The seceders determined to abide the issue. They had the fullest confidence that the insensate cry raised against them would eventually subside, and that truth would again prevail. They contented themselves, therefore, with appealing to their countrymen, through the columns of the _Nation_, then interdicted and banned through every parish in the island. But, in those appeals, there was no word of allusion to the storm of calumny and denunciation then raging against them. They sought to fix public attention on subjects of vast national importance, and to awake the energies of the people to some becoming effort where the stake was their lives. Meantime, week after week, the Government was praised, the Board of Works were praised, and the people--"_the faithful and moral people, who died, peacefully, of hunger_"--were praised, in the Repeal Association. [Illustration: Robert Holmes (1848)] Late in the autumn of 1846, some men, few in number and humble in condition, undertook the desperate task of remonstrating with the Repeal Association. Among them, Mr. Keeley and Mr. Holywood, Mr. Crean and Mr. Halpin, were prominent. Their undertaking was gigantic, considering the formidable obstacles they proposed to encounter. They proceeded silently and sedulously; and, in a few weeks, a remonstrance against the course pursued by the Association was signed by fifteen hundred citizens of Dublin. It was presented to the Chairman of the Association on the 24th of October, and ordered by Mr. J. O'Connell to be flung into the gutter. The remonstrants and the public resented this indignity alike. It was determined to hold a meeting in the Rotunda, where they proposed to defend themselves against every species of assault. The meeting was held on the 3rd of November, and was allowed to pass off without disturbance. Mr. M'Gee attended. He had never appeared in the struggle in the hall, nor was he a member at the time. His speech at the Rotunda was calm, forcible and conclusive on the points in issue; and the excitement it created was, in no small degree, enhanced by the fact that the speaker was a young man theretofore unknown. The success of the meeting suggested the practicability and safety of an experiment upon a large scale preparatory to the formation of the Confederation. The meeting was fixed for the 2nd of December. The remonstrant committee offered to defend it against any assailants. The main object was to reply to the calumnies which, for nearly six months, had been urged against the leading seceders. The meeting was one of the most important ever held in the metropolis. It was intelligent, numerous and fashionable. The entire ability of the seceders was put forth; and such was the sensation created by the proceedings that two publishers, one in Dublin and one in Belfast, brought out reports, in pamphlet form, which were read all over the country with the greatest avidity. It was that