abandoned for the same reason that Russell's had proved abortive the year before. They passed the Commons, but were obstructed and recast in the Lords, the £8 being changed to £10. So arduous was each step in the ladder of Irish Reform.

In 1840 Morpeth again introduced a Municipal Reform Bill, which this time had the advantage of Peel's influential support. By the new arrangement the eleven largest towns were continued as corporations under the provisions of the Act, to be composed of mayor, aldermen, and burgesses, the franchise in them being fixed at a £10 rating. Thirty-seven smaller corporations were dissolved, nineteen of which possessed corporate property to the amount of £100 a year and upwards, and eighteen corporate funds to a smaller amount. Any of these thirty-seven boroughs, which had a population exceeding 3,000, could apply for a charter on the petition of the majority of the inhabitants rated at £8 to the Queen in Council, the affairs of these towns, pending the application, being managed by Commissioners appointed under the Act of George IV. As for the remainder of the thirty-seven, the corporate funds of those of the first class were to be vested in Commissioners in the proportion of one Commissioner to every 500 inhabitants, and those of the second class to the Poor Law guardians and applied to public objects. Lyndhurst as usual mutilated the Bill, when it entered the Lords, by insisting upon the municipal franchise being raised in the smaller towns to 10, thus permitting only the largest towns to obtain the advantage of self-government, and with this alteration the feeble measure was eventually passed. Another provision in the Bill, which robbed it of much of its grace in the eyes of the Irish, was that the Sheriff was not to be elected by the town councils, as was the custom in England, but appointed by the Lord-Lieutenant. The town councils, indeed, were to be allowed to submit certain names to the Viceroy for selection, but if all of them were repugnant to him, he was to be able to nominate a man of his own choice.

Thus, after long waiting, the Irish had at last succeeded in obtaining the advantage of elective governing bodies for their largest towns. One of the results of the Act was the election of O'Connell as Lord Mayor, the first Roman Catholic to occupy the position since the Revolution of 1681. The election took place on November 1, 1841, in the Assembly Rooms, William Street. Later on he made an arrangement by which the mayors were to be Protestant and Catholic in alternate years, and this agreement was maintained until the rise of the Land League in 1880.

This crippled measure was a great disappointment to O'Connell. He had determined to support the Melbourne Government as long as he conscientiously could, and had continued to maintain

the alliance even after the passing of the Tithe Act, although he had formed the Precursor's Society to agitate for Municipal Reform. The belated, strengthless reform had now come, but was worth absolutely nothing. As Sir Erskine May has said"The tedious controversy of six years was at length closed, but the measure virtually amounted to a scheme of municipal disfranchisement." O'Connell was therefore determined to have done with this solemn trifling and once more to raise the cry of repeal.

A

CHAPTER VIII

O'CONNELL'S TWO CONSTITUTIONAL AGITATIONS FOR A REPEAL OF THE UNION, 1830 AND 1842-4

"there are some others who say that the great misfortune of Ireland is in the existence of the noxious race of political agitators. Well, as to that, I may state that the most distinguished political agitators that have appeared during the last hundred years in Ireland are Grattan and O'Connell, and I should say that he must either be a very stupid or a very base Irishman who would wish to erase the achievements of Grattan and O'Connell from the annals of his country."-JOHN BRIGHT, Dublin, October 30, 1866.

"All the sympathies of all continental politicians are with the Irish. We are regarded as the oppressors, and the Irish as the oppressed. An insurrection in Ireland would have the good wishes of a great majority of the people of Europe. And, sir, it is natural that it should be so."-THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, February 13, 1844.

ALREADY, in 1810, had a cry arisen for the repeal of the Union. Ten years of married life had sufficed to nauseate the weaker partner. For within such a period what vice there is in a man is generally disclosed, what virtue there may be is manifested. Within such a period of ten years the faithless spouse has time to prove his inconstancy, the faithful one his fidelity: the former his harshness and indifference, the other his kindliness and affection. A man cannot hedge about his character with mere profession: the truth will out. You know him by his deeds, by his manner of living, and his associates. The rest is all dress a coat and trousers into which he thrusts himself, to last till they are worn out and rejected for a newer or more fashionable suit. For ten long years Ireland had tried to lie with her partner in the same bed, but without success, for the larger and stronger bedfellow filled the whole of it, and turned out his feebler mate on to the floor. Was it remarkable that she should weep and tear her hair, and demand a separation from this unnatural husband? The wonder was she did not smother him in the night, or, seeking an illicit amour, call in the aid of some stalwart foreign lover to help her in her distress. For the Union was a farce, the distrust mutual, the dislike reciprocal. The rulers of Ireland despised her because of her want of guineas, and disliked her because of their inability to govern her; and Ireland looked askance at her rulers like a man once cheated eyes his deceiver, fearful lest he should once

more fall a victim, and remembering also that the guardians of the law had actually been accomplices in the fraud. In fact, by 1810, the relations between the two countries had become well-nigh insufferable. A meeting had been held that year on September 18 at the Royal Exchange in Dublin in which Catholics and Protestants took part, and where O'Connell delivered an impassioned speech urging his countrymen to toil without ceasing for their charter of national independence. For there was-none could doubt it-grave discontent in Ireland, weeping and gnashing of teeth in many a hovel, all the burdens of great poverty without its dignity, all the oppressiveness of masterful supervision without the guarantee of fair play.1

