Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/334

 , would be indispensable to any new movement. Now, on this matter, I wish not to adopt any course that could interfere with your intended arrangements in the event of acquittal. Will you let me know your own personal views, wishes, and feelings, on the subject, as I wish to be guided by them?

"We ought to have but one journal, that is clear, and clear, too, that you should be at the head of it. Two journals would inevitably create two parties. Nothing could hinder that. But the immediate establishment of a weekly journal at least, if not of a morning one, is required.

"Now, why should I conceal it from you -- my own firm impression is that you need have little fear of being taken from Ireland, but I am greatly afraid they mean and will contrive to keep you in Richmond, with O'Brien and the others, for the next eight or ten or twelve months. For such a case you ought at least to be prepared and making provision. Is there anything to hinder you from being proprietor of a paper while there, or from writing its articles? I can see nothing—nothing, at least, that could not be got over. You could not superintend details, but you could write the more, there would be all the difference.

"Your funds may probably have failed, but I have reasons for hoping that funds may be furnished."

I had no confidence in conspiracy. I was resolutely determined to fall back upon the plan I had proposed to the Council of the Confederation—independent opposition and the gradual creation of confidence in a patriot party whom the country would trust and follow in any extremity. I had learned the story of the late abortive insurrection from its leaders; and I knew they had found no town or district ready to begin an insurrection, each of them having an insensate confidence that the struggle would break out somewhere else, and that we could bring an army into the open field who would hold their ground before artillery and cavalry was a dream. I did not make it a reproach to the country that they did not fight; they were broken by famine and disaster, and they saw nowhere what they had a right to see when such an appeal was made to them, men qualified from experience and