Morgan O'Connell fired three, Lord Alvanley two shots; * but neither of the combatants was wounded. The duel between Lord Alvanley and Mr. Morgan O'Connell was fought on May 4. On the very following day Mr. Disraeli wrote this letter:: "31A, Park Street, Grosvenor Square, "Tuesday, May 5th, 1835. "Sir,-As you have established yourself as the champion of your father, I have the honour to request your notice to a very scurrilous attack which your father has made upon my conduct and character. "Had Mr. O'Connell, according to the practice observed among gentlemen, appealed to me respecting the accuracy of the reported expressions before he indulged in offensive comments upon them, he would, if he can be influenced by a sense of justice, have felt that such comments were unnecessary. He has not thought fit to do so, and he leaves me no alternative but to request that you, as his son, will resume your vicarious duties of yielding satisfaction for the insults which your father has too long lavished with impunity on his political opponents. "I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant, 66 Morgan O'Connell, Esq., M.P." Mr. Morgan O'Connell declined this challenge, explaining that, while he would not allow other people to insult his father, he did not hold himself accountable for what his father might do to other people. He had challenged Lord Alvanley because he " conceived he had purposely insulted" his "father by calling a meeting at Brooks's for the purpose of expelling him from the club, he being at the time absent in Ireland." Lord Alvanley did not understand the signal the first time, and young O'Connell alone fired. * And, then, Mr. Morgan O'Connell proceeds to deny the right of Mr. Disraeli to insult him, and requests Mr. Disraeli, accordingly, to withdraw his letter. Some other letters passed, the effect of which was that Mr. Disraeli undertook to write a letter to Daniel O'Connell, in the hope of giving the son a proper ground for a challenge. "I shall take every opportunity," wrote Mr. Disraeli to Mr. Morgan O'Connell, "of holding your father's name up to public contempt, and I fervently pray that you, or some of his blood, may attempt to avenge the unextinguishable hatred with which I shall pursue his existence." And now for Mr. Disraeli's letter to O'Connell.+ "Although," it begins, "you have long placed yourself out of the pale of civilization, still I am one who will not be insulted even by a yahoo without chastising it." Then, recalling the duel O'Connell's son had fought "When I deny your right to call on me in the present instance, I also beg leave most unequivocally to deny your right to address any insulting letter to me, who am almost personally unknown to you, and unconscious of ever having given you the slightest offence." †The following quotations from the journals of the day on the controversy between Lord Beaconsfield and O'Connell will be read, perhaps, with interest : (Spectator, May 9th, 1835.) "D'Israeli 'the Younger' has done much to throw ridicule on the practice of duelling. The fury into which he has plunged, because nobody thinks it worth while to treat his raving with anything but cool contempt, is very ridiculous. How he blusters and fumes! He may challenge every man in the House of Commons, and insult every member of the United Service Club, without the least danger to his valuable life. If any one should gratify Mr. D'Israeli so far as to accept a challenge from him, the man would be with "another individual on whom you had dropped your filth," Mr. Disraeli goes on to relate his failure to induce Mr. Morgan O'Connell to accept a similar challenge. He next complains that O'Connell had founded his comments on a "hasty and garbled report," and then he replies to the charge of having been once a Radical and now a Tory. His answer is the same as that he gave at Taunton-that he was the opponent of the Whigs at Wycombe in 1832, that he was still their opponent, and that, therefore, he was quite consistent: failing, however, to show why he advocated all the Radical cries in the first period, and set down at once as a fit inmate for a madhouse. As a lady of fashion would find it impossible to wear a dress of the same pattern as that of an alderman's wife, so any person, pretending to the possession of common sense, would blush at the idea of sending a challenge after reading Mr. D'Israeli's last epistle to Mr. Morgan O'Connell."