They contented themselves, therefore, with appealing to their countrymen, through the columns of the _Nation_, then interdicted and banned through every parish in the island.

But, in those appeals, there was no word of allusion to the storm of calumny and denunciation then raging against them.

They sought to fix public attention on subjects of vast national importance, and to awake the energies of the people to some becoming effort where the stake was their lives.

Meantime, week after week, the Government was praised, the Board of Works were praised, and the people--"_the faithful and moral people, who died, peacefully, of hunger_"-- were praised, in the Repeal Association.
[Illustration: Robert Holmes (1848)] Late in the autumn of 1846, some men, few in number and humble in condition, undertook the desperate task of remonstrating with the Repeal Association.

Among them, Mr.Keeley and Mr.Holywood, Mr.Crean and Mr.
Halpin, were prominent.