The aims of O’Connell were far more national than political. He was studying in France when the great Revolution broke out, and its horrors made such an impression on his mind that he returned to his own country “half a Tory at heart.” His views were never what might be called Radical or democratic--though in many respects liberal; but he was a consummate demagogue--that is to say, a man gifted with a marvellous capacity of exciting, swaying, and controlling the mobs which were at once the sources and the subjects of his power. To these results, his commanding figure, expressive countenance, and splendid voice, contributed not a little. It may be doubted if there has ever been so accomplished an agitator in the modern world: those of the ancient republics spoke to much smaller audiences. One secret of his success (so far as he can be said to have succeeded) lay in the complete harmony which existed between himself and the majority of the Irish people. His face declared him to be an unmixed Celt, of the Hibernian variety; and not merely his face, but every throb of his nature. Passionate, impulsive, violent in thought and in expression, boastful, wayward, pathetic, and humorous, he drew from all these qualities a species of eloquence peculiarly suited to the audiences he addressed. In the open air, on a bleak hill-side, he would bring together thousands of half-barbarian peasantry, and play upon them, as a master plays upon an instrument. He had the almost unparalleled gift of stimulating his hearers to the very brink of some mad outbreak, and of restraining them at the last moment. It must be recorded to the credit of O’Connell that he always repudiated and condemned the resort to physical force, and that he did actually avoid it. Yet the turmoil he created was almost as distracting as civil war, and the gigantic failure of the Repeal movement was written in gloomy characters all over Ireland.