The county went wild with joy. The whole country followed. For a long time afterwards the fact of being a Clareman made one popular at a bound in any part of Ireland. The county had made a great breach in the hitherto unassailable battlements of Protestant Ascendancy. O'Connell's return to Dublin was one long triumphal procession. Seven millions of people regarded his victory as their own, and began at last to see the dawn of freedom after a long and weary night of bondage.

The Catholic Association was dissolved. It had, as a first wise move, some years before, sent a petition with 800,000 signatures to Parliament, asking and securing the removal of certain disabilities under which the Dissenters laboured. Now, in a sense, it had set its own house in order by the Clare victory, and the special work for which it was called into existence being accomplished not fully but to some extent, it voluntarily fell out of sight.

CHAPTER XXVII.

FROM 1828 TO 1851.

Bill of 1829 for Catholic Emancipation-Petty Restrictions-O'Connell at the Bar of the House claiming to sit as M.P. for Clare-O'Gorman Mahon succeeds him in '30-Unseated on Petition for BriberyQuarrel with O'Connell-"Terry Alts"-Classical Schools-National System-Workhouses-Monster Meeting at Ballycoree-From Life to Death-The Famine-Drowning at Poulnasherry-The Times becomes a Balaam-Statistics of Evictions and Deaths- Letter of Very Rev. Dr. Kelly, P.P., V.G., Kilrush-Father Malachy Duggan.

THE Clare election, combined with the determined spirit it had evoked from end to end of Ireland, brought home to the minds of Wellington and his Administration the conviction that there should be either a large measure of Catholic Emancipation or civil war. For the latter they were not prepared, so they felt themselves compelled to eat all their previous declarations against granting civil rights to Catholics. The King, too, who had publicly sworn, "so help me God," never to yield on this point, had to give way; and when Parliament met next, in February 1829, a measure, inadequate indeed, but for the time startling enough in character, for the emancipation of Roman Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland, was introduced in both Houses. To gild the pill for Protestant bigotry and intolerance, certain restrictions were still to be maintained. No Catholic should be LordLieutenant of Ireland, nor-more important still, for the appointment to the magistracy was vested in the office-Lord Chancellor. The Catholic Association, which had already dissolved, was to be declared illegal; and, worse than all these put together, the brave forty-shilling freeholders were to be disfranchised. The men who had by their votes in Clare compelled a radical change in the British Constitution,

were stripped of the weapons with which they had won their famous victory. Why O'Connell seemed to acquiesce for he remained silent-in the reduction of the Catholic electorate to about one-tenth of what it had been, is almost incomprehensible. By a cunning and shabby device, too, he was compelled to seek re-election. The Act was not made retrospective, so that, when he advanced to the table of the House of Commons, he was confronted with the old intolerable oath, declaring the King of England the Head of the Church, the sacrifice of the Mass impious and idolatrous. He refused, of course, and demanded, what could not be denied. him, the right to be heard at the Bar of the House in defence of his claim to sit after a duly-declared election. This gave him the opportunity of delivering, on the 15th of May, before the closely-packed curious senate, a splendid harangue, the pith of which was contained in his impressive and eloquent declaration-" Part of this oath I know to be false; the rest I do not believe to be true." All his reasoning and eloquence fell on ears that would not hear. He had to come back to Clare to qualify for taking the amended but still offensive oath approved of in the Act of Emancipation.

This time, though his former friends the forty-shilling freeholders-fully nine-tenths of the Clare voters-had been made incapable of giving him support, his return was unopposed. This was probably advised by the Government as a tribute to the strong public opinion aroused by the crisis in the three kingdoms. Daniel O'Connell then took his seat as member for Clare, the first Catholic in either the Irish or English Parliament since the reign of James II.

After a storm a calm. Comparative quiet reigned in the county for some subsequent years. Owing to the death of George IV. in 1830, and other causes, election followed upon election within short intervals, but of a tame kind compared with that of '28. In the election of 1830, O'Connell felt called on to resign the safe seat of Clare, in order to give a final blow to the Beresford influence in Waterford. O'Gorman Mahon succeeded him. Having married a very wealthy lady, Miss O'Brien of Dublin, and not being a lover of money, he

spent money, or it was spent for him, so freely that he was unseated on petition. The voters under the new ten-pound franchise had not, as a rule, the splendid spirit of their poorer brethren, and, being much less numerous, the doubtful among them were unfortunately secured by bribes. Maurice O'Connell, the son of the Liberator, as O'Connell was after the victory of '28 universally called, was sent down. The magic of the name secured his return; but at the next election a split occurred. O'Gorman Mahon asserted his right to stand for the county, and, having money still to dispose of, he was able to bring a mob with him from Ennis in opposition to the Liberator himself when approaching the town. A scuffle ensued, which so incensed O'Connell, that, declaring himself no longer safe there, he passed through to Galway. These occurrences threw O'Gorman Mahon out of public life for some years.

It

The "Terry Alt" system-one of those calamitous secret societies which have brought from time to time so much ruin and misery on the country, and on the dupes who are entrapped into them-spread rapidly in Clare. It took its name, as was said, from a shoemaker living in Corofin, and perhaps for the fantastic reason that he had nothing to say to it. The rumour was industriously, and of course untruthfully, spread that O'Gorman Mahon was at the head of it, and this contributed largely to increase its numbers. had its origin in disputes about land. Since the '28 election, the landlords in most instances were at open war with their tenants. Increased rents were demanded and exacted from tenants at will. Then in the natural course evictions followed, and then murders, and then hanging. A typical instance of what was taking place through the county was the atrocious murder of Neptune Blood-descendant of the parson who had secured, as already related, confiscated property-outside his own door, avenged by the erection of a gallows on the same spot, to hang three men convicted of the murder.

A state of alarm and terrorism prevailed for some years. It gradually died out towards the end of the decade, owing partly to the more prudent, as well as more just, relations of

the landlords with their tenants, and still more to the great and beneficent change brought about among the people by the Father Mathew and Repeal movements.

The educational condition of the county was still deplorable in the extreme. The love of learning was there, but very

little to satisfy it. Elementary education was given in what was little better than the hedge schools of the preceding century. Those who aspired to higher branches had to depend entirely either on the Erasmus Smith school, established in Ennis, or on classical schools maintained entirely by the fees of the pupils. Of the Erasmus Smith College all that need be said is, that some few privileged Catholics were taught there gratis, but with great danger to their faith. It was a decided advantage to Protestant aspirants to the various learned professions. It is no longer in existence; but before it was merged in the more liberal educational programme lately adopted under an Act of Parliament, it could boast of having given to the wide world of letters of this generation one of its most popular writers, Richard Ashe King, son of its late Principal, the Rev. Dr. King. It is only fair to say here that, though being brought up in such an exclusive school, and writing mostly for an English public, his tone displays nothing of the bigot or the anti-Irishman. On the contrary, it is in a very marked and, it may be added, courageous way sympathetic whenever he touches on Irish topics.

A very successful classical school was kept about this time in Ennis by Mr. O'Halloran. Mr. Magrath taught later on with great advantage to youths whose parents could not afford to send them to boarding-schools outside the county. How this want of suitably equipped schools was supplied within the county will appear in its proper place.

Among the best known and most sought after of the classical teachers of this transition period were Mr. Curry and Mr. Tuohy. On these, and such as these, Catholic parents who desired to educate their sons for the various professions, had largely to depend; and well, all things considered, they did their work. They moved about from place to place, according as the need for their services grew more