At the adjourned meeting next day, the Secretary read a letter from Mr. Charles Gavan Duffy, the proprietor of the Nation newspaper.  That journal had been charged by several members of the Association with inciting the people to overthrow English rule in Ireland by armed force.  Mr. Duffy’s letter was written to explain and defend the articles of the Nation, which were said to have such a tendency.  It must be admitted that, in his earlier days of agitation, O’Connell did not seem to hold the single-drop-of-blood theory; on the contrary, he often threatened England, at least indirectly, with the physical strength of the Irish millions.  The Young Ireland party, in defending themselves, referred to this, but Mr. John O’Connell explained in his speech of the previous day, that all those allusions to physical force pointed but to a single case in which it could be used—­“the resistance of aggression, and defence of right.”  The Liberator himself, in the letter quoted above, also fully admits this one case, when he says it is to be borne in mind that those peaceable doctrines leave untouched the right of defence against illegal attack, or unconstitutional violence.  Referring to this admission, Mr. Duffy, in a postscript to his letter, writes—­“Mr. O’Connell says his threatening language pointed only to defensive measures.  I have not said anything else.  I am not aware of any great popular struggle for liberty that was not defensive.”

Mr. John O’Connell again spoke at great length on the second day; his speech mainly consisting in a bill of indictment against the Nation.  He quoted many passages from it to show that its conductors wrote up physical force.  Mr. John Mitchell, in an able speech, interrupted by cheers, hisses, and confusion, undertook to show that O’Connell was, to all appearance, formerly for physical force.  He was accustomed, he said, to remind his hearers that they were taller and stronger than Englishmen, and had hinted, at successive meetings, that he had then and there at his disposal a force larger than the three armies at Waterloo.  “I cannot,” said Mr. Mitchell, “censure those who may have believed, in the simplicity of their hearts, that he did mean to create in the people a vague idea that they might, after all, have to fight for their liberties.  It is not easy to blame a man who confesses that he, for his part, thought when Mr. O’Connell spoke of being ready to die for his country, he meant to suggest the notion of war in some shape; that when he spoke of ‘a battle line,’ he meant a line of battle and nothing else."[105]