probable result that either the meeting would be allowed to proceed, or
it would be illegally dispersed in the usual way by reading the Riot
Act. Even if the weight of conjecture were the other way, the
consequences should be risked rather than falsify the national pledge.
To recede was cowardice; not the vulgar cowardice arising from personal
weakness, but the moral cowardice which shrinks from an imperious
obligation, because it is perilous. The meeting should be held; every
possible precaution should be taken to prevent an armed conflict. If
Power, drunk with its own advantage, risked an outrage, the people
should be taught to yield; but only to yield with the purpose of
entering a court of law, as prosecutors and avengers. Even if worse
consequences ensued after every effort to prevent them had been
exhausted, the issue should be left to God. Recriminations, painfully
petty in their nature, followed. The Government were charged with a
premeditated design to commit wide and indiscriminate slaughter, and the
weakness, in which were shrouded deep national shame and guilt, was made
matter of indecent boast. The Government, aware of the unexpected
advantage, followed up the blow. Mr. O'Connell took shelter in the
sacredness of the Hall, which, he imagined, he had guarded against the
encroachments of arbitrary power, and thither they followed him. Having
abandoned a position where he could act on the offensive, he was forced
to contend against the aggressive attacks of Government flushed with its
first success.

The trial that followed already occupies a large space in history. Its
effects were immediate and disastrous. The personnel of the accused
assumed the nation's place. Exhortations full of intense eloquence were
addressed to the people from which the question of the country's
deliverance was entirely excluded. Technicalities of law absorbed the
attention which was due to Liberty. A demurrer, a motion in abatement,
or in arrest of judgment, was canvassed with a deeper interest by the
people of the provinces than by even the distinguished Bar, which were
arrayed on either side. Mr. O'Connell's infallibility in law engaged the
anxious solicitude, the pride, the passions of Ireland. Yet throughout
that long trial the question which would test it was not mooted. The
indictment was a subtle net-work, which excluded such argument. The
objections to the indictment also were objections of form merely, and
the final issue up