1

XLI.

1844.

bled to support the majesty of the law. The Repeal CHAP. Association immediately yielded. Parties were sent out in all directions to warn away and disperse the people, Oct. 14. and the meeting was stopped. This was followed by the arrest of O'Connell and the leaders of the Repeal Association, which took place a few days after, on a charge of conspiracy, sedition, and unlawful assembling.1

Ann. Reg. 237; Spec

1843, 229,

tator, 1843, 965.

conviction

nell.

The trials came on in the beginning of November, and 72. every effort was made from the very first to obstruct the Trial and proceedings by every legal means, and to strain every of O'Con nerve to intimidate and overawe both the grand and Jan 15, petty jury. Objections were made at every step to the 1844. proceedings; and with such success were the efforts of the repealers attended, that a great proportion of the jurymen paid the fine of £50 to avoid serving. At length the objections in point of form were overruled, and the petty jury was sworn. O'Connell came to the bar in the lord mayor's carriage, followed by twenty-three other carriages filled with his friends. The opening speech of the Attorney-General was very powerful, and made a great impression, unfolding as it did a series of proceedings which recalled the Rebellion of 1798, and left no doubt on any one's mind that a crisis of the same description was at hand. The public anxiety rose to the highest pitch as the proceedings drew to their close; but no words can describe the sensation which was felt when the foreman of the jury returned with a verdict finding all the accused guilty of some of the counts in the indictment. A yell arose in the court, which was reechoed through all the streets and lanes adjoining, when the verdict was known, which froze every heart with horror. Mr Smith O'Brien, a gentleman of family and fortune, who afterwards obtained an unenvied celebrity in Ireland, generously came in with O'Connell when he was to hear judgment; a courageous step at such a moment, which deservedly excited the enthusiasm of all present. Sentence was not pronounced till the 30th

XLI.

1844.

May 30.

CHAP. May, and by it O'Connell was ordered to a year's imprisonment, to pay a fine of £2000, and to find security under heavy recognisances to keep the peace for seven years to come. The other persons accused were fined 1 Ann. Reg. £50 each, and sentenced to nine months' imprisonment. 1843, 238, Mr O'Connell was allowed to choose his own place of 337; Law confinement, and he selected the Richmond penitentiary, tator, 1844, to which he was immediately conveyed.

239-1844,

Cases, Spec

154: Mart.

The judge ii. 572. (Burton) who pronounced sentence was so much affected that he could scarcely discharge his duty.1

73.

the sen

tence.

The news of O'Connell's conviction spread like wildReversal of fire over Ireland, and produced a prodigious sensation. Bale-fires were lighted up on all the hills, and there was at first some talk of a general rising; but this was forbidden by O'Connell, who issued a proclamation enjoining the people to keep the peace for six or at most twelve months, and they would have a parliament in College Green. He was permitted to see his friends in confinement, but not to receive deputations; and it was soon apparent that his power had received a death-blow. His alleged invincibility was at an end; the determination. of Government at length to terminate the agitation, and strike at the guilty party, had been made manifest; and after so flagrant a proof of the erroneous nature of his predictions regarding himself, men no longer trusted those of which he was so profuse regarding his country. Sunday, 7th July, was appointed as a day for a general prayer in all the Catholic chapels of Ireland in behalf of O'Connell; but there was an ominous difference among the spiritual authorities regarding it. The Archbishop of Dublin interdicted the prayer in his province, and it was only partially obeyed in the rest of Ireland. Meanwhile an appeal against the sentence was presented first to the Queen's Bench in Ireland, and next to the House of Peers in England. The sentence was affirmed by the former, but the issue was different with the latter. The

XLI.

1844.

case was referred, according to usual custom, to the twelve CHAP. judges for their opinion; and though they were unanimous in pronouncing the findings of the jury on six out of the eleven counts in the indictment to be bad from not returning a correct answer to the charges, yet, by a majority of seven to two, they held that enough which was unobjectionable remained in the verdict to sustain the sentence. With this opinion in favour of the conviction, the case returned to the House of Peers, and then the result was different. The lay lords, with great propriety, abstained from voting, and the case was left to the law lords. These were Lord-Chancellor Lyndhurst, Lords Denman, Cottenham, Campbell, and Brougham. Three of them overruled the opinion of the twelve judges, and held the objections insurmountable; two-Lords 1 Ann. Reg. Lyndhurst and Brougham-adhered to the opinion of 1844, 337; the majority of the judges. The result was, that Spectator, the sentence was quashed, and the accused all at liberty.1

Law Cases;

1844, 841,

set 845.

