ar, and had the undivided
support of nearly all the gentlemen and principal land-owners of the
county, in which he himself had large property. But O'Connell's cause
was taken up by the entire Roman Catholic priesthood; addresses in his
favor were read at the altars of the different churches; and, after five
days' polling, Mr. Fitzgerald withdrew from the contest. The Sheriff, in
great perplexity, made a special return, reporting that "Mr. Fitzgerald
was proposed, being a Protestant, as a fit person to represent the
county in Parliament; that Mr. O'Connell, a Roman Catholic, was also
proposed; that he, Mr. O'Connell, had declared before the Sheriff that
he was a Roman Catholic, and intended to continue a Roman Catholic; and
that a protest had been made by several electors against his return."

It was accepted as a return of O'Connell, who, however, made no attempt
to take his seat, though when he first stood he had assured the electors
that there was no law to prevent him from doing so; but the importance
of his success was not to be measured by his actual presence or absence
in the House of Commons for the remainder of a session. It had made it
absolutely impossible to continue the maintenance of the disabilities;
what one Irish constituency had done, other Irish constituencies might
be depended on to do.[200] And it was quite certain that, as opportunity
offered, almost every constituency in Munster and Connaught, and many in
Leinster, would follow the example of Clare, and return Roman Catholic
representatives; while to retain a law which prevented forty or fifty
men duly elected by Irish constituencies from taking their seats must
have appeared impossible to all but a few, whom respect for the
undoubted sincerity of their attachment to their own religion and to the
constitution, as they understood it, is the only consideration which can
save them from being regarded as dangerous fanatics. At all events, the
ministers were not among them. And the Duke of Wellington, though he had
previously hoped, by postponing the farther consideration of the
question for a year or two, to gain time for a calmer examination of it
when the existing excitement had cooled down,[201] at once admitted the
conviction that the result of the Clare election had rendered farther
delay impossible. In his view, and that of those of his colleagues whose
judgment he estimated most highly, the Irish constituencies and their
probable action at future