ALEXANDER MARTIN MARTIN SULLIVAN. For the last few years Mr. Sullivan's career has been chiefly connected with England. He was not long in the house when he established his right to occupy there the same prominent position to which his talents had previously raised him in the assemblies of his own country; and, though he belongs to a party not very acceptable to the British parliament, he has succeeded in placing himself in the ranks of those speakers whose voices control divisions. Mr. Sullivan has published several works. Of these, one of the most popular was an Irish history called The Story of Ireland, which had a very large sale. His best known work, however, is New Ireland. This book has had a marvellous success; it has been received with equal favour by the English, the Scotch, and the Irish press, and it has passed in a short period through a large number of editions.] [Alexander Martin Sullivan was born in | mind to seek in the profession of the lawyer Bantry in 1830-three years later than his another sphere of action. In 1876 he was brother the poet. Destined for other pursuits, admitted to the Irish bar, and in 1877 he he at an early age discovered that his true voca- joined the bar of England, receiving the untion was journalism, and in 1853, having made usual honour of a "special call" to the Inner the acquaintance of Gavan Duffy, he began to Temple. He had in 1876, as has been mencontribute to the Nation. Two years after, tioned in the preceding notice, resigned his Duffy, as has been told in his memoir, threw connection with the Nation. up in despair Irish journalism and Irish politics, and Mr. Sullivan succeeded to the then not promising heritage of editing the Nation. He held that position for upwards of twenty years, and throughout that lengthened period his pen was constantly active in defence of the Nationalist side in politics. His post, as well as his natural disposition and talents, threw him into political warfare, and there has been no movement of importance in Irish politics for the last quarter of a century in which he has not taken a prominent part. Possessed of great oratorical powers, gifted with an eloquence ready, spontaneous, and brilliant, his aid was eagerly sought, and his friendship or hostility was an important factor in the political struggles of his time. In 1857 he took a short vacation, paying a visit to the United States, and he has left a record of his impressions in a volume entitled A Visit to the Valley of Wyoming. In 1868 he came, like most National Irish journalists, into collision with the authorities, and having been indicted on two charges in connection with the processions in memory of the three Fenians executed at Manchester, he was convicted on one of the charges, and sent to prison. During his incarceration he learned that the corporation of Dublin had determined to give the most significant mark of its respect by nominating him to the position of lord-mayor; but he refused the flattering proposal. He in like manner would not accept a subscription which had been collected as a testimonial to him on his release, and insisted on devoting the £300 already gathered to the fund for erecting the statue to Henry Grattan, which now stands in College Green, Dublin. In 1874 Mr. Sullivan entered on a new career. He was started for Louth in opposition to an important member of the Liberal administration - Mr. Chichester Fortescue (now Lord Carlingford)—and was returned. He had some time previously made up his "FORTY-EIGHT." (FROM "NEW IRELAND.") John Mitchel- the first man who, since Robert Emmet perished on the scaffold in 1803, preached an Irish insurrection and the total severance of Ireland from the British Crown-was the son of the Rev. John Mitchel, Unitarian minister of Dungiven, county Derry. He was born in 1815, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Like many another Trinity student he early became a contributor to the Nation newspaper; and in 1845, on the death of Thomas Davis, accepted an editorial position on that journal, in conjunction with Charles Gavan Duffy and Thomas Darcy M'Gee. The stern Unitarian Ulsterman soon developed a decided bent in favour of what half a century before would 1 By permission of the author. be called "French principles." He was republican and revolutionary. At all events, during the scenes of the famine period he quite drew away from the policy advocated by his colleagues, and eventually called upon the Irish Confederation to declare for a war of independence. He it was who revived the "Separatist" or revolutionary party in Irish politics. From 1803 up to 1845 no such party had any recognized or visible existence. There was, beyond question, disaffection in the country, a constantly maintained protest against, or passive resistance to, the existing state of things; but no one dreamed of a political aim beyond Repeal of the Union as a constitutional object to be attained by constitutional means. The era of revolt and rebellion seemed gone for ever. John Mitchel, however, thrust utterly aside the doctrines of loyalty and legality. He declared that constitutionalism was demoralizing the country. By "blood and iron" alone could Ireland be saved. These violent doctrines were abhorrent to Smith O'Brien, and indeed to nearly every one of the Confederation leaders. O'Brien declared that either he or Mitchel must quit the organization. The question was publicly debated for two days at full meetings, and on the 5th of February, 1848, the "war" party were utterly outvoted, and retired from the Confederation. Seven days afterwards John Mitchel, as if rendered desperate by this reprehension of his doctrines, started a weekly newspaper called the United Irishman, to openly preach his policy of insurrection. He was regarded as a madman. Young Irelanders and Old Irelanders alike laughed in derision or shouted in anger at this proceeding. But