Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/157

But even a month's leisure proved impossible, for a new and serious trouble had suddenly sprung up. Before the month approached its close, Mitchel came to me on the eve of publication, bringing the proofs for next day's Nation, and with them the news that O'Connell had returned from London in a fury, real or affected; and Mitchel predicted that if I did not drop the book and return to the editor's room I should find, when it was completed, the Nation engaged in a conflict with O'Connell in which it would possibly perish. I wrote no more history in that era. The grounds of O'Connell's wrath were a pronunciamento in the Nation famous in that period as "The Railway Article." Apropos of some food riots, which the threatened famine had provoked, the Morning Herald, then a Government organ, announced that it had become necessary to declare the agitation for Repeal high treason, and to shut up Sedition Hall; and the official journalist triumphed in the ease with which the thing could be done by despatching troops to every dangerous district by the new railways, which were very handy for the purpose. Mitchel replied that if the new railways were to be applied in suppressing public opinion in Ireland the people were not without a remedy—a cutting could be filled up or an embankment levelled without much trouble. Hofer received the invaders of the Tyrol in a memorable manner. When the enemy appeared in a narrow pass his soldiers seized upon rocks and roots of trees, and in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, discharged them on the enemy. "But," he added, "'tis a dream. No enemy will put us to realise these scenes. Yet let all understand what a railway may and what it may not do."

This answer seemed to me a natural and seasonable one in reply to a threat of suppressing by force an agitation for a perfectly lawful purpose. It was such an answer as the Nation would have given to such a menace at any period of its existence. But Mitchel, knowing that O'Connell was watching for a favourable opportunity to assail us, committed a serious mistake in tactique when he associated the Repeal Association with his menace.

"For actual measures of coercion," he said, "all Ireland laughs at them. The military uses or abuses of railways are