Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/262

 ruin. But if we did not accept Lalor's dazzling theory, what were we to do? I insisted that in rejecting it we were bound to substitute a better one for it, and as the plan which I had been directed to draw up was now ready, I proposed to submit it to the Council of the Confederation. A meeting was summoned, and members at a distance warned of the vital importance of the occasion and urged to attend.

Dillon, O'Hagan, and I had long conferences with Mitchel. We were persuaded he was going to destroy himself and probably the public cause, and as we had a sincere affection for him we spared no pains to bring him to reason. But he would not yield. If he could not preach Lalor's theories in the journal and in the Confederation he would establish a weekly paper in Cork or Belfast, where he would be free to pursue his policy to the end. John Martin came much to me on the same business and as a general peacemaker. But as he did not agree with the new policy, and only argued in the name of what he called free opinion that Mitchel ought to be allowed to have his way, he wasted his time. To allow him to have his way was to permit the people to be taught with my sanction that the sure road to liberty was the refusal to pay poor rate, for he had modified Lalor's proposal to refuse the payment of rent (the income of the landlords) into the prodigious absurdity of a refusal to pay poor rate destined for the support of the suffering poor. During these negotiations Mitchel tried my spirit sorely by writing for the Nation opinions which he knew I would not sanction. In one article he defended the perpetual slavery of the negro, and in another objected peremptorily to the emancipation of the Jews. He had learned these opinions from Thomas Carlyle, but they made a strangely unsuitable equipment for a spokesman of Irish liberty. I struck these professions out of the