and the people would be faithful to the National cause to the end. They would soon have the opportunity of expressing their feeling at the re-election of Irish members who formed part of the new Government. He did not think the Association had acted wisely in the case of his imprisonment, but he retained no feeling of enmity, and would work cordially with those who had counselled that policy. Henry Grattan contrasted the conduct of men like Swift, Lucas, and Grattan, whom the British Treasury could not purchase, with the conduct of those who betrayed their country. Some of them died obscurely in foreign countries, some suffered agonies of shame and self-reproach, and one conspicuous offender died by his own hand. These speeches greatly increased the difficulty of the task which O'Connell had set himself; but unfortunately both gentlemen assumed they had done their duty adequately, and retired to the country.
When O'Connell returned to Dublin public attention was fixed on the course he would take on the Ministerial elections. The policy of the Association had been proclaimed and insisted upon, in no case more rigorously than in the battle of the hustings. O'Connell had specified some of the men now claiming re-election as persons who must be peremptorily excluded from Parliament, unless they declared themselves Repealers. As it would be impossible to understand the conflict which followed without completely realising this fact, I borrow a couple of paragraphs from a former narrative referring to a period a few months past:—
"O'Connell still held occasional meetings and banquets in the country. His constant theme was the necessity of a Parliamentary party; 'with sixty-five members he would carry Repeal and restore the Parliament to College Green.' When he abandoned the policy of the Mallow Defiance,, the only alternative, if he continued a Repealer, was a Parliamentary party. If he would not fight, then he must persuade or coerce the Legislature; there was literally no third method. He recognised this necessity so clearly that after his Federal proposal had failed it was the topic to which he constantly applied himself. At local meetings and banquets he exhorted constituencies to insist upon their representatives supporting the National cause or to cashier
