FURTHER EMBARRASSMENT CAUSED BY THE RESCRIPT--DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MR. O'CONNELL AND THE PRIMATE.--FINANCIAL REFORMS IN THE COMMITTEE OF THE ASSOCIATION, AND CONSEQUENT DISSENSION.--'82 CLUB.--THE COLLEGES BILL.--DIFFERENCES AND CALUMNIES CONSEQUENT UPON IT. QUARREL WITH MR. DAVIS.--THE GREAT LEVEE AT THE ROTUNDA.--DECLINE OF THE AGITATION.--CLOSING LABOURS AND DEATH OF THOMAS DAVIS. Thus wrote Thomas Davis at the opening of the new year:-- "Hitherto our dangers have been few and transient. The product of mistake or enthusiasm, they were remedied by explanation and kindliness. There are dangers threatened now, and against them we shall try the same prompt and frank policy which never failed us yet. Already the English press are quarrelling for the spoils of the routed Repealers. They are almost unanimous in describing the people as disgusted, the leaders as exhausted, and the policy of the ministers as rapidly levelling the defences of the once great party. "We do not quail. We remember that whenever the rent[5] has fallen, the same press cried out the people are sick of the agitation. Whenever righteous discussion took place in our councils, they exulted over our 'fatal divisions,' and at the beginning of each new blunder of the cabinet, they sang victory. "If the Irish be a hot or capricious race, who plunge into a new policy because it is new, and abandon their dearest interests and most solemn vows because their success needs time, then indeed Repeal was hopeless and was always so. If the leaders have not sagacity enough to embrace the business of an empire and pierce through time, unwearied industry, pure hands and resolute spirits, then to repeal is hopeless until a new race of chiefs appears." Almost contemporaneously with this article, the Catholic Primate contradicted Mr. O'Connell's assertion respecting the rescript, and laid rescript and contradiction before the public. "I was surprised and sorry," he writes, "to find that you had ventured to assert that a letter sent to me some time past from the Propaganda was not a canonical document." He adds that he laid the document before the assembled prelates, and appends the resolution in which they acknowledged its authenticity and approval of its counsel.[6] Mr. O'Connell at once expressed his entire acquiescence and deep contrition. He bowed reverentially to the resolution of the prelates, retracted the hasty opinion, and apologised for his error, which, he said, resulted from his great anxiety of mind, caused by the avowal of the _Morning Chronicle_ that the Whigs had a secret agent in Rome.