Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/175

 never while they lived place reliance on any English party, but contend for an independent domestic legislature.

A point in the debate in which I was personally concerned belongs properly to this personal narrative. Mr. John Reilly, one of O'Connell's Old Guard, affirmed that the Nation was teaching disastrous doctrine, and he assailed Mitchel, one of the Nation party, as responsible for it. Mitchel interposed briefly:—

"I avow the connection with the Nation. I should say this, I am not the editor of the Nation—my friend, Mr. Duffy, is editor and proprietor; my friend, Mr. Duffy, is, in fact, the Nation."

Mr. Reilly read a specimen of the impugned article which will enable the reader to gauge the depth of our offence. Speaking of the new men, the new ideas, and the new sympathy of foreign nations which had fortified the movement in recent times, and which were so worthy to be preserved and cherished, I said:—

"Shall we quarrel with our new strength—with this growing wealth of mind and energy? Once there was little more in the agitation than O'Connell and the multitude, and then surely it was not well with Ireland. For less than a miracle of God would not liberate a people among whom knowledge and self-respect and independence, the capacity to see and the courage to dare, were not common. Never have such a people won freedom; seldom, when freedom was their birthright, have they retained it."