The career of O'Connell would appear to have been easily marked out for him. He was the foremost advocate in Ireland; he was making a large income; he had inherited a considerable property--what was there for him but to go on and prosper; make money, hunt, shoot, fish, and be happy. He could not indeed obtain any of the honors or dignities of his profession. He could not even be a king's counsel, and wear a silk gown. His religion cut him off from all such marks of distinction--for he was a member of the Catholic Church. But no penal laws prevented him from addressing juries and winning verdicts and attracting popular admiration and making money. He was very happily married--a genuine love-match, it would seem to have been, and the love lasted. Moreover he was strongly and almost unreasonably opposed to all manner of agitation that bordered on rebellion or even on sedition. He was positively unjust, he was utterly unreasonable, in his estimate of the rebellion of 1798 and Robert Emmet's abortive effort in 1803. He never did full justice even to the brave men who were concerned in these movements. He had an absolute detestation for all manner of secret societies. He knew too well that they only ended in betrayal by some traitor who had contrived to be admitted to their ranks. Under such conditions and with such views what was there to induce the successful and prosperous advocate who loved peace and who hated social disturbance, to mix himself up with political affairs at a time when national politics meant for a patriotic Irishman only social exclusion, danger, poverty, and even ruin? O'Connell could not help himself. He had to walk, as Carlyle says of a very different man, "his own wild road whither that led him." O'Connell's wild road--the road that he had to walk, led him to the leadership of two great national movements.