(Spectator, same date.) "Another assailant of the agitator has fared no better. Mr. Benjamin D'Israeli chose to commence a war of abuse with the greatest master of abuse; and then, finding himself worsted, pretends that he is an injured person. He reminds us of the puppy yelping under the pain of a kick from some strong-limbed horse, at whose heels he had been snapping and snarling for miles. He has only received his deserts. Assuredly we approve not of the coarse, vituperative language in which O'Connell sometimes indulges. Our protest against this practice, on the score of policy as well as taste, stands recorded, but it is too much to expect that any man in the possession of a powerful weapon should suffer all kinds of assaults and not use it in self-defence. This Mr. D'Israeli too, with matchless effrontery, accuses O'Connell of injustice in assuming the correctness of a newspaper report of his Taunton speech, while he founds a long letter of vituperation of O'Connell on the faith of a newspaper report of O'Connell's Dublin speech! It is difficult to believe that the man can be in his right senses. D'Israeli confesses that he-he-endeavoured to make a tool of O'Connell, and obtain his assistance under pretence of being a Radical, while all the time he had made up his mind to turn Tory again as soon as it answered his purpose! Was had dropped all these same cries in the second stage of his career. Then he brings against O'Connell this very same charge of inconsistency; contending that O'Connell's abuse of the Whigs in 1832, and his alliance with them in 1835, were irreconcileable-an argument the fallaciousness of which I have already exposed; and finally, the letter winds up with this vigorous passage: "I admire your scurrilous allusion to my origin. It is clear that the 'hereditary bondsman has already forgotten the clank of his fetters. I know the tactics there ever such an unblushing avowal of political profligacy? But Mr. D'Israeli's conduct has been consistently absurd to the end. Because Mr. Morgan O'Connell had called Lord Alvanley to account for endeavouring to procure his father's expulsion from Brooks'sbecause the son claimed satisfaction on behalf of the father-therefore Mr. D'Israeli supposes that he was bound to give him satisfaction, as if he had the same claim upon the son of Mr. O'Connell that Mr. O'Connell himself has! Finding that Mr. Morgan O'Connell will not indulge him, this pugnacious gentleman declares that he intended to insult Mr. O'Connell, and 'fervently prays' that some member of that gentleman's family 'will attempt to avenge' the 'unextinguishable hatred with which he shall pursue his existence.' And yet Mr. D'Israeli conceives himself to be possessed of an astounding faculty for statesmanship, and talks of contending with the most powerful orator and versatile politician of the day on the floor of the House of Commons. Impudence and conceit could certainly go no further than this."-(True Sun, May 6th, 1835.) "So gross, so vulgar, so impertinent, so cowardly an epistle never came from the hands of a literary coxcomb than that which has been written to Mr. Morgan O'Connell by the adventurer who twice brought himself to market, and returned from Taunton and Marylebone with the halter about his neck, but no money for his owners. It may be one of the curiosities of literature, -if there be anything curious in the fact,-that the son of an industrious bookmaker should prove himself both profligate and absurd. Ambitious of newspaper distinction, beyond that which his own insig. nificance could confer upon him, Mr. D'Israeli the younger is fain 'to of your Church-it clamours for toleration, and it labours for supremacy. I see that you are quite prepared to persecute. With regard to your taunts as to my want of success in my election contests, permit me to remark that I had nothing to appeal to but the good sense of the people. No threatening skeletons canvassed for me. A death's-head and cross-bones were not blazoned on my banners. My pecuniary resources, too, were limited. I am not one of those public beggars that we see swarming with their obtrusive boxes in hang up his breeks amang men's clothes,' and so he challenges Mr. Morgan O'Connell to a 'vicarious combat.' The following verses, though somewhat doggrel, give a picture of the ideas of the time with regard to our present Premier. They are taken from a set of verses, headed "Portraits from a Pistol Gallery," which appeared in the Morning Chronicle, May 8, 1835: "This is an author, the first of our day, Who wrote the great novel of 'Vivian Grey,' And another grand and instructive book, Also an Epick whose sale's at zero, And of these is himself the hero. Though the Fates won't let him just now be glorious, Sometimes stealing the hearts of the Blues In velvet trousers and crimson shoes, With jewels and chains and rings from Ransom, And a face, oh! was anything ever so handsome? Such times require one master mind To control this world-'mid the whirl and whiz Of jarring systems-such mind being his. At Taunton, a zealot for Lords and Throne, A Republican stout in St. Mary-le-bone; This is the man Who has challenged the man Who challenged the man Who challenged the great Agitator." |