the greatest
disinclination to take the initiative in the holy war. There as
elsewhere the people felt no unwillingness to fight; but they knew they
were ill prepared for such an emergency, and fancied the first blow
might be struck more effectively elsewhere. "Who will draw the first
blood?" asked Finton Lalor in the last number of the _Felon_; and the
question was a pertinent one; there was a decided reluctance to draw it.
It is far from our intention to cast the slightest reflection on the
spirit or courage of the nationalists of 1848. We know that it was no
selfish regard for their own safety made the leaders in Wexford,
Kilkenny, and elsewhere, shrink from counselling an immediate outbreak
in their localities; the people, as well as the men who led them, looked
forward to the rising of the harvest moon, and the cutting of their
crops, as the precursors of the herald that was to summon them to aims.
Their state of organization was lamentably deficient; anticipating a
month of quiet preparation, they had neglected to procure arms up to the
date of O'Brien's arrival, and a few weeks would at least be required to
complete their arrangements. In Kilkenny, for instance, not one in every
eight of the clubmen possessed a musket, and even their supply of pikes
was miserably small. But they were ready to do all that in them lay; and
when O'Brien, Dillon, and Meagher quitted Kilkenny on Monday, July 24th,
they went in pursuance of an arrangement which was to bring them back to
the city of the Nore before the lapse of a week. They were to drive into
Tipperary, visit Carrick, Clonmel, and Cashel, and summon the people of
those towns to arms. Then, after the lapse of a few days, they were to
return at the head of their followers to Kilkenny, call out the clubs,
barricade the streets, and from the Council Chambers of the Corporation
issue the first Revolutionary Edict to the country. They hoped that a
week later the signal fires of insurrection would be blazing from every
hill-top in Ireland; and that the sunlight of freedom, for which so many
generations of patriots had yearned, would soon flood glebe and town,
the heather-clad mountains, and pleasant vales of Innisfail. _Diis
aliter visum_; the vision that glittered before their longing eyes
melted away with the smoke of the first insurgent shot; and instead of
the laurel of the conqueror they were decked with the martyr's palm.

On arriving in Callan the travellers were receiv