lengthy reply for an official letter-writer, acknowledged the receipt of the petition, but explained his unwillingness to present it, on the ground that it contained advice "which no minister, even if favorable to the repeal of the Union, could give a constitutional sovereign." In explanation, Mr. Maginn assured his lordship that the petitioners, in using that special form of words, strictly meant "to pray her Majesty to have the Union repealed in that way only, which the laws and constitution sanctioned." He then proposed, on behalf of the Committee, to modify the address so as clearly to express that intention. Thus modified, we believe, it was finally presented by the Marquis of Normanby. This theory of the royal prerogative, it may be necessary to add, seems to have been seriously held by O'Connell and other Irish patriots; but it was never, so far as the present writer knows, elaborated with sufficient research to attract the attention of constitutional writers.*

Mr. Maginn's reliance in O'Connell's wisdom, disinterestedness, and resources, was implicit and complete. His admiration for that illustrious man inspires his most private correspondence. He was none of those insincere adherents--too commonly found in the train of great men--who criticise and condemn in private, what publicly they applaud and eulogize. In 1844, writing to a

The letter of the Marquis, as a document of those times, is given in the Appendix from his autograph.

near relative in New York, he thus expounds O'Connell's policy, at home, towards England, and the United States:

"You will of course expect that I would say something on the political aspect of our country. Our prospects are much better than they have been. The agitation for Repeal has forced the Minister into measures of conciliation. The policy of England is not now to coerce by brute force, but to endeavor to seduce us from the love of independence by smiles and favors. You have heard of the Maynooth grant, and of the excellent manner in which it was made. The manner was as important as the matter. It was gracious and conciliatory. The Bequest Bill and the New Academies Act have been proffered as boons. In both there is much good, and perhaps as much evil. The country, and especially our hierarchy, are unfortunately divided on these subjects. The great majority of the people and clergy are against them, a few for them, but not of that class in whom the patriotic portion of the people have confidence. The general belief is that they were intended, notwithstanding their plausibility, as apples of discord, to divide the strength, and waste by battles the energies of the great Irish party. My own opinion on this subject is, in unison with Mr. O'Connells, that they are 'dead sea fruits, to tempt the eye and turn to ashes on the lips.' At any rate, England and England's Minister, thanks to Repeal Agitation, are no longer the rattlesnakes of old, carrying with them, in their noisy and deadly track, terror and dismay. They may be, however, not less dangerous in their pretended friendship than in their open and outrageous hostility. The venom of the asp is not less subtle or deadly, though its approach be noiseless and its sting be wreathed in flowers. It was quite natural for you to feel hurt, as an American citizen, at the repeated attacks of Mr. O'Connell on your adopted country. His language, I am convinced, must have been prejudicial to the Irish exiles, and capable of strongly exciting the native American population against them. Many in Ireland blamed him much, and considered his language rash, wanton and ill-timed. I am sure no American citizen could have felt more strongly on that subject than numbers of the Irish people. The Young Ireland Party did not hesitate to express their dissatisfaction in language warm and vigorous. My own opinion is, that there was very little hu

man policy in Mr. O'Connell's intermeddling with a question so complicated as the slave question must be, in consequence of its long continuance in many of the states of the Union. There may be, however, a plea of justification put forward for Mr. O'Connell, which, to the reflecting Christian mind, would be deemed satisfactory. I don't think that Mr. O'Connell, at his time of life, is much influenced by what we would call worldly wisdom. His views may be, and I think are, of a more sublimated nature-more Christian, and more in accordance with his supposed mission. He considers himself the chosen apostle of liberty, and that he would be deviating from his high and holy vocation were he to sanction, by word or deed, slavery in any shape or in any country. He considers the condition of the negro a disgrace to your Republic; and being solicitous that the great experiment which man is making in the way of self-government in the new world, should not suffer in the eyes of the despots of the old world by that foul, dark spot on its otherwise glorious escutcheon, he should like to see, as we would all like to see, the proud American eagle-the noblest bird of the feathered tribe-pursuing its exalted, onward course on its full-spread pinions, with steady gaze on the brilliant sun of its destiny, without being obliged to droop its wing in shame, or with downcast look to meaner earth, show that it still retained something in common with the grosser birds the harpy brood-whose lusts are fleshy, who prey on filth, and riot in the ruin of their making. Hers should be the duty to teach the young eaglets of the earth, as they burst the shell of their thraldom, to fly upwards and onwards, and preserve their steady, undeviating course towards the orb of freedom, and not to induce them, by bad example, to shrink back again to the shells from which they had been invited by the proud daring of Franklin's bird of freedom. She should not forget the sublime maxim of her illustrious parent, "De cælo eripuit fulmen, septrumque tyrannis." Mr. O'Connell, being anxious that the ends of Providence should be thus fully and fairly carried out; that the new world which God provided for man as a refuge from the bondage of the old--as a land of promise where freedom's ark would securely and forever rest-should not present to the eye of the European despot God's free and rational creatures, even there in a state of bondage-the free republican, the refugee from slavery, turned the oppressor and taskmaster of his fellow-creatures in that chartered soil of liberty. To achieve the objects which Mr. O'Connell has in view, his reliance is on God, and only on man

