Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/141

 can't bear to inscribe it with the name of any distinguished person, and on the whole will take John Martin."

I found when I returned to the Nation office that Mr. John O'Connell's industry had not been limited to the public affairs of the universe. He found time to sow suspicions of Thomas Davis as a dangerous, intriguing infidel, whose friends acquiesced in his dark designs. The young men in towns treated these rumours with contempt, but they made a serious impression on the Catholic clergy. Among a pious people irreligion is the most unpardonable of offences, and from this time rumours were circulated in many parts of the island that the Young Irelanders were the enemies of God and their country. Dillon wrote me from Mayo that Repeal was dead in that county, and that there was but one priest who was not unfriendly to the Nation, but that one, he added, was worth all the rest. Doheny sent a similar report from Tipperary, and bade me gauge the force of the popular sentiment by the fact that a doctor lost subscribers to his dispensary among the clergy because he would not give up the obnoxious journal. A few of the Repeal Reading Rooms were induced to abandon so dangerous a teacher, and it seemed certain that a sectarian controversy would spring up, in which ignorance and bigotry would be on one side, and intelligence and integrity on the other. More was done in a month in what was scoffingly called the Vice-Tribunate of John O'Connell, to lower the force and damage the character of the Repeal Party than ever had been done in twelve months to animate and elevate them.

To crown these troubles came suddenly without forecast or warning the heaviest stroke that could befall the young men or the unconscious country. Thomas Davis died after a week's illness. By God's inscrutable providence it has often been the fate of Ireland to suffer the loss which nothing can compensate, the loss of the guiding mind. Brian fell while his soldiers were still hot with the triumph at Clontarf; Hugh O'Neill died in exile while his principality was being partitioned among strangers; Roger O' Moore died when the