The writers of the Nation lived much together, and educated each other by friendly discussion on every problem in the Irish case, for a man scarcely understands his own opinions till he has defended them in debate. A weekly supper on Saturday evening and Sunday excursions to historic places, to which sympathetic friends were invited, made the chief recreations of a busy life. The Nation was not a journal designed to chronicle the small beer of current politics, but to teach opinions, and this was a task never neglected. The ideal of an historic nationality embracing the whole people of whatever creed or origin was a topic to which Davis constantly applied himself. Dillon, to whom the practical side of life appealed most keenly, painted the desolate condition of the tenant-at-will, and analysed the exceptional laws under which he cowered. For my part I insisted over and over again on the need of systematised self-education, such as I had mooted to Father Mathew at Newry, and to Davis at Belfast. We interchanged topics, indeed week after week, but each man returned in the end to the theme which touched him nearest.
I aimed from the outset to stamp upon the Nation an individuality like that which distinguishes an honourable man, from whom it is instinctively felt that nothing underhand or unfair need be feared. Every line of the contents passed under my eye. No one was assailed for any offence except some public delinquency injurious to Ireland, and no one assailed was ever refused a hearing. The aim of the Nation was speedily understood by the best men in Ireland; they recognised almost instinctively that here was a journal which was not a commercial speculation, but the voice of men to whom the elevation of Ireland was a creed and a passion. The profits, which were considerable, were spent in improving and distributing the journal, and paying contributors on a scale unprecedented in Ireland.[1]
- ↑ Davis, and after him Mitchel, received from the Nation more than twice as much as Macaulay received from the Edinburgh Review, or Southey from the Quarterly, these two being the only men who devoted their entire
had imperfect sympathy with his labours. In National stories and ballads and charming essays on the resources and attractions of the country he had anticipated much that was afterwards done in the Nation. But he had not reached the people, who knew so little of Ferguson that when I printed his fine ballads "Willy Gilliland " and "Una Phelamy " in the "Ballad Poetry of Ireland," a few years later, I was asked by educated people if the author was still living.
