was packed, in fact. O'Connell and his colleagues were set free
after a few months; but the leader never recovered his former ascendency
over the political movement of Ireland. He was growing old; he had been
reckless of his great physical resources, he had been unsparing of his
strength; and undoubtedly, the younger men in the agitation fell away
from him when he had made it clear that he never meant, under any
conditions, to lead them into revolution. A number of his young and
brilliant followers set up a party of their own--the Young Ireland
Confederation--which after his death drifted into a generous, but
hopeless, rebellion. The Young Ireland movement, however, quickened and
established a national literature which had an immense effect on
subsequent political history in Ireland. The Irish famine of 1846 and
1847 was a terrible blow to O'Connell in his rapidly weakening health.
His last speech in the House of Commons was an appeal for a generous
help to Ireland, and a prediction, which proved only too true, that if
generous help were not given, one-fourth of Ireland's population must
perish by starvation. His physicians ordered him to the Continent, and
he passionately longed to reach Rome and die under the shadow of the
Vatican. He had during some of his years led a wild life, and he had
killed a man in a duel--a duel which was literally forced upon him, but
for which he always felt deeply penitent. His ultimate longing had come
to be a quiet death in the papal city. He was not graced so far. He died
in Genoa on May 15, 1847.

As a politician O'Connell was absolutely consistent. He was in favor of
liberty for Ireland, but he was in favor of liberty for every other
country. His definition of liberty was practical and not merely
declamatory. He was in favor of equal rights for all men before the law;
he was in favor of a free press, a free vote, and as nearly as possible
a manhood suffrage. He was in many ways far in advance of the English
liberals of his day. When the question of slavery in the West Indian
colonies was under discussion in Parliament, he went farther for
abolition than even the professed philanthropists and emancipationists,
the Clarksons and the Buxtons, were inclined to go. He was almost
fanatically opposed to the advocates of the slave system in the United
States, and he refused to receive any help in money from them to carry
on his Repeal agitation. He declined to endure any political dictation
f