Many an admirer of his thought he dosed
his countrymen far too much with, "first flower of the earth," and
"Hereditary bondsmen;" but, as he said about his attacks on men, it was
_calculation_ made him do it, and he proclaimed this so late as 1846, at
the Repeal Association, in the following words: "I have often said, and
repeated it over and over again, that I had found, that it was not
sufficient in politics to enunciate a new proposition, one, or two, or
three times. I continue to repeat it, until it comes back like an echo
from the different parts of the country; then I know it is understood,
and I leave it to its fate." The lesson had been learned.
Physically, O'Connell was a very powerful man. He was taller than he
seemed, his muscular frame taking away, in appearance, from his height.
The earliest portraits of him make him a soft-faced athletic young man,
very likely to be a dangerous antagonist in the prize ring, but his
features, as given at the time, bear scarcely any resemblance to later
portraits of him. His shoulders were broad, and in walking he pushed
them forward alternately in a rather remarkable manner. This
peculiarity, arising more from physical necessity than from choice, gave
him a sort of slinging gait, which caused a Tory print to call him,
derisively, "Swaggering Dan.
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