Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/315

 influence a man who was going to walk on thawing ice, or to cross a fordless river, as not to desire to keep men right in a political struggle, and to do it with might and main. If I was Smith O'Brien I would shape out in my own mind, or with such counsel as I valued, a definite course for the revolution, and labour incessantly to develop it in that way. For example, your project of obtaining signatures to the roll of the National Guard, and when a sufficient number were procured, and not sooner, calling the Council of Three Hundred, was one I entirely relied upon. But it has been permitted to fall into disuse, and could scarcely be revived now. The clubs, however, might take the place of the National Guard, and the proposal in your letter on Union of a definite number of clubs being formed would suit as well, if it were vigorously and systematically carried out—each day adding an item to it, and all the men we could influence employed upon it. Forgive me for urging this so anxiously upon you, but I verily believe the hopes of the country depend upon the manner in which the next two months are used. There is not a town in which you could not find a band of missionaries to organise the neighbouring counties—every club has its active men fit for this work—and it is only by applying all our force to it that we will succeed."

It was held by lawyers of moderate temper that since the era of the Stuarts so shocking an outrage had not been committed in a court of justice as the Solicitor-General's speech.

O'Brien was not a man to permit brutality, which pretended to favour him at the cost of one of his friends, to pass in silence, and the following dialogue took place, highly characteristic of both the interlocutors:—

"The Solicitor-General (Mr. Hatchell): I wish Mr. O'Brien had not listened to this diabolical tempter, who was pressing him to his destruction."

The Prisoner (Mr. O'Brien): It is not fair to speak of Mr. Duffy in this manner in his absence.

"The Solicitor-General: I do believe Mr. O'Brien was unwilling to take this step. His honour, his position, his feelings, his education were against it, but he was urged on by bad advisers. I regret