events were now near, which, all unforeseen as they were by Mitchel and by his opponents, were destined to put the desperate game completely into his hands. The third number of the new journal had barely appeared when news of the French revolution burst on an astonished world. It set Ireland in a blaze. Each day added to the excitement. Every post brought tidings of some popular rising, invariably crowned with victory. Every bulletin, whether from Paris, Berlin, or Vienna, told the same story, preached, as it were, the same lesson: barricades in the streets, overthrow of the government, triumph of the people. It may be doubted if the United Irishman would have lived through a third month but for this astounding turn of affairs. Now its every utterance was rapturously hailed by a wildly excited multitude. What need to trace what may be easily understood-Ireland was irresistibly swept into the vortex of revolution. The popular leaders, who a month previously had publicly defeated Mitchel's pleadings for war, now caught the prevalent passion. Struck by the events they beheld, and the examples set on every side, they verily believed that Ireland had but to "go and do likewise," and the boon of national liberty would be conceded by England, probably without a blow. Confederate "clubs" now sprang up all over the country, and arming and drilling were openly carried on. Mitchel's journal week by week laboured with fierce energy to hurry the conflict. The editor addressed letters through its pages to Lord Clarendon, the Irish Viceroy, styling him "Her Majesty's Executioner General and General Butcher of Ireland." He published instructions as to street warfare; noted the "Berlin system," and the "Milanese system," and the "Viennese system;" highly praised molten lead, crockeryware, broken bottles, and even cold vitriol, as good things for citizens, male or female, to fling from windows and housetops on hostile troops operating below. Of course Mitchel knew that this could not possibly be tolerated. His calculation was that the government must indeed seize him, but that before he could be struck down and his paper be suppressed he would have rendered revolution inevitable. The Confederation leaders had indeed embraced the idea of an armed struggle, yet the divergence of principles between them and the Mitchel party was wide almost as ever. They seemed marching together on the one road, yet it was hardly so. For a long time O'Brien and his friends held to a hope that eventually concession and arrangement between the government and Ireland would avert collision. Mitchel, on the other hand, feared nothing more than compromise of any kind. They would fain proceed soberly upon the model of Washington and the colonies; he was for following the example of Louis Blanc and the boulevards of Paris. The ideal struggle of their plans, if struggle there must be, was a well-prepared and carefully-ordered appeal to arms,1 and so they would wait till autumn, when the harvest would be gathered in. A private letter written from his cell in Newgate Prison by Gavan Duffy to O'Brien in the week preceding the outbreak, and found in O'Brien's portmanteau after his arrest, brings out very curiously these views: "I am glad to learn you are about to commence a series of meetings in Munster. There is no half-way house for England, they would prefer it a thousand "Rose-water revolutionists," Mitchel scorn- | greatly as they disliked the domination of fully called them. "Fools, idiots," exclaimed one of his lieutenants; "they will wait till muskets are showered down to them from heaven, and angels sent to pull the triggers." Behind all this argument for preparation and delay there undoubtedly existed what may be called the "conservative" ideas and principles, which some of the leading Confederates entertained. O'Brien stormed against "the Reds," as he called the more desperate and impatient men. They, on the other hand, denounced him as an "aristocrat" at heart, and a man whose weakness would be the ruin of the whole enterprise. Speaking with myself years afterwards, he referred bitterly to the reproaches cast upon him, for his alleged "punctiliousness" and excessive alarm as to anti-social excesses. "I was ready to give my life in a fair fight for a nation's rights," said he; "but I was not willing to head a jacquerie." But if the whilom Young Irelanders were thus split into two sections, led respectively by O'Brien and Mitchel, there was a third party to be taken into account, the O'Connellite Repealers. These were as hostile to the revolutionists-both "rose-water" and "vitriol"-as were the life-long partisans of imperial rule. On the occasion of a public banquet given to O'Brien, Meagher, and Mitchel, in the city of Limerick, in March, 1848, an O'Connellite mob surrounded the hall and dispersed the company in a scene of riot and bloodshed. The immediate cause of this astonishing proceeding was an attack on the memory of O'Connell in Mitchel's paper, the dead tribune having been contumeliously referred to for his "degrading and demoralizing moral force doctrines." One important class in Ireland-a class long accustomed to move with or head the people throughout all this time set themselves invincibly against the contemplated insurrection: the Catholic clergy. They had from the first, as a body, regarded the Young Irelanders with suspicion. They fancied they saw in this movement too much that was akin to the work of the Continental revolutionists, and you; you will be the head of the movement, loyally obeyed; and the revolution will be conducted with order and clemency, or the mere anarchists will prevail with the people, and our revolution will be a bloody chaos. You have at present Lafayette's place as painted by Lord Clarendon, though fully aware that the war-policy Young Irelanders were comparatively weak in numbers, evidently judged that an