Ardently admiring our free institutions, and constantly pointing to our
glorious political exaltation as an incentive to the perseverance of his
own countrymen in their struggle against oppression, he has yet omitted
no opportunity of rebuking our inexcusable slave system. An enthusiastic
admirer of Jefferson, he has often regretted that his practice should
have so illy accorded with his noble sentiments on the subject of
slavery, which so fully coincided with his own. In truth, wherever man
has been oppressed by his fellow-man, O'Connell's sympathy has been
directed: to Italy, chained above the very grave of her ancient
liberties; to the republics of Southern America; to Greece, dashing the
foot of the indolent Ottoman from her neck; to France and Belgium; and
last, not least, to Poland, driven from her cherished nationality, and
dragged, like his own Ireland, bleeding and violated, to the deadly
embrace of her oppressor. American slavery but shares in his common
denunciation of all tyranny; its victims but partake of his common pity
for the oppressed and persecuted and the trodden down.

In this hasty and imperfect sketch we cannot enter into the details of
that cruel disregard of Irish rights which was manifested by a Reformed
Parliament, convoked, to use the language of William IV., "to ascertain
the sense of the people." It is perhaps enough to say that O'Connell's
indignant refusal to receive as full justice the measure of reform meted
out to Ireland was fully justified by the facts of the case. The Irish
Reform Bill gave Ireland, with one third of the entire population of the
United Kingdoms, only one sixth of the Parliamentary delegation. It
diminished instead of increasing the number of voters; in the towns and
cities it created a high and aristocratic franchise; in many boroughs it
established so narrow a basis of franchise as to render them liable to
corruption and abuse as the rotten boroughs of the old system. It threw
no new power into the hands of the people; and with no little justice has