A RECOLLECTION OF DANIEL O'CONNELL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 122, 27 August 1875, Page 8

A RECOLLECTION OF DANIEL O'CONNELL.

O'Coknell in 1838 was giving his support to the Whig ministry. During the August of that year, however, in starting the society of Precursors, he had inaugurated a last effort to obtain what he regarded as a full measure of justice to Ireland from the British Legislature. Jealousies, however, were already beginning to be excited against him as the originator and arch promoter of this movement. In startling evidence of this, when on the 19th of January, 1839, Lord Norbury was assassinated, the crime was actually, attributed to the influence of O'Connell's agitation. To this day the murderer of that good judge, who was reputed to have had not an enemy in the world, has never been discovered ; but never, during all these sis and thirty years, has there been traceable any conceivable connection between that sanguinary incident and that most lawful agitation. Arriving hurriedly now in mid-session at Dublin to hold this first of his long-projected series of meetings in the Corn Exchange, O'Connell's advent in the midst of infatnous rumors like these awakened among all ranks and classes a breathless expectation. The hall of assembly — as central a rendezvous as could have been selected in Dublin — was already historical as the scene of many memorable demonstrations. There had been previously gathered, in 1832, the National Council. There afterwards Avore collected, week by week, month by month, year by year, the Repeal Association. Thence went forth the signals in 1843, that convened in O'Conuell'-s name the monster meetings — on the 16th of March at Trim, on the 15th of August at Tara, on the Bth of October at Clontarf — meetings that carried agitation to the very verge, but never beyond the verge, of "nsurrection. On Monday, February 18, 1839, toward noon, half Dublin seemed i pouring southward down Sackville Street, across the Liffey, by Carlisle Bridge, and along Burgh Quay, to the entrance of the Corn Exchange. The throng was so great, so wholly out of proportion to the capabilities even of that ample building, that it became necessary in some way to restrict the admissions. An entrance fee of a shilling was charged. Rapidly enough the noble auditorium was crammed almost to suffocation, and when the last who could squeeze his way in had effected an entrance, dense throngs still crowded the staircase, the hall, the roadway in front of the Exchange, and all the adjacent thoroughfares,, By the time the meeting-place was completely filled I found myself seated toward the upper end of the long, narrow table extending the whole length of the hall of audience, immediately opposite the vacant place reserved for the Liberator. The preliminary proceedings, without Availing for his advent, were at once commenced. A Precursor of some eminence then, one Jeremiah Dunne, was in the chair. The secretary, Mr. Ray — whose name was long familiar through the newspapers of the Three Kingdoms as the "My Dear Ray/ of O'Conncll's correspondence— was. reading aloud letters from recruits to the society, asking to be enrolled as Precursors, and each onclosing a subscription, or a handful of subscriptions, when, suddenly, drowning his voice, there was heard a roar of cheering outside, a sound'soon caught up by the dense mass wedged together on the staircase. Inside the room, immediately around the entrance, there were cries, having the flavor of the broguo about them, of "Shut the door! We'll bo crushed to death!" Somehow, through the struggling cluster of half-suffocated people — room being made for him, as Lord Alvanley would say, for it certainly was not there — O'Connell entered. The prolonged shout of welcome that greeted him as he advanced up the hail to the vacant place (opposite to which I was seated) was magnanimously echoed on Burgh Quay, below the windows, by the multitude, who had failed to gain admission. Wbile the last of the oft-repeated cheering in the room was yet going on, I observed O'Connell, who had by that time reached his allotted chair, stoop and say something to a gentleman beside him. Tho-person thus addressed started up in amazement. Springing on to his chair and thence to the tabie, he waved the last cheering into silence with his hand, saying in the sudden hush : " I am sorry to announce that a most disgraceful transaction has occurred since Mr. O'Connell's arrival m this room," adding, a moment afterwards, with a breathless pause at every word, "Mr. — O'Connell's — watch — has — •been — picked — out — of — his — pocket!" After a bewildered instant or two of silence and evident dismay, there were indignant cries of • Oh, shameful ! " " Shut the door 1 " " Send for the police ! " " The Liberator robbed ! " " Oh, monstrous ! " For several seconds thcro was a Babel of indignant voices. In the midst of the hubbub, O'Connell, as if talking involuntarily to hiinsolf, exclaimed : " I would not have wished it for £500 ! " adding, with a sigh, " It was an old family piece."

