down of one such institution tended to make the rest stronger or more healthy.  It was a tree that had undoubtedly serious flaws, and whose growing had not been as perfect as it might have been, but it had admittedly borne some good fruit, and might have borne better had it been left alone.  Anyhow it was gone, and the history of the next twenty-nine years is a confused and distracting medley of petty outbreaks—­that in 1803 of which Robert Emmett was the leader being the most important—­and of recurrent acts of repression, out of the monotonous welter of which one great figure presently rises like a colossus, till it comes to dominate the whole scene.

[Illustration:  ROBERT EMMET. (From a stipple engraving by J. Heath.)]

At a meeting of Catholic citizens in Dublin in 1800 to protest against the Union, Daniel O’Connell, then a young barrister of twenty-six, made his first public speech, and from that time forward his place as a leader may be said to have been fixed.  A Catholic Association had some years earlier been formed, and of this he soon became the chief figure, and his efforts were continually directed towards the relief of his co-religionists.  In 1815 a proposal had been made by the Government that Catholic Emancipation should be granted, coupled with a power of veto in the appointment of Catholic bishops, and to this compromise a considerable Catholic party was favourable.  Richard Lalor Sheil—­next to O’Connell by far the ablest and most eloquent advocate for Emancipation—­supported it; even the Pope, Pius VII., declared that he felt “no hesitation in conceding it.”  O’Connell, however, opposed it vehemently, and so worked up public opinion against it that in the end he carried his point, and it was agreed that no proposal should be accepted which permitted any external interference with the Catholic Church of Ireland.  This was his first decisive triumph.

O’Connell’s buoyancy and indomitable energy imparted much of its own impulse to a party more dead and dispirited than we who have only known it in its resuscitated and decidedly dominant state can easily conceive.  In 1823 a new Irish Catholic Association was set on foot, of which he was the visible life and soul.  It is curious to note how little enthusiasm its proceedings seem at first to have awakened, especially amongst the priesthood.  At a meeting on February 4, 1824, the necessary quorum of ten members running short, it was only supplied by O’Connell rushing downstairs to the book-shop over which the association met, and actually forcing upstairs two priests whom he accidently found there, and it was by the aid of these unwilling coadjutors that the famous motion for establishing the “Catholic rent” was carried.  No sooner was this fund established, however, than it was largely subscribed for all over the country, and in a wonderfully short time the whole priesthood of Ireland were actively engaged in its service.  The sums collected were to be spent in parliamentary expenses, in the defence of Catholics, and in the cost of meetings.  In 1825 the association was suppressed by Act of Parliament, but was hardly dead before O’Connell set about the formation of another, and the defeat of the Beresfords at the election for Waterford in 1826 was one of the first symptoms which showed where the rising tide was mounting to.