usion of this reply some present exclaimed, "Vive la
Republique!" others "Vive le Gouvernement Provisore!" and a few
cried out, "Vive Lamartine!" but the general impression was one of
dissatisfaction. Smith O'Brien and his companions retired discomfited.
The British government and people received the intelligence of this
reply with the greatest satisfaction, and their confidence in the
provisional government, and in Lamartine, more especially, was much
increased. There was already more reliance upon the friendly policy of
the republic than there had been upon the monarchy and the monarchial
ministry of Louis Philippe. In Ireland the reply of Lamartine gave
satisfaction also to the Protestants, and such of the Roman Catholic
citizens as were opposed to the O'Brien movement; but the Young
Irelanders, and most of the Old Irelanders, were exasperated, and
in their speeches and newspapers denounced Lamartine as the enemy
of liberty, the sycophant of England, and the incubus of the French
provisional government. It was said that he had married an English lady,
and was more English at heart than French--that he would betray the
republic to England or to monarchy. Those persons who had been foremost
in holding him up as a demi-god, now abused him not only as a traitor,
but as weak in purpose, policy, and intellectual grasp. John Mitchell
denounced him as the great obstruction to the development of
European freedom, which no doubt he was to such freedom as Mitchell
advocated--the plunder and tyranny of a modified communism; for while
essentially holding that theory, he in some way, not very intelligible
to others, repudiated it. Lamartine began his career of power by
emancipating the negro race; Mitchell commenced his career as a free
exile in America, some years after, by the most violent advocacy of the
fetter and the whip for the coloured population of that country. The
_Nation_ newspaper, week after week, informed its readers that Lamartine
was an idle dreamer, a mere theoretical politician; that his mind was
only constituted for the regions of romance; and that his opinion on the
affairs of Ireland, England, France, or Europe was worthless. A week or
two before the same paper held him up as the very Achilles of freedom,
and the hope of Ireland--for it was the habit of both the parties
claiming nationality in Ireland, to hope for liberty from the courage
and efforts of others rather than from their own. The reply of Lamartine