The _Register_, to everybody's astonishment, took up the one cause not represented, namely, that of the country.

Davis denounced the appointment as an insult to that country, and with a bold hand vindicated the superiority of its Bar, without any reference to party, above the adventurers whom each faction placed over it in turn.
Soon after he and his friend ceased to write for that paper; but not until satisfied by the experiment that a journal devoted to Ireland, guided by truth, and sustained with earnest ability, would supersede the whole jaundiced literature of the metropolis, and create a new era in the progress of the country's civilisation and ambition.

They immediately busied themselves to establish such an organ.

Charles Gavan Duffy, late editor of the _Belfast Vindicator_, entered into the spirit of the enterprise, and after an evening's ramble in the Park, during which the terms and the principles of the paper and the spirit in which it should be conducted were canvassed, the publication of the _Nation_ was determined on.

Mr.Duffy was convicted for having written a libel in the _Vindicator_, and his friends earnestly advised him to compromise the matter with a view of bringing more powerful energies to the same task in a wider field.
The first number of the new journal appeared on the 12th of October, 1842.