Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/272

 concluded by moving an amendment declaring that the Confederation did not feel called upon to promote, or condemn, doctrines promulgated by its members in letters or speeches, because one of the fundamental rules specified that no member should be bound by any proceeding of that character to which he had not given his special assent."

The controversy is fully epitomised in another work ; here it will be only necessary to recall the carte and tierce of debate; the points where weapons clash or a palpable hit is made.

Michael Doheny, afterwards one of the founders of the Fenian societies in America, ' who certainly did not want pluck or sympathy with daring enterprise, repudiated the new policy, because it lacked all possibility of success. Let the people resist the collection of rates armed with muskets and pitchforks, and they would lay their bodies on their fields, or if they had a momentary success deliver them to the gibbet. The peasantry had not arms, but if they had, why conceal the fact that the majority of them would use them not for the Confederation but against it?

P. J. Smyth, who afterwards rescued Mitchel from his jailors in Tasmania, scoffed at his proposal. They were asked to rely on a single class, and that one the lowest of all—on men directly under the influences which impelled the mobs of Limerick and Kilkenny and Belfast to assail the Confederates. How could even this class be reached? With the upper and middle classes in hostility, as well as the priesthood, it would be impossible by speaking or writing to induce a single parish in Ireland to rise in insurrection.

D'Arcy M'Gee opposed the new policy, not because it was treason against the law, but because it was treason against common sense. Opinion, they were told, to be successful, must be armed, if so it was very successful in Ireland. They were ruled by opinion represented by Sir Edward Blakeney with the bâton of Commander-in-Chief in his hand. But not such was the opinion which had conquered the world. What was the fashion of Paul's sword or Peter's cuirass? In what sort of armour did Leo confront Attila? With how many legions did St. Augustine convert Africa to the faith? Mr.