All that followed was one unvaried scene of distraction, division and enmity.  Week after week, the seceders were held up to public odium, derision and scorn.  One day, they were “blasphemous,” one day, “revolutionary,” one day, they “sang small,” and one day “their nobles were come to ninepence.”  Now, they were challenged to establish a society of their own principles; now, they were recommended to the mercy of the Attorney-General, and again commended to the hatred of the people.  Meantime a blight had fallen on the earth, and a whole people’s food, in one night, perished.  To the new Government, the famine that ensued was an assurance of subsistence and success.  Hunger would waste the bodies of the people, as the dearth of truth had wasted their souls.  The ministry affected great sympathy, great diligence, and great impotence.  Among other wants of theirs, the want of practical engineers was felt the deepest.  They knew and lamented that many died of starvation; but the thing was inevitable as long as they were unprovided with practical engineers.  Mr. O’Connell, from the platform of the hall, announced the good intentions of the Government, and proclaimed, at the same time, his own commission to supply them with engineers.  How many applied and were refused, I am not in a position to say; but there is no disputing the records of the church-yard, where many an uncoffined corpse attested the care of the “paternal government.”  The people were guaranteed against death, and yet death came, and took them at his will; but what was left of life was taught to exhaust itself in curses against those who would save it at every risk.  Wherever the seceders appeared they were hooted.  Prostitutes of both sexes regarded them as fit subjects for their insolent raillery.  The avowed foes of nationality looked on them as fools; its pretended friends as knaves; and the common herd of indifferent villains as a butt.  The low retainers of the English garrison, who had sold their souls to the enemy but were kept in awe by bodily fear, became outrageously patriotic; and with insulted gratitude they scouted the traducers of the “saviour of their country.”  Alas! in Ireland, nothing was saved but death’s agencies.  Doom had come upon all—­her produce, her people, her hopes and her morality.

The same report, which contained the Peace Resolutions, set out with a statement dissevering the Association from the Nation newspaper.  If the statement were embodied in a resolution of expulsion, it would clash directly with the failure of the prosecution against it, and brand the jurors who refused to find a verdict with perjury.  But the admission of the Nation that, in 1843, it inculcated principles having a remote tendency to effect the redemption of the country, by arms if need were, supplied the Association with a pretext for expelling it altogether.  Two rules had been adopted for the circulation of newspapers.  The first was, when L10 were forwarded