'The miscreant had the audacity to style me an incendiary. I was a greater incendiary in 1831 than I am at present, if ever I was one, and he is doubly so for having employed me. He calls me a traitor; my answer to this is, he is a liar. His life is a living lie. He is the most degraded of his species and kind, and England is degraded in tolerating and having on the face of her society a miscreant of his abominable, foul, and atrocious nature. His name shows that he is by descent a Jew. They were once the chosen people of God. There were miscreants amongst them, however, also, and it must certainly have been from one of those that Disraeli descended. He possesses just the qualities of the impenitent thief that died upon the cross, whose name I verily believe must have been Disraeli. For aught I know the present Disraeli is descended from him, and with the impression that he is I now forgive the heir at law of the blasphemous thief that died upon the cross.' [Sidenote: O'CONNELL AND DISRAELI] All the world shouted with laughter. The hit was good, and the provocation, it was generally felt, had been on Disraeli's side. But there are limits to license of tongue even in political recrimination, and it was felt also that O'Connell had transgressed those limits. An insult so keen and bitter could be met in one way only. Disraeli had already been spattered by the mud which flies so freely in English political contests. He had found that 'the only way to secure future ease was to take up a proper position early in life, and to show that he would not be insulted with impunity.' He put himself into the hands of Count d'Orsay. D'Orsay considered that a foreigner should not interfere in a political duel, and found Disraeli another friend; but he undertook himself the management of the affair. O'Connell having once killed an antagonist on an occasion of this kind, had 'registered a vow in heaven' that he would never fight again. But Morgan O'Connell had recently fought Lord Alvanley in his father's behalf, and was now invited to answer for the Dublin speech. If he was to meet every person who had suffered from his father's tongue his life would have been a short one. He replied that he had fought Lord Alvanley because Lord Alvanley had insulted his father; he was not accountable for what his father might say of other people. Disraeli undertook to obviate this difficulty. He addressed O'Connell in a letter published in the 'Times,' which, if less pungent, at least met Morgan O'Connell's objection. 'Although,' he said, 'you have placed yourself out of the pale of civilisation I am one who will not be insulted even by a yahoo without chastising it.... I admire your scurrilous allusion to my origin; it is clear the hereditary bondsman has already forgotten the clank of his fetters.... I had nothing to appeal to but the good sense of the people. No threatening skeleton canvassed for me. A death's-head and cross-bones were not