The bloodless victories of the latter have all the sublimity
with none of the criminality which attaches itself to the triumphs of the
former. To thunder high truths in the deafened ear of nations, to rouse
the better spirit of the age, to soothe the malignant passions of.
assembled and maddened men, to throw open the temple doors of justice to
the abused, enslaved, and persecuted, to unravel the mysteries of guilt,
and hold up the workers of iniquity in the severe light of truth stripped
of their disguise and covered with the confusion of their own vileness,--
these are victories more glorious than any which have ever reddened the
earth with carnage:--
"They ask a spirit of more exalted pitch,
And courage tempered with a holier fire."
Of the more recent efforts of O'Connell we need not speak, for no one can
read the English periodicals and papers without perceiving that O'Connell
is, at this moment, the leading politician, the master mind of the
British empire. Attempts have been made to prejudice the American mind
against him by a republication on this side of the water of the false and
foul slanders of his Tory enemies, in reference to what is called the
"O'Connell rent," a sum placed annually in his hands by a grateful
people, and which he has devoted scrupulously to the great object of
Ireland's political redemption.
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