ever I left the house a covered car emerged from a neighbouring alley and pursued my steps, and a scoundrel who had entered into the service of the police called on me to tender his advice of what was fitting to be done at the moment. This mouchard was Mark O'Callaghan, brother of a perfectly honourable man well known in national politics.[1] But the most able and reliable of my friends tendered me advice almost as contradictory and irreconcilable. John Dillon, a man of solid judgment and high integrity, thought I ought to transfer the Nation to London, and make it the organ, not of Irish nationality alone, but of a philosophical radicalism embracing the empire.
"The issue of Duffy's trial," he wrote to his wife, "has given me the liveliest satisfaction. I rejoice at it, not only as the triumph of a very dear friend over very vile and malignant enemies, but also as an event which will certainly be followed by important consequences to the country. Supposing (as it seems to be generally believed) that the Government have abandoned the design of trying him again, he is now in a better position than he has ever occupied. The persecution he has endured must have softened the hostility of many of his enemies, and all prejudice against him must have been entirely dissipated in the course of his trials; so that if the Irish people will ever listen to anybody they will listen to him, and if ever man was above wilfully misleading a people for any purpose, I think he is. It is my most earnest wish that he may remain quiet for a little time, and before he enters on a new career (it must be altogether new) that he would weigh carefully the relative advantages of the different projects which will not fail to be pressed upon him. If he should turn his face now in a wrong direction, all future exertions will be leading him but further astray. I have seen in one of the papers that he proposed re-establishing the Nation, and I heard through P. J. Smyth that Meagher wishes
- ↑ Dr. Madden, the author of "The United Irishmen," told me that Mark O'Callaghan called upon him about the same time to say that he wished to consult him on a political movement far ahead of '48. But Madden, warned by his experience of spies in '98, called in his wife, and bade her note the conversation, whereupon O'Callaghan got up and retired. O'Callaghan's death took place in Tasmania in a lone house which he was occupying jointly with J. D. Balfe, another spy; he had been dead several days when his body was discovered.
