It was followed two years later by a much more important victory.  Although Catholics were excluded from sitting in Parliament the law which forbade their doing so did not preclude their being returned as members, and it had long been thought that policy required the election of some Catholic, if only that the whole anomaly of the situation might be brought into the full light of day.  An opportunity soon occurred.  Mr. Fitzgerald, the member for Clare, having accepted office as President of the Board of Trade, he was obliged to appeal to his constituents for re-election, and O’Connell caught at the suggestion made to him of contesting the seat.  His purpose had hardly been announced before it created the wildest excitement all over Ireland.  The Catholic Association at once granted L5,000 towards the expenses, and L9,000 more was easily raised within a week.  In every parish in Clare the priests addressed their parishioners from the altar, appealing to them to be true to the representative of their faith.  After a vehement contest, victory declared itself unhesitatingly for O’Connell, who was found to have polled more than a thousand votes over his antagonist.

The months which followed were months of the wildest and most feverish excitement all over Ireland.  O’Connell, though he used his “frank,” did not present himself at the House of Commons.  He devoted his whole time to organizing his co-religionists, who by this time may be said to have formed one vast army under his direction.  In every parish the priests were his lieutenants.  Monster meetings were held in all directions, and it may without exaggeration be said that hardly a Catholic man escaped the contagion.  So universal a demonstration was felt to be irresistible.  A sudden perception of the necessity for full and unqualified Emancipation sprang up in England.  Even the Duke of Wellington bent his head before the storm.  In the king’s speech of February, 1829, a revision of the Catholic disabilities was advised.  The following month the Catholic Relief Bill was carried through the House of Commons by a majority of 180, and received the royal assent on the 13th of April.

Thus the victory was won, and won too without a single shackling condition.  It was won, moreover, by the efforts of a single individual, almost without support, nay, in several cases against the active opposition of some who had hitherto been its warmest advocates, a fact for which O’Connell’s own violence was undoubtedly largely responsible.  This seems to be the place to attempt an analysis of this extraordinary man, setting down the good and the evil each in their due proportion.  The task, however, would in truth be impossible.  For good or ill his figure is too massive, and would escape our half inch of canvas were we to try and set it there.  The best description of him compressible in a few words is Balzac’s—­“He was the incarnation of an entire people.”  Nothing can be truer.  Not only was he Irish of