AUTHOR OF "AN ARGUMENT FOR IRELAND,"" REPEAL DICTIONARY," ETC.

PUBLISHED BY JAMES DUFFY,
10, WELLINGTON-QUAY,

LONDON: C. DOLMAN, 61, NEW BOND-STREET.

1846.

PREFACE.

!

THE ten years which are embraced in the present volume of this "Sketch of the Life and Collection of the Speeches of Daniel O'Connell" (to give the work its proper, though very awkward title) were among the most important of his entire career, in point of permanent usefulness to Ireland.

This assertion may appear at first sight strange; considering that the period in question included so small a portion of the workings of that great engine which he devised and put together, and by which he accomplished the great victory of Catholic Emancipation.

And in all probability the reasons advanced in support of the assertion may not seem as convincing, nor by any means as palatable, to some of those who shall chance to read this imperfect record of Mr. O'Connell's career, as I have little doubt they will be found when submitted to the majority of Catholic Ireland.

During the ten years, then, which occupy this volume, the struggle between the enemies and the defenders of the independence of the Catholic Church in Ireland was most severely carried on; and in effect decided for that, and

314683

until the present, very perilous season.

Mr. O'Connell, it will be seen, was the main agent in this, as in other manifestations of the right-mindedness and high-mindedness of the Irish Catholic people.

Ireland's hope is her Catholicity! Pure she has preserved it for fourteen hundred years; and pure she must preserve it, so long as she claims to rank among the nations. But all history and all experience tell us, that state contact never can operate otherwise than to contaminate and destroy the purity of religion, and wean from it the reverence and attachment of the people.

That there was a time when state alliance was of benefit, may be readily conceded, without in any degree weakening the argument. That time was in the infancy of civilization, when men had to obtain their lights and a knowledge of the first and leading principles of rational liberty from the teachings of the Church, and when, pending that instruction, it was well that the only institution which the rude license and ignorant passions of the barons at all respected, should have the countenance and support of the secular authority.

Yet even then, even under the peculiar circumstances of those times of violence, evil still resulted from the Church and state connexion-a fearful evil in the number of ecclesiastics who were found ready to support the brutal license and tyrannous rapacity of a William and a Henry, whensoever they came in contact with the privileges and rights

which the Church held in guardianship for the humble and

the lowly.

Ireland would, indeed, have profited little of the teachings of all history-of those of her own sad history in particular-were she ever to give her consent to the chaining of the ministers of her holy religion to the chariot-wheels of the state. Where would have been her consolations in the afflictions through which she has passed ?-where the pure, bright Christian hope which is beaming upon her for the future, if those who administered the consolations, and who encourage that hope, were the salaried or selected servants of a reckless and unscrupulous, or of any, temporal government?

If the attempted invasions of the independence of the Catholic Church in Ireland by the British government, in the period 1814-1824, were dangerous, from their boldness, and the perseverance with which, for at least a considerable portion of that period, they were urged on, their attempts at the present time are far more dangerous, from the insinuating and deceptive forms under which they are made. With the pretence of benefiting religion, and of favouring and forwarding the extension of education, the real design is, to enmesh the prelacy, and to master and control, and ultimately to pervert to anti-Catholic and anti-national purposes, the moral and intellectual training of the future men of Ireland.

The heart of Ireland was sound in the period 1814-1824;