and when at length we pressed him to accompany us to the meeting, the worthy old man harangued us for a quarter of an hour to demonstrate the impolicy of publicly assembling at all, and ended by-coming to the meeting. He drew up a resolution, which denounced the continued agitation of the Catholic Question at that time. This resolution, proceeding as it did from a tried old leader, was carried. I then rose, and proposed a counter-resolution, pledging us all to incessant, unrelaxing agitation; and such were the wiseacres with whom I had to deal, that they passed my resolution in the midst of enthusiastic acclamations, without once dreaming that it ran directly counter to John Keogh's! Thenceforward, I may say, I was the leader. Keogh called at my house some short time after; he paid me many compliments, and repeated his importunities that I might alter my policy. But I was inexorable; my course was resolved upon and taken. I refused to yield. He departed in bad humour, and I never saw him afterwards.

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Keogh was undoubtedly useful in his day. But he was one who would rather that the cause should fail, than that any body but himself should have the honour of carrying it.

"He and his coadjutors made a mistake in 1793. He was a member of a deputation, consisting alto

gether of five persons, who had an interview with Pitt and Dundas on the subject of the Catholic claims. Pitt asked, 'What would satisfy the Catholics?' Keogh replied, 'Equality.' Pitt seemed inclined to comply with the wishes of the deputation, but Dundas started several objections. Pitt then said, 'Would you be satisfied with the bar, the elective franchise, and eligibility to the municipalities?' Keogh replied, 'They would be great boons.' Pitt immediately pinned him to that, and would concede no more. Now, had a lawyer been present, he would have known that eligibility to the municipalities was really worth nothing. They thought it was a great approach to equality."

Some short time afterwards, the Cork papers contained a speech of Mr. Joseph Hayes, of Cork, in which he denounced the Poor Law as a gross imposition on the country; a national calamity, which rendered the poor man destitute, and the destitute hopeless. Mr. Hayes, who had originally been an advocate of the Poor Law, concluded by withdrawing himself from the administration of the measure, and retiring from the office of guardian.

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"Oh!" exclaimed O'Connell, on reading this, never had man such a triumph of opinion as I have. I predicted all along that this Poor Law

would be a grievous affliction to the country. Men who were deluded by the specious pretence of relieving the destitute, hoped great things from it. But experience now shows them that I was quite right."

"Allow me to ask," said Steele, "whether a country can be called fully civilised unless there is in it a legal provision, judiciously administered, for the destitute?"

"the

"On the contrary," replied O'Connell, existence of a compulsory or legalised provision for the destitute raises up a barrier against the best kind of civilisation-the civilisation of Christian charity. It directly operates to check the charitable impulses of our nature; for it leads the community to say to the applicant for relief, 'I'll give you nothing-go to the poor-house!' A law that compels the public to support the destitute affords the strongest encouragement to scheming knaves to affect destitution in order to be supported at the public expense. You may say that schemers would equally seek to impose on private charity. It is quite true they would. But a man who gives charity out of his own pocket will probably inquire respecting the applicant, and take measures to detect imposition. Whereas the distributors of public

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charity have not this individual stimulus to ascertain imposture. What is every one's business is nobody's business, and will, of course, be less carefully performed. But, after all, my grand objection to the Poor Law is, that it tends to deaden the Christian sentiment, by laying upon the state the performance of those duties to which religion should stimulate the community. There would be some small set-off against this evil if the condition of the destitute poor were essentially bettered by it. But this, in truth, is not the case. Look at the working of the Poor Law in Dublin and in Cork. It was to have been a model of state-charity; whereas we have already witnessed the cruel neglect of the commonest comforts of the paupers; the absolute and

gross inhumanity exhibited towards them in several instances, and publicly complained of by the guardians. Now, if such be the blessings of the system in its very outset, who can calculate the additional abuses which time will doubtless accumulate?"

O'Connell's battle with the Times newspaper was carried on at intervals. In a letter addressed about this period to the Morning Chronicle, O'Connell says, that no greater folly could exist than to believe an assertion because it is found in the

Times.

"Indeed," he proceeds, "the contrary

inference is conclusive. The Times lies like a misplaced milestone, which can never by any possibility tell truth."

O'Connell had frequently battled with the press, both in and out of Parliament; and more than once the corps of reporters had formed resolutions to suppress his speeches. But it would not do. The public demanded the speeches, and the public demand was imperative. Suppression would have injured the journals. The reporters were accordingly compelled to strike their colours, and O'Connell's harangues obtained undiminished circulation.

O'Connell reverted to the period when he was attending his terms at Gray's Inn. He said he used constantly then to amuse himself boating on the Thames; so constantly, that the watermen's fare made inconvenient inroads on his purse. He pointed out to me a court on the north side of Coventry Street, in which he had lodged in 1794.

"I then lived in that cul-de-sac," said he, "and had excellent accommodation there." Passing one day through Coventry Street, he stopped opposite a fishmonger's shop, saying, "That shop is in precisely the same state in which I remember it when I was at Gray's Inn, nearly fifty years ago—the same