Again, in the course of the same speech, he said:
"We (Mr. O'Brien and himself) did our best to avert such a calamity. We called upon the Government not to persist in working out this bill in all its details of blackness and horror."
He concluded by lauding Lord John Russell for his valuable assistance in the attempt to amend the bill, and finally said that, having failed in this attempt, he "flung the bill to the ministry, to deal with it as they pleased."
Mr. O'Brien continued in London, and proposed amendments to the bill in every stage of its progress. It was during that time he was assailed by Mr. Roebuck with all the little malevolence of his envenomed nature. He failed in every attempt to remedy the defects of the bill, which passed its last stage in the Commons on the 10th day of July. On the 17th of the same month, Mr. O'Connell, speaking in the Association, said:
"In the resolution I am about submitting to the Association, we have not inserted one word about mixed education. This is a question upon which there exists some differences of opinion. I have my opinions upon the subject, I am the decided enemy of mixed education....
"I fully respect the contrary convictions entertained by others, and I am the more ready to proclaim that respect because at present all possibility of discussion on the matter is out of the question."
It will be observed that Mr. O'Connell's opinions underwent a serious and important change during the time over which these speeches range. That change was produced gradually, and not without infinite trouble on the part of his son whose inveterate zeal knew no bounds. In his father's presence, and more particularly so in his absence, he denounced the bill, and held up any Catholic who dared to support it to public indignation. He called on the people of Waterford to demand Mr. Wyse's resignation, not because he was an unfaithful representative, but because he was unchristian. If he had not determined to divide the Association on this question, he did all a man could do who had so determined.
I shall only trouble the reader with two quotations more. They refer to the question immediately under discussion, namely, that the Seceders were as much opposed to the obnoxious clauses of the bill as those with whom they differed. But while they are unequivocal and conclusive on that branch of the subject, they go still further and attest the sincere forbearance with which they treated language and conduct which appeared to them in the utmost degree narrow and intolerant. Discussion among the bishops naturally produced discussion among the chiefs of the Association, and it was agreed that the Association should confine its objections to those provisions of the bill upon which there could be no disagreement. The first petition of the Association was confided to me. I endeavoured to embody in the petition what appeared to me the true basis of a comprehensive system of education. Some persons on the Committee objected to certain phrases as susceptible of an inference favourable to the principle of mixed education. Mr. O'Connell joined in the objection and succeeded in reducing the petition to a single paragraph, deprecatory of the Tenth Clause of the Bill. I refused to have any more to do with the petition, and it was dropped. After the lapse of a fortnight, Mr. Maurice O'Connell proposed another, simply praying that the tenth clause, which vested the appointment of the professors of the college in the Government, should be rejected.
Upon the occasion of this petition being submitted to the Association (9th June, 1845), Mr. J. O'Connell delivered one of his usual invectives against the bill and its abettors. Mr. O'Brien deprecated the ill-feeling and discord such language was calculated to provoke. In the course of his observations he said:—
"In seconding the motion of my hon. friend, the member for Kilkenny, for the adoption of this petition, it is not my intention to follow into any of the polemical questions which, in the course of his protracted speech, he has raised in this Association. I am obliged, however, to say in candour that in some of the views he has put forward I cannot agree.... We have given a general concurrence in this Hall to the recommendation that has emanated from the Catholic Hierarchy.... I am not disposed to assist the Government in making those seminaries, which ought to be seats of learning, filthy sties of corruption. It is because I believe that such would become their character if this tenth clause were to remain a legislative enactment that I shall oppose it to the utmost."