74.

this deci

Leaving it to English lawyers to determine in point of law between these conflicting authorities, and to say whether Effects of the opinion of Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham, and the sion. seven English judges, or that of the three Whig law lords and the two judges be the better founded, one thing is perfectly clear, that never was a more magnificent exhibition of British justice exhibited than on this occasion, and never a step taken attended with more beneficial effect in stilling the agitation of the neighbouring country. O'Connell was now at the mercy of the assembly he had so long vilified and reviled; nothing was required but for three of the numerous peers who were in attendance behind the Woolsack awaiting the issue to step forward and take a part in the vote, and the thing was done. They did not do so; they yielded to the scruples, perhaps too critically conceived, of the three law lords, and allowed the great Agitator to issue, apparently, a triumphant

CHAP. martyr from prison, rather than violate, even in the most XLI. trifling matters of form, the strictest principles of British 1844. justice. Every one saw that O'Connell was really guilty

that he owed his liberation to a minute technical difficulty; but this difficulty was given effect to by the highest Saxon court, composed almost entirely of political opponents, upon whom he had heaped every epithet of abuse which the English language could afford. The moral effect of this was great. If the victory in legal niceties was with O'Connell, that in opinion and justice was with the House of Peers; and he never afterwards regained his position in public estimation, for he had been caught in his own toils, and liberated from them by the hand of his enemies.

His subsequent career was short, and deserves to be noticed only as the closing scene in the life of one who had so long held so prominent a position in the public eye. He was indulged with a triumphal procession from jail when the reversal of the sentence was communicated to him, and an immense crowd assembled to witness his departure and attend him home; but it was already evident that his influence was on the wane. The year of liberation passed without a parliament being assembled in College Green-and the next, and the next. Men began to throw in his teeth the non-accomplishment of his promises; the credulity even of the Irish peasantry began to yield to the repeated disappointment of their hopes. He was never formidable again; and he had the misfortune, before he died, of seeing himself passed in the career of popularity by younger, more audacious, and less experienced men. "Young Ireland" reproached him with having "surrendered," when, on the return of the "base, bloody, and brutal Whigs" to power in 1846, he was reinstated in the commission of the peace, and supported the Russell Ministry in Parliament. Symptoms of internal disease and approaching dissolution ere long

CHAP.

XLI.

appeared. His eye became heavy, his countenance fell, his step, once so firm and elastic, waxed feeble and tremulous. By the advice of his physicians he went 1844. abroad; but he experienced no material benefit from change of scene, or the respect with which he was received by the Catholic authorities; and having reached Genoa, he expired there on 15th May 1847. After his death his reputation rapidly sank, and among none so completely as those who had so long worshipped his footsteps. It was essentially injured in the estimation of the world in general, by the revelations made by the Government commissioners sent down to investigate the condition of Ireland during the famine which so soon after ensued, to the effect that the Liberator who had uttered so many eloquent declamations on the wrongs of 1. Reg. Ireland, was himself a grinding middleman, who exacted Chron.; three times as much from his starving tenantry as he Times' Corhimself paid for the land to his overlord. His reputation 530; Letters sank so rapidly, that at a sale of his effects, which took place in Dublin some years after, a bust of the great Liberator only brought sixpence.1

1844, 95,

Letters of

respondent,

from Genoa,

May 16,

1847; Mart.

. 574, 575.

of 1842, and

in

The general distress continued unabated during the 76. first six months of 1843; but towards the close of the Fineharvest year symptoms of decided amendment began to appear. gradual imThis was probably in some degree owing to the impulse provement given to trade by Sir R. Peel's tariff, but much more try in 1843. was to be ascribed to the increased bounty of nature, which now began to be as benign as for the five preceding years she had been rigorous. The "long, long summer" of 1842 still lives in the recollection of those who had been warmed by its sunshine, as much as the terrible winters of 1838 and 1839 live in their gloomy remembrance. The autumn of that year was peculiarly fine; during the whole of August and September scarce a drop of rain fell, and the harvest was not only abundant, but, what is of almost equal importance in these