Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/90

 contrast between Mr. Mitchel's gallant and generous acceptance of free opinion and my cowardly rejection of it. One line from my letter to John Mitchel will dispose of this case:—

"Oh, soul of candour and chivalry! it was you who suppressed Kenyon's letter in the Nation; it was you who notified that this kind of gladiatorial combat over a dead body had ceased with the Pagan times! And it was you who published in the United Irishman Father Kenyon's denunciation of the cowardly conduct in question."

Is there any gentleman alive who in such circumstances would not have burned to declare that he was responsible? but Mr. Mitchel maintained a disingenuous silence.

The next case I may borrow without abridgment from the pamphlet:—

"You were an habitual reader of the Northern Star in '48; every number of your paper contained extracts from it. You were in personal communication with the Irish Chartists, and spoke at two of the three meetings they held in Dublin in that year. In the Star, Mr. Fergus O'Connor published a fabulous biography, describing how you sacrificed your noble professional income to be a mere writer in the Nation, and how you were compelled to break away from that unworthy journal, because the cowardly proprietor, Gavan Duffy, not only trammelled the free expression of your sympathy with the English Chartists, but himself wrote infamous reactionary articles about digging deeper the gulf between Ireland and them. Afterwards Mr. Dyott adorned his speech with this story at one of the Chartist meetings in Dublin, and improvised an effective comparison between Mr. Duffy, of the Nation, and Mr. Conway, of the Post. His speech was, of course, transferred to the United Irishman, but this paragraph was adroitly omitted. You chuckled, I have no doubt, at the odium that was created against me among large masses of men in England and Ireland, and at your own growing Chartist popularity. Will you chuckle now when I disclose the fact that, of these reactionary anti-Chartist articles I was not the writer, and—you, Mr. John Mitchel, were! It was you who proposed to dig deeper the gulf between the Chartists and Ireland!