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Devin Reilly, and other prominent members of the Confederation. They took a survey of the village and its neighbourhood; addressed the crowd from the piers of the chapel gate, and slept in the house of one of the village shopkeepers. Next day they returned to Mullinahone and thence to Killenaule, where they were received with every demonstration of welcome and rejoicing. Bouquets fell in showers upon O'Brien; addresses were read, and the fullest and warmest co-operation was freely promised by the excited crowds that congregated in the streets. The exact position which the Confederates had now assumed towards the Crown and government, is deserving of a moment's attention. Up to the last they carefully distinguished between resisting the acts of the government and disputing the sovereignty of the queen. They regarded the suspension of the _Habeas Corpus_ Act as unconstitutional in itself; and when O'Brien told her Majesty's Ministers in the House of Commons, that it was they who were the traitors to the country, the Queen, and the Constitution, he did but express the opinions that underlay the whole policy of the Confederation. Even the passing of the _Habeas Corpus_ Suspension Act was not quite sufficient to exhaust their patience; in order to fill the measure of the government's transgressions and justify a resort to arms against them, it was necessary in the opinion of O'Brien and his associates, that the authorities should attempt to carry into operation the iniquitious law they had passed; the arrest of O'Brien was to be the signal for insurrection; meanwhile, they were satisfied with organizing their forces for the fray, and preparing for offering an effective resistance to the execution of the warrant, whenever it should make its appearance. It was therefore that when at Killenaule, a small party of dragoons rode up to the town they were suffered to proceed unmolested; at the first notice of their coming, the people rushed to the streets and hastily threw up a barricade to intercept them. Dillon commanded at the barricade; beside him stood Patrick O'Donoghue, and a young man whose career as a revolutionist, was destined to extend far beyond the scenes in which he was then sharing; and whose name was one day to become first a terror to the government of England, and afterwards a by-word and a reproach amongst his countrymen. O'Donoghue and Stephens were both armed, and when the officer commanding the dragoons rode
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