cate with the Press. The new invention would, doubtless, have found its way speedily to the official journals but that I claimed my vindication from the Prison Board. They informed Lord Clarendon that they had requested me a month earlier, on instructions from the Castle, to make such a pledge, but that I had positively refused as an untried prisoner to give any sort of undertaking. The Chairman of the Board suggested there ought to be much allowance for the Lord-Lieutenant. The fact of my correspondence with newspapers would be commented on in Parliament, and what was his Excellency to say? "Say," I rejoined, "why say again through Lord Lansdowne what he said before, that the letter was written outside the prison, and my name forged to it."
Lord Clarendon was very indignant, and his Crown lawyer found an opportunity of gratifying his animosity against me. In Smith O'Brien's portmanteau a letter of mine was found which he had forgotten to destroy, and on the strength of that document the Solicitor- General affected to treat him as an unfortunate gentleman deluded into ruinous courses by a "diabolical tempter." Here is the diabolical temptation in question. It represents very accurately my position in that trying time. I thought we were bound to call the country to arms, formidable as the difficulties were, because a refusal would cover Ireland with contempt before America and Europe, but that no pains ought to be spared to make the revolution an honourable and magnanimous one:—
"I am glad to learn that you are about to commence a series of meetings in Munster. There is no half-way house for you—you will be the head of the movement, loyally obeyed, and the revolution will be conducted with order and clemency, or the mere anarchists will prevail with the people, and our revolution will be a bloody chaos. You have at present Lafayette's place—so graphically painted by Lamartine—and I believe have fallen into Lafayette's error, that of not using it to all its extent and in all its resources. I am perfectly well aware that you don't desire to lead or influence others—but I believe, with Lamartine, that this feeling, which is a high personal and civic virtue, is a vice in revolutions. One might as well, I think, not want to
