Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/145

 might well seem, in this disabled condition, they would be an easy prey; but it proved otherwise.

It will be obvious that the question of submission or resistance to O'Connell's policy of lowering our national flag must be answered primarily by me. I was the editor and proprietor of the recognised organ of the party, and the sole representative of the men who had founded it, and gathered adherents around it. If I resisted it was plain it would be a struggle for existence. But if I did not resist the National cause would disappear from Conciliation Hall, the men of integrity and intellect who still remained would retire, the surrender of 1834 would be renewed, and again we should see the shameful transmutation of national tribunes into sleek officials of the Castle.

After consultation with the few friends who remained I determined to accept the struggle, and to spare no pains to make it a stubborn one. It looked a forlorn hope, but in the Federal controversy the leader had found it necessary to submit to public opinion, and by the favour of Heaven this result might befall us again.

But there must be men who could speak the opinions- of the party in the Association, from which I was excluded by one of its new rules, and writers to replace those who were withdrawn from the Nation, or the contest could not be successfully maintained. I promptly sought for recruits, and before the Association commenced serious work in January there was a second Young Ireland Party as uniform in opinion and united in policy as the first. Their opinions and policy were the same as those of their predecessors, that the National cause must not be sacrificed to any intrigue, and that if little could be done to promote it during the lifetime of O'Connell it must at any rate be kept pure and above suspicion for an inevitable future. My tour in the previous autumn with Mitchel in Ulster and M'Gee in Wicklow suggested two recruits, and inquiry brought me others.

When Thomas D'Arcy M'Gee came across the Atlantic he was drawn back to his native country chiefly by electric sympathy with the young men of the Nation. He possessed rare intellectual gifts, which were only partially developed, for he was still a boy; but it was already possible to discern