had arms, and were perhaps provided with ammunition for a day or a week; but a man who sympathised with him declared that they did not know, with certainty, where to lay their hands on the first wheelbarrow and pickaxe to throw up the first barricade. Money is the sinews of revolution even more than of war; if the ordinary method of supplying food were interrupted, a famine would ensue in a few days, and it was certain the ordinary method could only be maintained by paying for necessary articles at least the usual price. But those who insisted on immediate revolution had no funds whatever.
"Meagher and O'Gorman made a personal inspection of the Dublin clubs with a view to determine whether, as far as they were concerned, a rescue was feasible. They sought information from all sources, and they arrived at the conclusion that the people were unprepared, unorganised, unarmed, and incapable of being even roughly disciplined for such an attempt. In truth, the insensate policy of deriding preparation had borne its natural fruit—no one was prepared.
"O'Brien and Dillon were convinced before this survey of the clubs that a rescue could not be undertaken without ruin to the cause. It was now May, and they hoped to secure a general and simultaneous rising in the autumn, when the new food supplies would be available, and farm labourers could be withdrawn from their ordinary employment without public disaster, and when a union of parties, perhaps of classes, was attained, and funds and munitions of war provided. They now took, frankly and unreservedly, the ground that no such attempt must be made."
After a single week's imprisonment Mitchel's trial took place, which I have described elsewhere.[1] The Government had packed this panel with such skill that before forty-eight hours had elapsed their warship was carrying him to penal servitude. When his sentence was pronounced the wrath and rage of his friends caused the judges to fly in a panic from the court, but no rescue was attempted, and disappointed expectations chilled and irritated public opinion.
Next day Father Kenyon, accompanied by my friend T. B. MacManus, and another gentleman from the North of England,
- ↑ "Four Years of Irish History."