outbreak once begun might have an alarming development. He determined to strike quickly and strike hard. On the 21st of March O'Brien, Meagher, and Mitchel were arrested, the first two charged with seditious speeches, Mitchel with seditious writings. The prosecutions against O'Brien and Meagher on this indictment failed through disagreement of the juries. As to Mitchel, before his trial by the ordinary course of procedure for sedition could be held, the government passed through parliament a new law called the "Treason Felony Act," which gave greater facilities for dealing with such offences. On the 22d of May he was arraigned under the new act in Green Street Court-house, Dublin, and on the 26th was found guilty. The Mitchelite party had determined and avowed that his conviction-any attempt to remove him from Dublin as a convict-should be the signal for a rising, and now the event had befallen. There can be no question that had they carried out their resolution a desperate and bloody conflict would have ensued. Mitchel possessed in a remarkable degree the power of inspiring personal attachment and devotion; and there were thousands of men in Dublin who would have given their lives to rescue him. The government were aware of this, and occupied themselves in preparations for an outbreak in the metropolis. The Confederation leaders, however, who considered that any resort to arms before the autumn would be disastrous, strained every energy in dissuading the Mitchelites from the contemplated course of action. The whole of the day previous to the conviction was spent Lamartine, and I believe have fallen into Lafayette's in private negotiations, interviews, arguments, error of not using it to all its effect and in all its resources. I am well aware that you do not desire to lead or influence others; but I believe with Lamartine that that feeling, which is a high civic virtue, is a vice in revolutions." and appeals. This labour was prolonged far into the night, and it was only an hour or two before morning dawned on the 27th of May, 1848, that Dublin was saved from the horrors of a sanguinary struggle. The friends of Mitchel never concealed their displeasure at the countermand thus effected by the O'Brien party, and prophesied that the opportunity for a successful commencement of the national struggle had been blindly and culpably sacrificed. The consent of the Dublin clubs to abandon the rescue or rising on this occasion was obtained, however, only on the solemn undertaking of the Confederation chiefs that in the second week of August the standard of insurrection would absolutely be unfurled. A rumour that some such dissuasion was being attempted that Smith O'Brien and his friends were opposed to the intended conflict -spread through Dublin late on the evening of the 26th of May, and painful uncertainty and apprehension agitated the city next morning. The government, though well informed, through spies of everything that was passing, took measures in preparation for all possible eventualities. Mitchel was sentenced to fourteen years' transportation beyond the seas. The court was densely crowded with his personal and political friends and former fellowstudents of Trinity College. He heard the sentence with composure, and then a silence as if of the tomb fell on the throng as it was seen he was about to speak. He addressed the court in defiant tones. "My lords," said he, “I knew I was setting my life on that cast. The course which I have opened is only commenced. The Roman who saw his hand burning to ashes before the tyrant promised that three hundred should follow out his enterprise. Can I not promise for one-for two-for three--aye, for hundreds?" As he uttered these closing words he pointed first to John Martin, then to Devin Reilly, next to Thomas Francis Meagher, and so on to the throng of associates whom he saw crowding the galleries. A thundering cry rang through the building, "Promise for me, Mitchel! Promise for me!" and a rush was made to embrace him ere they should see him no more. The officers in wild dismay thought it meant a rescue. Arms were drawn; bugles in the street outside sounded the alarm; troops hurried up. A number of police flung themselves on Mitchel, tore him from the embrace of his excited friends, and hurried him through the wicket that leads from the dock to the cells beneath. It may be pronounced that in that moment the Irish insurrectionary movement of 1848 was put down. At an early hour that morning the war-sloop Shearwater was drawn close to the north wall jetty at Dublin quay. There she lay, with fires lighted and steam up, waiting the freight that was being prepared for her in Green Street Court-house. Scarcely had Mitchel been removed from the dock than he was heavily manacled, strong chains passing from his wrists to his ankles. Thus fettered he was hurried into a police-van waiting outside the gateway, surrounded by dragoons with sabres drawn. At a signal the cavalcade dashed off, and skilfully making a detour of the city so as to avoid the streets wherein hostile crowds might have been assembled or barricades erected, they reached the Shearwater at the wharf. Mitchel was carried on board, and had scarcely touched the deck when the paddles were put in motion, the steamer swiftly sped to sea, and in a few hours the hills of Ireland had faded from view. The news of his conviction and sentence, the astounding intelligence that he was really gone, burst like a thunderclap on the clubs throughout the provinces. A cry of rage went up, and the Confederation chiefs were fiercely denounced for what was called their fatal cowardice. Confidence in their determination vanished. Unfortunately, from this date forward there was for them no retreating. They now flung themselves into the provinces, traversing the counties from east to west, addressing meetings, inspecting club organizations, inquiring as to