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

[324] propriety, and, in view of the aggravated circumstances of the case, moderation and forbearance of Henry Clay when speaking of a man who has had the impudence to intermeddle with the ‘patriarchal institutions’ of our country, and with the ‘domestic relations’ of Kentucky and Virginia slave-traders.

We wait impatiently for the fruits of the labors of this sagacious committee. We should like to see those eloquent and thrilling appeals to the sense of shame and justice and honor of America republished. We should like to see if any Irishman, not wholly recreant to the interests and welfare of the Green Island of his birth, will in consequence of this publication give his vote to the slanderer of Ireland's best and noblest champion.

But who is Daniel O'Connell? ‘A demagogue —a ruffian agitator!’ say the Tory journals of Great Britain, quaking meantime with awe and apprehension before the tremendous moral and political power which he is wielding,—a power at this instant mightier than that of any potentate of Europe. ‘A blackguard’—a fellow who ‘obtains contraband admission into European society’—a ‘malignant libeller’—a ‘plunderer of his country’—a man whose ‘wind should be stopped,’ say the American slaveholders, and their apologists, Clay, Stevenson, Hamilton, and the Philadelphia Gazette, and the Democratic Whig Association.

But who is Daniel O'Connell? Ireland now does justice to him, the world will do so hereafter. No individual of the present age has done more for