ramparts, where freedom was justly estimated, and where the possession of the precious gift was purchased by the effusion of generous blood. I admire the Belgians, I honour the Belgians, for their courage and their daring; and I will not stigmatize the means by which they obtained a citizen king, a Chamber of Deputies." Here Mr. John O'Connell rose to order. He said, the language of Mr. Meagher was so dangerous to the Association, that it must cease to exist, or Mr. Meagher must cease to be a member of it. Mr. Meagher again essayed to speak, but failed to obtain a hearing. Mr. John O'Connell continued: Unless, he said, those who acted with Mr. Meagher stood by the Peace Resolutions, they must adopt other resolutions and another leader; upon which Mr. O'Brien and the Young Ireland party abruptly left the Hall, amid much excitement and confusion. They never returned to it: the rupture was complete. Thus, at a most critical moment, standing between two years of fearful, withering famine, did the leaders of the Irish people, by their miserable dissensions, lay that people in hopeless prostration at the mercy of the British Cabinet, from which, had they remained united, they might have obtained means of saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of their countrymen.[106] It matters but little now which party was in the right and which in the wrong. Looking back, however, through the cool medium of a quarter of a century, it would seem that each side had something of right to support its views. In the earlier part of his career, O'Connell did not disclaim the use of physical force, nor denounce the employment of it, in the cause of liberty, as it became his habit to do towards the close of his life; and if ever he did so, it was usually after telling his audience, as Mr. Mitchel said, that Ireland contained seven millions of people, as brave as any upon the face of the earth. Subsequent professions of loyalty, and assurances of his never intending to have recourse to the bravery of those millions, were interpreted by the people as nothing more than a clever touch of legal ability, to keep himself out of the power of the Crown lawyers, who were ever on the watch to catch him in his words. O'Connell himself may have never contemplated any effort beyond legal and constitutional agitation, but the fear that he might intend something more, founded on his bold allusions to the strength and courage of those whom he led, gave undoubted force to the demands he made upon the Government--in a strictly legal and constitutional manner. When the "single-drop-of-blood" principle became the guiding star of his political life, his demands had public opinion, and their own inherent justice only to support them; so that physical force no longer played a part in Irish politics, except from the fact that, inasmuch as it undoubtedly still existed, it might some day act without him, or in spite of him, or act when he should be dead and gone. It is hard to