In 1830, O'Connell, having abandoned his seat in Clare and won a brilliant victory over the Beresford interest at Waterford, proceeded, in view of the suppression of the old Catholic Association, to form a new one for the agitation of Repeal, called "The Society of the Friends of Ireland of all Religious Persuasions." The meeting of this Association was soon prohibited, whereupon in October 1830 he summoned his immediate followers in Dublin to draw up the constitution of "The Anti-Union Association," and their advertisement was published in the evening papers. Sir Henry Hardinge, the Chief Secretary, proclaimed the proposed Association, and O'Connell retorted in a speech, the result of which was that Hardinge sent his friend, George d'Aguilar, to O'Connell with a challenge to a duel. But O'Connell refused the challenge. Meanwhile he had established weekly "Repeal Breakfasts" at Holmes' Hotel, at which violent anti-Union speeches were made. The Tory Government were now defeated on a motion by Sir Henry Parnell for the revision of the Civil List, and a Whig Government under Lord Grey was formed. Anglesey, who had left Ireland in 1828, was again appointed Lord-Lieutenant, and Edward Stanley, who afterwards became the celebrated Lord Derby, was made Chief Secretary. O'Connell seems now to have been asked whether he would accept a judgeship and to have rejected the offer.

In 1829 "The O'Connell Tribute' was inaugurated by Patrick Vincent FitzPatrick, the son of the Catholic bookseller. The tribute, as in the case of the "rent" of the Catholic Association, was mainly collected at the chapel doors after mass on Sundays. In the first year after emancipation £50,000 were contributed, and in five years, from 1829 to 1834, no less than £91,000 were subscribed. On the average it amounted to £13,000 a year. O'Connell was often attacked by his enemies

1 Appendix XXXIX, quotations from J. P. Curran, Edward Wakefield, Mr. Justice Day, etc.

on the score of the tribute, but, as Charles Greville, in his Memoirs, says "His dependence on his country's bounty in the rent that was levied for so many years was alike honourable to the contributors and the recipient." In the first week of January 1831 a "Breakfast Meeting"-ostensibly for the benefit of the Dublin Orphan Asylum-was held at Holmes' Hotel to consider a circular issued by Stanley, and addressed to the Irish magistrates, directing them, while they respected the constitutional principle of the right of petition, to discountenance and put down as illegal all meetings whose object, in their opinion, was to accomplish changes in the law by force and intimidation. O'Connell presided, and on his motion it was resolved to establish "a general Association for Ireland to prevent illegal meetings, and protect the exercise of the sacred right of petitioning." This Association was proclaimed next day. O'Connell then proposed that he himself should be constituted "The Repeal Association," as an individual could not be dispersed by proclamation. To assist him, he appointed a Council of Thirty-one which he styled "a body of persons in the habit of meeting weekly at breakfast at a place called Holmes' Hotel." But this body was also proclaimed. "The Irish Society for Legal and Legislative Relief" followed. This too was suppressed. It immediately reappeared as "The Anti-Union Association," and again the same result followed. Next day O'Connell and his followers styled themselves "An Association of Irish Volunteers for the Repeal of the Union." This was likewise suppressed, and the following day it reappeared as "An Association of Subscribers to the Parliamentary Intelligence Office." But the new Association experienced the same fate; so O'Connell called it "A party meeting for dinner at Hayes' Tavern." Then a comprehensive proclamation was issued on January 13, 1831, prohibiting the meeting of any association, body, society, or party calling itself any name whatsoever; but over 300 friends met O'Connell at Hayes' that night at dinner, and next morning he and his Council of Thirty-one assembled at the same tavern to breakfast, where they were dispersed by two police magistrates. On January 19, 1831, O'Connell was arrested for sedition at his residence in Merrion Square at ten o'clock in the morning, and proceedings were commenced against him for inciting to riot. The Cabinet, however, unknown to the Executive, wished the prosecution to drop, as they wanted O'Connell's aid in the Reform Bill. On March 9 he made a speech in its favour. On April 20 he was to have appeared for judgment, but he could not be spared, and the Attorney-General agreed to a further postponement of the sentence to May 9. In April, Parliament was dissolved owing to the defeat of the Reform Bill in Committee, and the statute under which the