Michael Doheny, when he left his home and his career to engage in the fatal enterprise, was a sober middle-aged barrister, a man of weight and fortune into which he had built himself by the hard toil of twenty years.

His social anchorages were deep-cast--and no mere sentiment provokes such a man to throw aside the hard-won harvest of his life and risk the rebel's or the felon's fate.
In the leadership of the Young Ireland party Michael Doheny was, save Smith O'Brien, the oldest man and, like O'Brien, his counsels while courageous were always restrained.

There was little other likeness between the men.

Doheny sprang from the poorest class of the Irish farmers.

At Brookfield, near Fethard in Tipperary, where he was born in May, 1805, he followed the plough on his father's little holding, earning literally his bread in the sweat of his brow, and educating himself how he could, for his people were too poor to pay for his schooling.