supported it, dislocating another, and dominating a
third, and had made a position for himself in that
assembly unprecedented in the long and painful history
of the relations between England and Ireland. This
unrivalled popular leader, eloquent, passionate, volcanic,
irresistible, politic, and sagacious, but not over-scrupulous,
will perhaps always be represented, according to the
bias of his critics, either as a demagogue with many
of the gifts of a statesman, or as a statesman with some
of the vices of a demagogue. Probably both repre-
sentations are true according as his character and
career are looked at from the English or the Irish
point of view. Endowed with all the gifts and many
of the failings of the Celtic nature, the parliamentary
champion of a race which England had often oppressed
and never cared to understand, O'Connell never managed
to conform, perhaps he never cared to conform to the
accepted standards of political propriety in England.
On one side of St. George's Channel he was an absolute
monarch whose lightest word was obeyed by millions
of devoted subjects. On the other he was socially an
outcast and politically an incubus. Such a man placed
in such a position is not to be gauged by the standards
which Englishmen apply to their own public men.
If he gave back reviling for reviling, if he requited
contumely with vituperation, even if he met treachery,
as he thought it, with treason, as his adversaries called
it, perhaps in the sum of things he may be held to
have been as much sinned against as sinning. The
course of English history has often presented opposing
statesmen in almost ideal contrast of character, tem-
perament, and correspondence with different phases of

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