at
the Clare election in 1828. He said:--

'We have put a great engine into action, and applied the entire force
of that powerful machinery which the law has placed under our control.
We are masters of the passions of the people, and we have employed
our dominion with a terrible effect. But, sir, do you, or does any man
here, imagine that we could have acquired this formidable ability to
sunder the strongest ties by which the different classes of society
are fastened, unless we found the materials of excitement in the state
of society itself? Do you think that Daniel O'Connell has himself,
and by the single powers of his own mind, unaided by any external
co-operation, brought the country to this great crisis of agitation?
Mr. O'Connell, with all his talent for excitation, would have been
utterly powerless and incapable, unless he had been allied with a
great conspirator against the public peace; and I will tell you who
that confederate is--it is the law of the land itself that has been
Mr. O'Connell's main associate, and that ought to be denounced as the
mighty agitator of Ireland. The rod of oppression is the wand of this
enchanter, and the book of his spells is the penal code? Break the
wand of this political Prospero, and take from him the volume of his
magic, and he will evoke the spirits which are now under his control
no longer. But why should I have recourse to illustration, which may
be accounted fantastical, in order to elucidate what is in itself
so plain and obvious? Protestant gentlemen, who do me the honour to
listen to me, look, I pray you, a little dispassionately at the real
causes of the events which have taken place amongst you.... In no
other country, except in this, would such a revolution have been
effected. Wherefore? Because in no other country are the people
divided by the law from their superiors, and cast into the hands of a
set of men who are supplied with the means of national excitement
by the system of government under which we live. Surely, no man can
believe that such an anomalous body as the Catholic Association could
exist excepting in a community that has been alienated from the state
by the state itself. The discontent and the resentment of 7,000,000
of the population have generated that domestic government which sways
public opinion, and uses the national passions as the instruments
of its will. It would be utterly impossible, if there were no
exasperating distinctions amongst us,