Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/302

 appointed a day for a confidential conference. The men who take the first plunge in perilous enterprises seldom escape the experience which befell us. Our closest associates came promptly, but the gushing sympathisers who crowd the platforms of a popular party began to drop off like leaves in autumn. The value of such a story as this is the moral it teaches, and it is worthless unless it be illustrated by examples. The people are fond of lords, and Young Irelanders had two lords among their sympathisers. Lord Cloncurry debated their policy frankly over his dinner-table, and generally favoured the most extreme proposals. But he never held out any hope that a man who had been a State prisoner half a century earlier was prepared to begin the rebel's stormy life anew in his declining years. Lord Wallscourt was a younger and more vigorous man. He was a social, as well as a political, reformer, and was a leader among the cosmopolitan societies in Paris, which were busy with experiments for framing the world anew. He had held language which induced us to hope for his aid, and I summoned him to Dublin. He made objections which were not ill-founded, but which were certainly ill-timed, and ought to have been heard of at an earlier date. He was a soldier, he said, and every soldier knew that the first condition of success in a campaign was that the men should stand shoulder to shoulder, but peasants would never stand shoulder to shoulder, but be scattered by artillery like a flock of crows. He assured me that for his part he had always been for peaceful methods, and I do not think I ever saw him again.

Father Kenyon was a man of far higher national importance. He had won popular confidence by vigorous and fearless utterances, and he had committed high treason with the leaders in sending missions to France and America for military assistance. Under these circumstances we had good reason to count on his prompt attendance, but he excused himself and kept within the shelter of his presbytery till the contest closed in the ruin of his associates. Only the result of the conference need be stated. The honour and interest of the country compelled an appeal to arms. To organise the people into clubs was the most pressing work, and the news from our agents in France and America would fix the