When the suicidal policy of O’Connell drove the Confederates from Conciliation Hall, John Martin was not a silent spectator of the crisis, and in consequence of the manly sentiments he expressed with reference to the treatment to which the Young Ireland party had been subjected, he ceased to be a member of the Association.  There was another cause too for his secession.  A standing taunt in the mouth of the English press was that O’Connell pocketed the peoples’ money and took care to let nobody know what he did with it.  To put an end to this reproach Mr. Martin asked that the accounts of the Association should be published.  “Publish the accounts!” shrieked the well-paid gang that marred the influence and traded in the politics of O’Connell:  “Monstrous!” and they silenced the troublesome purist by suppressing his letters and expelling him from the Association.  In the ranks of the Confederates, however, Martin found more congenial society; amongst them he found men as earnest, as sincere, and as single-minded as himself, and by them the full worth of his character was soon appreciated.  He frequently attended their meetings, and he it was who filled the chair during the prolonged debates that ended with the temporary withdrawal of Mitchel from the Confederation.  When the United Irishman was started he became a contributor to its columns, and he continued to write in its pages up to the date of its suppression, and the conviction of its editor and proprietor.

There were many noble and excellent qualities which the friends of John Martin knew him to possess.  Rectitude of principle, abhorrence of injustice and intolerance, deep love of country, the purity and earnestness of a saint, allied with the kindliness and inoffensiveness of childhood; amiability and disinterestedness, together with a perfect abnegation of self, and total freedom from the vanity which affected a few of his compatriots—­these they gave him credit for, but they were totally unprepared for the lion-like courage, the boldness, and the promptitude displayed by him, when the government, by the conviction of Mitchel, flung down the gauntlet to the people of Ireland.  Hastily settling up his worldly accounts in the North, he returned to Dublin to stake his fortune and his life in the cause which he had promised to serve.  The United Irishman was gone, but Martin had undertaken that its place in Irish Journalism should not be vacant; and a few weeks after the office in Trinity-street was sacked he reoccupied the violated and empty rooms, and issued there-from the first number of the Irish Felon.  There was no halting place in Irish Journalism then.  The Nation had already flung peace and conciliation and “balmy forgiveness” to the winds, and advocated the creed of the sword.  The scandalous means used to procure a verdict of guilty against Mitchel tore to tatters the last rag of the constitution in Ireland.  It was idle to dictate observance of the law which