nstantly. Let us not mistake the case. Mr O'Connell
did not seriously aim at Repeal--_that_ he knew too well to be an
enterprise which could not surmount its earliest stages without coming
into collision with the armed forces of the land; and no man will ever
believe that he dreamed of prevailing _there_. What was it, then, that
he _did_ aim at? It was the establishment in supremacy of the Papal
church. His meaning was, in case he had been left quietly to build up
his aspiring purpose so high as seriously to alarm the government,
then suddenly to halt, to propose by way of compromise some step in
advance for his own church. Suppose that some arrangement which should
have the effect of placing that church on a footing of equality, as a
privileged (not as an endowed) church, with the present establishment;
this gained, he might have safely left the church herself
thenceforwards, from such a position of advantage, to fight her way
onwards, to the utter destruction of her rival.

Thus it was that the conspirators hoped to terrify the minister into
secret negotiation and compromise. But that hope failed. The minister
was firm. He watched and waited his opportunity; he kept his eye
settled upon them, to profit by the first opening which their folly
should offer to the dreadful artillery of law. At last, said the
minister, we will put to proof this vaunt of yours. We dare not bring
you to trial, is your boast. Now, we will see that settled; and, at
the same time, we will try whether we cannot put you down for ever.
That trial was made, and with what perfection of success the reader
knows; for let us remind him, that the perfection we speak of lay as
much in the manner of the trial as in its result--in the sanctities of
abstinence, in the holy forbearance to use any one of many decent
advantages, in the reverence for the sublime equities of law. Oh,
mightiest of spectacles which human grandeur can unfold to the gaze of
less civilized nations, when the ermine of the judge and the
judgment-seat, belted by no swords, bristling with no bayonets--when
the shadowy power of conscience, citing, as it were, into the
immediate presence of God twelve upright men, accomplishing for great
kingdoms, by one day's memorable verdict, that solemn revolution which
elsewhere would have caused torrents of blood to flow, and would
perhaps have unsealed the tears of generations. Since the trial of the
seven bishops[29]--which inaugurated for England