This contumely, to a great degree undeserved, naturally reacted upon the subjects of it.  The taunt of treachery and ingratitude flung at them wherever they went stung and nettled.  In the general reaction of gratitude and affection for O’Connell, his son John succeeded easily to the position of leader.  The older members of the Repeal Association thereupon rallied about him, and the split between them and the younger men grew deeper and wider.

A wild, impracticable visionary now came to play a part in the movement.  A deformed misanthrope, called James Lalor, endowed with a considerable command of vague, passionate rhetoric, began to write incentives to revolt in The Nation, These growing more and more violent were by the editor at length prudently suppressed.  The seed, however, had already sown itself in another mind.  John Mitchell is described by Mr. Justin McCarthy as “the one formidable man amongst the rebels of ’48; the one man who distinctly knew what he wanted, and was prepared to run any risk to get it.”  Even Mitchell, it is clear, would never have gone as far as he did but for the impulse which he received from the crippled desperado in the background.  Lalor was, in fact, a monomaniac, but this Mitchell seems to have failed to perceive.  To him it was intolerable that any human being should be willing to go further and to dare more in the cause of Ireland than himself, and the result was that after awhile he broke away from his connection with The Nation, and started a new organ under the name of The United Irishmen, one definitely pledged from the first to the policy of action.

From this point matters gathered speedily to a head.  Mitchell’s newspaper proceeded to fling out challenge after challenge to the Government, calling upon the people to gather and to “sweep this island clear of the English name and nation.”  For some months these challenges remained unanswered.  It was now, however, “’48,” and nearly all Europe was in revolution.  The necessity of taking some step began to be evident, and a Bill making all written incitement of insurrection felony was hurried through the House of Commons, and almost immediately after Mitchell was arrested.

Even then he seems to have believed that the country would rise to liberate him.  The country, however, showed no disposition to do anything of the sort.  He was tried in Dublin, found guilty, sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation, and a few days afterwards put on board a vessel in the harbour and conveyed to Spike Island, whence he was sent to Bermuda, and the following April in a convict vessel to the Cape, and finally to Tasmania.