ous Liberator obtained some degree of
freedom for his country, all the O'Connells were prescribed from
positions of emolument, for having held with unswerving fidelity to the
old faith.

O'Connell was born on the 6th of August, 1775, "the very year," as he
himself says, in a letter to the _Dublin Evening Post_, "in which the
stupid obstinacy of British oppression _forced_ the reluctant people of
America to seek for security in arms, and to commence that bloody
struggle for national independence, which has been in its results
beneficial to England, whilst it has shed glory, and conferred liberty,
pure and sublime, on America." He was educated at St. Omers, and it is
said manifested some inclination for the priesthood; but there can be no
doubt that his vocation lay in another direction, as he was incomparably
too deeply religious and too thoroughly honest not to have obeyed the
call of God at any cost, had such a favour been vouchsafed to him. It is
said, whatever his dislike of physical force may have been in
after-life, that he unquestionably knew how to use the _argumentum
baculinum_ in his early days; and that more than one student was made to
feel the effects thereof, when attempting ill-natured jokes on the
herculean Celt. During his residence abroad he had some opportunities of
witnessing the fearful effects of the French Revolution; and it is
probable that a remembrance of these scenes, added to his own admirably
keen common sense, saved him from leading his countrymen on to deeds of
open violence. He was called to the Irish bar in the memorable year of
1798. For some time he failed to obtain practice; for who would confide
their case to a young Catholic lawyer, when the fact of his creed alone
would be sufficient to condemn his client in the eyes of Protestant
juries, judges, and attorneys? His maiden speech was made in opposition
to the Union, even as his life was spent in the most strenuous efforts
to obtain the reversal of that most fatal measure. A meeting was held in
the Royal Exchange, Dublin, at the close of the year 1799, to petition
against it; but even as O'Connell was denouncing, in his most eloquent
language, the new attempt at national degradation, Major Sirr and his
file of military rushed into the apartment, and separated the assembly.
O'Connell now retired into private life, and, with the marvellous
foresight of true genius, devoted himself to storing up that forensic
knowledge which he felt sure