Davis who marked his character, and knew that on such men a free and self-respecting Ireland must be rebuilt induced him to enter the Repeal movement of 1842, and in its councils he swayed the influence of a strong, sincere, able and incorruptible man until the Association fell into the toils of the English Whigs.

Then he quitted it and formally adhered to the Young Irelanders.

To them he was invaluable for his eloquence--less brilliant and polished than that of Meagher, but more effective in its appeal to the heart of the peasantry whom Doheny knew better than any of his colleagues.

On a platform he triumphed, but with the pen he was often ineffective.

His admiration and reverence for Davis misled him into laboriously imitating Davis's style, and the result was what it must always be when one man attempts to express his ideas not in his own way but as he thinks a greater man would express them.