It is for others to write his history and vindicate his career.

By me even his mistakes shall be treated with forbearance.
A brief reference to the struggle for Catholic Emancipation becomes here imperative.

That struggle has had no equal in history--nor for its moral grandeur, nor for its triumph--but for the singular difficulties which the position of the Irish Catholic imposed on those who engaged in it.
It is an error to call it emancipation.

It was neither the first nor the last, nor even the most important in the train of concessions, which are entitled to the name of emancipation.

The pains and penalties of the "_penal laws_" had been long abolished, and that barbarous code had been compressed into cold and stolid exclusiveness.