when he did not defy the Government, at last stirred into hostile
action by the demonstrations he organised, there was an end of his
power over the fiercer spirits whom he had roused against the rule of
"the Saxon"--luckless phrase with which he had enriched the
Anglo-Irish controversy, and misleading as luckless. O'Connell died,
a broken and disappointed man, on his way to Rome in 1847; but the
spirit he had raised and could not rule did not die with him, and the
younger, more turbulent leaders, who had outbid him for popular
approval, continued their anti-English warfare with growing zeal
until the year of fate 1848.

Even the Principality of Wales had its own peculiar form of
agitation, sometimes accompanied by outrage, during these wild
opening years. The farmers and labourers in Wales were unprosperous
and poor, and in the season of their adversity they found turnpikes
and tolls multiplying on their public roads. They resented what
appeared a cruel imposition with wrathful impatience, and ere long
gave expression to their anger in wild deeds. A text of Scripture
suggested to them a fantastic form of riot. They found that it was
said of old to Rebecca, "Let thy seed possess the gate of those which
hate them," and ere long "Rebecca and her children," men masking in
women's clothes, made fierce war by night on the "gates" they
detested, destroying the turnpikes and driving out their keepers.
These raids were not always bloodless. The Government succeeded in
repressing the rioting, and then, finding that a real grievance had
caused it, did away with the oppressive tolls, and dealt not too
hardly with the captured offenders; leniency which soon restored
Wales to tranquillity.

[Illustration: Richard Cobden.]