split up the Association, on which we relied for the deliverance of Ireland; but there was an unanimous consent that whatever the consequences might be we would not allow the cause so proudly proclaimed at Mullaghmast and Mallow to be again bartered for any official mess of pottage. We now know from evidence under his own hand the painful fact which was then only surmised, that he had entered into a second compact with the Irish Whigs, represented by D. R. Pigot and Richard Shell, to secure their Irish seats against the competition of Repealers, to support the party in the House of Commons, and, as of old, to dispose of the patronage of the Irish Government at his discretion. From this time the two parties in the Association worked side by side in a concert which might be described as an armed neutrality. But vague rumours of a great calamity which threatened the country began to prevail, and created alarm and uncertainty. It was predicted that there might be a famine on a prodigious scale.
While the truce in the Association continued, the agents of Mr. John O'Connell were not idle; they still disparaged the young men, chiefly in private talk. Our most systematic assailant in public was the Pilot, and a happy circumstance spiked for a time the guns of that battery of slander. Some time earlier, in the letter of an American correspondent, there appeared a calumny on the young Irelanders of more than usual audacity. The correspondent, who was well known in Dublin and did not choose to be made a cat's-paw, wrote assuring me that he had never written a word of the slander in question, which was doubtless composed in the Pilot office and interpolated into his correspondence. He authorised me to publish his denial, and it enabled friends at a distance from Dublin to estimate the value of Mr. Barrett's evidence. In Dublin it was sufficiently known already. Not warned by this mishap, Mr. Barrett fell into a more rash and dangerous one at the period which we have now reached. Dr. Crolly, the Catholic Primate, did not agree with the attacks of the O'Connells on the provincial colleges, which he thought might be rendered safe and most useful. This was an offence to be signally punished, and Mr. Barrett only knew one way of punishing an opponent. He announced
