was supposed to be waiting.[1] Towards the close of his life he visited Ireland to preach the kindred doctrine of refusing to seek Home Rule in Parliament, and of electing only such members as were resolved not to sit in the House of Commons, and whose seats would necessarily go (as his own seat went) to the enemies of the people. It was a hard régime that Mr. Mitchel imposed on his countrymen. We were to look on, session after session, while hostile Acts of Parliament were directed like spears at the breast of Ireland, but take no notice. We were to see the young and strong fly from every port, but do nothing to retain them, relying on his prediction that when the fragment of the Irish race was sufficiently exasperated they would rise and deliver themselves with sword and torch.
It was a curious aggravation of this fantastic folly that a dozen years later, at the close of the American War, when Mr. Mitchel had to consider under nearly identical circumstances what he himself would do and counsel others to do, he adopted in America the policy which he had denounced as futile and shameful in Ireland. This is what he wrote:—
"There was no longer a Confederate Government it had disappeared from human eyes; and inasmuch as a country cannot be without a government, and the only government then in fact subsisting being the Federal Government of the United States, I owed to it from that instant full obedience—which obedience I at once yielded in good faith, as I think my fellow-citizens at the South very generally did at the same time and for the same reason. I am therefore no longer a Secessionist nor a rebel, but a Unionist and a lawful citizen."
While Mr. Mitchel was denouncing the League in New
- ↑ The plan which gave most promise of an expedition to Ireland was Fenianism, but of Fenianism and its leader Mr. Mitchel wrote "Meagher and myself met Stephens by appointment at my lodgings in Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington. He demanded of us in a somewhat high tone that we should enter into his conspiracy, and should use all the credit and influence which he supposed us to possess amongst the Irish citizens of the United States in order to procure money for the purposes of that conspiracy. It was a startling proposal. Unfortunately for him, we could not believe his statements and speedily arrived at the conclusion at which many others have since arrived—that he was a humbug." After this declaration of opinion Mr. Mitchel was sworn in a Fenian and despatched as an agent of the organisation to Paris, and accomplished as little there as he had done in Dublin and New York.
