The other “Young Irelanders,” stung apparently by their own previous inaction, thereupon rushed frantically into rebellion.  The leaders—­Smith O’Brien, Meagher, Dillon, and others—­went about the country holding reviews of “Confederates,” as they now called themselves, a proceeding which caused the Government to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and to issue a warrant for their arrest.  A few more gatherings took place in different parts of the country, a few more ineffectual attempts were made to induce the people to rise, one very small collision with the police occurred, and then the whole thing was over.  All the leaders in the course of a few days were arrested and Smith O’Brien and Meagher were sentenced to death, a sentence which was speedily changed into transportation.  Gavan Duffy was arrested and several times tried, but the jury always disagreed, and in the end his prosecution was abandoned.  The “Young Ireland” movement, however, was dead, and never again revived.

LVII.

THE FAMINE.

All the time the earlier of the foregoing scenes were being enacted, the famine had been drawing its python grasp tighter and tighter around the unhappy island.  The first symptoms of the dread potato disease showed themselves in the autumn of 1845, and even that year there was much suffering, though a trifle to what was to follow.  Many remedies were tried, both to stop the blight and save the crops, but all alike proved unavailing.  The next year the potatoes seemed to promise unusually well, and the people, with characteristic hopefulness, believed that their trouble was over.  The summer, however, was very warm and wet, and with August there came on a peculiarly dense white fog, which was believed by all who were in Ireland at the time to have carried the blight with it in its folds.  Whether this was the case or not, there is no doubt that in a single fatal night nearly the whole potato crop over the entire country blackened, and perished utterly.  Then, indeed, followed despair.  Stupor and a sort of moody indifference succeeded to the former buoyancy and hopefulness.  There was nothing to do; no other food was attainable.  The fatal dependence upon a single precarious crop had left the whole mass of the people helpless before the enemy.

Soon the first signs of famine began to appear.  People were to be seen wandering about; seeking for stray turnips, for watercresses, for anything that would allay the pangs of hunger.  The workhouses, detested though they were, were crammed until they could hold no single additional inmate.  Whole families perished; men, women, and children lay down in their cabins and died, often without a sign.  Others fell by the roadside on their way to look for work or seek relief.  Only last summer, at Ballinahinch in Connemara, the present writer was told by an old man that he remembered being sent by his master on a message to Clifden, the nearest town, and seeing