ithout another trial of strength.
Then, if they succeed, the onus of retrieving lost credit is thrown upon
the party that was formerly victorious. If they fail a second time,
the double triumph of their conquerors excites them to a greater
determination to throw off the additional disgrace; and this species of
alternation perpetuates the evil.

"These habits, however, familiarize our peasantry to acts of outrage and
violence--the bad passions are cultivated and nourished, until crimes,
which peaceable men look upon with fear and horror, lose their real
magnitude and deformity in the eyes of Irishmen. I believe this kind
of undefined hatred between either parties or nations, is the most
dangerous and fatal spirit which can pervade any portion of society.
If you hate a man for an obvious and palpable injury, it is likely
that when he cancels that injury by an act of subsequent kindness,
accompanied by an exhibition of sincere sorrow, you will cease to look
upon him as your enemy; but where the hatred is such that, while feeling
you cannot, on a sober examination of your heart, account for it, there
is little hope that you will ever be able to stifle the enmity that you
entertain against him. This, however, in politics and religion, is what
is frequently designated as principle--a word on which men, possessing
higher and greater advantages than the poor ignorant peasantry of
Ireland, pride themselves. In sects and parties, we may mark its effects
among all ranks and nations. I therefore, seldom wish, Toby, to hear a
man assert that he is of this party or that, from principle; for I am
usually inclined to suspect that he is not, in this case, influenced by
conviction.

"Kelly was a man who, but for these scandalous proceedings among us,
might have been now alive and happy. Although his temperament was warm,
yet that warmth communicated itself to his good as well as to his
evil qualities. In the beginning his family were not attached to any
faction--and when I use the word faction, it is in contradistinction to
the word party--for faction, you know, is applied to a feud or grudge
between Roman Catholics exclusively. But when he was young, he ardently
attached himself to the Murphys; and, having continued among them until
manhood, he could not abandon them, consistently with that sense of
mistaken honor which forms so prominent a feature in the character of
the Irish peasantry. But although the Kellys were not _faction-men_,