The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 6.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

[323] Union. But the late Whig defeat in New York has put an end to these premature rejoicings. ‘The speech of Mr. Clay in reference to the Irish agitator has been made use of against us with no small success,’ say the New York papers. ‘They failed,’ says the Daily Evening Star, ‘to convince the Irish voters that Daniel O'Connell was the “ plunderer of his country,” or that there was an excuse for thus denouncing him.’

The defeat of the Whigs of New York and the cause of it have excited no small degree of alarm among the adherents of the Kentucky orator. In this city, the delicate Philadelphia Gazette comes magnanimously to the aid of Henry Clay,—

‘A tom-tit twittering on an eagle's back.’

The learned editor gives it as his opinion that Daniel O'Connell is a ‘political beggar,’ a ‘disorganizing apostate;’ talks in its pretty way of the man's ‘impudence’ and ‘falsehoods’ and ‘cowardice,’ etc.; and finally, with a modesty and gravity which we cannot but admire, assures us that ‘his weakness of mind is almost beyond calculation!’

We have heard it rumored during the past week, among some of the self-constituted organs of the Clay party in this city, that at a late meeting in Chestnut Street a committee was appointed to collect, collate, and publish the correspondence between Andrew Stevenson and O'Connell, and so much of the latter's speeches and writings as relate to American slavery, for the purpose of convincing the countrymen of O'Connell of the justice,