think that a people who had been resisting English oppression for twenty generations, with nothing else but physical force, ever believed him in earnest, when he told them they should win their rights by legal and constitutional means alone. The more educated may have given some credence to his words, but I do not think the great bulk of the people ever did.[107] At any rate, the principle was distasteful to them; and when the _Nation_ newspaper began to publish what seemed to them the good old threatening physical force articles, and when a talented band of young gentlemen, in the Repeal Association, began to pronounce eulogiums on the physical force patriots of other countries in fervid eloquence, they soon became the prime favourites of the people; and it was not long until the _Nation_ surpassed, in circulation, every other journal in the country. Those enthusiastic young men saw that the oft-repeated maxim, that "no political amelioration is worth one drop of human blood," took the strength and manhood out of the agitation; so they determined to return to the older doctrine of moral force--a doctrine which neither makes it independent of physical force, nor antagonistic with it, but rather its threatening shadow. A principle well expressed by the motto on the cannon of the Volunteers of '82--"Free Trade, or else."--a motto often quoted by the Liberator himself, with a disclaimer, to be sure, in order to avoid the law, as the people believed. Smith O'Brien was right, then, when he said he could not see the utility of continually assuring England that, under no circumstances whatever, would Ireland have recourse to any but peaceable means to right her wrongs, quoting at the same time Davis's happy definition of moral force-- "When Grattan rose, none dared oppose The claim he made for freedom; They knew our swords to back his words Were ready, did he need them." Had Mr. O'Brien and his friends stopped here, all would have been well; but they did not. The two parties in the Repeal Association, having the same object in view--the good of Ireland--chose different and diverging routes for arriving at it; and every day saw them further and further from each other. The Young Ireland party, to the sorrow of their best friends, and, exposing themselves to the sneers of their enemies, drifted rapidly into an armed outbreak, feeble and ill-planned, if planned at all, and ending in miserable disaster. The Old Ireland agitation went on; but the hand of death was upon the mighty spirit who alone could sustain it, and it may be said to have expired with him. Moral force, with physical force in the not too dim perspective behind it, was a giant power in the hands of O'Connell, and it won emancipation; physical force by itself, when brought to the test, eventuated in ridiculous failure.