and successfully down again was more than even he could accomplish.  Resistance he had always steadily denounced, yet every day his own words seemed to be bringing the inevitable moment of collision nearer and nearer.  The crisis came on October the 5th.  A meeting had been summoned to meet at Clontarf, near Dublin, and on the afternoon of the 4th the Government suddenly came to the resolution of issuing a proclamation forbidding it to assemble.  The risk was a formidable one for responsible men to run.  Many of the people were already on their way, and only O’Connell’s own rapid and vigorous measures in sending out in all directions to intercept them hindered the actual shedding of blood.

His prosecution and that of some of his principal adherents was the next important event.  By a Dublin jury he was found guilty, sentenced to two years imprisonment, and conveyed to prison, still earnestly entreating the people to remain quiet, an order which they strictly obeyed.  The jury by which he had been condemned was known to be strongly biassed against him, and an appeal had been forwarded against his sentence to the House of Lords.  So strong there, too, was the feeling against O’Connell, that little expectation was entertained of its being favourably received.  Greatly to its honour, however, the sentence was reversed and he was set free.  His imprisonment had been of the lightest and least onerous description conceivable; indeed was ironically described by Mitchell shortly afterwards as that of a man—­“addressed by bishops, complimented by Americans, bored by deputations, serenaded by bands, comforted by ladies, half smothered by roses, half drowned in champagne.”  The enthusiasm shown at his release was frantic and delirious.  None the less those months in Richmond prison proved the death-knell of his power.  He was an old man by this time; he was already weakened in health, and that buoyancy which had hitherto carried him over any and every obstacle never again revived.  The “Young Ireland” party, the members of which had in the first instance been his allies and lieutenants, had now formed a distinct section, and upon the vital question of resistance were in fierce hostility to all his most cherished principles.  The state of the country, too, preyed visibly upon his mind.  By 1846 had begun that succession of disastrous seasons which, by destroying the feeble barrier which stood between the peasant and a cruel death, brought about a national tragedy, the most terrible perhaps with which modern Europe has been confronted.  This tragedy, though he did not live to see the whole of it, O’Connell—­himself the incarnation of the people—­felt acutely.  Deep despondency took hold of him.  He retired, to a great degree, from public life, leaving the conduct of his organization in the hands of others.  Few more tragic positions have been described or can be conceived than that of this old man—­so loved, so hated, so reverenced, so detested—­who had been so