" These
manly words were uttered in the presence of an audience hostile to
Ireland, and hostile to himself, on account of his sympathy for her: an
audience, which at a former election, drove him from the representation
of their city, because he had supported the endowment of Maynooth in
Parliament.
Ireland is generally regarded as one of the chief difficulties of
English Cabinets, but at no period was it a greater difficulty than on
the day Lord John Russell accepted the seals of office, as First
Minister of the Crown. Nine millions of people were passing through the
terrible ordeal of a famine year; a far more awful year of famine was
before them; the Repeal of the Union was still regarded by them as the
only true remedy for their grievances; the hopes awakened by the great
public meetings of Clifden, Mullaghmast, and Tara were still clung to
and fostered; whilst the fierce indignation resulting from the sudden,
and therefore treacherous suppression of the projected meeting at
Clontarf; and above all, the prosecution and unjust imprisonment of
O'Connell and his compatriots, caused the Irish people to turn a deaf
ear to every promised concession short of complete legislative
independence.
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