and secured between sixty and seventy Irish members of
Parliament and forty-five Irish peers to subscribe to his independence
programme. They met in Dublin, resolved boldly, departed for London
cheered by the nation, and crumbled there at the Premier's frown. When
the Tory Lord George Bentinck proposed that instead of pauperising the
Irish by a vote of four or five millions for relief there should be a
vote of sixteen millions for railway construction, the Premier, Lord
John Russell, threatened the Irish members with his displeasure if they
supported Bentinck, and the majority of them thereupon opposed the
proposal of reproductive work for the people in lieu of pauper relief.

It was in these circumstances Mitchel put forward his policy in the
Confederation of arming the people and bidding them hold their harvests.
The Confederation rejected the policy, still hoping to effect a national
union. Through such a union alone, it declared, could national
independence be achieved. Doheny strongly opposed Mitchel on this
ground. Mitchel's reply was simple. He had been and was ready to follow
the aristocrats of Ireland if they would lead. They would not lead, and
meanwhile the people perished. Therefore he would urge the people to
save themselves. The policy of the Confederation in normal times would
have been nationally sound. The circumstances had become abnormal, and
Mitchel's policy was suited to the abnormal circumstances. His
conviction that the British Government was deliberately using the
potato-crop failure for the purpose of reducing the Irish
population--which then was equal to more than half the population of
England and a menace to that country, as one of its statesmen
incautiously admitted--was a conviction not shared by the bulk of his
colleagues. They shrank from it as men will shrink from a conclusion
that horrifies the human nature in them. Mitchel went outside the
Confederation to preach his policy, and he might have preached it
without result had not the French Revolution turned men's minds to the
contemplation of arms and armed opinion. The arrest, indictment and
conviction of Mitchel, Doheny has described graphically. The reasons
that prevailed against attempting Mitchel's rescue, Doheny cogently
states. There is no reason to doubt that an attempt to rescue Mitchel
would have been a failure in its object. But there are occasions when it
is wiser to attempt the impossible than to acquiesce. The unchallenged