--Sweet children of turpitude, beware! the old
antipopery people are fast perishing away. Take heed that you are not
surprised by an emancipating king, or an emancipating administration.
Leave a _locus poenitentiae!_--prepare a place for retreat--get ready
your equivocations and denials. The dreadful day may yet come, when
liberality may lead to place and power. We understand these matters
here. It is safest to be moderately base--to be flexible in shame, and
to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when any
thing is to be gained by virtue,"
The suggested prophecy had not long to wait for its fulfilment. In the
summer of 1828, William Vesey Fitzgerald, a great landowner in County
Clare, and one of the Members for that county, accepted office in the
Government as President of the Board of Trade, thereby vacating his seat.
Lord Beaconsfield shall tell the remainder of the story. "An Irish lawyer,
a professional agitator, himself a Roman Catholic and therefore ineligible,
announced himself as a candidate in opposition to the new minister, and on
the day of election thirty thousand peasants, setting at defiance all the
landowners of the county, returned O'Connell at the head of the poll, and
placed among not the least memorable of historical events--the Clare
Election."[92]
This election decided the emancipation of the Roman Catholics, and the
cause, for which Sydney Smith had striven so heroically, was won at last.
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