The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-05 00:00:00

IRELAND.
REPEAL ASSOCIATION:
DUBLIN, Dac. 2.—The usual weekly meeting of the
Repeal Association was held at the Conciliation-hall to-
day. The attendance was, as on all occasions when Mr.
O'Connell is in town, extremely numerous, every part of
the building being crowded to inconvenience.

On the motion of Mr. O'CONNELL, Mr. Patrick J.
Somers, M.P. for Sligo, was called to the chair.
Some preliminary business having been disposed of,
Mr. O'CoNNELL read a letter which he had received
from Mr. O'Neill, of Bunowen Castle, ex-J. P., in reply
to Mr. O'Connell's attack on the French nation. The
Hon. and Learned Gentleman expressed a hope that the
Association would allow the letter to appear on their
minutes, though it was addressed to himself. He had
never stated, and he did not believe he was reported to
have stated, that all France was immoral and irreligious;
but he could not go as far as his friend Mr. O'Neill in
thinking that France, at the present day, was religious
and moral. There was a very powerful party in that
country who, not content with being irreligious them-
selves, were violently opposed to all who were religiously
disposed. The Government of France was irreligious, and
the principle upon which that Government acted was
irreligious. They were now introducing laws pre-
venting the religious education of the people—•the
only education that was worth having—the education
that cultivated the moral judgment of the minds of
youth, and Wight theni "their proper duty towards man,
and the necessity of worshipping God with fidelity, and
in a true spirit. There were in France both Catholics
and Protestants of high religious principles, and he did
not of course mean to apply his remarks to them. For
instance, - there was the Count de Montalembert, whom
he was proud to call his personal friend, and who was as
sincere and zealous a Catholic as was in existence. That
noblemsn had made a great battle in favour of the
French bishops, and he was proud to add, that all the
bishops of the country were standing firmly together in
favour of religious education. He knew the many fine
qualities that were to be found among Frenchmen as
prominently as among any people on the face of the
earth, and he should be basely ungrateful if he did not
recollect the generous-hospitality that they had extended
towards Irishmen in the ages of persecution. At the
beginning of the French Revolution he had himself no
less than fifty-two cousins, all within the third degree of
relationship to him, holding commissions in the French
army, at a time when they could hold no commission in
the British service. Three of these afterwards rose to
the rank of generals, and one of them, who was his own
uncle, held the rank of Inspector-General of the
French infantry. He had the honour of getting
from the King the command of a German regiment
called Salem Salem ; and though they were but an un-
disciplined mob when they came under him, they were
afterwards one of the finest regiments in the service. He
had the singular good fortune to receive at the same time
full pay as a French general, and as a colonel in the
British service.—(Cheers.) He was, then, grateful to
the French people. He admired the Christian zeal of
the religious portion of them. He admired the many
virtues which they possessed in so eminent a degree. At
the same time be hated French infidelity, and he deeply
regretted the extent to which it existed in that country.
The Constitutionnel had hired Eugene Sue to write all
sorts of calumnies against the. French clergy, and the
Nationd was 'following in the same track.
The motion for the insertion of the letter on the mi-
nutes was carried unanimously.

