indulge himself in thrashing them? In fact, I wanted to set down the principle as nakedly as possible—that it is not wrong to hold a slave; from this principle it follows that it is not wrong to make a slave work; and there is no way of making him work (in the last resort) but dread of the lash.

This is an ungracious task I find myself forced to undertake. On my side, in this controversy, everything sounds harsh and looks repulsive. Your reverence has chosen, if not the better, at least, the balmier part. Yours is the privilege, dear to the enlightened modern heart, of uttering kind-looking sentences. It comes easy to you (for all the prevailing cants are with you) to assume for yourself and your followers, the credit of benevolence, and philanthropy, and enlightenment, and "progress," and all the rest of it; while I, to escape the charge of barbarous cruelty and bloodthirsty atrocity, am forced to shield myself under the authority of mere ancients, persons behind the century, persons who had not the advantage of hearing your lectures at the tabernacle, persons like the legislators of the Jews, and the wise men of the Greeks and the framers of the Declaration of Independence. It would be easy for me also, and it would be true, to assert that I am not cruel or tyrannical by nature—that I hate all oppression-that, if I had slaves, I would influence and govern uniformly by kindness instead of coercion; in short, that I would use them as humanely as Jefferson himself, whose enthusiastic reception by his attached negroes on his return to Monticello, forms so agreeable a picture in Tucker's life of that illustrious man. It would be easy; but I do not condescend to treat the question in this personal and restricted manner. My position was, and is, the naked assertion, "that slaveholding is not a crime;" and that nobody ever thought it a crime until some time towards the close of the last century.

Many of his friends were surprised and pained by this explicit declaration in favour of slavery; and many wrote to remonstrate with him. I cannot find, from his correspondence, that he took much pains to justify his view. But some letters he did answer. The following is taken from a letter written from New York, on April 24, 1854, to Miss

1856.]

CHARGES OF INCONSISTENCY.

49*

Thompson, the friend to whom he wrote the letter from Van Diemen's Land already quoted :

We were very glad, at all events, to see your letter. Write again, even, if you think it right to criticise me severely. I am glad you find anything to read with pleasure in my "Jail Journal," but it seems incomprehensible to me when you say you "find it hard to reconcile my sentiments." Does it not occur to you to inquire whether in other ages, and even so late as the age of our fathers, those two sets of sentiments, now called irreconcilable, were not in fact constantly reconciled, and whether people so much as suspected that there was any discrepancy to reconcile? My dear lady, beware of the nineteenth century; and when any of your taunting friends asks you again, "What do you think of Ireland's emancipator now? Would you like an Irish republic with an accompaniment of slave plantations ?"-answer quite simply, "Yes." At least, I would so answer; and I never said or wrote anything in the least inconsistent with such a declaration. But enough of the blacks.

There can be no doubt but that, viewed from the standpoint of self-interest, Mitchel's declarations on the slavery question were highly imprudent. But whatever may have been his virtues, I fear it must be admitted that worldly prudence was not amongst them. Circumstances led him to conclude that it was "in some sort needful" for him to come out and define his position on the slavery question; and straightway he "did it effectually and finally," without for one moment stopping to think what might be the effect upon his worldly prospects. Possibly some people may think that there was no duty cast upon him to make the declaration at all, and that he would have done better and more wisely to have kept his views upon the slavery question to himself. It is enough here to say that, if he had so acted, he would not have been the John Mitchel he was.

The success of the Citizen at its start was probably

VOL. II.

E

without precedent in the history of American journalism. Within a few weeks of its commencement, the paper reached a circulation of fifty thousand. The paper would undoubtedly have proved a very valuable property, and have yielded its owner a large income, had he but been willing to be governed by maxims of prudence. But the policy of saying out just what one believes to be true, irrespective of consequences, is not the policy most likely to conduce to the financial success of a newspaper.

