as opposed and it was the only ground on which it could be opposed;
with sincerity or success. The use, therefore, which was made of the
resolutions on Mr. Duffy's trial was false and unsustainable in every
point of view.

There is no disposition and no desire to quarrel with the line of
defence adopted by Mr. Duffy. It is conceded freely that any defence
which his counsel, some of the ablest and most honourable men at the bar
in Ireland, or elsewhere recommended was justifiable. But coupling that
part of the defence with the evidence given on the same trial, by
pensioners and parasites[8] of the British Government, and with the
commentaries that afterwards appeared from the pens of some of Mr.
Duffy's friends, the whole was calculated to leave on the public mind an
impression, not only utterly inconsistent with the truth, but pernicious
and fatal in its influence on the future of the country, if indeed she
is ever to have a future.

This impression inevitably would be that Mr. Duffy modelled and moulded
the proceedings of the Confederation at his mere pleasure; that Mr.
Duffy was not alone averse to revolution, but actually conservatively
loyal; and that, in the spirit of that loyalty, he controlled the whole
body, and kept an insensate "Jacquerie," which existed within it, in
check--that it was only when he was sent to prison this Jacquerie
obtained the ascendant, and that Mr. Duffy was the victim of their
intemperate folly. However agreeable all this may be to personal vanity,
Mr. Duffy must feel compelled to reject it as audacious and unmeaning
flattery. There is much more at stake than the estimate of private
character--the highest interests of truth. They require that it should
be made known and incontestably established that every word of the
above--fact and inference--is unfounded. As to the statement that Mr.
Duffy was made the victim of others' intemperance, its converse could be
much more easily sustained. But it satisfies every requirement of truth
simply to state that, morally speaking, Mr. Duffy was equally
responsible for the late outbreak, with those who perilled their lives
and lost their liberty forever in the struggle.

The _United Irishman_ started under auspices more flattering than ever
cheered the birth of a similar enterprise. The man in Dublin, who did
not read the first number, might indeed be pronounced a bigot or a
fool. Every word struck with the force and terror of lightning. So great
wa