Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/274

 The meeting consisted almost entirely of young men or men under forty, students, artisans, tradesmen, and professionals. But they had been trained in respect of fair play and common sense, and they rejected the amendment by a decisive majority. Mitchel retired from the Confederation, accompanied by Reilly alone, and for a time the controversy left him the most disabled and discredited politician in Ireland. He had pluck, men said, and rhetorical power, but not a tittle of the supreme faculty which estimates forces accurately, and encounters difficulties successfully, called in its most modest form good sense.

The controversy furnishes a more effectual test of the character of the Confederates than the conflict with O'Connell, or perhaps any other transaction in their career. It is so easy and so pleasant to declare for measures which look daring, and so painful to say "No" to what is described as the only remedy for a manifest wrong, but they had the courage to be simply just.