Physical contagion generally begins at the bases of society, and trails its way slowly to the upper ranks, occasionally dealing doom to some hard hearts that mocked, it may be, its first uncared-for victims.  But moral corruption begins with the highest, and embraces the whole circle of society in its descent.  So it was in this instance.  Members of Parliament who had solemnly pledged themselves to the disenthrallment of their country, accepted the wages, and entered into the service of the Government who had one and all vowed they would prevent the fulfilment of the hustings pledge, even at the risk of a civil war.  Among them was Mr. O’Connell’s son, who had taken that pledge before the assembled people of Meath, his son-in-law, Mr. Fitzsimon, who had sworn it to the freeholders of the metropolitan county, Mr. Carew O’Dwyer who, in virtue of the same pledge, obtained the unanimous suffrage of Drogheda, and several others.  Many relatives and friends of Mr. O’Connell obtained rewards adequate to their services.  Agents who had been successful against Whig candidates now retired into Whig places.  The corporate towns were made over to the Whigs, who held out the understanding that the sons, nephews and kindred of the leading and deserving citizens would be provided for in the departments suited to their different capacities, and varying from the post of tide-waiter, to that of stipendiary magistrate.  Fierce was the struggle which followed, and sore the disappointment, and many a scalding tear of baffled ambition watered the way to the aspirant’s ruin.

This is not said for the purpose of disparaging the legitimate ambition of those who sought advancement in the altered circumstances and sentiments of the time.  But the effect of such a state of things on the morality of the nation was incalculably injurious.  The most solemn resolution was openly violated, and that by the very men who were foremost in recommending the national vow.  Nor would its tendency be less fatal, assuming that Mr. O’Connell was correct in supposing that the experiment would be vain, and that its failure could not fail to supply new and more urgent reasons for the nation’s independence.  The compact, if even entered into with that view, would shake all faith in public men; because it would only change the parties with whom a false obligation was contracted, leaving the obligation itself and its violation exactly where they were.

Mr. O’Connell’s support was doomed to be as fatal to the Whigs as his opposition.  He unhappily assisted them during his period to carry one measure, against which they had recorded several solemn decisions in Parliament, namely, the Tithe Bill, without an appropriation clause, which was a direct falsification of their own resolution, whereby they defeated Sir Robert Peel’s short-lived administration, in 1835.  And what was still more lamentable, he supported them in renewing in a modified form the very Coercion Act for the introduction of which he designated them as “base, bloody and brutal.”