should never have any grounds for saying I was a mercenary one. Father Mathew reluctantly yielded to my wishes, and the project was dropped.
Public indignation took a form we little expected. A number of young men from the Dublin clubs were arrested for what was called the Crampton Court conspiracy—a plot to break open Newgate and set the political prisoners free.
As the New Year approached I read the amazing announcement that a new journal to be called the National, printed with the type and issued from the office of the Nation, and ostensibly owned by my late book-keeper, was about to appear. The design was that it should be regarded as my property, and should leap into the circulation won by the Nation. The projector and proprietor of this specious journal was Mr. Durham Dunlop, formerly editor of the Monitor, a Whig who probably had no deeper design than to make a little illegitimate profit. The book-keeper, Bernard Fulham, who since my imprisonment had been profuse in professions of devotion to his "dearly beloved friend and master,"[1] wanted employment, and fell cheerfully into the plot. The Government objected to the proposed title, but after some negotiations, in which Lord Clarendon granted an interview to Mr. Fulham, and doubtless ascertained the true state of the case, he permitted the journal to appear under the name of the Irishman. From the first issue it was sent to the agents and friends of the Nation, whose addresses Mr. Fulham copied from my books, and for a time was universally believed to be mine. On subsequent trial of the action, "Birch against Sir William Somerville," we discovered that one of the writers was Mr. Taylor, sub-editor of the World, a subsidised organ of Lord Clarendon, and that the editor was Mr. William Dunlop, who finally left the Irishman to write in a Conservative journal, the Daily Express. I sent from Newgate to the Irishman a denial of any connection or sympathy with the new paper,
- ↑
"August 9th, 1848.
"My dearly beloved friend and Master,—Nothing but the interest of your family would induce me at this time to intrude on you the following, or any other question: What was the amount of money lent by you to Mr.? May Almighty God guard and defend you is the prayer of your ever devoted Friend,
"B. Fulham."