The

The outlook for the Citizen soon became clouded. declarations on the slavery question above referred to probably hurt the paper a good deal; but more serious harm was done to it by another controversy in which Mitchel some months afterwards became involved. In this second

controversy his antagonist was no less a person than Dr. Hughes, the then Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York. There was a good deal of controversy then going on regarding the temporal power of the Pope, who had recently been restored to his dominions by French aid. Mitchel, in the Citizen, opposed the temporal power on the ground that the Romans had as good a right as any other people to change their form of government, if they wished to do it. Writing an account of this controversy years afterwards, he says he has since had reason to believe that he then somewhat misunderstood the real feeling of the Romans; and he adds:

However, the doctrine of the Citizen, that the Romans had a right to change the government of Rome, scandalized a great many of the Catholic clergy of the United States; and Archbishop Hughes came out and scathed us in the newspapers. I am not patient of ecclesiastical censure; and replied, perhaps too bitterly, and more than once. It was an unfortunate controversy for me, and for the purposes and objects of the Citizen, inasmuch as most of the readers of that paper, those indeed, to whom it was mainly

1856.]

BARON STOECKL.

5L

addressed, were just the flocks of this very prelate, and of the rest of the Catholic clergy. Independently, however, of the effect of the dispute upon the fortunes of the Citizen, I do admit, now, after fifteen years, that I would, if I could, erase from the page, and from all men's memory, about three-fourths of what I then wrote and published to the address of Archbishop Hughes. This I say, not by way of atonement to his memory-for he deserved harsh usage, and could stand it and repay it—but by way of justice to myself only.

The Citizen never quite recovered the effect of this controversy with the archbishop. Yet it continued to have a large circulation so long as Mitchel remained the editor.

Meantime there were matters going on in the old world which interested Mitchel more keenly than either the temporal power or the slavery question. The great struggle between the two great western powers and Russia had begun. Mitchel watched eagerly for some turn in the progress of affairs which might hold out hope for Ireland. At length he became impatient, and he bethought him of going to Washington, and calling on the Russian ambassador there. His account of the interview is amusing:—

Went to Washington, travelling through the great cities of Philadelphia and Baltimore, to see the Russian minister at this capital, the Baron Stoeckl. Found him residing in a house at a place called Georgetown Heights, and when he received my card he came instantly to greet me with much warmth. He was a subscriber, he said, to the Citizen, and a "constant reader;" yet the baron surmised, not without some show of reason, that the part which I took in the pending war, endeavouring to turn away the sympathies of America from the allies, and engage them on the side of Russia, was instigated by my abhorrence of England only, not by any particular love of Russia. I admitted the impeachment.

He met Baron Stoeckl twice: once at Washington, and once, at the baron's own request, at New York. But

nothing came of it. Neither the Russian minister nor Mr. Mitchel himself could see very well how Russia was to get at Ireland while the English and French were sweeping the sea. And Mitchel admitted, in answer to the baron's questions, that money would be of little use without a covering force.

Ireland was always first in Mitchel's thoughts; and, therefore, he generally took a keenér interest in European politics than in American politics. But occasionally things occurred in home politics which roused him thoroughly. He was so roused during this year 1854 by the movement known as "Know-Nothingism." In the account which he gives of the rise of this movement, he begins by asserting that it was in truth the British press which suggested the idea of the crusade. The cry was the echo of a like cry previously raised in England. It would never do to give up American liberties to the Pope of Rome, the Jesuits, and the Dominicans of the Inquisition. This was the cry used to rouse the people. As regards the true motives of the leaders, Mitchel writes thus :

:

To come down from those high considerations—which, in truth, nobody ever thought of for one moment-the case was this: One party, the Democrats, held power and enjoyed the emoluments of office too long; the Whigs, Federals, Massachusetts Protectionists felt that they should have their turn, so they raised a cry.

They thought it would answer at least for a campaign; and it really did answer, to an extent I had never expected, amongst the uneducated people of this most noble country, a class of the people indeed which I find to be in very enormous proportion to the rest. No old story out of Fox's "Book of Martyrs" was too monstrous to be dwelt upon by the orators of this grand Protestant movement. The old women of all the three sexes, masculine, feminine, and neuter, were to be frightened and irritated, and this was easy enough.

An apostate Italian priest, named Gavazzi, had come but lately