Eighthly: Mr. O'Connell's assertion, in his speech at Conciliation Hall: "I did not begin this quarrel; in my absence in London, an attack was made on the Whig ministry."

And, finally: The boasted acceptance by Mr. O'Connell of the distribution of Whig patronage, and the appointment of his personal friends to lucrative employment.

All that followed was one unvaried scene of distraction, division and enmity. Week after week, the seceders were held up to public odium, derision and scorn. One day, they were "blasphemous," one day, "revolutionary," one day, they "sang small," and one day "their nobles were come to ninepence." Now, they were challenged to establish a society of their own principles; now, they were recommended to the mercy of the Attorney-General, and again commended to the hatred of the people. Meantime a blight had fallen on the earth, and a whole people's food, in one night, perished. To the new Government, the famine that ensued was an assurance of subsistence and success. Hunger would waste the bodies of the people, as the dearth of truth had wasted their souls. The ministry affected great sympathy, great diligence, and great impotence. Among other wants of theirs, the want of practical engineers was felt the deepest. They knew and lamented that many died of starvation; but the thing was inevitable as long as they were unprovided with practical engineers. Mr. O'Connell, from the platform of the hall, announced the good intentions of the Government, and proclaimed, at the same time, his own commission to supply them with engineers. How many applied and were refused, I am not in a position to say; but there is no disputing the records of the church-yard, where many an uncoffined corpse attested the care of the "paternal government." The people were guaranteed against death, and yet death came, and took them at his will; but what was left of life was taught to exhaust itself in curses against those who would save it at every risk. Wherever the seceders appeared they were hooted. Prostitutes of both sexes regarded them as fit subjects for their insolent raillery. The avowed foes of nationality looked on them as fools; its pretended friends as knaves; and the common herd of indifferent villains as a butt. The low retainers of the English garrison, who had sold their souls to the enemy but were kept in awe by bodily fear, became outrageously patriotic; and with insulted gratitude they scouted the traducers of the "saviour of their country." Alas! in Ireland, nothing was saved but death's agencies. Doom had come upon all—her produce, her people, her hopes and her morality.

The same report, which contained the Peace Resolutions, set out with a statement dissevering the Association from the Nation newspaper. If the statement were embodied in a resolution of expulsion, it would clash directly with the failure of the prosecution against it, and brand the jurors who refused to find a verdict with perjury. But the admission of the Nation that, in 1843, it inculcated principles having a remote tendency to effect the redemption of the country, by arms if need were, supplied the Association with a pretext for expelling it altogether. Two rules had been adopted for the circulation of newspapers. The first was, when £10 were forwarded to the Secretary, the subscribers had the privilege of naming two weekly or one evening paper, which the Secretary was to forward and pay for. By the second rule, adopted after the State trials, the subscribers retained the drawback, and selected and paid for their own paper. For several weeks, the Nation was the only theme of Mr. O'Connell's abhorrence. He exhausted all his eloquence in warning the people against it, but in vain. The people continued to insist on it in return for their subscriptions. Accordingly, on the 10th of August, a resolution was proposed to the effect that no money subscribed for Repeal Purposes should be allocated to the payment of a subscription for the Nation, on the sole ground that, in 1843, it inculcated doctrines which were in their tendency treasonable. Mr. O'Connell said, after the resolution was passed, that he did not wish to injure the paper in a pecuniary point of view; and on the next day of meeting, he brought down to the Association some twenty law authorities, which he read, to prove that treason had actually been committed; and thus stamped the conduct of the Attorney-General as not alone justifiable, but lenient to excess.

The seceders determined to abide the issue. They had the fullest confidence that the insensate cry raised against them would eventually subside, and that truth would again prevail. They contented themselves, therefore, with appealing to their countrymen, through the columns of the Nation, then interdicted and banned through every parish in the island. But, in those appeals, there was no word of allusion to the storm of calumny and denunciation then raging against them. They sought to fix public attention on subjects of vast national importance, and to awake the energies of the people to some becoming effort where the stake was their lives. Meantime, week after week, the Government was praised, the Board of Works were praised, and the people—"the faithful and moral people, who died, peacefully, of hunger"—were praised, in the Repeal Association.

