CHAPTER XII.

Provincial Repeal Meeting at Kilkenny-Eulogy on the Irish Church-William Cobbett at Kilkenny-O'Connell's Remark on Cobbett O'Connell's Recollection of his School DaysO'Connell's Account of his First Circuit-Robert HicksonN. P. O'Gorman-Checkley, the Attorney-How to prove an Alibi-Kingstown Harbour-Representation of KilkennyPatronage-The "Edinburgh Review" on Catholicity-Visit to Canterbury Cathedral.

eyes

THE provincial meeting of Leinster for the Repeal of the Union shortly took place at Kilkenny.* Croker's Hill, in the vicinity of that city, was the place selected for the meeting. Accustomed as my had been for several years to large assemblies, I was really astonished at the enormous concourse which gathered upon this occasion. The numbers were computed—and I do not think the computation an exaggerated one-at 200,000 persons, of whom at least 20,000 were on horseback. It was a noble sight! that orderly and well-conducted multitude, pacifically met together without riot, without * October 14, 1840.

crime, without violence, to record their hostility to all save domestic legislation for Ireland. They had come to renew the declaration of the Irish Volunteers of 1779-" We know our duty to our Sovereign, and are loyal; we know also our duty to ourselves, and are resolved to be free."

O'Connell felt the full inspiration of the scene before him, and his thrilling words aroused the spirits and confirmed the resolves of his auditors. As has usually happened with his greatest efforts, the report did not do him justice. I have preserved the following passage, in which he alludes to the faith of the people of Ireland; it is one of the best morçeaux of his eloquence, as regards both the beauty of sentiment and the felicity of expression. He had been speaking of the penal code—

"Your priesthood were hunted and put to death; yet your hierarchy has remained unbroken-a noble monument of your faith and your piety. The traveller who wanders over Eastern deserts, beholds the majestic temples of Balbec or Palmyra, which rear their proud columns to heaven in the midst of solitude and desolation. Such is the Church of Ireland. In the midst of our political desolation, a sacred Palmyra has ever remained to us. It is true our altars have been broken down, and the gold and the silver have been taken away; the temple has

been desecrated, and its sacred tenants slain or forced to fly. But the moral Palmyra still stands in the midst of the desert. Its columns of eternal truth still tower to the clouds.. The Church of the People of Ireland has survived the wreck of time; the hierarchy exists in the plenitude of its integrity— a glorious monument of the religious fidelity and steady faith of the Catholics of Ireland."

The evening terminated with a Repeal banquet, which took place in a large apartment belonging to Mr. Smithwick, of St. Francis' Abbey.

I was Mr. Smithwick's guest; and that gentleman informed me that Cobbett had passed a week beneath his roof in 1834. Cobbett, during his sojourn, used to rise at five, and promenade the gardens, with his hands joined behind his back, and his eyes fixed on the ground. His hostess and her child met him on some of these early perambulations, but he did not condescend to take the least notice of them. During the day, he often inquired with apparent anxiety what he was to have for dinner; and on the whole, he was so much pleased with Mr. Smithwick's ménage, as to make it the subject of an eulogistic letter in his Weekly Register.

O'Connell said of Cobbett, that "his mind had not an extensive grasp; but what it could lay hold on, it grasped with iron force. He was honest: he

never saw more than one side of a subject at a time, and he honestly stated his impression of the side he saw."

O'Connell, as I have already said, was very communicative when travelling. About this period the various Repeal meetings kept the agitators constantly on the road; and he told me several incidents connected with his early life. He said, “I learned the alphabet in an hour. I was, in childhood, remarkably quick and persevering. My childish propensity to idleness was overcome by the fear of disgrace: I desired to excel, and could not brook the idea of being inferior to others. One day I was idle, and my teacher finding me imperfect in my lesson, threatened to beat me. But I shrank from the indignity, exclaiming, 'Oh, don't beat me for one half hour! If I haven't my lesson by that time, beat me then!' The teacher granted me the reprieve, and a lesson, rather a difficult one, was thoroughly learned."

On another occasion O'Connell said to me, "I was the only boy who wasn't beaten at Harrington's school; I owed this to my attention."

His instructors at Douay predicted his future distinction, from the rare abilities he displayed while in that seminary.

In the spring of 1798 he was in Dublin, and

joined the yeomanry, embodied to defend the city from the insurgents. Of the men who were embodied in the corps, many were discovered to be United Irishmen ; a discovery which alarmed O'Connell, who naturally feared, that some officious person might endeavour to implicate him in their disaffection. In June, 1798, he quitted Dublin. The following narrative I give as nearly in his own words as possible :

"Communication by land with the interior was cut off; so eighteen of us sailed for Cork in a potatoboat, bound for Courtmasherry. We each gave the pilot half a guinea to put us ashore at the Cove of Cork, where we landed, after a capital passage of thirty-six hours. I then went to Iveragh, and remained some months at Carhen. In the August* of 1798 my career was nearly ended by a violent fever, occasioned by sitting in wet clothes. I tried, for a fortnight, to fight it off, but at last I was compelled to yield. My life was despaired of. By the blessing of God I recovered, contrary to all expectation; and, after my recovery, I prepared to quit Carhen, to go off circuiteering. It was at four o'clock, on a fine sunny morning, that I left Carhen, on horseback. My brother John came part of the way with me; and oh, how I did envy him, when he turned off the road to hunt among the

* See page 48, ante.