In the summer of 1847, when Bill-Ned’s decree was executed on our house, and when all the furniture was canted, notice of eviction was served upon my mother. The agent was a cousin of ours, and he told my mother it was better for her to give up the land quietly, and he would do all he could to help her. She had four children who were not able to do much work on a farm. She had no money, and she could not till the land. There were four houses included in the lease—our own house, Jack McCart’s house across the street, Jack Barrett’s house next door above us, and Darby Holland’s house next door below. Darby Holland had died lately, and he would get her his house rent-free during her life, and give her £12 on account of the wheat crop growing in the strand field, and let her have the potato crop that was growing in the hill field. My mother accepted the terms, and we moved into Darby Holland’s house.

The previous two bad years had involved us in debt; friends were security for us in the small loan banks in Ross and in Leap, and as far as the twelve pounds went my mother gave it to pay those debts. To give my mind some exercise in Millbank prison one time, I occupied it doing a sum in Voster’s rule of Interest, regarding those little loan-banks. I made myself a banker. I loaned a hundred pounds out of my bank one week, I got a hundred shillings for giving the loan of it; I got it paid back to me in twenty weeks—a hundred shillings every week.

I loaned it out again as fast as I got it, and at the end of fifty-two weeks, I had one hundred and forty-seven pounds and some odd shillings. That was forty seven per cent. for my money. I wish some of my tenants on the United Irishman estate would now go at doing that sum in the rule of Interest-upon-Interest, and let me know if I did it correctly. ’Tis an interesting exercise to go at, if you have leisure time; you cannot do it by any rule of arithmetic; I give out a hundred pounds the first week, and get in on it a hundred shillings interest; I lend out that hundred shillings, and get in on it five shillings: I hold that five shillings in my treasury till next week; next week I get in a hundred and five shillings; I lend out five pounds, and get in on it five shillings interest; I have now a hundred and ten borrowers for the third week, and have fifteen shillings in the treasury. So on, to the end of the twenty weeks, and to the end of the year, when my hundred pounds will have amounted up to £147.

The harvest time of 1847 came on. The potato crop failed again. The blight came on in June. In July there was not a sign of a potato stalk to be seen on the land. My brother John and I went up to the hill field to dig the potatoes. I carried the basket and he carried the spade. He was the digger and I was the picker. He digged over two hundred yards of a piece of a ridge and all the potatoes I had picked after him would not fill a skillet. They were not larger than marbles; they were minions and had a reddish skin. When I went home, and laid the basket on the floor, my mother looking at the contents of it exclaimed: “Oh! na geinidighe dearga death-chuin!” which I would translate into English as “Oh the miserable scarlet tithelings.”

I will now pass on to the year 1848. In our new house there was a shop one time, and a shop window. The shop counter had been put away; the window remained; that window had outside shutters to it, but those shutters were never taken down. One morning we found pasted on the shutters a large printed bill. My mother read it, and after reading it, she tore it down. It was the police that had posted it up during the night. It was an account of the unfavorable reception the delegation of Young Irelanders had met with in Paris, when they went over to present addresses of congratulation to the new revolutionary provisional government.

France had had a revolution in February, 1848. The monarchical government had been overthrown, and was succeeded by a republican government. King Louis Phillippe fled to England—as the street ballad of the time says:

That you may understand thoroughly what I am speaking about, I quote the following passages from John Mitchel’s history of Ireland:

“Frankly, and at once, the Confederation accepted the only policy thereafter possible, and acknowledged the meaning of the European revolutions. On the 15th of March, O’Brien moved an address of congratulation to the victorious French people, and ended his speech with these words:

“‘It would be recollected that a short time ago, he thought it his duty to deprecate all attempts to turn the attention of the people to military affairs, because it seemed to him that in the then condition of the country the only effect of leading the people’s mind to what was called “a guerilla warfare,” would be to encourage some of the misguided peasantry to the commission of murder. Therefore it was that he declared he should not be a party to giving such a recommendation. But the state of affairs was totally different now, and he had no hesitation in declaring that he thought the minds of intelligent young men should be turned to the consideration of such questions as—How strong places can be captured, and weak ones defended—how supplies of food and ammunition can be cut off from an enemy, and how they can be secured to a friendly force. The time was also come when every lover of his country should come forward openly and proclaim his willingness to be enrolled as a member of a national guard. No man, however, should tender his name as a member of that national guard unless he was prepared to do two things: one, to preserve the State from anarchy; the other, to be prepared to die for the defence of his country.’

“Addresses, both from the confederation and from the city, were to be presented in Paris, to the President of the Provisional government, M. de Lamartine; and O’Brien, Meagher and an intelligent tradesman named Hollywood, were appointed a deputation to Paris.

“These were mere addresses of congratulation and sympathy. De Lamartine made a highly poetic, but rather unmeaning reply to them. He has since, in his history, virulently misrepresented them; being, in fact, a mere Anglo-Frenchman. Mr. O’Brien has already convicted him of these misrepresentations.”

It was that “unmeaning reply” of Lamartine’s that the English government placarded all over Ireland one night in ’48. It was that poster I saw my mother tear down next morning. It is that memory, implanted in my mind very early in my life, that makes me take very little stock in all the talk that is made by Irishmen about France or Russia, or any other nation doing anything to free Ireland for us. They may do it, if it will be to their own interest to do it.

My friend, Charles G. Doran, of the Cove of Cork, comes to my assistance at this stage of my writing. He sends me a full copy of all that was printed on that poster which my mother tore down. He says: