His conviction that the British Government was deliberately using the potato-crop failure for the purpose of reducing the Irish population--which then was equal to more than half the population of England and a menace to that country, as one of its statesmen incautiously admitted--was a conviction not shared by the bulk of his colleagues.

They shrank from it as men will shrink from a conclusion that horrifies the human nature in them.

Mitchel went outside the Confederation to preach his policy, and he might have preached it without result had not the French Revolution turned men's minds to the contemplation of arms and armed opinion.

The arrest, indictment and conviction of Mitchel, Doheny has described graphically.

The reasons that prevailed against attempting Mitchel's rescue, Doheny cogently states.