“Oh, the old story; the same plot over again we had this year at the Rotunda?” said O'Reilly, contemptuously. “Which only failed from our own faults,” added Heffer-nan, angrily. “Some of us were lukewarm and would do nothing; some waited for others to come forward; and some again wanted to make their hard bargain with the minister before they made him feel the necessity of the compact.” O'Reilly bit his lip in silence, for he well understood at whom this reproof was levelled. “The cause of failure was very different,” said O'Hallo-ran, authoritatively. “It was one which has dissolved many an association, and rendered many a scheme abortive, and will continue to do so, as often as it occurs. You failed for want of a 'Principle.' You had rank and wealth, and influence more than enough to have made your weight felt and acknowledged, but you had no definite object or end. You were a party, and you had not a purpose.” “Come, come,” said Heffernan, “you are evidently unaware of the nature of our association, and seem not to have read the resolutions we adopted.” “No,---on the contrary, I read them carefully; there was more than sufficient in them to have made a dozen parties. Had you adopted one steadfast line of action, set out with one brief intelligible proposition,--I care not what,--Slave Emancipation, or Catholic Emancipation, Repeal of Tests Acts, or Parliamentary Reform, any of them,--taken your stand on that, and that alone, you must have succeeded. Of course, to do this is a work of time and labor; some men will grow weary and sink by the way, but others take up the burden, and the goal is reached at last There must be years long of writing and speaking, meeting, declaring, and plotting; you must consent to be thought vulgar and low-minded,--ay, and to become so, for active partisans are only to be found in low places. You will be laughed at and jeered, abused, mocked, and derided at first; later on, you will be assailed more powerfully and more coarsely; but, all this while, your strength is developing, your agencies are spreading. Persuasion will induce some, notoriety others, hopes of advantage many more, to join you. You will then have a press as well as a party, and the very men that sneered at your beginnings will have to respect the persistence and duration of your efforts. I don't care how trumpery the arguments used; I don't value one straw the fallacy of the statements put forward. Let one great question, one great demand for anything, be made for some five-and-twenty or thirty years,--let the Press discuss, and the Parliament debate it,--you are sure of its being accorded in the end. Now, it will be a party ambitious of power that will buy your alliance at any price; now, a tottering Government anxious to survive the session and reach the snug harbor of the long vacation. Now, it will be the high 'bid' of a popular administration; now, it will be the last hope of