At an early date the penetrating mind of O’Brien detected the existence of the evil which was afterwards to transform Conciliation Hall into a market for place hunters.  “I apprehend,” said he, in a remarkable speech delivered in January, ’46, “more danger to Repeal from the subtle influence of a Whig administration, than from the coercive measures of the Tories.”  And he was right.  Day by day, the subtle influence which he dreaded did its blighting work; and the success of those who sought the destruction of the Repeal Association through the machinery of bribes and places was already apparent, when on the 27th of July, 1846, O’Brien, accompanied by Mitchel, Meagher, Duffy, and others arose in sorrow and indignation, and quitted the Conciliation Hall for ever.

Six months later the Irish Confederation held its first meeting in the Round Room of the Rotundo.  Meagher, Mitchel, Doheny, O’Brien, O’Gorman, Martin, and McGee were amongst the speakers; and amidst the ringing cheers of the densely thronged meeting, the establishment was decreed of the Irish Confederation, for the purpose—­as the resolution declared—­“of protecting our national interests, and obtaining the Legislative Independence of Ireland by the force of opinion, by the combination of all classes of Irishmen, and by the exercise of all the political, social, and moral influence within our reach.”  It will be seen that the means by which the Confederates proposed to gain their object, did not differ materially from the programme of the Repeal Association.  But there was this distinction.  Against place-hunting, and everything savouring of trafficking with the government, the Confederates resolutely set their faces; and in the next place, while prescribing to themselves nothing but peaceful and legal means for the accomplishment of their object, they scouted the ridiculous doctrine, that “liberty was not worth the shedding of a single drop of blood,” and that circumstances might arise under which resort to the arbitration of the sword would be righteous and justifiable.  In time, however, the Confederates took up a bolder and more dangerous position.  As early as May, 1846, Lord John Russell spoke of the men who wrote in the pages of the Nation, and who subsequently became the leaders of the Confederation, “as a party looking to disturbance as its means, and having separation from England as its object.”  The description was false at the time, but before two years had elapsed its application became more accurate.  A few men there were like Mitchel, who from the birth of the Confederation, and perhaps before it, abandoned all expectation of redress through the medium of Constitutional agitation; but it was not until the flames of revolution had wrapped the nations of the Continent in their fiery folds—­until the barricades were up in every capital from Madrid to Vienna—­and until the students’ song of freedom was mingled with the paean of victory on many a field of death—­that the hearts