THE IRISH TRIBUNE IN CHAINS: O'CONNELL SEIZED BY THE CROWN AT DUBLIN—A STORM ACROSS THE CONTINENT

DUBLIN, 14th October 1841.—The blow has fallen. At the first light of this damp October morn, a detachment of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, accompanied by a magistrate of the Crown, entered the residence of Daniel O'Connell, the Liberator, and served upon him a warrant charging criminal conspiracy against the realm. The arrest was conducted with a cold civility that belied its gravity, and the great tribune, whose voice has shaken the very foundations of Westminster, submitted without resistance. He was conveyed under heavy guard to the Four Courts, where a special commission is to sit. The charge, as our correspondent in the Irish capital reports, springs from the recent meetings of the Loyal National Repeal Association—assemblies that the government of Sir Robert Peel now deems seditious and unlawful.

The news raced through the streets of Dublin with the speed of a gale. Crowds gathered at the quays and along the Liffey, their faces a mixture of fury and disbelief. In the fashionable squares, the Anglo-Irish gentry exchanged knowing glances, while in the Liberties, the poor knelt in the mud and prayed for their champion. O'Connell, though manacled in law if not in iron, remains defiant. 'I have committed no crime,' he is reported to have said, 'save that of loving my country too well.' His lieutenants, including his son John, have been likewise summoned, and the city bristles with bayonets and rumor.

On the Continent, the reaction is immediate. In Paris, the journals of the opposition declare the arrest a martyrdom in the making; in Brussels and Berlin, the diplomatic corps whisper of Irish rebellion and British panic. The Austrian ambassador, ever watchful of restive provinces, has ordered his couriers to double their speed. For the traveler, the message is clear: the packet boats from Liverpool to Dublin are now subject to search, and the mail coaches through the Midlands carry more than letters—they carry the seeds of a storm that may yet break over all the British Isles.