Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/98

 were not able to fulfil; in denouncing the puerility and cowardice of being adequately prepared; and in disparaging, as Reactionaries, the men who took the precautions which you neglected. Your labours had, indeed, one computable result; you begot among the Confederates an angry and unscrupulous faction, who spent their nights and days in denouncing the best men in the movement. But of these 'Montagnards' not one took the field with O'Brien; on the contrary, some of them behaved with signal cowardice, one with disgusting treachery, and another was unmasked as a Government spy. O'Brien's failure might have befallen any cause; it had befallen some of the noblest in the annals of mankind; destiny may repeat or reverse it but nothing can rob it of its intrinsic greatness. In the midst of a generation who did not believe in heroic sacrifice he offered up his life for the common weal. What is the hidden root of all your bitterness? Why does the name of every associate make your blackest bile to overflow? Ah, I know it well. There is one of them never named in your diary, never named in the Citizen, ignored even in the history of the Felon newspaper, where he dominated like a king—the ablest democrat ever born on the soil of Ireland, James Fintan Lalor. In the second number of the Felon Lalor published a Letter which will furnish the most memorable data in your biography. It contains your political genesis. Eighteen months before (he said) he had 'sent that document to a leading member of the Confederation,' for private circulation; and he received in about a month from the date and delivery of his paper a 'letter from John Mitchel stating that on perusal and consideration of its contents, he fully adopted its views, and intended to act on them as soon as occasion should serve.'

"And he did adopt them, but never once hinted from whom he derived them."

I invite the reader to note that I published in the Nation every line of Mr. Mitchel's "Jail Journal" week by week as it appeared for three months, and then answered him as we have seen. He made an elaborate reply to my pamphlet, which I also published in the Nation. How did this generous spirit, imbued with so noble a scorn of finesse and so lofty a devotion to abstract truth, comport himself