life would suggest higher motives; and the perseverance and intensity of feeling and purpose, with which he urged the deliverance of his country in after times, proves that he was a stranger to the sordid considerations which envy or fear coupled with his first labours in that direction.  Certain it is that, whatever were his motives, it could be no tempting ambition that determined him to transfer the exercise of his abilities to the tribune of angry agitation from that more legitimate and loftier arena which, with unsurpassed energy, he had won.

The agitation succeeded rapidly.  The Government became at once intolerant and impotent.  They proclaimed down the agitation; but this only imparted to it activity, energy and strength.  The Government gave way to a furious storm which had been long gathering elsewhere.  The great Reform Ministry succeeded with Earl Grey at its head; and in the struggle for Imperial parliamentary Reform, Ireland and her independence were forgotten.

During the intellectual conflict that followed, Mr. O’Connell asserted his pre-eminence, and won a lofty name.  He made far the most successful speech on the question of Reform.  It not only exceeded the ablest orations of the British leaders, but was, perhaps, the most triumphant he himself had ever delivered.  But his position soon changed.  From being the unanswerable champion of the ministerial majority in the House of Commons, he took the lead of a small opposition which resisted the Government on the Irish Bill.  Although the minister was the exponent and stern advocate of the widest liberality, in applying the reform to England, he undertook to defend, on the very opposite principle, the niggard liberty he was prepared in the same measure to extend to Ireland.  In this unnatural and unexpected turn of affairs, Mr. O’Connell took a proud and bold stand, against the Government, and for his country.  The ministry succeeded, but he had more than ever acquired the confidence and unbounded gratitude of his countrymen.  Thenceforward, he was their acknowledged chief, and his words expressed not more his own than the public will.

His remonstrances were vehement and angry, but they were vain.  The ministry disregarded the claims of justice, as well as the voice of the orator.  The quarrel became personal and vindictive to so great an extent, that Mr. O’Connell’s support would almost ensure the defeat of any measure at the hands of the English Whig faction.

While this was his position in the House of Commons, he was preparing the elements of an organisation which was destined to embrace the whole island.  He started the first great Repeal Association, which was at once attended with marvellous success.  Forty-four members of Parliament were under its control if not in its ranks.  A discussion of the merits of Repeal was forced in the House of Commons by the intemperate zeal of the member for Cork.[3] The motion was resisted by the whole weight and influence of the Ministry.  But in a resolution proposed as an amendment, both Houses concurred in acknowledging that Ireland’s complaint was founded in justice, and in solemnly pledging themselves to the practical redress of her grievances.  The resolution was carried to the foot of the throne, and there received the sanction of royalty.