with Lucas in the face of rejoicing enemies I allowed the fact that I was retiring in fulfilment of a pledge which we had made in common to fall into the background, but some newspapers assumed that he was about to take the same course, and he wrote a letter to the Times stating that that was not his intention. To my closest friends I intimated that I would not only leave Parliament, but leave Ireland; there was no longer a field for me in a country which could be induced to repudiate a policy on which its safety and almost its existence depended. Among the League priests the man with the greatest capacity for awakening enthusiasm and stimulating action was Archdeacon Fitzgerald. To him and others I wrote that my retirement was to fulfil a specific pledge, but did not relieve him or such as he from prolonging the contest. This was his reply:—
"April 9, 1855."My Dear Mr. Duffy,—If Duffy and Lucas with all the honest ardour of the purest patriots and with intellectual resource, vigour and energy of the first order, having moreover at their command two widely circulated and popular newspapers, if such as these despair of stemming the overwhelming torrent of corruption, selfishness and apathy on the one part, and blind and miserable delusion on the other, what can others do? The alliance between the North and South is broken up—O'Shea, and Doyle and Keeffe are in penal exile—Maher is a Sadleirite—the Whig Lord Primate, Cullen, will Italianise the old sod, and Bishop Browne is a bottle-holder to the Right Hon. Oath-and-pledge-breaker, William Keogh—all hope for the poor of Ireland is dead, and in rhyme and reason 'there is no more to be said.'
After a little time some of the friends nearest to Lucas assured me that he was in a much more dangerous condition than he supposed, and that he would be for a long time, perhaps for ever, unfit for serious labour. I was deeply touched by a calamity brought on by the constancy and
opposition from those who professed the same opinions, always in exhausting personal conflict with a hired Press, and all who lived, or hoped to live by corruption. It may be the result is small, and I am an unprofitable servant, but I have done my best."