Robert Holmes (1848)

Late in the autumn of 1846, some men, few in number and humble in condition, undertook the desperate task of remonstrating with the Repeal Association. Among them, Mr. Keeley and Mr. Holywood, Mr. Crean and Mr. Halpin, were prominent. Their undertaking was gigantic, considering the formidable obstacles they proposed to encounter. They proceeded silently and sedulously; and, in a few weeks, a remonstrance against the course pursued by the Association was signed by fifteen hundred citizens of Dublin. It was presented to the Chairman of the Association on the 24th of October, and ordered by Mr. J. O'Connell to be flung into the gutter. The remonstrants and the public resented this indignity alike. It was determined to hold a meeting in the Rotunda, where they proposed to defend themselves against every species of assault. The meeting was held on the 3rd of November, and was allowed to pass off without disturbance. Mr. M'Gee attended. He had never appeared in the struggle in the hall, nor was he a member at the time. His speech at the Rotunda was calm, forcible and conclusive on the points in issue; and the excitement it created was, in no small degree, enhanced by the fact that the speaker was a young man theretofore unknown. The success of the meeting suggested the practicability and safety of an experiment upon a large scale preparatory to the formation of the Confederation. The meeting was fixed for the 2nd of December. The remonstrant committee offered to defend it against any assailants. The main object was to reply to the calumnies which, for nearly six months, had been urged against the leading seceders. The meeting was one of the most important ever held in the metropolis. It was intelligent, numerous and fashionable. The entire ability of the seceders was put forth; and such was the sensation created by the proceedings that two publishers, one in Dublin and one in Belfast, brought out reports, in pamphlet form, which were read all over the country with the greatest avidity. It was that night stated, only casually, that the seceders would meet in January to announce to the nation the course of political action they would recommend. On the 13th of January, the promise was redeemed. The seceders met as before, and their deliberations were guarded by the same men, who thus a third time risked their lives—the hazard was nothing less—to secure to the seceders freedom of speech and of action. On the 13th of January, the Confederation was fully established. The bases, if the phrase be applicable, were freedom, tolerance and truth. There was no avowal of war, and no pledge of peace. The great object was the independence of the Irish nation; and no means to attain that end were abjured, save such as were inconsistent with honour, morality and reason.

During the intervening time, between the first and second meetings, overtures of peace were made by Mr. O'Connell. A sudden and singular change was observable in his tone and language. He said with chagrin, and acknowledged with reluctance, that the position and strength of the party defied alike his power and his address. Every art and every effort to crush them had been exhausted in vain. The question between them, he now loudly proclaimed, was one purely of law; and he referred to several barristers, by whose judgment he was ready to abide. The question he was prepared to submit suggests the most mournful considerations. If it were not painful, it would be amusing to see to what painful absurdities he was compelled to have recourse. He would leave it to anyone at the bar, whether the "physical force principle" would not make the Association illegal; and then he would indulge in a hollow triumph over the certainty and security of his position. But that was not the question in issue. None of the seceders ever recommended the principle of physical force, in practice or theory, to the Association. On the contrary, they disavowed it, in reference to that body, and their own connection with it. The real question was this—whether it was necessary to the legality of any political society, to disavow, formally and forever, under all circumstances, and at all times, the right of men to strike down the cruellest tyranny with the strong hand. It would be absurd to submit such a proposition to a lawyer, which could only be answered by a laugh. It had been sufficiently settled by the fact that, without it, the Catholic Association, the Corn-law League, and the Repeal Association itself, up to the 13th of July, 1846, were perfectly safe and perfectly legal. But no man knew better than Mr. O'Connell that this was a feigned issue, the real one being the mendicancy of the Association, and the treachery with which it abandoned the national constituencies to Whig officials. The overtures on this occasion eventuated in some negotiations, of which the Rev. Mr. Miley was the medium. His mission was singularly unfortunate, for it led to greater misunderstanding; and the negotiations terminated in mutual charges of misconception or misrepresentation.