for the sagacity of Peel,
and the awful wisdom of Wellington, that meditate to suppress monastic
orders in Ireland by a pecuniary penalty, and the dread of a foreign
mission, under the name of banishment!" In this letter Mr. O'Connell
made some magnificent promises to the electors of Clare and the people
of Ireland at large. He would obtain the repeal of the disfranchisement
act, of the sub-letting act, and of the vestry bill; would assail the
system of "grand jury jobbing, and grand jury assessment;" would procure
an equitable distribution of church property between the poor on the one
hand, and the laborious portion of the Protestant clergy on the other;
would cleanse the Augean stables of the law, for which Herculean task
his professional habits gave him peculiar facilities; would procure for
every Catholic rector of a parish, a parochial house, and an adequate
glebe; would make manifest the monstrous injustice that had been done
to the Jesuits and the monastic orders; would wage war against the East
India charter; would strain every nerve in the cause of parliamentary
reform; and would provide a system of poor laws for Ireland that would
be agreeable even to those who had to pay their money for the support
of the poor. He added:--"If the gentry of Clare are desirous to have as
their representative a man who is able and most desirous to protect in
parliament their properties and permanent interests, let them do me the
honour to elect me. But let them not lay the flattering unction to their
souls, that they can, without an independent man of business as their
representative, postpone the introduction of the English system of poor
laws." As soon as Mr. O'Connell took the field an "aggregate meeting"
of Catholics, which was nothing else than a meeting of the Catholic
Association took place, to consider what steps should be adopted to
forward his re-election. The first thing done was to vote L5000 of the
rent as an aid to assist the agitator in standing for the county of
Clare, The election did not excite much interest, as Mr. O'Connell was
not opposed; but it was preceded and accompanied by "triumphant entries"
as they were called; that is, assemblages of large crowds of people, to
whom were addressed harangues in which inflammatory abuse was mixed
up with low buffoonery. On the subject of the repeal of the union with
England, he said at Youghall:--"We have now a brighter era opened to us;
and I trust that all classes of