The Young Irelanders reincarnated the men of “ninety-eight.”  They were neither too late nor too soon.  They snatched the sacred torch of Liberty from the dying hands of O’Connell, who summoned in vain old Ireland against his young rivals.  But men like Davis and Duffy appealed to types O’Connell never swayed.  He could carry the mob, but poet, journalist, and idealist were enrolled with Young Ireland.  For this reason the history of their failure is brighter in literature than the tale of O’Connell’s triumphs.  To read Duffy’s “Young Ireland” and Mitchel’s “Jail Journal”, with draughts from the Spirit of the Nation. is to relive the period.  Without the Young Irelanders, Irish Nationalism might not have survived the Famine.

Mitchel, as open advocate of physical force, became father to Fenianism.  An honest conspirator and brilliant writer, he proved that the pen of journalism was sharper than the Irish pike.  Carlyle described him as “a fine elastic-spirited young fellow, whom I grieved to see rushing on destruction palpable, by attack of windmills.”  Destruction came surely, but coupled with immortality.  He was transported as a felon before the insurrection, while his writings sprang up in angry but unarmed men.

Mitchel and O’Connell both sought the liberation of Ireland, but their viewpoint differed.  Mitchel thought only of Liberty; O’Connell not unnaturally considered the “Liberator.”  His refusal to allow a drop of blood to be shed caused Young Ireland to secede.  Only when death removed his influence could the pent-up feelings of the country break out under Smith O’Brien.  If Mitchel was an Irish Robespierre, O’Brien was their Lafayette.  His advance from the level of dead aristocracy had been rapid.  From defending Whigs in Parliament he passed to opposition and “contempt of the House.”  He resigned from the Bench from which O’Connell had been dismissed, became a Repealer, adding the words “no compromise,” and finally gloried in his treason before the House.  His next step brought a price upon his head.

Grave and frigid, but inwardly warmhearted and passionate, O’Brien had little aptitude for rebellion.  But the death penalty (commuted to transportation) which he incurred went far to redeem his forlorn failure.  Mitchel, who shared his Australian imprisonment, left a fine picture of “this noblest of Irishmen, thrust in among the off-scourings of England’s gaols, with his home desolated and his hopes ruined, and defeated life falling into the sere and yellow leaf.  A man, who cannot be crushed, or bowed, or broken; anchored immovably upon his own brave heart within; his clear eye and soul open as ever to all the melodies and splendors of heaven and earth, and calmly waiting for the angel, Death.”