I'd rather see vice--vice that burns out and
leaves scar-white the lives it scorches. There is more sin in the
HEARTS and MINDS of these poor, wretched, ill-mated people than in
the sinks of Europe. There is some hope for the vicious.
Intelligence and common-sense will wean them from it. But there is
no hope for the people whose lives from the cradle to the grave are
drab and empty and sordid and wretched."
As O'Connell uttered this terrible arraignment of the old order of
protecting society by early and indiscriminate marriages, it seemed
as if the mantle of some modern prophet had fallen on him. He had
struck at the real keynote of Ireland's misery to-day. The spirit of
oppression followed them into the privacy of their lives. Even their
wives were chosen for them by their teachers. Small wonder the
English government could enforce brutal and unjust laws when the
very freedom of choosing their mates and of having any voice in the
control of their own homes was denied them.
To Father Cahill such words were blasphemy. He looked at O'Connell
in horror.
"Have ye done?" he asked.
"What else I may have to say will be said on St. Kernan's Hill this
afternoon."
"There will be no meetin' there to-day," cried the priest.
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