Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/95

 number of a daily paper, which you got at sea, the transactions running over weeks:—

"'The doctor has sent into my cabin a Daily News which came by the mail on Sunday. Now, why could not Mr. Duffy have made ballads in some quiet place all his days? As if purposely to relieve the enemy from all embarrassment in the " vindication of the law," he has allowed a petition to Government to be got up, very extensively signed, praying that as he is totally ruined—as he has already been long confined—as he is an admirable private character—as his health is delicate—as the violent and revolutionary articles in his newspaper appeared during a period of great excitement, and extended over but a few weeks—the enemy would, of their mercy, forbear to persecute him further—the very thing they wished to have any decent excuse for. I say he has allowed this petition, because no petitioners could make such implied promises of amendment without his sanction, and especially because he has not disowned the mean proceeding. It is quite in keeping with his miserable defence upon his last trial, his production of evidence to character, his attempt to evade the responsibility of articles published by himself. Sir Lucius O'Brien, too, who presents this memorial to Lord Clarendon, takes occasion to admit the "guilt" of the culprit. With what joy the enemy must gloat upon this transaction, and exult over us and our abandoned cause!&apos; ("Jail Journal").

"Unhappy man! Did you indeed people your solitude with these hideous spectres of a diseased heart? I am fain to throw down my pen. That hell of envy and rancour carried in your bosom to the Antipodes and back again, making the daylight dark, and truth falsehood in your eyes, is its own Nemesis.

"Of all the rash and ungenerous conclusions to which you rush, over the chance number of a paper, which yesterday or to-morrow's might correct, not so much as one is true. Not one.

"Nobody made 'promises of amendment' on my behalf, 'implied' or expressed. On the contrary, the memorialists were met with a flat and insolent refusal on the ground (to cite the language of Lord Clarendon) that I had 'exhibited no signs of repentance, and had not expressed the smallest