testant, while his mental habits and
religious principles alike made him the consistent friend of religious
liberty. It was generally supposed that his views of government were
monarchical; and as he was the undoubted representative of the Irish
monarchy, it was also believed that he had sufficient ambition to look
forward to the time when independent Ireland would restore to him his
family honours. The personal and moral influence of Mr. O'Brien were
such as to qualify him to be a leader. He was much loved, and deserved
to be so. As a man he was amiable, as a gentleman courteous, as a friend
true. Intellectually, he was not fit to conduct a powerful party through
great dangers. Scholarly and accomplished, he was yet not profoundly
read, nor did he possess any great power as a writer or speaker. He
could not shake the senate like Grattan, Flood, or Curran, nor could
he move the popular will by his pen, like Moore or Davis. Whatever he
undertook for Ireland was in the spirit of a patriot, and his courage
was as unquestionable as his truth. He had studied too little the
character of his countrymen, and the political influence of their
religious predilections, or he probably would never have embarked upon
the stormy sea of the repeal agitation. Had he pondered deeply the
philosophy of Irish character, and of the Protestant and Roman Catholic
religions, by which the people were so extensively and sincerely
influenced, he must have foreseen that the Irish Roman Catholic
population would never enter upon any political enterprise to which
their priests were opposed; that the priests would never favour any
political scheme that did not comprise the ascendancy of Rome; and that
the Irish Protestants, deeply and thoroughly convinced of that fact,
would not extensively join any confederacy for political purposes where
the priesthood could possibly exercise any authority. All these
things William Smith O'Brien, from his position as an Irish Protestant
gentleman, ought to have known; knowing these things, he never could
have plunged into the raging surge of an Irish popular insurrection. He
meant honestly, failed signally, and suffered himself to be involved in
a hapless enterprise, because he had not sufficiently studied the people
among whom he lived, nor the religious influences to which they were
subjected.

A third leader of this party was Thomas Meagher, who afterwards called
himself O'Meagher, son of a wealthy and respectable