in the train of concessions, which are
entitled to the name of emancipation. The pains and penalties of the
"_penal laws_" had been long abolished, and that barbarous code had been
compressed into cold and stolid exclusiveness. But the vices which a
long and unrelenting slavery had burned into the character of the
country, remained. The lie of law, which assumed the non-existence of
the Catholic had infused itself into his nature, and while it was erased
from the statute book, it was legible on his heart. That terrible
necessity of denying his feelings, his property, his religion and his
very being, had stamped its degrading influence on his nature. In a
moral sense the law had become a truth--there was no people. The
Catholic gentry, giddy by their recent elevation, had only changed for
that semblance of liberty their old stern spirit of resistance and
revenge. Their new concessions hung gracefully around them, but they
were like grafts on an ash stock--their growth was downward, and they
wanted the stature and dignity of the native tree. Such were the means
at Mr. O'Connell's disposal. His enemies on the other hand were false,
powerful, dexterous and unscrupulous. His efforts necessarily partook of
the character both of the weapons he was obliged to wield and the foes
he struck down. As he advanced to eminence and strength, means, the most
crafty and cruel, were taken to overthrow him, every one of which he
foiled by a sagacity infinitely above that of his oppressors. So
successful had he been in deceiving the champions of intolerance, that
of all the great qualities displayed in that wonderful struggle, that
which was most prized was the cunning of evasion. It left behind it an
enduring and destructive influence. Dissimulation in political action
began to be regarded as a public virtue, and long afterwards, when men
sought to assert the dignity of truth, their candour was charged against
them as a heinous crime. It will be seen hereafter how fatally this fact
operated against their efforts.

The very character of Emancipation has assumed an exaggerated and false
guise. The joy of the nation was boundless--its gratitude immeasurable.
In the shout that hailed the deliverer, earlier deliverers were
forgotten. No one remembered the men whose stupendous exertions wrung
from the reluctant spirit of a far darker time the right of living, of
worship, of enjoying property, and exercising the franchise. All these,
and more, wh