of the Volunteers of ’82—­“Free Trade, or else.”—­a motto often quoted by the Liberator himself, with a disclaimer, to be sure, in order to avoid the law, as the people believed.  Smith O’Brien was right, then, when he said he could not see the utility of continually assuring England that, under no circumstances whatever, would Ireland have recourse to any but peaceable means to right her wrongs, quoting at the same time Davis’s happy definition of moral force—­

     “When Grattan rose, none dared oppose
       The claim he made for freedom;
     They knew our swords to back his words
       Were ready, did he need them.”

Had Mr. O’Brien and his friends stopped here, all would have been well; but they did not.  The two parties in the Repeal Association, having the same object in view—­the good of Ireland—­chose different and diverging routes for arriving at it; and every day saw them further and further from each other.  The Young Ireland party, to the sorrow of their best friends, and, exposing themselves to the sneers of their enemies, drifted rapidly into an armed outbreak, feeble and ill-planned, if planned at all, and ending in miserable disaster.  The Old Ireland agitation went on; but the hand of death was upon the mighty spirit who alone could sustain it, and it may be said to have expired with him.

Moral force, with physical force in the not too dim perspective behind it, was a giant power in the hands of O’Connell, and it won emancipation; physical force by itself, when brought to the test, eventuated in ridiculous failure.

English parties, instead of legislating for Ireland as an integral part of the Empire, have been in the habit of using her for the promotion of their own ambitious views.  The party out of place seeks her aid to help to reinstate it in power; whilst those in power, profuse of promises before they had attained to it, forget, or postpone the measures which, in opposition, they had pronounced essential to her welfare.

When Sir Robert Peel was resigning, he took especial care to lay down the doctrine, that Ireland was fully entitled to all the rights and privileges of Great Britain.  His successor, Lord John Russell, expressed the same view only a short time before he was summoned to the Councils of his Sovereign.  A few days after his unsuccessful attempt to form a government, at the close of 1845, he was invited by the people of Glasgow to accept the freedom of their city.  In the speech which he addressed to them, on that occasion, he said, “My opinion is, that Scotchmen should have the same privileges as Englishmen, and that Irishmen ought to have the same privileges as both Englishmen and Scotchmen.”  The sentiment was received with cheers.  He further said:  “I consider that the Union was but a parchment and unsubstantial union, if Ireland is not to be treated, in the hour of difficulty and distress, as an integral part of the United Kingdom; and unless we are prepared