hostile hand could be laid upon it without violating the constitution.
His countrymen had nothing to do but obey the law and support the
Association, and a Repeal of the Union within a few months was, he said,
inevitable. In all this he had allowed his own heart to deceive him;
and his mistake was clearly shown, when in October, 1843, the
government, by proclamation and a display of military force, prevented
the intended monster meeting at Clontarf. It was still more fully
established in the early part of the following year, when he, with a
number of his political associates, was brought to trial for treasonable
and seditious practices, found guilty, and sentenced to twelve months'
imprisonment. The subsequent reversal of the verdict by the House of
Lords, was a legal triumph for O'Connell; but nevertheless, his prestige
had suffered by the occurrence, and his policy had begun to pall upon
the minds of the people.

After his release the business of the Association went on as before,
only there was less of confidence and of defiance in the speeches of the
Liberator, and there were no more monster meetings. He was now more
emphatic than ever in his advocacy of moral force principles, and his
condemnation of all warlike hints and allusions. The weight of age--he
was then more than seventy years--was pressing on his once buoyant
spirit; his prison experience had damped his courage; and he was haunted
night and day by a conviction--terrible to his mind--that there was
growing up under the wing of the Association, a party that would teach
the people to look to an armed struggle as the only sure means of
obtaining the freedom of their country. The writings of the
_Nation_--then a new light in the literature and politics of
Ireland--had a ring in them that was unpleasant to his ears, a sound as
of clashing steel and the explosion of gunpowder. In the articles of
that journal much honour was given to men who had striven for Irish