written incitement of insurrection felony
was hurried through the House of Commons, and almost immediately after
Mitchell was arrested.

Even then he seems to have believed that the country would rise to
liberate him. The country, however, showed no disposition to do anything
of the sort. He was tried in Dublin, found guilty, sentenced to fourteen
years' transportation, and a few days afterwards put on board a vessel
in the harbour and conveyed to Spike Island, whence he was sent to
Bermuda, and the following April in a convict vessel to the Cape, and
finally to Tasmania.

The other "Young Irelanders," stung apparently by their own previous
inaction, thereupon rushed frantically into rebellion. The
leaders--Smith O'Brien, Meagher, Dillon, and others--went about the
country holding reviews of "Confederates," as they now called
themselves, a proceeding which caused the Government to suspend the
Habeas Corpus Act, and to issue a warrant for their arrest. A few more
gatherings took place in different parts of the country, a few more
ineffectual attempts were made to induce the people to rise, one very
small collision with the police occurred, and then the whole thing was
over. All the leaders in the course of a few days were arrested and
Smith O'Brien and Meagher were sentenced to death, a sentence which was
speedily changed into transportation. Gavan Duffy was arrested and
several times tried, but the jury always disagreed, and in the end his
prosecution was abandoned. The "Young Ireland" movement, however, was
dead, and never again revived.

LVII.

THE FAMINE.

All the time the earlier of the foregoing scenes were being enacted, the
famine had been drawing its python grasp tighter and tighter around the
unhappy island. The first symptoms of the dread potato disease showed
themselves in the autumn of 1845, and even that year there was much
suffering, though a trifle to what was to follow. Many remedies were
tried, both to stop the blight and save the crops, but all alike proved
unavailing. The next year the potatoes seemed to promise unusually well,
and the people, with characteristic hopefulness, believed that their
trouble was over. The summer, however, was very warm and wet, and with
August there came on a peculiarly dense white fog, which was believed by
all who were in Ireland at the time to have carried the blight with it
in its folds. Whether this was the case or not, there is no doubt that
in a single fa