nised that the motion in aggravation was directed against him. He construed something the attorney-general said into a personal insult, and in presence of the whole court declared that only his respect for the temple of justice prevented him from personally chastising him. His violence had the effect of frightening his client, and at the end of his speech Magee repudiated his counsel. The solicitor-general, however, refused to draw any distinction between counsel and client, and Magee was sentenced to fines of 500l. and 1,000l. and imprisonment for two years and six months. O'Connell felt Magee's action keenly, not merely on his own account, but as likely to increase ‘dissension amongst the few who remained devoted, in intention and design at least, to the unfortunate land of our birth.’ At the same time he judged it impossible to allow him to suffer the full brunt of the punishment alone, and, with the assistance of Purcell O'Gorman, he seems to have paid Magee's fines. On the other hand, O'Connell's conduct did not escape censure. As the solicitor-general expressed it, the catholic board ‘entered into partnership with Magee, but left the gaol-part of the concern exclusively to him.’ So strong indeed was this feeling that O'Connell's friends felt obliged to mark their approbation by presenting him with a service of plate worth a thousand guineas.
The year 1814 opened gloomily for the catholics. They had alienated their friends in parliament, and, to add to their misfortunes, there arrived in February Quarantotti's famous rescript sanctioning, in the name of the pope, the acceptance of the very securities they had denounced as incompatible with the discipline of the church. The rescript was voted by the board and the bishops to be mischievous and non-mandatory. But the controversy it raised was still at its height when, on 3 June, government interfered and suppressed the catholic board. How low the board had sunk in public estimation may be gathered from the fact that not a voice was raised in its favour in parliament. Except his declining days, the next eight years were the darkest of O'Connell's life. Still, he never abandoned hope in the ultimate success of emancipation, and the gloomier the prospect became the more confident was his language. The strain of the struggle fell on him almost entirely alone. At a time when, to use his own words, his minutes counted by the guinea, when his emoluments were limited only by the extent of his physical and waking powers, when his meals were shortened to the narrowest space and his sleep restricted to the earliest hours before dawn, there was not one day that he did not devote one or two hours, often much more, to the working out of the catholic cause; and that without receiving any remuneration, even for the personal expenditure incurred in the agitation. It is not surprising that his language at times exceeded the bounds of decorum. But it is difficult to understand how, except on the supposition that it had been determined by the Castle party to pick a quarrel with him, his application of such an epithet as ‘beggarly’ to the corporation of Dublin should have been construed by any member of it into a personal insult. But D'Esterre, one of the guild of merchants, regarded it in that light. After in vain trying to make O'Connell the challenger, D'Esterre sent him a message, which O'Connell accepted. On Wednesday, 1 Feb. 1815, O'Connell and D'Esterre met at Bishopscourt, near Naas, about twelve miles from Dublin. O'Connell won the choice of ground. Both parties fired almost simultaneously, D'Esterre slightly the first. O'Connell fired low, and struck D'Esterre fatally in the hip. After D'Esterre's death the courtesy of his second, Sir Edward Stanley, relieved O'Connell from fear of legal proceedings, and he, on his part, behaved with thoughtful generosity to D'Esterre's family. To O'Connell's personal friends the result of the duel was highly satisfactory, especially as the patching up of a former affair of honour between him and a brother barrister had given his enemies cause to sneer at his courage (Irish Monthly Magazine, x. 629).
O'Connell's duel with D'Esterre was still fresh when he became involved in an affair of honour with Peel, who at that time filled the post of Irish secretary. Ever since Peel had come to Ireland O'Connell had spoken of him in most contemptuous language—language, perhaps, not altogether unwarranted when one remembers Peel's youth and inexperience, and the indifference to Ireland which his appointment might be conceived to imply. Peel, moreover, had not been wanting in arrogance. Affecting to look down on O'Connell as a noisy agitator, he spoke of him to his friends as an ‘itinerant demagogue,’ and he had, it was reported, insinuated that O'Connell's agitation of the catholic question was dishonest. The rumour reached O'Connell, and he declared on more than one occasion that Peel would not dare to repeat the suggestion in his presence. Neither Peel nor his friends were inclined to overlook this challenge, and, at Peel's request, Sir George Saxton called on O'Connell, who at once avowed his words; but explanations followed, in the course of which O'Connell
