the cabin. For fuel they burned peat. In
order to pay their rent, they sold their pigs. Beggars infested every
road and filled every village. No one was certain of employment, even at
twopence a day. Everybody was controlled by the priests, whose power
rested on their ability to stimulate religious fears, and who were
supported by such contributions as they were able to extort from the
superstitious and ignorant people,--by nature brave and generous and
joyous, but improvident and reckless. It was the wonder of O'Connell how
they could remain cheerful amid such privations and such wrongs, with
the government seemingly indifferent, with none to pity and few to help.
Nor could they vote for the candidates for any office whatever unless
they had freeholds, or life-rent possessions, for which they paid a rent
of forty shillings. The landlords of this wretched tenantry, unable to
face the misery they saw and which they could not relieve, or fearful of
assassination, left the country to spend their incomes in the great
cities of Europe, not being united with their people by any ties, social
or religious.

What wonder that such a wretched people, urged by the priests, should
form associations for their own relief, especially when famine pressed
and landlords exacted the uttermost farthing,--when the crimes to which
they were impelled by starvation were punished with the most inexorable
severity by Protestant magistrates in whose appointment they had
no hand!

The result was the rise of the Catholic Association, the declared object
of which was to forward petitions to Parliament, to support an
independent Press, to aid emigration to America,--all worthy, and
unobjectionable on the surface, but with the real intent (as affirmed by
the Tories and believed by a large majority of the nation) of securing
the control of elections, of bringing about the repeal of the Union with
England (which, enacted in 1801, had done away with the separate Irish
parliament), the resumption of the Church property by the Catholic
clergy, and the restoration of the Catholic faith as the dominant
religion of the land. Such an Association, embracing most of the Roman
Catholic population, was regarded with great alarm by the government;
and they determined to put it down as seditious and dangerous, against
the expostulation of such men as Brougham, Mackintosh, and Sir Henry
Parnell. Then arose the great figure of O'Connell in the history of
Ireland (who