Again I trusted to Patrick’s finding out for himself what it meant.  To be brief about a phase of human experience which has nothing new in it, Patrick presently saw that the difficulty of governing Ireland by a local legislature, and executive is this:—­that no man is tolerated from the moment he can do more than talk.  Irish members under O’Connell’s eye were for the most part talkers only.  Then and since, every Irishman who accepts the office so vehemently demanded is suspected of a good understanding with Englishmen, and soon becomes reviled as a traitor and place-hunter.  Between the mere talkers and the proscribed office-holders, Ireland would get none of her business done, if the Imperial Government did not undertake affairs, and see that Ireland was taken care of by somebody or other.  Patrick saw that this way of putting Government in abeyance was a mild copy of what happened when a Parliament sat in Dublin, perpetrating the most insolent tyranny and the vilest jobs ever witnessed under any representative system.  He told me, very simply, that the people of Ireland should send to Parliament men whom they could trust, and should trust them to act when there:  the people should either demand a share of office for their countrymen, or make up their minds to go without; they ought not first to demand office for Irishmen, and then call every Irishman a traitor and self-seeker who took it.  In a very short time he told me that he found he had much to unlearn as well as learn:  that many things of which he had been most sure now turned out to be mistakes, and many very plain matters to be exceedingly complicated; but that the one thing about which there could be no mistake was, that, in such a state of opinion, he was no proper guide for the readers of the “Nation,” and he had accordingly sent in his resignation of his appointment, together with some notices to the editor of the different light in which Irish matters appear outside the atmosphere of Repeal meetings.

In thus cutting loose from his only means of pecuniary support, Patrick forfeited also his patriotic character.  He was as thoroughly ruined in the eyes of Repealers as if he had denounced the “Saxon” one hour and the next crept into some warm place in the Custom-House on his knees.  Here ended poor Patrick’s short political life, after, I think, two letters to the “Nation,” and here ended all hope of aid from his countrymen in London.  His letter was very moving.  He knew himself to be mortified by O’Connell’s behavior to him; but he felt that he could not submit to be regarded with suspicion because he had come to see for himself how matters stood.  He did not give up Repeal yet:  he only wanted to study the case on better knowledge; and in order to have a perfectly clear conscience and judgment, he gave up his only pecuniary resource,—­his love and a future home being in the distance, and always in view, all the time.  Here, in spite of some lingering of old hopes, two scenes of his young life had closed.  His Irish life was over, and his hope of political service.