th the sentiments of
the French Revolution. He had passed a few of his early years in
France, he had seen some of the later excesses of the revolutionary
period, and he had been inspired with a horror as great as that felt by
Edmund Burke for the extravagances of the revolutionary era. He
belonged to the landlord class, but his sympathies had always been with
the popular and national movements of his countrymen. He had practised
at the Irish bar, and had become the greatest advocate in the Irish law
courts, and was thus enabled to combine with all the fire and energy of
a born popular leader the subtlety and craft of a trained and practised
lawyer. O'Connell was one of the greatest orators of a day when
political oratory could display some of its most splendid
illustrations. He had a commanding presence, indeed a colossal form,
and a voice which was marvellous alike for the strength and the music
of its varied intonations. Such men as Disraeli and Bulwer Lytton have
borne enthusiastic tribute to the magic of that voice, and have
declared it to be unrivalled in the political eloquence of the time.
O'Connell made his voice heard at many great public meetings in England
and in Scotland, as well as in Ireland, and his political views had,
indeed, much in common with those of English and Scottish advanced
Liberals.

[Sidenote: O'Connell and the Parliamentary Oath]

The Catholic Association was made, at one period of its career, the
subject of an Act of Parliament which declared it to be, for a certain
time, an illegal organization, and the period was now approaching when
the prohibitory Act would have to be renewed or allowed to drop out of
existence. In consequence of some ministerial rearrangements a vacancy
had arisen in the Parliamentary representation of the county of Clare
in Ireland, and O'Connell resolved on taking a bold and what then
seemed to many a positively desperate step. He announced himself as a
candidate for the vacancy in opposition to its former occupant, who,
having been appointed to ministerial office, was compelled to resign
his place in the House of {71} Commons and offer himself to his former
constituents for re-election. O'Connell was not disqualified by
positive enactment from becoming a candidate for a seat in Parliament;
that is to say, there was no law actually declaring that a Roman
Catholic, as such, could not enter the House of Commons. But, as we
have explained already, it was th