CHAPTER IV.
IMPRISONMENT OF O'BRIEN FOR CONTEMPT OF THE BRITISH COMMONS .-- CONDUCT OF THE ASSOCIATION .-- DEPUTATION FROM THE '82 CLUB .-- MR.

O'CONNELL RETURNS TO IRELAND .-- DISCUSSIONS IN THE COMMITTEE.
Before proceeding to detail the circumstances which led to the celebrated secession, it is essential to dispose of an episode in the struggle, which, more than any other, stamped its impress on the acts and feelings of that unfortunate period; I allude to the imprisonment, by the House of Commons, of William Smith O'Brien.

There is no act of his life upon which there has been so much acrimonious criticism; none on account of which he has been subjected to so much intemperate misrepresentation.

And yet, perhaps, his great career, fruitful in good actions, never furnished a purer or more unselfish example of sound judgment as well as intrepidity and devotion.

The history of his incarceration ranges over a great portion of the time which has been already passed, and enters largely into the leading events, hereafter to be related.