anchorages
were deep-cast--and no mere sentiment provokes such a man to throw aside
the hard-won harvest of his life and risk the rebel's or the felon's
fate.

In the leadership of the Young Ireland party Michael Doheny was, save
Smith O'Brien, the oldest man and, like O'Brien, his counsels while
courageous were always restrained. There was little other likeness
between the men. Doheny sprang from the poorest class of the Irish
farmers. At Brookfield, near Fethard in Tipperary, where he was born in
May, 1805, he followed the plough on his father's little holding,
earning literally his bread in the sweat of his brow, and educating
himself how he could, for his people were too poor to pay for his
schooling. His indomitable perseverance and his thirst for knowledge
overcame the formidable obstacles of fortune, and at thirty years of age
the poor peasant boy had become a barrister of reputation for ability
and fearlessness. He returned to his native county to become the most
popular and trusted of its "counsellors"--the advocate who did not fear
to face and beard Influence and Ascendancy in its courts. The city of
Cashel had had much of its property alienated and long enjoyed by local
magnates whom none were willing to offend. Doheny fought and defeated
them and regained the purloined estates for the people. He was made
Legal Adviser to the Borough of Cashel and when later the pestilence
fell upon the place, and even the men employed to carry the sick to
hospital lost courage and fled, Doheny showed the same manly example of
citizenship and duty which years later forced him "on the Felon's path,"
by carrying in his strong arms to shelter and relief the deserted
victims of the plague. Davis who marked his character, and knew that on
such men a free and self-respecting Ireland must be rebuilt induced him
to enter the Repeal movement of 1842, and in its councils he swayed the
influence of a strong, sincere, able and incorruptible man until the
Association fell into the toils of the English Whigs. Then he quitted
it and formally adhered to the Young Irelanders. To them he was
invaluable for his eloquence--less brilliant and polished than that of
Meagher, but more effective in its appeal to the heart of the peasantry
whom Doheny knew better than any of his colleagues. On a platform he
triumphed, but with the pen he was often ineffective. His admiration and
reverence for Davis misled him into laboriously imitating Davis's style,