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324 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
of what became known as “monster meetings”, throughout the country. The meetings ac- quired the epithet “monster” because they were attended by vast numbers of his followers. These meetings, to which the “Repealers” arrived in a form of military array and were drilled and marshalled with great discipline by their own marshals, were held in several locations noted for their important historic associations. Locations such as Mullaghfast, in Kildare, where centuries before a number of Irish chiefs were treacherously massacred, and the Hill of Tara in Meath, the former seat of the Irish High Kings, where it is estimated over a quarter of a million people attended. The Government were of the belief that there was considerable danger in meetings of this kind and duly dispatched to Ireland large bod- ies of military and ordered warships to be anchored in many of the principal harbours. So when a Repeal Meeting advertised as “the greatest of all the monster meetings-the most memorable of all the memorable gatherings of this memorable year” was announced to take place on Sunday, 8 October, 1843, on the strand at Clontarf, the historic spot where 800 years before Brian Boru had ‘hurled the Danes out of Ireland,’ the Government at last decided to interfere.
The evening before the meeting was to take place, the Lord Lieutenant issued a proc- lamation prohibiting it on the grounds that it was “calculated to excite reasonable and well-grounded apprehension.” With the walls of Dublin covered with the aforementioned proclamation and with troops of soldiers and lines of artillery dispatched to Clontarf bear- ing orders to shoot any who defied the proclamation, O’Connell was called upon to act instantly-either in defiance or submission. He decided to submit and immediately declared that the orders of the Lord-Lieutenant should be obeyed and the meeting called off.
From a speech by Daniel O’Connell, 1843: “Not all that the universe contains would I, in the struggle for what I conceive my country’s cause, consent to the effusion of a single drop of human blood, except my own.”
That Saturday evening and well into Sunday morning, along all the roads leading out of Dublin, north, south, and west, galloping horsemen were dispatched with commands to intercept and turn back to their homes the thousands and thousands of travellers who were converging upon Clontarf. It should be noted that the majority of those who attended these meetings normally came from distances that entailed their travelling for days and nights to reach their objective. The Government had triumphed. In the aftermath, the “Liberator”
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