rates resolutely set their faces; and in the next place, while
prescribing to themselves nothing but peaceful and legal means for the
accomplishment of their object, they scouted the ridiculous doctrine,
that "liberty was not worth the shedding of a single drop of blood," and
that circumstances might arise under which resort to the arbitration of
the sword would be righteous and justifiable. In time, however, the
Confederates took up a bolder and more dangerous position. As early as
May, 1846, Lord John Russell spoke of the men who wrote in the pages of
the _Nation_, and who subsequently became the leaders of the
Confederation, "as a party looking to disturbance as its means, and
having separation from England as its object." The description was false
at the time, but before two years had elapsed its application became
more accurate. A few men there were like Mitchel, who from the birth of
the Confederation, and perhaps before it, abandoned all expectation of
redress through the medium of Constitutional agitation; but it was not
until the flames of revolution had wrapped the nations of the Continent
in their fiery folds--until the barricades were up in every capital from
Madrid to Vienna--and until the students' song of freedom was mingled
with the paean of victory on many a field of death--that the hearts of
the Irish Confederates caught the flame, and that revolution, and
revolution alone, became the goal of their endeavours. When Mitchel
withdrew from the Confederation in March, 1848, the principles of
constitutional action were still in the ascendancy; when he rejoined it
a month later, the cry "to the registries," was superseded by fiery
appeals summoning the people to arms. In the first week of April, the
doctrine which John Mitchel had long been propounding, found expression
in the leading columns of the _Nation_:--"Ireland's necessity," said
Duffy, "demands the desperate remedy of revolution." A few weeks later,
the same declaration was made in the very citadel of the enemy's power.
It was O'Brien who spoke, and his audience was the British House of
Commons. With Messrs. Meagher and Hollywood, he had visited Paris to
present an address of congratulation on behalf of the Irish people to
the Republican government; and on taking his seat in the House of
Commons after his return, he found himself charged by the Ministers of
the Crown, with having gone to solicit armed intervention from France on
behalf of the disaffec