Page:An Ulsterman for Ireland.djvu/7



OHN MITCHEL, an Ulster Protestant, wrote these letters to the Ulster Protestant democracy in April and May of 1848. The disgraceful Treason-Felony Act had just been enacted, enabling the Government to treat Irish political offences on a level with the vilest crimes. Ireland had just passed through three years of famine and famine-fever, the unchecked consequences of her ruthless Government, and had paid the toll of a million Irish lives; and to remedy her condition the Imperial Parliament enacted the Treason-Felony Act. An indictment for the newly invented crime was awaiting Mitchel, to his knowledge, at the time when he wrote these letters.

A recent French critic, having studied Mitchel's "Jail Journal," has done the entente cordiale the service of exposing Mitchel as a futile railer with no positive or constructive ideas and with no better basis for his Nationalism than bitter unreasoning rancour against England. I am sorry to say that the criticism has been adopted by some Irish writers. If after '47 no thought had remained in an Irishman's mind but the v