from any account, grossly traduced me.  I said, at the last meeting, in the presence of the notetakers of the police, who are paid by him, that he was too prudent to attack me in my presence.  I see the same police informers here now, and I authorize them carefully to report these my words, that Mr. Peel would not DARE, in my presence, or in any place where he was liable to personal account, use a single expression derogatory to my interest, or my honour.”

This passage led to the affair of honour between himself and Peel.  No hostile meeting, however, took place.

His best friends thought his propensity of arraigning and denouncing those who differed from him, was often carried to excess, but he refused to give it up or modify it.  The defence he once made for it was, that it was not irritation, it was calculation that made him adopt that style of animadversion.[264] The Catholic aristocracy and the older leaders of the Catholics were offended with it, and soon retired from any active part in Catholic affairs.  This may have been one of O’Connell’s calculations.  Although his aggressive propensities were sometimes indulged to an extreme degree, he was right in the main, for, the “whispering humbleness” of the older Catholic leaders would have never won emancipation; and this was handsomely and honourably confessed to Mr. P.V.  Fitzpatrick by Lord Fingal, shortly before his death.  Lord Fingal having sent for Mr. Fitzpatrick, that gentleman repaired immediately to his lordship’s residence, and having been shown into the library, where the dying nobleman was reclining in an easy chair, feeble in body, but bright and vigorous in mind, his lordship addressed him as follows:  “Mr. Fitzpatrick, I have been for some time thinking whom I should pitch upon, to discharge my conscience of a heavy debt, and I have fixed upon you, as the most appropriate person, because you not only know me and Mr. O’Connell, but you knew us all who were connected with Catholic politics for years, and well.  You know, too, that I went forward to an extent, that caused me to be sometimes snubbed by those of my own order in that body; but, notwithstanding, I, like them was criminally cowardly.  We never understood that we had a nation behind us—­O’Connell alone comprehended that properly, and used his knowledge fitly.  It was by him the gates of the Constitution were broken open for us; we owe everything to his rough work, and, to effect further services for Ireland, there must be more of it.  I never understood this properly until they made me a peer of parliament, and I feel myself bound to make the avowal under the circumstances in which you now see me, preparatory to my passing into another world.  You will communicate this to O’Connell, and my most earnest wish, that he will receive the avowal as an atonement for my not having always supported him, as I now feel he should have been supported."[265]