nd of our common country, I protest that if I did not
sincerely and firmly believe that the amelioration I desire could be
effected without violence, without any change in the relative scale of
ranks in the present social condition of Ireland, except that change
which all must desire, making each better than it was before, and
cementing all in one solid irresistible mass, I would at once give up the
struggle which I have always kept with tyranny. I would withdraw from
the contest which I have hitherto waged with those who would perpetuate
our thraldom. I would not for one moment dare to venture for that which
in costing one human life would cost infinitely too dear. But it will
cost no such price. Have we not had within my memory two great political
revolutions? And had we them not without bloodshed or violence to the
social compact? Have we not arrived at a period when physical force and
military power yield to moral and intellectual energy. Has not the time
of 'Cedant arma togae' come for us and the other nations of the earth?"

Let us trust that the prediction of O'Connell will be verified; that
reason and intellect are destined, under God, to do that for the nations
of the earth which the physical force of centuries and the red sacrifice
of a thousand battle-fields have failed to accomplish. Glorious beyond
all others will be the day when "nation shall no more rise up against
nation;" when, as a necessary consequence of the universal acknowledgment
of the rights of man, it shall no longer be in the power of an individual
to drag millions into strife, for the unholy gratification of personal
prejudice and passion. The reformed governments of Great Britain and
France, resting, as they do, upon a popular basis, are already tending to
this consummation, for the people have suffered too much from the warlike
ambition of their former masters not to have learned that the gains of
peaceful industry are better than the wages of human butchery.

Among the great names of Ireland--alike conspicuous, yet widely
dissimilar--stand Wellington and O'Connell. The one smote down the
modern Alexander upon Waterloo's field of death, but the page of his
reputation is dim with the tears of the widow and the orphan, and dark
with the stain of blood. The other, armed only with the weapons of truth
and reason, has triumphed over the oppression of centuries, and opened a
peaceful pathway to the Temple of Freedom, through which its G