D'Esterre paraded the streets of Dublin with a horse-whip in his hand, and vowed vengeance against O'Connell. He did not meet him; but he afterwards challenged him. O'Connell refused to apologize—met the challenger, and mortally wounded him. D'Esterre, as I have said, was a crack shot, and O'Connell was not; but it sometimes happens that the practiced duellist suffers the penalty which he has inflicted upon others.
D'Esterre had been an officer of marines, and it has been stated, and always believed, that he constituted himself the Champion of the Corporation, not only in the hope, but with a direct promise of obtaining a lucrative appointment, provided that he "silenced" O'Connell. The odds were five to one in his favour—for he was cool and determined, and could snuff a candle with a pistol shot at twelve paces. His skill, his coolness, availed not. At the first shot he fell, and his death speedily followed.
Soon after, Sir Robert Peel (the then Irish Secretary) fastened a quarrel upon Mr. O'Connell, who again placed himself in the hands of his friends. A hostile meeting was appointed—the authorities in Dublin interfered—the parties were bound over to keep the peace—they agreed to meet on the Continent, but the duel was ultimately prevented by the arrest of Mr. O'Connell, in London, on his way to Calais. He was held to bail before the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, not to fight Mr. Peel; and since that time declined any further meetings of the sort.[17] It would have been well if, when he determined to avoid duels, O'Connell had also resolved to abstain from language offensive to men of honour and men of feeling. His chief fault, during his last thirty years, was the application of epithets towards his political opponents, which appear to have been culled rather in the market of Billingsgate, than in the flowery garden of Academe!
For several years after the duel with D'Esterre, O'Connell was almost alone in the struggle for Emancipation. His practice steadily increased, and his legal knowledge, ability and tact, united with wondrous art in the examination of witnesses, and great influence with juries (by the union of a species of rhetoric consisting of common sense, humour, and rough eloquence, cemented together by a good share of "Blarney"), soon made him a very successful barrister. Whenever a Catholic victim was to be defended or rescued, whether an Orange oppressor was to be assailed and punished, O'Connell was in the van. The Catholics readily took him as their champion, and he won their gratitude by his services, and gained their personal attachment by a good humour which nothing could daunt, and a plain, straightforward, affectionate manner of eloquence which went directly home to their hearts. To this hour it is a moot point whether the Irish had greater admiration for his talents, gratitude for his services, confidence in his fidelity, or attachment for his person.
He continued increasing in influence for many years. From 1815, until he relinquished most of his practice in 1831, the annual income from his professional pursuits cannot have averaged less than from £6000 to £8000—an immense sum for a lawyer to make in Ireland. No man could make such an income, except one who was at once an excellent Nisi Prius pleader, as well as a good Crown lawyer. He united the highest qualifications of both. He could wield at will immense power over a jury, and argue with a success rarely equalled, so as to reach the understanding of a judge. Hence, he had the most extraordinary versatility. You would see him at one o'clock joking a jury out of a verdict in the Nisi Prius court, or familiarly laying down cases for the information of the judge; and, the next hour, you might behold him in the Crown court, defending an unhappy man accused of murder, and exercising a caution and prudence in his unparalleled cross-examination of witnesses which would alike surprise and please. No man could more readily get the truth from a witness, or make him say only just as much as suits the particular point he had in view.
In 1821, when George the Fourth visited Ireland, Mr. O'Connell made "his first appearance, by particular desire," in the part of a courtier. He presented a laurel crown to the monarch on his departure, and eulogized him to the seventh heaven as "a real friend of old Ireland," anxious to see her
"Great, glorious, and free,
First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea."
He did more than this. He sacrificed his feelings, as a Catholic, in order to conciliate the Ascendency party. Intent on conciliation, he even dined with the Dublin Corporation, and drank their charter toast of intolerance,[18] "The pious, glorious and immortal memory." Concession was vain. The leopard would not change his spots; and, throwing away the scabbard, O'Connell drew the sword, and threw himself, body and soul, into the stormy battle of Agitation.
In 1823, O'Connell, finding how little was to be anticipated from George IV. (who, as king, forgot the promises he made when Prince of Wales), organized a great plan for uniting his Catholic countrymen into an array against the laws which excluded them from the enjoyment of their civil and rights. He had great difficulty in arousing the languid energies of the Irish people, so hopeless had they been for a long time. At last, the Catholic Association assumed a "local habitation and a name." The subscription to the somewhat aristocratical Catholic Board had been five pounds a year—one fifth of that amount was the payment to the Association; and, at last, the Catholic Rent was instituted on the basis of admitting contributions of a shilling a-year. Every subscriber to this small amount thereby became a member of the Association, and crowds eagerly joined it, on these terms, from all parts of Ireland. Here were agitation and combination. Here was money, the very sinews of war. Here was a fund, large in amount, annually augmenting, applicable to a variety of purposes connected with the assertion of the Catholic claims and the defence of Catholics, who thought themselves individually wronged or injured by their Orange masters. Here, with O'Connell at their head, was a band of leaders, most of them in the practice of the law, who had station, influence, audacity, courage, integrity, and the art of moving the multitude by voice or pen. The Government speedily feared, and felt, it to be an imperium in imperio.