It is a curious fact that the Liberator, in the lapse of years, forgot
where he had originally found the passage, as the following extract from
the proceedings of the Repeal Association, on the 12th of April, 1844,
will show:--
"Mr. O'Connell--As Mr. Steele began by correcting some errors which had
crept into a published report of some of his observations, there is
quite enough in that fact to justify me in following his example. The
errors to which I allude appear in a book recently published by a
Frenchman, the Viscount D'Arlingcourt, whom I met accidentally at Tara,
and who felt somewhat surprised and mortified, on being informed that I
had not heard of him before. In his work he speaks of the meeting, and
he makes me state to him that six lines which I wrote in an _album_ he
presented to me for the purpose, were my own composition. Now, I am a
plain prose writer, and I neither wrote, nor said I wrote, the lines in
question. You may recollect them; they are as follows:--
O Erin shall it e'er be mine, To wreak thy wrongs in battle line; To
raise my victorhead and see Thy hills, thy dales, thy people free,--That
glance of bliss is all I crave, Betwixt my labours and my grave!
(Cheers.
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