He thought his cause would be
injured, and not advanced, by such outrages as before and since his
day have too often disgraced party warfare in Ireland. His favourite
maxim was that "the man who commits a crime gives strength to the
enemy." This opinion was not heartily endorsed by all his followers.
When it became clear that his dislike of physical force was real,
when he did not defy the Government, at last stirred into hostile
action by the demonstrations he organised, there was an end of his
power over the fiercer spirits whom he had roused against the rule of
"the Saxon"--luckless phrase with which he had enriched the
Anglo-Irish controversy, and misleading as luckless. O'Connell died,
a broken and disappointed man, on his way to Rome in 1847; but the
spirit he had raised and could not rule did not die with him, and the
younger, more turbulent leaders, who had outbid him for popular
approval, continued their anti-English warfare with growing zeal
until the year of fate 1848.
Even the Principality of Wales had its own peculiar form of
agitation, sometimes accompanied by outrage, during these wild
opening years.
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