tation rendered necessary by the act which disfranchised
the forty-shilling freeholders was going on, Mr. O'Connell was taking
measures to secure his re-election for the county of Clare. In a letter
to the electors he again raised the standard of defiance to government.
It represented himself and his constituents, in fact, as the conquerors
of the government; and spoke of it as faithless and insulting. In it he
remarked: "The house of commons have deprived me of the right conferred
on me by the people of Clare. They have, in my opinion, unjustly and
illegally deprived me of that right; but from their decision there is no
appeal, save to the people. I appeal to you. In my person the county
of Clare has been insulted. The brand of degradation has been raised to
mark me, because the people of Clare fairly selected me. Will the
people of Clare endure this insult, now that they can firmly but
constitutionally efface it for ever? Electors of the county of Clare, to
you is due the glory of converting Peel and conquering Wellington!
The last election for Clare is admitted to have been the immediate
irresistible cause of producing the Catholic relief bill. You have
achieved the religious liberty of Ireland. Another such victory
in Clare, and we shall attain the political freedom of our beloved
country." The victory which had been achieved, he said, was still
necessary to be maintained in order to "prevent Catholic rights and
liberties from being sapped and undermined by the insidious policy of
those men who, false to their own party, can never be true to us,
and who have yielded, not to reason, but to necessity, in granting us
freedom of conscience." Even the Catholic relief bill itself did not
escape the censure of Mr. O'Connell. The prohibition contained in it
against the growth of the monastic orders especially was denounced by
him. He remarked:--"I trust I shall be the instrument of erasing from
the statute-book that paltry imitation of the worst and still existing
portion of Jacobinism, a miserable imitation, which pretends to do that
which nature and religion forbid to be done--to extinguish monastic
orders in Ireland. While it is law, its penalties will be submitted to;
but let me add as a matter of fact, that its mandate will most assuredly
not be obeyed. It was formerly death in Ireland to be a friar; and the
Irish earth is still scarcely dry from the blow of martyred friars: the
friars multiplied in the face of death. Oh