• After some further proceedings,
Mr. O'CONNELL rose to proceed with the principal
business of the day, and was
_received with loud cheers.
—He said he would commence by, a preliminary re-
mark,, that the repeal dictionary which was in the
course of publication in the newspapers, and from
which he would be obliged to quote largely during his
address, was, he was authorised to state, the work of
his son John, the Member for Kilkenny.—(Cheers.)
It ,was the second work that he had latterly given to
the cause of Ireland, and would be shortly published
in a collected form. He would then proceed with
his speeCh, and he begged to premise that he would be
under the necessity of trespassing upon their time to
a much greater extent than many of them would wish,
or than he would himself desire. He rose to say many
words, and the first of them would refer to the principle
of their future action. They were beginning to work
again for the repeal with renewed force. He had made
a pause, waiting to see if he would get additional force,
but it had gone for nothing, and he would now proceed
without it, with an agitation which would never termi-
nate until they had a Parliament on College-green.—
(Cheers.) It was, therefore, necessary that they should
understand the principle of their action, and that prin-
ciple was the doctrine which, throughout his entire po-
litical career, he had ever preached and practised,
namely, that no amelioration of any human institutions
—no improvement in the law, even to the repeal of the
union itself, with all its concomitant blessings, could or
ought to be acquired by force or crime, and that no po-
litical blessing was worth one single drop of human blood.
He was the apostle of that moral combination, and
his principle was that that moral combination when free
from trim and stain, was abundantly sufficient to
procure all human ameliorations. That was the prin-
ciple on which the repealers acted—no crime against the
laws of man, no injury to any human being, and above
all, no sin against the laws of God.—(Hear, and cheers.)
He had no occasion to refer to this profession of faith,
with which they were all familiar, but the repetition
would remind them again of it, and would inform their
enemies of what they were still ignorant.—(Hear, hear.)
He had, then, made a pause to try if the federalists
would join them, but he had been totally disap-
pointed. They had, he might add, without allud-
ing to any person in particular, betrayed them,
and he was bound to say that he now expected nothing
from them. The federalists were Irishmen, but they
had a preference for somebody else; they did not think
that Irishmen ought to govern for themselves. They
were good-natured people; but the love of fatherland did
not burn brightly in their bosoms, and he could not en-
dure any Irishman who did not prefer Ireland to every
country in the world. He had no national antipathies,
but he had a national preference, and that was in favour
of Irelatel and the Lisle Some of those federalists would
from time to time fall in to the Association, but they
were at present kept away by Whig predilections. The
federalists should not deceive themselves, and if they
hereafter make any motion, he could tell them—unless
they came forward at once—that they would speak too
late. An old woman in Kerry had a grandson who was
a lunatic. He had a passion for sucking eggs, and his
old grandmother was always obliged to watch her clutches
from him. One day that she went out he not to a nest
where a hen was hatching and commenced swallowing
the eggs. A chicken in one of them screamed as it was
going down his throat, when he cried out, " Ah ! you
spoke too late," In the same manner, if the federalist
chickens speak hereafter they would tell them that
they spoke too late, that their day was gone by, and
that the people would not swallow them at all.—(Hear,
hear, and cheers.) As for Mr, ;Sharman Crawtord's
plan of federalism, all he would say of it was that
he respected the boldness and manliness with which
its author had come forward, but that it did not contain
a single sentence or proposition that he could adopt.—
(Hear, hear.) It was a sober, dull piece of plodding,
having neither right nor left, neither beginning nor end,
hnd they would leave it, like an unlicked cub, never to
be formed into any shape whatever. They had then
done with federalism ; and he wished in the next place
to take notice of a portion of the British press that ho
thought was anxious to speak the truth. He alluded to
the Patriot, the organ of the English Dissenters. The
editor of that paper stated •in a late number that he was
looking for repeal, not with the hope or intention of get-
ting it, but to coerce England to do justice to Ireland.
That wag aft licthest than but he had formed a most mis-
taketi opinion of him (Mr. O'Connell). He wished him
to understand that there was nothing equivocal in his
conduct in looking for the fepeel, end that England
could offer him nothing short of repeal that he would
aecept of.--=-(Letid cheers.) Four years ago, when he
formed the Prourser Assoclatidn, he stated his willing-
nek,4 revs' to look fot.tepeiel if England did full justice
to Ireland, is.ahe ieee pledged to tipi 1 btit perhaps he
would not have been very ready id Make tht
offer if he expected it would have been accepted. If
Englend aattl then , adopted ,his proposition, neither he
nor the Irish people would hate pee bask from their
agreement, but that time was passed, and nothing
Nish
the repeal of the union would satisfy him or the
HAI peopie:--(ileart hear, and cheers.) He next
came to another London newspaper, the Examiner,
in the last ntinitier of which there was an article, of
eotiestsi abusing him, and headed with the words
" Richard is himself egaiii." That wits a kind of walk-
ing falsehood of the Examiner, for it distinctly admitted
that he made no proposition for federalism that was not
loottitig foe repeal, and something more than simple re-
peal.—(teat, berth) (He then read the extract from
the Examiner, in which his allusion at the Limerick
dintief td WS political revenge being " dear as the honey
can of life" was stigimithed as an infernal sentiment.)
He dented -/-1„,.; it was either unchristian or internal. lie
had distitictly stated that he had no personal or indivi-
dual animosity, but that he hated injustice and oppres-
eon but as it was English injustice, the Examiner
iioitht the 7 had a right to leave it. There was a
4;14 wilitet for themes--(Hear, hear.) Some persons
were surprised that they should draw the Whigs into
the category of their. contempt, but those peoplem but
little-knew hos, tots y VV.the-higs had lost the confidence
of the Irish poop e through the scurrility of their
writers. The Examiner man also quarrelled with his
cap. He was obliged, when spearing in the open air
or in large assemblies, to wear a covering on his head,
and if his cap happened to be a beautifully ornamented
One he might thank a dear little daughter of his then
present, who thought fit to make it so, and this
he could add, that. cap did not fit him
be would not wear it.—(Laughter and cheers.) (Mr.
O'Connell then read the subsequent passages from the
article in the Examiner, in which it was stated that, if
-an untruth would hays served his (sir. 010asziell