of society. To see our Irish race year after year growing more prosperous, more manly, more virtuous. To see the green banner that we love still floating before our eyes like the star of our destiny. To see all the Irish race, without distinction of class or creed, united in love, and ready to maintain the rights of our ancient land against all mankind. Oh, God grant it. God send it soon, though our blood be part of the price to purchase that immortal treasure of liberty."
This was the programme of the Young Ireland Party. We aimed, at least, that the conflict should be a generous one, in which no man of honour need shrink from taking part.
The Nation was printed and ready to be despatched to the country, when the police pounced on the office and seized the entire issue. They took possession of the MSS. from which it was set, and the types which printed it, and arrested compositors and machinists. The effect was complete; no national journal any longer existed in the capital.
For a week not a glimmer of light came from Kilkenny—a week the torture of which can only be estimated by counting the hours and minutes of which it was composed. The Dublin newspapers did not furnish the smallest information on the position of our friends, and no letters reached us. On the third day we despatched a messenger not likely to be suspected of sympathy with the Confederates, but all travellers were watched, and he returned without having made his way to O'Brien. We debated the possibility of escaping from Newgate and joining our friends, but the difficulties seemed insuperable. In this extremity two young girls, who were persuaded that their sex and social position would amply protect them, volunteered to make their way to the Confederate leaders, to whom they were well known, and bring us reliable news.[1] The temptation to accept the offer was very great, but they were young, attractive, and inexperienced, and I could not consent to send them into a district probably occupied by soldiery, or perhaps the theatre of civil war.
- ↑ Of these two heroic girls, one died since I commenced this narrative, an honoured matron in Belfast; the other is happily still living a Dominican nun, in a convent in New Zealand.
