It matters but little now which party was in the right and which in the wrong.  Looking back, however, through the cool medium of a quarter of a century, it would seem that each side had something of right to support its views.  In the earlier part of his career, O’Connell did not disclaim the use of physical force, nor denounce the employment of it, in the cause of liberty, as it became his habit to do towards the close of his life; and if ever he did so, it was usually after telling his audience, as Mr. Mitchel said, that Ireland contained seven millions of people, as brave as any upon the face of the earth.  Subsequent professions of loyalty, and assurances of his never intending to have recourse to the bravery of those millions, were interpreted by the people as nothing more than a clever touch of legal ability, to keep himself out of the power of the Crown lawyers, who were ever on the watch to catch him in his words.  O’Connell himself may have never contemplated any effort beyond legal and constitutional agitation, but the fear that he might intend something more, founded on his bold allusions to the strength and courage of those whom he led, gave undoubted force to the demands he made upon the Government—­in a strictly legal and constitutional manner.  When the “single-drop-of-blood” principle became the guiding star of his political life, his demands had public opinion, and their own inherent justice only to support them; so that physical force no longer played a part in Irish politics, except from the fact that, inasmuch as it undoubtedly still existed, it might some day act without him, or in spite of him, or act when he should be dead and gone.  It is hard to think that a people who had been resisting English oppression for twenty generations, with nothing else but physical force, ever believed him in earnest, when he told them they should win their rights by legal and constitutional means alone.  The more educated may have given some credence to his words, but I do not think the great bulk of the people ever did.[107] At any rate, the principle was distasteful to them; and when the Nation newspaper began to publish what seemed to them the good old threatening physical force articles, and when a talented band of young gentlemen, in the Repeal Association, began to pronounce eulogiums on the physical force patriots of other countries in fervid eloquence, they soon became the prime favourites of the people; and it was not long until the Nation surpassed, in circulation, every other journal in the country.  Those enthusiastic young men saw that the oft-repeated maxim, that “no political amelioration is worth one drop of human blood,” took the strength and manhood out of the agitation; so they determined to return to the older doctrine of moral force—­a doctrine which neither makes it independent of physical force, nor antagonistic with it, but rather its threatening shadow.  A principle well expressed by the motto on the cannon