Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/23

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THE REVIVAL OF THE "NATION"
5

event how can you shape a policy cognate and coherent with the past, yet fit for the present and hopeful for the future? Herein I see great difficulties to your revival. If you restart the Nation I hereby tender you the enthusiastic services of a New York Correspondent.

"I will not go back to Ireland. I have thrown myself on the race in America. I aspire to be the Duffy of our Emigrants; I have provoked their attention to projects and themes which I am bound to see out, or carry out. They have sustained me handsomely. Seven months ago I entered this city with 11 in my purse, since then I received 5,000 dollars, all of which has been sunk, as it came in, in their Nation. I therefore feel myself bound to our outcasts; at the same time my heart longs and strains itself after Ireland and you. I would rather ten to one live in Dublin. My little Nation in 1850, will give me personal independence, all I want or wish for. Whatever in sway, or wealth, it may create I shall feel bound to share with you, whether you stay in Ireland or come here. As it is, half of it is at your service, at this hour, and if you refuse it I have a mental reservation to devote so much of its gains to whatever Irish enterprise you originate at home. Personally, I would wish above all things to be your second again—but, I dare not say, come; you are by far better able to decide between Ireland and America than I can be, and I expect you have chosen already.

"As to the prospects of an auxiliary Irish party on this side, I hold them to be as good or better than ever they were. We have more Irishmen, and absence sublimes love of country. All the Irish here feel under a cloud till the work is done, and though if appealed to now they would be mighty hard of hearing, still they keep watching every speck of light in the Eastward. But any new Irish movement, social or other, should begin in Dublin. The waters must come from the fountain, and the command from the head of the army. You cannot make a tail a head, or any quantity of emigrants a people. All they can do is to give help, and that you could get, after a time, as largely as any one ever got it.

"You are, perhaps, aware that 'the Directory' here have some .£5,000 or thereabouts in the funds, of Irish subscriptions since last year. This, or part of it, could be got for an