. Such a coalition was the policy of the Young
Ireland party; but they made the doctrine of physical force a _sine
qua non_ in the creed of the coalesced parties; and the Old Irelanders,
still clinging to the policy of their deceased chief, refused the terms.
John O'Connell and his adherents were then made the objects of unsparing
ridicule by the _literati_ of the new party, and the lampoons and
caricatures of which the chairman and committee of Conciliation Hall
were the victims, told upon the people, and gradually insinuated a
contempt for the weak and vacillating policy, as it was described, by
which they were guided. The party of John O'Connell, as when under the
guidance of his father, was not slow to resort to physical violence,
whenever there was a chance of doing so with impunity, while they
continued to proclaim the sanctity and permanent obligation of the
O'Connell doctrine of moral force. The Young Irelanders endeavoured to
reunite Irishmen to lift the arm of a manly and brave revolt against
English connection. The Old Irelanders had no objection to kill
scripture-readers, break church windows, waylay Protestants, and
maltreat them at market or fair, and riotously disperse the assemblages
of Young Irelanders, while they preached passive resistance as alone
justifiable to the government. Of course the leaders of Old Ireland
denounced all breakers of the laws; but when outrages were committed,
especially on Young Irelanders or Protestants, they palliated them, or
denied them in the face of evidence which was conclusive. John O'Connell
found himself in a hurricane of political passion, which he could not
quell, and through which he had neither power nor skill to direct his
course. By the end of the year he found the reins of authority slipping
through his hands; Smith O'Brien and his compeers were rampant; and
Ireland, stained with blood, blackened with pestilence, exhausted by
famine, raged with impotent fury against the imperial government and
Great Britain: in all the folly of domestic faction, she was pitied and
scorned by Great Britain when she supposed herself feared. There were
no men amongst the leaders of the disaffected in Ireland to command the
respect of England, in that sense which a dominant nation respects the
power of a rival, or of an insurgent province. The wish became
very extensive in Great Britain that all Irish grievances should be
redressed, and that in every respect Ireland should be placed