A little later I aimed to accomplish a part of the same purpose through Repeal Reading-rooms, to which the journals and periodicals which came to the Nation office, and all the suitable books I could obtain from friends, were sent weekly. But O'Connell looked upon these reading-rooms as part of the machinery for collecting Repeal Rent, and only aided them so far as they served this purpose. The design of making them schools of nationality did not altogether fail, however, and when a contest arose between O'Connell and the Young Irelanders a few years later, over what was called the Peace Resolutions, the Repeal Reading-room played an important part.
From the outset we had to fear the leader's displeasure on many more dangerous issues. He insisted on the fantastic dogma that all countries struggling for freedom, under whatever rule, would find in peaceful agitation the right and sufficient remedy. We knew that it was not as sheep that any people had been led to freedom, and that his own sole victory, Catholic Emancipation, had been yielded to the fear of an insurrection; but so long as he did not insist on his opinions being adopted by his confederates, they were only a great man's whims to be smiled at in silence. During his long career the popular press commonly followed his guidance, criticising nothing and initiating nothing. A journal which broke new ground in every number, which criticised respectfully all his proposals, applauding or objecting, not as a matter of course, but according to the circumstances of the case, perplexed him. I was assured by O'Neill Daunt, who was a friend and occasional contributor of the new journal, that O'Connell was divided between satisfaction at the effective services rendered to the cause, and alarm at the temerarious novelties sometimes propounded. We knew he had ruined journal after journal which had crossed his path, and we were not ignorant that the Nation was about equally liable to founder in the Queen's Bench, or in the Corn Exchange. A prosecution for sedition was a constant probability, and denunciation by O'Connell for rashness and audacity was scarcely less imminent. He had driven a man of the conspicuous gifts of Richard Sheil from public life in Ireland, and a long array of popular
