cious gift was purchased by the effusion of generous blood. I
admire the Belgians, I honour the Belgians, for their courage and their
daring; and I will not stigmatize the means by which they obtained a
citizen king, a Chamber of Deputies." Here Mr. John O'Connell rose to
order. He said, the language of Mr. Meagher was so dangerous to the
Association, that it must cease to exist, or Mr. Meagher must cease to
be a member of it. Mr. Meagher again essayed to speak, but failed to
obtain a hearing. Mr. John O'Connell continued: Unless, he said, those
who acted with Mr. Meagher stood by the Peace Resolutions, they must
adopt other resolutions and another leader; upon which Mr. O'Brien and
the Young Ireland party abruptly left the Hall, amid much excitement and
confusion. They never returned to it: the rupture was complete.

Thus, at a most critical moment, standing between two years of fearful,
withering famine, did the leaders of the Irish people, by their
miserable dissensions, lay that people in hopeless prostration at the
mercy of the British Cabinet, from which, had they remained united, they
might have obtained means of saving the lives of hundreds of thousands
of their countrymen.[106]

It matters but little now which party was in the right and which in the
wrong. Looking back, however, through the cool medium of a quarter of a
century, it would seem that each side had something of right to support
its views. In the earlier part of his career, O'Connell did not disclaim
the use of physical force, nor denounce the employment of it, in the
cause of liberty, as it became his habit to do towards the close of his
life; and if ever he did so, it was usually after telling his audience,
as Mr. Mitchel said, that Ireland contained seven millions of people, as
brave as any upon the face of the earth. Subsequent professions of
loyalty, and assurances of his never intending to have recourse to the
bravery of those millions, were interpreted by the people as nothing
more than a clever touch of legal ability, to keep himself out of the
power of the Crown lawyers, who were ever on the watch to catch him in
his words. O'Connell himself may have never contemplated any effort
beyond legal and constitutional agitation, but the fear that he might
intend something more, founded on his bold allusions to the strength
and courage of those whom he led, gave undoubted force to the demands he
made upon the Government--in a strictly legal and con