armament, and exhorting the people to be ready for the fray. Of course the government was not either inattentive or inactive. Troops were poured into the country; barracks were improvised, garrisons strengthened, gunboats moved into the rivers, flying camps established; every military disposition was made for encountering the insurrection. In all their calculations the Confederate leaders had reckoned upon two months for preparation, which would bring them to the middle of August. By no legal process of arrest or prosecution known to them could their conviction be effected in a shorter space of time. Never once did they take into contemplation the possibility (and to men dealing with so terrible a problem it ought to have been an obvious contingency) that the government would dispense with the slow and tedious forms of ordinary procedure, and grasp them quickly with avenging hand. While O'Brien and Dillon and Meagher, O'Gorman and M'Gee, were scattered through the country, arranging for the rising, lo! the news reached Dublin one day in the last week of July that the previous evening the government had passed through parliament a bill for suspending the Habeas Corpus act. That night proclamations were issued for the arrest of the Confederate leaders, and considerable rewards were offered for their apprehension. This news found O'Brien at Ballinkeele, in Wexford county. He moved rapidly from thence through Kilkenny into Tipperary, for the purpose of gathering, in the latter county, a considerable force with which to march upon Kilkenny city-this having been selected as the spot whence a provisional government was to issue its manifesto, calling Ireland to arms. Before any such purpose could be effected, he found himself surrounded by flying detachments of military and police. Between some of these and a body of the peasantry, who had assembled to escort him at the village of Ballingary, a conflict ensued, the result of which showed him the utter hopelessness of the attempted rising, and in fact suppressed it there and then. As the people were gathering in thousands--and they would have assembled in numbers more than sufficient to have defeated any force that could then have been brought against him-the Catholic clergy appeared upon the scene. They rushed amidst the multitude, imploring them to desist from such an enterprise, pointing out the unpreparedness of the country, and demonstrating the too palpable fact that the government were in a position to quench in blood any insurrectionary movement. "Where are your arms?" they said;-there were no arms. "Where is your commissariat?"-the multitude were absolutely without food. "Where are your artillery, your cavalry? Where are your leaders, your generals, your officers? What is your plan of campaign? Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Dillon are noble-minded men; but they are not men of military qualification. Are you not rushing to certain destruction?" These exhortations, poured forth with a vehemence almost indescribable, had a profound effect. The gathering thousands melted slowly away, and O'Brien, dismayed, astounded, and sick at heart, found himself at the head, not of 50,000 stalwart Tipperary men, armed and equipped for a national struggle, but a few hundred half-clad and wholly unarmed peasantry. Scarcely had they set forth when they encountered one of the police detachments. A skirmish took place. The police retreated into a substantially built farmhouse close by, which, situated as it was, they could have held against ten times their own force of military men without artillery. The attempt of the peasantry to storm it was disastrous, as O'Brien forbade imperatively the execution of the only resort which could have compelled its evacuation. Three of his subordinates had brought up loads of hay and straw to fire the building. It was the house of a widow, whose five children were at the moment within. She rushed to the rebel chief, flung herself on her knees, and asked him if he was going to stain his name and cause by an act so barbarous as the destruction of her little ones. O'Brien immediately ordered the combustibles to be thrown aside, although a deadly fusilade from the police force within was at the moment decimating his followers. These, disgusted with a tenderness of feeling which they considered out of place on such an occasion, abandoned the siege of the building, and dispersed homewards. Ere the evening fell, O'Brien, accompanied by two or three faithful adherents, was a fugitive in the defiles of the Kilnamanagh mountains. No better success awaited his subordinates elsewhere. In May they had prevented a rising; now they found the country would not rise at their call. Soon after Mitchel's transportation, Duffy was arrested in Dublin, and on the 28th of July armed police broke into the Nation office, seized the number of the paper being then printed, smashed up the types, and carried off to the Castle all the documents they could find. Throughout the country arrests and seizures of arms were made on all hands. Every day the Hue and Cry contained new proclamations and new lists of fugitives personally described. There was no longer any question of resistance. Never was collapse more complete. The fatal war-fever that came in a day vanished almost as rapidly. Suddenly every one appeared astounded at the madness of what had been contemplated; but somehow very few seemed to have perceived it a month before. Throughout the remaining months of the year Ireland was given over to the gloomy scenes of special commissions, state trials, and death-sentences. Of the leaders or prominent actors in this abortive insurrection, O'Brien, Meagher, MacManus, Martin, and O'Doherty were convicted; Dillon, O'Gorman, and Doheny succeeded in accomplishing their escape to America. O'Brien, Meagher, and MacManus, with one of their devoted companions in danger, |