No wonder that the actual return of Mr. Shiel, which the committee was charged to resist, had escaped its vigilance; for the celebrated Peace Resolutions were, at the same time, under discussion, and produced simultaneously with the Dungarvan report.  Mr. Mitchel, Mr. O’Gorman and Mr. Meagher, who attended the committee, vainly remonstrated against the betrayal of Dungarvan, as well as the Peace Resolutions.  They saw that the real object of the resolutions was to blind the country to the other important question, whether the Irish constituencies were to be transferred once more to Whig placemen; and they confined their opposition principally to the Dungarvan case.  It must be admitted, too, that the falsehood involved in the Peace Resolutions, escaped their attention in the first instance; and they were under the impression that the pledge they contained extended no farther than the action of the Association itself was concerned.  On consideration, they found it was of far wider scope, and would engage them to a false principle, embracing all men, all countries and all tunes; and having stated this at the public meeting of the Association, they allowed the resolutions to pass without further opposition.

The original resolution on which the Association was framed is this:—­

    “The total disclaimer of, and absence from, all physical force,
    violence or breach of the law.”

The resolution, reported on the 13th of July, 1846, is as follows:—­

    “That, to promote political amelioration, peaceable means alone
    should be used, to the exclusion of all others, save those that
    are peaceful, legal and constitutional.”

Sometimes, it has been averred lately that these two resolutions are, in principle and effect, the same.  Mr. O’Connell himself declared the latter was introduced by him, “to draw a line of demarcation between Old and Young Ireland.”  Indeed, if there were no distinction, the introduction would be eminently absurd as well as pernicious.  And if they be different, as essentially they are, there must be some strong justification for the adoption of the latter.

But before proceeding to this enquiry, it may not be amiss to point out the exact distinction between the original and the new resolution.  The former embraced a rule of action whereby the members of the Association engaged their faith and honour to each other and the country that they would not use its agency to cause or promote physical force or violence of any kind, or commit one another to any act of illegality.  But it went no farther—­it enunciated no moral dogma—­a rule of conscience rather than a pledge of conduct such as the other—­and it claimed no sacrifice of one’s own convictions.  As a mutual guarantee, it was not only just but essential to the perfect safety of the Association.