retiring they determined on a gross and scandalous abuse of power for
the purpose of rewarding an unscrupulous partisan, even though it
involved an affront to one of their oldest and ablest friends, the then
Irish Chancellor. That man was Lord Plunket, who had served the Whigs so
faithfully, honourably and fearlessly. He was commanded to retire in
order to make room for Sir John Campbell, who was thereby to be
qualified for the English peerage.

The stipendiaried journals of the Castle exhausted their adulation, and
had received their last reward for upholding the appointment. The Tory
press, hungry for the spoil which it maddened the others to lose, paid
back the compliments by intense vituperation. The slang of party warfare
was bandied in the usual fashion, without thought or a care beyond the
interest of party. The _Register_, to everybody's astonishment, took up
the one cause not represented, namely, that of the country. Davis
denounced the appointment as an insult to that country, and with a bold
hand vindicated the superiority of its Bar, without any reference to
party, above the adventurers whom each faction placed over it in turn.

Soon after he and his friend ceased to write for that paper; but not
until satisfied by the experiment that a journal devoted to Ireland,
guided by truth, and sustained with earnest ability, would supersede the
whole jaundiced literature of the metropolis, and create a new era in
the progress of the country's civilisation and ambition. They
immediately busied themselves to establish such an organ. Charles Gavan
Duffy, late editor of the _Belfast Vindicator_, entered into the spirit
of the enterprise, and after an evening's ramble in the Park, during
which the terms and the principles of the paper and the spirit in which
it should be conducted were canvassed, the publication of the _Nation_
was determined on. Mr. Duffy was convicted for having written a libel in