“Which only failed from our own faults,” added Heffer-nan, angrily. “Some of us were lukewarm and would do nothing; some waited for others to come forward; and some again wanted to make their hard bargain with the minister before they made him feel the necessity of the compact.”
O'Reilly bit his lip in silence, for he well understood at whom this reproof was levelled.
“The cause of failure was very different,” said O'Hallo-ran, authoritatively. “It was one which has dissolved many an association, and rendered many a scheme abortive, and will continue to do so, as often as it occurs. You failed for want of a 'Principle.' You had rank and wealth, and influence more than enough to have made your weight felt and acknowledged, but you had no definite object or end. You were a party, and you had not a purpose.”
“Come, come,” said Heffernan, “you are evidently unaware of the nature of our association, and seem not to have read the resolutions we adopted.”
“No,—-on the contrary, I read them carefully; there was more than sufficient in them to have made a dozen parties. Had you adopted one steadfast line of action, set out with one brief intelligible proposition,—I care not what,—Slave Emancipation, or Catholic Emancipation, Repeal of Tests Acts, or Parliamentary Reform, any of them,—taken your stand on that, and that alone, you must have succeeded. Of course, to do this is a work of time and labor; some men will grow weary and sink by the way, but others take up the burden, and the goal is reached at last There must be years long of writing and speaking, meeting, declaring, and plotting; you must consent to be thought vulgar and low-minded,—ay, and to become so, for active partisans are only to be found in low places. You will be laughed at and jeered, abused, mocked, and derided at first; later on, you will be assailed more powerfully and more coarsely; but, all this while, your strength is developing, your agencies are spreading. Persuasion will induce some, notoriety others, hopes of advantage many more, to join you. You will then have a press as well as a party, and the very men that sneered at your beginnings will have to respect the persistence and duration of your efforts. I don't care how trumpery the arguments used; I don't value one straw the fallacy of the statements put forward. Let one great question, one great demand for anything, be made for some five-and-twenty or thirty years,—let the Press discuss, and the Parliament debate it,—you are sure of its being accorded in the end. Now, it will be a party ambitious of power that will buy your alliance at any price; now, a tottering Government anxious to survive the session and reach the snug harbor of the long vacation. Now, it will be the high 'bid' of a popular administration; now, it will be the last hope of second-rate capacities, ready to supply their own deficiencies by incurring a hazard. However it come, you are equally certain of it.”
There was a pause as O'Halloran concluded. Heffernan saw plainly to what the Counsellor pointed, and that he was endeavoring to recruit for that party of which he destined the future leadership for himself, and Con had no fancy to serve in the ranks of such an army. O'Reilly, who thought that the profession of a popular creed might be serviceable in the emergency of an election, looked with more favor on the exposition, and after a brief interval said,—
“Well, supposing I were to see this matter in your light, what support could you promise me? I mean at the hustings.”
“Most of the small freeholders, now,-all of them, in time; the priests to a man, the best election agents that ever canvassed a constituency. By degrees the forces will grow stronger, according to the length and breadth of the principle you adopt,—make it emancipation, and I 'll insure you a lease of the county.” Heffernan smiled dubiously. “Ah, never mind Mr. Heffernan's look; these notions don't suit him. He 's one of the petty traders in politics, who like small sales and quick returns.”
“Such dealing makes fewest bankrupts,” said Heffernan, coolly.
“I own to you,” said O'Halloran, “the rewards are distant, but they 're worth waiting for. It is not the miserable bribe of a situation, or a title, both beneath what they would accord to some state apothecary; but power, actual power, and real patronage are in the vista.”