which I took an anxious part, I might labour to make the narration more
interesting to my readers, without any care for future consequences.

But through every disaster I preserved unbroken faith in the purpose and
courage of my country. I believed, and still believe that her true heart
is faithful to liberty and hopeful for the future; and this conviction
involved me in a struggle with the apparently opposite tendency of the
facts I was bound to narrate. Had I to write for a new generation, upon
whom these facts could have made no false impressions, my task would be
easy. I am persuaded that a simple statement of all that occurred would
satisfy any candid mind that no disgrace attached to Ireland in her
recent discomfiture. But I must needs confess that it is a task of
extreme difficulty to reconcile her fall with the pre-conceived notions
or present prejudices of those who read her story through the false
medium of the press; nor do I hope for more than partial success from
the details I have been able to give of the circumstances of which she
was the victim and the dupe.

It is impossible fully to appreciate the pernicious effect of Mr.
O'Connell's teaching, without reviewing in minute detail the leading
circumstances of his wonderful career and the matchless and countless
resources with which he upheld his fatal system. In dealing with this
part of my subject my difficulties have been multiplied and enhanced by
a strong desire to do him no injustice, and to leave untouched by doubt
or suspicion a character so intertwined with my country's love. But it
became necessary to refer to those acts which chiefly tended to increase
the obstacles which beset our endeavours. In doing this, whether here or
elsewhere in my narrative, if I use phrases which would seem to imply
harshness to his memory, I wish them to be understood as applied in
reference to the attempt to effect the deliverance of Ireland by force