made no demonstration of active resistance; and as he approached the last barricade he was surrounded by a great multitude.  A few of the people were armed with rifles and muskets, others with pitchforks, scythes and slanes, and others had no weapons but stones.  John Dillon stood at the barricade.  The officer asked why his passage was interrupted, and stated he was only on an ordinary march.  Mr. Dillon demanded whether his object was to arrest Smith O’Brien?  He said emphatically, No.  Mr. Dillon then asked if he would pledge his honour as a soldier, that he had no intention of arresting Mr. O’Brien, adding, that if he did so, the troop would be allowed to pass unmolested.  He unhesitatingly pledged his honour, and immediately the barricade was partially removed.  Mr. Dillon took his horse by the bridle and led him out of the town.

We were approaching Killenaule by another route when Mr. O’Brien and his party left it by the high road to the collieries.  We followed, and after a race of some ten miles overtook them near Lisnabrock.  Thence we proceeded in cars to Boulagh, and thence to the Commons.  This was on Friday evening, the 28th day of July.  We retired to an upper room in a publichouse.  There were then present Mr. O’Brien, Mr. Dillon, Mr. Stephens, Mr. Cantwell, Mr. Meagher, Mr. O’Donohoe, Mr. Maurice Leyne, Mr. Reilly, Mr O’Mahony and myself, with others whose names I cannot mention, fourteen, as well as I remember, in all.[10] The same questions that were discussed on the former day were again revived, and we, who felt the necessity of the bold course we recommended then, were much more convinced of it under the altered circumstances of our position.

The debate was long and warm, but Mr. O’Brien’s objections were even more immovable than ever.  It will not be expected that all the proposals of that evening should be reproduced here.  Suffice it, therefore, to add that as far as the principles by which Mr. O’Brien’s conduct was guided, he adhered to them the more steadfastly in proportion as ruin became more inevitable.  Many calumnies have been circulated respecting that meeting.  It has been said that the discussion was acrimonious and the separation final.  The truth is, there was not one word, even, of an angry tone, and we separated just as on the former occasion, determined to cope as best we could with a doom we were unable to avert.  Often afterwards it was a source of melancholy pleasure to some of his comrades that he had not been induced to incur what he regarded as guilt.  The lofty consciousness of unerring rectitude which sustained his fortitude could not fail to be chequered by the recollection of acts which in his own estimation were not purely blameless.  Had success attended the suggested proposals, they would receive the world’s unqualified approval; while failure, explained through the medium of a malicious law, and a warped and cowardly public opinion, would brand them as iniquitous.  But Mr. O’Brien’s scrupulous sense of honour escaped the hazards of such feeble probabilities; and in the hour of deepest gloom his own unsullied conscience shed peace, light and glory on his fate.