article, but it was manifestly impossible to go on together, and we agreed to separate. It was in these terms Mitchel took leave of me after nearly three years' association:—
"I do not blame you in the slightest particular; and, moreover, I am quite certain I could not have worked in subordination to any other man alive near so long as I have done with you. And lastly, that I give you credit in all that is past for acting on good and disinterested motives, with the utmost sincerity, and also with uniform kindness to me personally."
All the public proceedings which ensued, down to the defeat and dispersion of the Young Irelanders, followed in quick succession to the differences which had thus arisen between Mitchel and me. From that time we pushed, each of us to the best of his ability, the policy on which he relied. The reader who follows out this narrative will be in a position to judge for himself. But the weights and scales of his criteria ought to be accurate. I aimed to be a statesman, and I may be justly reproached for having fallen short of that ideal; but it would be strangely unjust to reproach me with not being a demagogue, a career which was odious and impossible to me. In the private letters of the period, where the Confederates expressed their most secret convictions, the new departure was treated with scorn. "The peasantry of Munster," said Meagher, "know as little of Mitchel as of Mahomet," and to O'Brien he wrote:—
"I feel—in my soul I believe—that an unconstitutional mode of action would not in present circumstances succeed. I am convinced that the only mode we can adopt, the only policy which we can successfully conduct, is the constitutional policy advised by Duffy. And yet, when I see the tyrannical spirit of the upper classes, the Government, the Parliament, when I mark the glee with which they hail the coercion measure now in force; when I find the most peaceful districts in Ireland proclaimed, and have in our very streets and towns the most insolent display of artillery and police and dragoons; when I see all this, and observe that, moreover, there is not the least change of spirit among the gentry—no generous national sentiment stirring among them—but on the contrary a vile thankfulness to that country for
