Referring to this
admission, Mr. Duffy, in a postscript to his letter, writes--"Mr.
O'Connell says his threatening language pointed only to defensive
measures. I have not said anything else. I am not aware of any great
popular struggle for liberty that was not defensive."
Mr. John O'Connell again spoke at great length on the second day; his
speech mainly consisting in a bill of indictment against the _Nation_.
He quoted many passages from it to show that its conductors wrote up
physical force. Mr. John Mitchell, in an able speech, interrupted by
cheers, hisses, and confusion, undertook to show that O'Connell was, to
all appearance, formerly for physical force. He was accustomed, he said,
to remind his hearers that they were taller and stronger than
Englishmen, and had hinted, at successive meetings, that he had then
and there at his disposal a force larger than the three armies at
Waterloo. "I cannot," said Mr. Mitchell, "censure those who may have
believed, in the simplicity of their hearts, that he did mean to create
in the people a vague idea that they might, after all, have to fight for
their liberties. It is not easy to blame a man who confesses that he,
for his part, thought when Mr.
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