removal of Mitchel in chains from Ireland had a moral effect on the
country that was worth 20,000 additional troops to the Government.

Thereafter, the Confederation vacillated in its policy and finally
permitted itself, in its desire for Unity as the potent weapon, to be
extinguished in favour of an Irish League which was to combine
O'Connellites and Young Irelanders. The Irish League met once, and died.
The Confederation had been hoodwinked. Doheny who opposed the
amalgamation, retired to Cashel, severing his connection with the former
Confederation. He was, therefore, free in honour to have taken no part
in the insurrection, since it was begun by men from whom he had
withdrawn. But when the voice in the night whispered through his window
that his former colleagues had crossed the Rubicon, Doheny, like the man
he was, rose and rode forth to make the fatal passage and stand or fall
with them.

From this point, Doheny's narrative may be supplemented and corrected by
information that was not at the time he wrote available to him. Meagher,
Leyne, M'Gee, O'Mahony and MacManus, have left in newspaper articles and
in MS. accounts of what happened in the light of which Doheny's
narrative must be read.

On Thursday, July 20th, 1848, the British Government issued a
proclamation ordering the people of Ireland to surrender their arms.
Thomas Francis Meagher, who was at the time in Waterford, issued a
counter-proclamation to the people of that city bidding them to hold
them fast. He then hurried to Dublin to consult with his colleagues and
he arrived in the metropolis the next day. There had been a strong
division of opinion in the Confederate clubs as to how the Government
proclamation should be treated, the general feeling of the rank-and-file
inclining to open resistance. The leaders counselled a waiting policy
until the harvest had been gathered, the arms to be concealed meanwhile.
This counsel prevailed against the remonstrance of one of the Dublin
leaders that if heaven rained down loaded rifles they would wait for
angels to pull the triggers. If the insurrection could have been
postponed until the harvest the counsel would have been sound. The
Young Ireland leaders forgot, however, that the Government had one
powerful weapon in reserve with which it might force their hands--the
Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. On July 21st Meagher and his
comrades and the Dublin leaders discussed and arranged the outline of a
contin