in his desire to strengthen his case against the exclusive principles that governed the conduct of the Irish administration, he resorted to what he called a ‘rhetorical artifice,’ which, being proved to be without justification, drew great odium on him and on the cause. The suppression of the Catholic Association, so far from putting an end to the agitation, only changed its modus operandi, and under O'Connell's direction the system of simultaneous meetings throughout the country proved far more effective in stimulating the demand for emancipation than the old weekly meetings at Dublin. In preparing the ground for the new system no one worked harder than Sheil. He was present and spoke at nearly all the principal gatherings during the summer—at the aggregate meeting at Dublin on 13 July, when the new association for purposes of public and private charity was started; on the 20th at Wexford, on the 26th at Waterford, on 4 Aug. at Kilkenny, on the 26th at the new association, when a suggestion of his was adopted for the formation of a register of the names and addresses of all the parish priests in Ireland. The amount of labour which these meetings implied for him can only be properly estimated when one remembers that he never trusted himself to speak extempore, and that the repugnance he felt to repeat himself rendered the preparation of each speech a matter of long and careful consideration.
In September he visited Paris, and having made the acquaintance of the proprietor of ‘L'Étoile,’ he endeavoured, not unsuccessfully, to promote the cause of his co-religionists by contributing to it a number of articles on the situation in Ireland. Extracts from these articles appeared in the London papers, and, coming from abroad, they obtained a greater degree of consideration than they would have done had their authorship been known. Owing to the widespread commercial depression in England in 1825 there was a practical cessation of agitation that year in Ireland. But at the general election in the summer of 1826 the defeat of Lord George Beresford at Waterford by the popular candidate, Villiers Stuart, exerted a profound influence on the situation, which was intensified when a similar result occurred in Louth, where Shiel acted as counsel for the popular candidate. The victory of the hitherto despised forty-shilling freeholders was in many cases dearly bought, and Sheil was indefatigable in trying to promote the new order of liberators founded by O'Connell in their behalf. A speech which he delivered at the association on 19 Jan. 1827 on the recently published ‘Memoirs of Wolfe Tone’ was made a pretext by the government to punish him for an insulting reference in a previous speech to the Duke of York. On 19 Feb. he and Michael Staunton, the proprietor of the ‘Morning Register,’ were indicted, the one for having uttered, the other for having published, a seditious libel. Before the case was tried the death of Lord Liverpool placed Canning in office, and on his refusal to prosecute, a nolle prosequi was entered by the crown. After Canning's death (8 Aug. 1828) Sheil advocated a policy of confidence in Lord Anglesey's government, and even after the formation of the new administration under the Duke of Wellington he was averse to O'Connell's proposal to pledge the Catholic association to oppose the return of every supporter of the new cabinet. But this motion being carried, he resisted an attempt to rescind it in gratitude for Wellington's assent to the repeal of the Test Act; and later in 1828, when Vesey Fitzgerald, the newly appointed president of the board of trade, who had voted against the repeal of the Test Act at every stage, sought re-election for co. Clare, he vehemently urged the association to oppose his return. His advice was productive of consequences not foreseen by him, and with the election of O'Connell the question of emancipation entered on its final stage. A counter agitation sprang up among protestants in both Ireland and England. With a view to stemming it, Sheil, by purchasing a small freehold in the county, qualified himself to speak at a meeting of the gentry and freeholders of Kent at Pennenden Heath on 24 Oct. convened to petition against further relaxation of the laws against the catholics. The tone of his speech and the courage with which he faced a hostile crowd were warmly commended, and before he left England a public dinner was given in his honour at the London Tavern on 3 Nov. But the controversy, which had raged for more than a quarter of a century, drew at last to a close. On 5 Feb. 1829 the speech from the throne held out a prospect of immediate relief, and a week later Sheil moved the dissolution of the Catholic association.
To him it was a grateful termination of a disagreeable business, for he had none of O'Connell's disinterested devotion to the cause. His position as a barrister was now assured, and visions of a silk gown and a seat in parliament hovered alternately before his vision. In February 1830 he accepted a retainer to act as counsel for Lord George Beresford in his effort to recover the representation of county Waterford, but his opponents, who drew no distinction between his professional and political interests, stigma-
