Improved on the Hebrew command;
One honored his wife, and the other his daughter,
That 'their days might be long on the land.'"
[18] This celebrated toast, the drinking or refusal of which, for many years, was the great test of (political) Protestantism in Ireland, was drank on the knee, and ran thus: "The glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great and good King William, Prince of Orange, who saved us from Pope and Popery, brass money and wooden shoes. He that don't drink this toast, may the north wind blow him to the south, and a west wind blow him to the east; may he have a dark night, a lee shore, a rank storm, and a leaky vessel to carry him over the ferry to hell; may the devil jump down his throat with a red-hot harrow, that every pin may tear out his inside; may he be rammed, jammed, and damned into the great gun of Athlone, and fired off into the kitchen of hell, where the Pope is roasted on a spit, and basted with the fat of Charles James Fox, while the Devil stands by pelting him with Cardinals!"
[19] Mr. Grattan says, at an expense of £20,000—an amount which seems incredible, as there was only a brief shadow of opposition.
[20] O'Connell had high judicial authority for the use of bad language. Sir Archibald Macdonald (who was Chief Baron of the English Court of Exchequer, from 1793 to 1813) once told Mr. Fletcher Norton, afterwards Speaker of the House of Commons, that he was a "lazy, indolent, evasive, shuffling, plausible, artful, mean, confident, cowardly, poor, pitiful, sneaking, and abject creature."
[21] In 1802, O'Connell married his cousin, the daughter of Dr. O'Connell, of Tralee. By this lady he had four sons and three daughters. Two of the sons are now [1855] in Parliament. Maurice, the eldest, was a barrister, but never distinguished himself either as a lawyer or a politician. Morgan was for some time in the Austrian service, and distinguished himself as a gallant officer. His "affair of honour" with Lord Alvanley showed cool determination and honourable feeling. Mr. John O'Connell, who tried to take his father's place in Conciliation Hall, as Repeal Leader, has displayed little of the talent and tact which distinguished the Liberator. The youngest son, Daniel, is a very commonplace person. It is usually said, that the children of a great man rarely arrive at eminence, and the limited talents of O'Connell's sons keep up the proverb in full force, as far as he and they are concerned:
'Few men achieve the praise of their great sires,
But most their sires disgrace.'
[22] Afterwards Chief-Justice of the Queen's Bench, whence, in 1852, he was raised to the Chancellorship of Ireland, which he retained during the nine months of the Derby Administration.
[23]I write of 1827. I know not what may be the practice now.