I was certain Mr. O'Brien would
direct his way, whether he came alone or followed by his countrymen in
arms. 'Mid the lone silence of that journey, while there was leisure to
revolve all the difficulties and hazards of the future, the idea never
once occurred to me that, supposing my information correct, the step was
rashly taken. On such occasions, when centuries gather into moments,
some one overmastering feeling, hope or passion absorbs and controls the
whole understanding. That which was then present to my mind, and
occupied all its faculties, was the hope of satisfaction, or vengeance,
if you will, for so many ages of guilty tyranny. The tears, the burning
and blood of nearly one thousand years seemed to letter the eastern sky,
as day dawned upon my way. Apprehension, I had none. From earliest
childhood to that hour, I never met one Irishman whose hope of hope it
was not to deliver the country forever from English thrall. I had lived
amidst all ranks (at least in their characters of politicians), had
known the sentiments of all, from the most ignorant peasant to the very
highest official of government; and then or now, I would find it
difficult to say where hatred to English domination--English power in
Ireland is neither government nor dominion--reigned the most intensely.
Some men there are by nature cowards, and they would shrink from the
perils of national deliverance; but if any sentiment could be said to
live in natures so grovelling, the grudge against England, even though
too craven to make itself audible, constitutes the essence of their
mental vitality. Some there are, too, so selfish as to sell their own
and their families' honour for gold; but as they count their sordid
gains, if they fall short by a scruple, whether in fact or in
anticipation, the deficiency becomes a heap of hoarded spite against
England. One man of that class, whom I had known, will furnish a
conclusive example. Trusted and paid by the Whigs, he was a supreme West
Briton, who saw in his country but a prey for meaner cormorants;
distrusted and dismissed by the Tories, he would storm the Castle, even
with the baton of the English office from which, he had been discarded.
Others, also, of a loftier stamp, were reined in, in the path of
allegiance[B], by considerations more justifiable, yet more or less
cowardly in character.

[Illustration: Ballingarry, Slievenamon in the distance, 1848]

Some doubted the ability of their country to e