ve amounted to a monomania with him; yet he was not himself
of Celtic lineage. His intolerance of opinion and rashness of action
would have been utterly unendurable, were it not for the directness of
his aims, the sincerity of his motives, the disinterestedness of his
spirit, and the suavity of his disposition. The only other member of the
Young Ireland party deserving notice as a chief was Charles Gavin Duffy,
the editor and proprietor of the _Nation_ newspaper. Mr. Duffy was a
Roman Catholic, and professed unbounded respect for the priests. He was
generally suspected of coquetting with them to secure their patronage
of the Young Ireland cause, and that at heart he despised the popular
subserviency to them. There was much in his speeches and literary
articles to confirm this view, but there was also a great deal to lead
to the belief that he was at heart "a priest's man." Certainly their
reverences did not think, or, at all events, appear to think him, a
very particular friend to their order, for they frequently opposed
the circulation of his paper, and denounced himself. He bravely,-'-but
respectfully battled with them, and lost the game-the circulation of his
paper fell as the Roman Catholic tone of it was lowered. Whether this
circumstance had any influence, as was alleged, it is beyond doubt that,
while he continued to maintain his young Ireland theories, he became
more chary of combat with the clergy, and no paper put forth a more wild
and daring ultra-montanism than the Dublin _Nation_, at the very time
that its columns were filled with passionate poetry dedicated to the
rights of country and of kind. Articles asserting that all Irishmen
should be held equal before God and the law, and that Orange ascendancy
and all party ascendancy was destructive to Ireland, were strangely in
contiguity with others asserting the most despotic claims for the
church of Rome that ever were put forth in her name. On the whole, the
inference might be fairly drawn from the writings and speeches of Mr.
Duffy that he hated England with an indiscriminating and malignant
rancour; that her peculiar virtues were as hateful to him as her vices,
her glorious deeds as her errors; and that he hated her for the power
with which she supported a certain degree of civil and religious
liberty, as much as from any grievances of which his country had to
complain, or any distaste he entertained to her race, her habits, or the
idiosyncracies of thought b