rary ambition which raised adequate
monuments to these stormy times denied to her swords the distinction
they vindicated for themselves in the hour of combat. The most
brilliant, unscrupulous and daring historian of France degraded the
niggard praise he accorded them by making it the medium of a false and
contemptible sneer. "The Irish soldier," says Voltaire, "fights bravely
everywhere but in his own country."

Without pausing here to vindicate that country from such ungrateful
slander, it is enough to say that you were not placed in the same
unhappy position as the illustrious exiles from the last Irish
army--soldiers of fortune in the service of a foreign prince. You were a
citizen of this free Republic, and a volunteer in its ranks; it was
_your_ country, and you and your compatriots who followed the same
standard did no dishonour to those who were bravest among the brave on
the best debated fields in Europe.

In the wreck of every hope, all who yet cherish the ambition of
realising for Ireland an independent destiny, point to your career as an
encouraging augury, if not a complete justification for not despairing
of their country. It is because I am among those that I have claimed the
honour of inscribing your name on the first page of this, my latest
labour in her cause.

I remain, dear Sir,

Very respectfully and sincerely yours,

MICHAEL DOHENY.

_New York, Sept. 20, 1849._

PREFACE

The Irish Confederation still awaits its historian. Three of its leaders
have left narratives of its brief and momentous career, but, of the
three, Doheny alone participated in the Insurrection that dug the
political grave of Young Ireland. In "The Felon's Track," written hot on
his escape from the stricken land, he tells the story vividly and
passionately. It has morals deducible for all manner of Irishmen, and
one for those English statesmen who comfort themselves with the illusion
that Irish Nationalism, like Jacobitism, is a platonic sentiment. The
man who, roused from his bed at midnight by tapping fingers on his
window and a voice whispering that insurrection was afoot, rose and rode
away in the darkness to join himself to its desperate fortunes was no
young man ardent for adventure. 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