very arena so fatal to Irish eloquence and Irish fame, where even Grattan
failed to sustain himself, and the impetuous spirit of Flood was stricken
down.

No subject in which Ireland was not directly interested has received a
greater share of O'Connell's attention than that of the abolition of
colonial slavery. Utterly detesting tyranny of all kinds, he poured
forth his eloquent soul in stern reprobation of a system full at once of
pride and misery and oppression, and darkened with blood. His speech on
the motion of Thomas Fowell Buxton for the immediate emancipation of the
slaves gave a new tone to the discussion of the question. He entered
into no petty pecuniary details; no miserable computation of the
shillings and pence vested in beings fashioned in the image of God. He
did not talk of the expediency of continuing the evil because it had
grown monstrous. To use his own words, he considered "slavery a crime to
be abolished; not merely an evil to be palliated." He left Sir Robert
Peel and the Tories to eulogize the characters and defend the interests
of the planters, in common with those of a tithe-reaping priesthood,
building their houses by oppression and their chambers by wrong, and
spoke of the negro's interest, the negro's claim to justice; demanding
sympathy for the plundered as well as the plunderers, for the slave as
well as his master. He trampled as dust under his feet the blasphemy
that obedience to the law of eternal justice is a principle to be
acknowledged in theory only, because unsafe in practice. He would,
he said, enter into no compromise with slavery. He cared not what cast
or creed or color it might assume, whether personal or political,
intellectual or spiritual; he was for its total, immediate abolition. He
was for justice,--justice in the name of humanity and according to the
righteous law of the living God.