allegiance[B], by considerations more justifiable, yet more or less cowardly in character. [Illustration: Ballingarry, Slievenamon in the distance, 1848] Some doubted the ability of their country to effect her redemption. Some doubted the capacity, and perhaps the sincerity, of the chiefs. Some were schooled in duplicity, and under the ermine, or under the privy councillor's robe, carried fierce hearts, benumbed by mendicancy and seared by shame. But the first flash of their country's liberty would see them ranged at that country's side, repaying with the fiercest hate the beggar crumbs which England had flung from the fragments of her overloaded table. It is true enough that a long course of corruption, beginning with the perjured peer and ending with the tidewaiter, had created a class of conditional loyalists, with nine-tenths of which the condition is always unfulfilled; while, in its very fulfilment, the other one-tenth has found but bitterness, the "sauce piquante" of their daily bread. But as a general rule, such a thing as a pure Irish loyalist does not exist. Its possible existence presupposes an absurdity in nature. An Irishman cannot become loyal to English domination, without divesting himself of the last attribute of his nature, not as an Irishman, but as a man. The knowledge of this fact was my "base of operations." Ten thousand armed men successful against a garrison of five hundred would produce a more abundant crop of avenging warriors than the fabled dragon's teeth, and that simultaneously through every square mile of the island. In ten days there would be two millions of Irishmen in arms. It may well be asked, what arms? But even instinct will reply, what arms would be needed? England had in Ireland less than forty thousand men, and, without hazarding the question, how many of them could she rely on, it requires no consummate military genius to suggest how they could be dealt with by a simultaneous rising of the country. The arms of her enemies would then be hers. She would have time to form a regular army to aid her undisciplined strength. England's position at home, where she had not a soldier to spare; her condition abroad, where she was beaten to the wall; and her relations with foreign powers would achieve the rest. To a successful Irish revolution, a _coup-de-main_ is indispensable; and a _coup-de-main_ would be incompatible with any organised plan other than existed. It will be seen at once that for this place details are unfit. The above sketch rather comprehends the bolder outlines of an insurrection in action, and they suggest nothing to warn the enemy as to future operations. The prospect they presented to me--a prospect which long contemplation seemed to have realised into fact--excluded from my mind the preliminary and intermediate considerations of time, place, and other circumstances. There was but one of any importance, the success of the commencement; and that seemed