the state of Irish parties depicted as they stood in
1845. Throughout the year 1846 some new phases of the political spirit
of the people were presented. O'Connell still declared that the only
remedy for Ireland was the repeal of the union; and that while he gave a
modified support to a whig government, so long as it sincerely attempted
the melioration of Irish circumstances, he merely did so to prove that
he was not a partisan, and in the hope of eventually bringing all men
to believe that no effectual redress for the wrongs of Ireland was to be
expected from the imperial legislature--that Ireland's only hope lay in
"a native parliament." This the great agitator declared he would obtain
by moral force only, if the people of Ireland abstained from rebellion,
and preserved the moral attitude of a united demand for the repeal of
the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland. Gradually there
arose in "the Repeal Association" a more spirited section, which went
by the designation of "Young Ireland." These men laughed at O'Connell's
moral force doctrines, or denounced them with disdain. At first they
professed unbounded respect for himself, and an approval of his aims,
but an irreconcileable antipathy to his measures. They maintained the
right of all men to use arms in defence or in the assertion of liberty;
proclaimed that Ireland was too noble a country, and the Irish too fine
a race, to be subjected to a provincial _status_. "Ireland a nation--not
a province," so often proclaimed by O'Connell, became in earnest the
watchword of this new and vigorous party. They derided the time-serving
and place-hunting of O'Connell's partisans, and declared that, by asking
places from the English government for his followers, O'Connell had
corrupted and dishonoured his country. They also opposed "the rent,"
which O'Connell received as a tribute from the people, and a means
of enabling him to employ various agencies for the prosecution of his
labours. He had given up the practice of his profession, to him most
lucrative, in order to devote himself wholly to what he believed to
be the good of his country, and, accordingly, the people contributed
liberally to enable him, as the leader of the Roman Catholics of
Ireland, to hold his place without indignity in the face of the
parliament and people of England. In theory this contribution was at all
events creditable to the generosity and zeal of the Irish people, and no
discredit to O'C