Young Irelanders so widely that without him we should scarcely get the support of the Catholic clergy.
Under the title "Wanted, a few Workmen," I invited the help of young Irishmen to fill the gap disaster had left in the ranks of my friends. I did not conceal the long, weary way that lay between us and success, but any one who was not willing to accept cheerfully the conditions of the case would be a useless recruit. The latest workers had got the wages which mostly pays heroic toil; their successors might be more fortunate, they could not be more faithful. The appeal had the good fortune to please Thomas Carlyle, who wrote to me to declare that it was the best article on Ireland he had ever read.[1] Another writer, who has since won distinction as a practical teacher of morals and duty, expressed his satisfaction with the tone of the revived journal. "All true friends of progress in England," Dr. Smiles wrote, "wish you well, and bid you Godspeed. I have been greatly gratified by the manly and courageous utterance of the Nation at its new birth. You have made a great beginning in the education of the people to self-reliance and self-help. This must be the foundation of all true progress in a nation." Many volunteers answered the summons for workmen—among them some who became notable: first Maurice Leyne, grand-nephew to O'Connell. Leyne had remarkable powers; as an orator he was scarcely inferior to Meagher, and he possessed a gift which Meagher wanted, the great gift of humour. The popular squibs of the era we are now approaching were nearly all his work; John George MacCarthy, afterwards member for Mallow, author of some remarkable little books, and in the end one of the Land Purchase Commission in Ireland; William Shaw, a young Independent minister, destined to become a member of Parliament, and for a time leader of the Irish Party in the House of Commons in succession to Isaac Butt; and Edward Butler, who became Attorney-General in New South Wales; and but for an accident would have been Chief Justice of that colony. But my best helper was John Cashel-Hoey, who had gifts amounting to genius, and a safer judgment than any of his colleagues.
- ↑ See for Carlyle's letter and the article: in question the volume entitled "Conversations with Cariyle," page 135. London: Cassell & Co.
