Whatever hopes may be entertained by Mr. O’Connell, his suggestions met with no sustainment and no response, save the empty echoes of an adulating press.  Among the great party to whom he appealed, not one voice was heard to suggest a practical step in the direction intimated.  The project fell, if indeed it were ever seriously entertained, leaving no memory and no regret.  The first place Mr. O’Connell afterwards appeared in a public capacity, was at the Limerick banquet, given on’ the 20th of November.  His speech on that occasion contained scarcely a reference to Federalism, and both his sentiments and those of the other speakers, including John, Archbishop of Tuam, as well as the Toasts and Mottoes, were distinguished for loftiness of tone, unflinching purpose and highest enthusiasm.  But other elements were at work furtively sapping that purpose and dimming that enthusiasm.

Prominent among these was the spirit of religious dissension already under discussion, to which it is now time to recur.

At and after the period when the Roman Catholic prelates accepted the functions of administering a law insulting and obnoxious to the Catholics generally, much angry controversy prevailed.  A report was rife that the Government not alone succeeded in deluding the Irish Bishops, but had accredited a minister plenipotentiary, whose mission was to conciliate the Court of Rome to a “Concordat” with England.  A rescript said to be received by the Most Reverend Doctor Crolly, the Primate, was adduced to prove not alone the existence of the intrigue, but its partial success.  The rescript contained an admonition to restrain the intemperate violence of political priests, and an advice to confine themselves more generally to the sacred functions of their holy office.  The English press magnified the advice into a command, and exulted over the failure of the Repeal movement whose extinction they augured from the withdrawal of the Catholic priesthood.

Mr. O’Connell, alarmed at the import of a command so fatal, pronounced the rescript “uncanonical.”  This led to greater dissensions and bitterer recriminations.  The prelates who condemned the Bequest Act, denounced those who accepted the task of administering it.  One of the body thus writes:—­

“The resolution [referring to one passed at a meeting of the prelates, which was pronounced by the ministerial press a vote of unanimous approval of the bishops’ acceptance of the office of Commissioners] did not meet the approval of all the Bishops, neither could it convey to any one of the Episcopal Commissioners the most distant notion that in accepting the office he did not oppose the views and wishes of many of his Episcopal brethren.  When the resolution was moved, there were six of the protesting Bishops absent, and a moment was not allowed to pass after it was seconded, when it was denounced in the strongest manner by two of the Bishops present.  They solemnly declared before the assembled prelates