Irish purpose again—if the said purpose was clearly manifest. New means would also be subscribed as freely as before, and a new spirit evoked.
"The moral of all these pros and cons is command me, in any way, whether you come or stay. If you stay return boldly to moral force not—O'Connell's but Davis's—not the moral force of the Peace Resolutions, but the 'Creed of the Nation.' Assume that Mitchelism is dead. It is dead. It will soon cease to have any organ here, and when it cannot live here, with all its professors prescribing for it, what can it do in Ireland? Mitchel's policy was driftless and reckless as O'Connell's—the one was mad, the other a cheat. Between them lies your course, and in the very same quarter lies victory."
In reply to these letters I told Dillon that it was not Radicalism or Republicanism which was the motive power of my life, but the desire to put a sceptre into the hand of Ireland, and if ever that became impossible my career would be at an end. "Fallen as the country is," I said, "I would not exchange the hope of serving it for the rule of India. I will, if it lies in me, reorganise and reanimate it. And you may rest assured that extermination and famine have conclusively eradicated all reliance on Irish landlords. Whatever I attempt shall base itself upon the people. But your pleasant dream of a fraternal union of the imperial democracy addressed by a journal in London does not realise itself to me. In English democracy there have appeared no enthusiasts, no thinkers, like those who have won a worldwide audience in France. I do not doubt that the generous youth of England might be engaged in democracy by an Apostolic English organ of liberty, but scarcely by an Irishman, and if by an Irishman our own people would die out in the interval. I will co-operate with an Englishman who attempts this work, but I will myself hold by the old ship. Mrs. Dillon read me your letter to her on this subject, and I copied it to consider it well. I cannot transform my own views into yours, but I will transfuse yours into mine." To M'Gee I said that New York was impossible; a country must be regenerated from within, not from without. I could not satisfy exaggerated
