less
than towards the few remaining Celtic ones. The failings of the upper
classes of Ireland of his day, and long before his day, there is no need
to extenuate, but it must not in fairness be forgotten that what seems
to our soberer judgment the worst of those failings--their insane
extravagance, their exalted often ludicrously inflated notions of their
own relative importance; their indifference to, sometimes open hostility
to, the law--all were bonds of union and sources of pride to their
dependants rather than the other way. It needed a yet stronger
impulse--that of religious enthusiasm--to break so deeply rooted and
inherent a sentiment. When that spark was kindled every other fell away
before it.

As regards England, unfortunately, the concession of Emancipation was
spoilt not merely by the sense that it was granted to force rather than
to conviction, but even more to the intense bitterness and dislike with
which it was regarded by a large proportion of English Protestants. A
new religious life and a new sense of religious responsibility was
making itself widely felt there. The eighteenth century, with its
easy-going indifferentism, had passed away, and one of the effects of
this new revival was unhappily to reawaken in many conscientious breasts
much of the old and half-extinct horror of Popery, a horror which found
its voice in a language of intolerance and bigotry which at the present
time seems scarcely conceivable.

The years which followed were chiefly marked by a succession of efforts
upon O'Connell's part to procure Repeal. An association which had been
formed by him for this purpose was put down by the Government in 1830,
but the next year it was reformed under a new name, and at the general
election in 1831 forty members were returned pledged to support Repeal.
The condition of Ireland was meanwhile miserable in the extreme. A
furious tithe-war was raging, and many outrages had been committed,
especially against tithe proctors, the class of men who were engaged in
collecting the tax. Ribbon associations and other secret societies too
had been spreading rapidly underground. Of such societies O'Connell was
through life the implacable enemy. The events of 1798 and 1803 had left
an indelible impression on his mind. The "United Irishmen," in his own
words, "taught me that all work for Ireland must be done openly and
above board." The end of the tithe struggle, however, was happily
approaching. In 1838 an Ir