were
unworthy of the people. They persuaded O'Brien to go elsewhere. It was a
cardinal and egregious mistake which he regretted within twenty-four
hours. Had he brushed the quavering local leaders aside and given the
word to the imploring people of Carrick the insurrection of 1848 would
have become respectable. O'Mahony's followers to the number of 12,000
were on the march to Carrick when the news reached them of O'Brien's
departure. Disheartened they broke up and returned to their homes.

Doheny's account of what happened after the fatal retreat from Carrick
needs to be amplified in connection with the final error of O'Brien's
leadership. At the Council of War on the 28th of July O'Brien rejected
the proposal to seize for the use of his followers all things needful,
paying for them with drafts on the future Irish Government, and he
declined the other practical proposal to offer farms rent-free to all
who fought for Ireland. Neither would he assent to the suggestion that
he and the other leaders should go into hiding until the harvest was
reaped. Willing to fight and ready to die, he would not consent to
conduct a revolution on revolutionary lines. The departure of Doheny and
others--save Devin Reilly, who urged the abandonment of the insurrection
as hopeless--was in pursuance of their plan to await the gathering of
the harvest.

O'Brien's attitude at the Council of War destroyed the last hope of the
insurrection. He expected to get men to fight under his standard while
he essayed no adequate provision for their support in the field, and
interdicted them from interference with private property to supply them
with the necessaries of the campaign. No nobler and braver man has
appeared in modern Irish history than William Smith O'Brien, but at the
head of an insurrectionary movement he was incompetent. There was none
of his lieutenants who, in his position, could not have made the
insurrection to some extent formidable.

That it could have been successful, few will believe. Mitchel and
Meagher agreed that 1848 would not have been the year of Liberation. But
the former held very justly that the insurrection if it grew to
respectable dimensions might have forced terms from England. The
attitude of France at the time was a factor in the situation. The
pro-Irish minister, Ledru-Rollin, had been checked by the pro-English
minister, Lamartine, but General Cavaignac and Louis Napoleon were, for
divergent reasons, inclined to