verses and "The Felon's Track" Doheny the writer will survive. As a man
who gave up all to help his country and served her like a gallant son,
his memory must be honoured while Ireland has virtue.

The Irish Confederation, on whose council Doheny sat, was noble in
conception, true in policy and able and honest in its membership. Never
in the leadership of the modern Nationalist movement has there been the
peer in genius and character of the men who founded and inspired that
brilliant and short-lived organisation. In its career it went nearer to
bridging the differences of class and creed in Ireland than any previous
organisation since the Volunteers at Dungannon proclaimed themselves
Irishmen and hailed their oppressed Catholic countrymen fellow-citizens.
But the Confederation was not yet six months old when it was called on
to face a situation in Ireland as terrible as that which confronted
Irishmen when Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill lay dead and Cromwell marched at the
head of his iron legions to the conquest of a distracted country. The
failure of the potato-crop which menaced Ireland with serious loss at
the birth of the Confederation in January, 1847, threatened the
destruction of the people by the middle of 1847. The Relief measures
provided by the English Whig Government set up a system under which
places, large and small, were provided for some thousands of persons of
political influence. Their tenure of employment depending upon the
ministry, they used that influence to the end of sustaining the
ministry, while the unfortunate small farmers who had hitherto kept on
the right side of the line between poverty and pauperism were forced to
the wrong side. Of all the measures passed under the guise of relieving
"the famine-stricken Irish" the most infamous was that measure which
provided that no farmer should be accorded relief if, the produce of his
farm having gone to discharge his rents, rates and taxes, he hungered
and yet strove to hold his farm. Before he was permitted to receive any