  His mission was to point out evils rather than to remove them.  No man living was capable of pointing out the remedy.  On all Irish questions the wisdom and experience of English statesmen were in vain.  Yet amid the storms which beat over the unhappy island, the voice of the great pilot was louder than the tempests, which he seems to control as if by magic.  Mr. Gladstone, in one of his later contributions to literature, has done justice to the motives and the genius of a man whom he regards as the greatest that Ireland has ever produced, if Burke may be excepted, yet a man whom he bitterly opposed in his parliamentary career.  Faithful alike to the interests of his church and his country, O’Connell will ever be ranked among the most imposing names of history, although he failed in the cause to which he consecrated his talents, his fortune, his energies, and his fame.  Long and illustrious is the list of reformers who have been unsuccessful; and Mr. O’Connell must be classed with these.  Yet was he one who did not live in vain.

Incapable of effectively dealing with the problem, the government temporized and resolved to stave off the difficulty.  A commission was appointed to visit every parish in Ireland and report the state of affairs to Parliament, when everybody already knew what this state was,—­one of glaring inequality and injustice, exceedingly galling to the Catholic population.  Nor was this the only Irish Church question that endangered the stability of the ministry.