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.

Different Views of the Two Sections of the Young Irelanders.— On the Young Irelanders, on the other hand, the sight of the tortures and death of so many of their fellow-countrymen had produced a feeling of savage anger ; for to the action and the inaction of the British Government they ascribed much or all of the horrors that had taken place. In th« Confederation, though those who inclined to moderate counsels were much more numerous, yet the extremists, of whom Mitchel was the most prominent, had the advantage of possessing a definite programme. They desired total separation from England, and the setting up of an Irish Republic on the lines indicated by the men of ‘98.

For the present, resistance should be offered by the refusal to pay excessive rents, by opposing the export of food and so forth ; but, at the same time, arnu should be collected, and the young men trained in the use of them, so that the country should be ready for an insurrection whenever an opportunity seemed to present itself.
To these views and to this programme the majority of the members of the Confederation refused to assent.

Many, while unwilling to subscribe to the principle that force may never be resorted to in order to attain a political end, yet considered that to employ it in the Ireland of 1848 was neither justifiable nor expedient.Though discouraged, they continued to believe that, by means of obstruction tactics in Parliament, Repeal or some other form m legislative independence could be attained, and this was the general policy, of The Nation newspaper. From it Mitchel seceded, and founded » journal of much more extreme views, The United Irishman. There were thus three distinct parties in Ireland to whom the ti’ of Nationalist might be applied : the old Repealers, the Confederation) and the party of Mitchel and The United Irishman. None of these were recognized.