The preliminary proceedings were yot going on when another energetic member of the Precursor society pushed his -way into the crowded room to announce that arrangements had been made with a new to ensure the recovery of Mr. O'Connell's watch. " I feel persuaded," he said, " that every gentleman here will willingly consent to be searched before leaving, and," he added very emphatically, and to all appearances very cogently, "as no one has been allowed to go away, the thief must be in the room." An uncomfortable sense pervaded the apartment that this roinark, however true, was by no means compliment-ivy to us collectively. _ In the midst of the general discomfort, O'Connoll, with a roguish twinkle of his Hibernian eye, was heard saying, as if again talking to liunself : " Oh ! the best thing the thief caii do is to steal away." Every eye in the room answered to that twinkle of fun, and, instead of the glum silence of a moment before, there was an instant roar of laughter. After this the proceedings of the day's meeting began in earnest. O Council's speech was recognizable, by those qualified to pronounce such an opinion, as among the finest orations he ever delivered. Save that it was uttered within doors, and to a more restricted audienr-o, though one very considerable, intensely congenial, and in many ways important, it exactly answered that noble description in St. Stephen's of O'Connell addressing one of his monster demonstrations : Once to my sight the giant thus was given, Wall'd by wide air, and roof d by boundless heaven ; Beneath his feet the human ocean lay, And wave on wave flowed into space away. Methought no clarion could liave sent its sound Even to the centre of the hosts around ; And, as I thought, rose the sonorous swell, As from some church tower swings the silvery bell, Alcft md clear from airy tide to tide, It glided easy, as a bird might glide ; To the last verge of that vast audience sent, It play'd with each wild passion as it went, Now stirr'd the uproar, now the murmur still'd, And sobs or laughter answer'd as it will'd." I saw my- elf the emotions thus awakened, of ten in startling rapid alternations. Tears glittered in the eyes of many at one time, and but a few seconds afterward there would be a roar of merriment. If, as Mr. Disraeli has said, Sir Eoberfc Peel played upon the House of Commons like an old fiddle, O'Connell played upon a nobler instrument — an Irish harp strung with the people's heart-strings. In one oi' (he earlier portions of his harangue,, while his hearers were hanging with breathless interest upon his accents, a disturbance at the doorway, as of some person endeavoring to force an entrance into the apartment, caused a general cry of " Order ! order!" The disturbance, however, to the indignation' of all, increased instead of diminishing, and an inspector of police, forcing his way into the hall, stepped on to ihe further end of the long table, and picking his -way among the inkstands, pens, and blotting paper, advanced the whole length of the room towards O'Connell, carrying conspicuously in his hand the gold watch and chain of the Liberator. A shout of delight from all present was hushed into silence as the policeman handed the watch, with some inaudible remark, to its owner t "What?" said O'Connell, 'not having caught the inspector's words quite acural ely. Inspector of police — " It was found, sir, after you had left home, under your pilloio, in your bedroom !" O'Connell's merriest touch of humor was never greeted by heartier peals of laughter than the few simple words uttered by that policeman . " Ah ! Liberator darlint, sure nobody would rob you," cried one of the frieze-clad tatterdomalians of the gutter, when the meeting was over and O'Connell was driving away in his carriage. At the close of the speech thus oddly interrupted, I recall to mind the sense of bewilderment with which I listened to the last words of the sonorous and impassioned peroration — a bewilderment awakened by the fantastic, evidence tho orator afforded in the manner of its utterance that he preserved the serenest mastery over himself and his theme, even when apparently most completely carried away by the influence of the eestrum, or divine afflatus. As the last words of tho ornate and balanced sentences forming the close of his peroration passed his lips, O'Connell, in the act of sitting down in the midst of a prolonged- burst of cheering, spread open a silk handkerchief he carried in his hands, and with it playfully enveloped the head and shoulders "of a little child beside him — one of the children of "My Dear Ray," the secretary — doing this with such aplomb that the whole speech might almost have seemed contrived as a cunning preparation for the climax of a game of boo-peep. — ' St. James' Magazine.'