“I must go back a little in order to reply to your queries; as the French say, _Il faut reculer pour mieux sauter_—one must draw back a little, in order to make a better spring. You have heard, Mr. Hawthorne, that the law of defeats separates the vanquished into two or three well-defined parties or sections: one party more bitter in opposition than ever, one party quietly put out of the way, who retire upon their shields, and a little party who recognize no defeat. This is just the outcome in Ireland of forty-eight and forty-nine. The Young Ireland movement in forty-eight was never national in dimensions or acceptance—” “Thrue for ye, father darlint,” exclaimed Peter O’Brien from his coigne of vantage, and whose heart and soul were in the discussion. “The boys wasn’t riz properly.” Without noticing the interruption Father O’Dowd continued: “O’Connell’s movement was from forty-two to forty-four; but from that date, although Smith O’Brien and John Mitchel came to the front, the country was not at their back.” “Did not the Young Irelanders break with O’Connell on a war policy?” “That is a fallacy. _They_ had no war policy, nor had he. It was the blaze of revolution lighted in Paris in forty-eight that set men on fire here. They seceded from O’Connell on the point of the celebrated test resolutions, which declared it would not be lawful to take up arms for the recovery of national rights. The non-acceptance of this declaration led to the Irish Confederation. The confederates were decidedly unpopular, especially after the death of O’Connell, whose demise was laid at their door, and they themselves became the victims of secession. John Mitchel and his following were for preparing the people for war against England. Thus we had three parties and no real national movement. When Paris hurled Louis Philippe from the throne, the pulse of Ireland became intensely agitated, and two schools of insurrectionists were to be found in the new insurrectionary party: one that declared that Smith O’Brien wanted a rose-water revolution, the other that Mitchel was a Red and wanted a _Jacquerie_. The refusal to rise for the release of Mitchel led to bad blood, and the subsequent rising resulted in a _fiasco_. The men who ordered it had no command from the nation, and were but a fraction of a fraction.” “Were you opposed to them, father—I mean your order?” “Assuredly not in a combative sense, but in the sense of a decided disapproval of the insurrection. They had also against them the bulk of the Repeal millions.” “But the cities—” “Yes, the cities became imbued with the spirit of the revolution and a desire to see it out, but, beyond their national antipathy to English rule, the rural population had little or no participation in the forty-eight movement.” “They wor aisy enough beyant in Kilpeddher, where they bet Mickey Rooney wud his own pike-handle an’ called him a bladdher-um-skite, no less,” cried my coachman.