There was, no doubt, a good deal of English sympathy for the famine-stricken people, and there were some remedial measures by Parliament—­totally inadequate, however, but I am afraid that the “Times” and “Punch,” two great organs of public opinion, but too faithfully represented the feelings of many of our rulers.  The “Times” actually gloated over what appeared to be the impending extinction of our race.  Young as I then was, but learning my weekly lessons from the “Nation,” I can remember how my blood boiled one day when I saw in a shop window a cartoon of “Punch”—­a large potato, which was a caricature of O’Connell’s head and face, with the title—­“The Real Potato Blight.”

At the time of the Rising of 1848 I was commencing my apprenticeship with a firm of builders, who were also my father’s employers.  They were successors to the firm through whose agency he had been sent to Ireland as clerk of the works, just previous to my birth there.  It was the custom of the firm, when a boy came to commence his apprenticeship to be a joiner, to keep him in the office for a time as office boy.  I was employed in the office at the time of the Rising, but one of the partners in this firm of builders, who was also an architect, seeing that I had had a good education, and, through attending evening classes at the Catholic Institute and Liverpool Institute, had a considerable knowledge of mathematics and architectural drawing, gave me employment which was more profitable to the firm and congenial to me than that of an ordinary office boy or junior clerk.  Besides helping in the ordinary clerical work in the office, I was put to copying and making tracings of ground plans, elevations and sections of buildings, and working drawings for the use of the artizans, besides assisting in surveying.  I was about three years employed in this way before entering into the joiners’ workshop.  The firm was most anxious that I should remain in the office altogether, and I have often thought since that my father made a mistake in insisting that I should learn the trade of a joiner, which he considered a more certain living than that of an architect or draughtsman, unless one had influential connections.

It was from the upper window of the office where I was at the work I have described that I could see the men belonging to our firm drilling as special constables in the school yard opposite, in anticipation of trouble in connection with an Irish Rising.

The authorities were evidently preparing for a formidable outbreak in Liverpool, for there was a large military camp at Everton—­a suburb of the city—­and three gunboats in the river ready for action, in case any part of the town fell into the hands of the Irish Confederates.  Special constables, as in the case of our own firm, were being sworn in all over the town, and the larger firms were putting pressure upon their employees to be enrolled.  Indeed, some 500 dock labourers were discharged because they would not be sworn in.  My father declined to be a special constable, but suffered no further from this than becoming a suspect—­his services being too valuable to be dispensed with by his employers.