Early in 1846, when the Repeal Association was still powerful and great, and ere yet the country had ceased to throb to the magic of O'Connell's voice, there rose one day from amongst those who crowded the platform of Conciliation Hall, a well-featured, gracefully-built, dark-eyed young gentleman, towards whom the faces of the assembly turned in curiosity, and whose accents when he spoke, were those of a stranger to the audience. Few of them had heard of his name; not one of them--if the chairman, William Smith O'Brien be excepted--had the faintest idea of the talents and capacities he possessed, and which were one day to enrapture and electrify his countrymen. He addressed the meeting on one of the passing topics of the day; something in his manner savouring of affectation, something in the semi-Saxon lisp that struggled through his low-toned utterances, something in the total lack of suitable gesture, gave his listeners at the outset an unfavourable impression of the young speaker. He was boyish, and some did not scruple to hint conceited; he had too much of the fine gentleman about his appearance, and too little of the native brogue and stirring declamation to which his listeners had been accustomed. The new man is a failure, was the first idea that suggested itself to the audience: but he was not; and when he resumed his seat he had conquered all prejudices, and wrung the cheers of admiration from the meeting. Warming with his subject, and casting off the restraints that hampered his utterances at first, he poured forth a strain of genuine eloquence, vivified by the happiest allusions, and enriched by imagery and quotations as beautiful as they were appropriate, which startled the meeting from its indifference, and won for the young speaker the enthusiastic applause of his audience. O'Brien complimented him warmly on his success, and thus it was that the orator of Young Ireland made his debut on the political platform.