Above : Illustration Picture Of The Famine

THE end of the famine found the masses of the Irish people reduced in number and depressed in spirit. Their great leader was dead. A sea of suffering divided them from the days of Emancipation and of the Maw Meetings.

Above : Picture Of Thomas Davis, One Of Young Irelanders

As O’Connell advanced in age, he tended to become more autocratic and less able to endure amongst his followers independence of views or divergence of method. Just at this time, as it happened, there was gathering round him a circle of young men who, while they admired and respected him, were too able themselves to be content to be mere echoes of his opinion or servants of his will. Amongst these ” Young Irelanders,” as they came later to be called, were several brilliant writers of prose and of verse, such as Thomas Davis, Charles Gavan Duffy and John O’Hagan.

Above : Picture Of Charles Gavan Duffy, One Of Young Irelanders

Meanwhile, O’Connell made no decided political move. The Young Ireland party grew in strength, although as yet its hold on the masses of the rural population was not great, and by their clergy it was generally opposed. New men, whose respect for the ” Liberator” was less, while at the same time their hostility to England was greater, began to speak again of the ” physical force method,” now for almost half-a-century discredited in Ireland. Of these, John Mitchel, an Ulsterman and a Protestant, and Thomas Meagher were amongst the most notable. William Smith O’Brien, also a Protestant and a member of the family of Lord Inchiquin, joined later.