While the Republican spirit was in full glow in Ireland, Meagher astonished his friends by rushing down to Waterford and offering himself as a candidate for the post left vacant in parliament by the resignation of O'Connell. By this time the Confederates had begun to despair of a parliamentary policy, and they marvelled much to see their young orator rush to the hustings, and throw himself into the confusion and turmoil of an election contest. _Que le diable allait il faire dans cette galere_ muttered his Dublin friends. Was not the time for hustings orations, and parliamentary agitation over now? Meagher, however, conceived, and perhaps wisely, that he could still do some good for his country in the House of Commons. He issued a noble address to the electors of his native city, in which he asked for their support on the most patriotic grounds. "I shall not meddle," he said, "with English affairs. I shall take no part in the strife of parties--all factions are alike to me. I shall go to the House of Commons to insist on the rights of this country to be held, governed, and defended by its own citizens, and by them alone. Whilst I live I shall never rest satisfied until the kingdom of Ireland has won a parliament, an army, and a navy of her own." Mitchel strongly disapproved of his conduct. "If Mr. Meagher were in parliament," said the _United Irishman_, "men's eyes would be attracted thither once more; some hope of 'justice' might again revive in this too easily deluded people." The proper men to send to parliament were according to Mitchel, "old placemen, pensioners, five pound Conciliation Hall Repealers." "We have no wish to dictate," concluded Mitchel in an article on the subject, full of the lurking satire and quiet humour that leavened his writings, "but if the electors of Waterford have any confidence in us, we shall only say that we are for Costello!" "Costello" was defeated, however, but so was Meagher. The Young Ireland champion was stigmatized as a Tory by the Whigs, and as a rebel by the Tories; if _the people_, as Mitchel remarks had any power he would have been elected by an overwhelming majority, but the people had no votes, and Sir Henry Winston Barren was returned. Meagher went back to Dublin almost a convert to Mitchel's views, leaving Whig, Tory, and West Briton to exult over his discomfiture.