when his co-operation is in accordance with God's ordinances. He believes that he has a mission from the Divinity to redeem his country, and that he will be successful, even if the world were against him. The slightest deviation from the path of Christian rectitude would, he believes, compromise his mission and make it abortive. He therefore denounces slavery wherever he knows it to exist, and unsparingly lashes the tyrant wherever he finds him, making no distinction between the crowned Bear of Russia and the crownless Bear of Kentucky. My own opinion is, that the Czar of Russia, whom he hates with a perfect hatred, is still less odious in his eyes than the American slaveholder, as the one acts from principle, and the other against it—the one being a despot among tyrants and slaves, by birth, breeding and custom, the other a slaver from avarice among professed freemen, where every surrounding institution proclaims liberty as the natural and inalienable birthright of every child of Adam. Not to raise his voice, then, against such a prostitution of the name of freedom, would be deemed by Mr. O'Connell a betrayal of his trust, and sufficient to provoke the vengeance of heaven against the sacred cause of his country. Moreover, Mr. O'Connell knows from experience that Ireland hitherto relied too much on foreign aid. He knows that nations are selfish, and seldom proffer the hand of friendship without a selfish motive. France and Spain were relied on by Ireland, when Ireland should have relied on herself. She failed with the selfish, doubtful and hesitating aid they afforded her. Mr. O'Connell firmly hopes that with Irish hearts, Irish exertions, and Providence as his protector and guide, he shall achieve, by purely Christian means, Ireland's independence, and he, for this reason, declines or does not seek any assistance not proceeding from the honest, the upright, and the virtuous, who love freedom for its own sake, and sympathise with Ireland because her cause is just. The Repeal movement is going on calmly and triumphantly. There are new and important accessions to it every day. There is less noise and more dignity. The people are as resolved as ever, but not impatient. They bide their time and God's leisure, assured that Ireland's day of prosperity must come in England's hour of adversity, and what John Bull now holds with a tiger's tenacity, he shall then yield with the meekness of a lamb. As Christians bound by the tie of allegiance to the Crown, Mr, O'Connell and the Catholic clergy could not conscientiously seek a separation from it. Beyond a domestic and independent legislature they could not go. This is another reason why Mr. O'Connell is so regard

less of the sympathies of other nations, who would not hesitate to urge the over-ardent and the less scrupulous beyond the path of duty.

The same year, during O'Connell's imprisonment, he wrote to his sister, a resident of Montreal:

"I have said so much of your friends, that I have scarcely left myself space in order to say a word about poor Ireland, and Ireland's immortal Liberator, Daniel O'Connell. He is now, as you already know, immured in a prison for his patriotism, while his indignant countrymen are forced to look on, as if they were apathetic or indifferent to his fate. They have now, thank God, much prudence and political wisdom; they will not risk Ireland's future freedom, happiness and prosperity by any rash or fruitless struggle for the present. They bide their time, leave vengeance to the God of justice, and calmly yet confidently await the day when He, in his goodness, will enable them safely and securely to claim their rights, or, if you please, assert them. Mr. O'Connell is the apostle of peaceful regeneration; he is anxions to set an example to the nations of the earth that war is no longer necessary to achieve the liberties of mankind. He has been hitherto successful, and will yet, we fondly and firmly hope, live to see this patriotic and Christian problem solved, in the perfect redemption and regeneration of his native country. He is now, to be sure, in prison, suffering in the cause for which others bled he is not, however, the less powerful by being in chains. Dan in the lion's den or fiery furnace is still more terrible to Ireland's enemies, than he has been on the heights of Tara-hill or Mullaghmast. The rent goes on accumulating since his imprisonment, until it has reached last week £3,400. The ministry that imprisoned him is tottering to its fall. All the political parties appear to be in confusion. The Lord appears to have confounded them and reduced them to a chaos, before he makes the light of freedom break upon our country. They seem to be blinded and running headlong to their ruin, like the tyrants of Egypt before the deliverance of the Israelites from their bondage. Never were the Irish people in better hoves, nor more dismay among their political opposers."

In 1845, the parish clergy of Derry, according to a time-honored and ennobling custom in the Irish Church,