Then the State trials came, in
which the Repeal leaders fought the Government, inch by inch, putting it
to enormous cost, trouble, and anxiety. To be sure it succeeded, at
last, in securing a verdict, and in sending O'Connell and some four or
five others to Richmond prison; but their imprisonment there, like their
journey to it, was a continuous triumph. Besides, the Government were in
the end defeated by an appeal to the House of Lords, and the State
prisoners set free in the fall of 1844. O'Connell, it was known through
the Press, had propounded a scheme to meet the impending famine, which
was, in substance, the one laid before the Viceroy. It is not much to be
wondered at, that a small politician and narrow party-man, as Lord
Heytesbury was, should think it a victory to make the deputation feel
his high displeasure at the manner in which agitators had been, for so
long a period, bearding the Government to which he belonged.
The deputation was highly respectable, and ought to have been
influential, consisting, as it did, of the Duke of Leinster, Lord
Cloncurry, the Lord Mayor, O'Connell, Henry Grattan, Sir James Murray,
John Augustus O'Neill, and some twenty other gentlemen of position.
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