"Thomas Davis was a great man where poetry is concerned, and a better
than Thomas Moore. All over Ireland his poetry is, and he would have
done other things but that he died young. That was the '48 time. The '48
men were foolish men; they thought to cope with the English Government.
They went to O'Connell to get from him all the money he had gathered,
for they had it in their head to use that to make a rise against
England. But when they asked O'Connell for it he told them there was
none of it left, not one penny. Buying estates for his children he used
it, and he said he spent it on a monastery. I don't know was he speaking
truth. Mahon made a great speech against him, and it preyed on
O'Connell, and he left the country and went away and died in some place
called Genoa. He was a very ambitious man, like Napoleon. He got
Emancipation; but where is the use of that? There's Judge O'Brien, Peter
the Packer, was calling out and trying to do away with trial by jury.
And he would not be in his office or in his billet if it wasn't for
O'Connell. They didn't do much after, where they didn't get the money
from O'Connell. And the night they joined under Smith O'Brien they
hadn't got their supper. A terrible cold night it was, no one could
stand against it. Some bishop came from Dublin, and he told them to go
home, for how could they reach with their pikes to the English soldiers
that had got muskets. The soldiers came, and there was some firing, and
they were all scattered. As to Smith O'Brien, there was ten thousand
pounds on his head, and he hid for a while. Then at the last he went
into the town of Clonmel, and there was a woman there in the street was
a huckster, and he bade her give him up to the Government, for she would
never earn money so easy. But for all she was worth she wouldn't do
that. So then he went and gave himself up, and he was sent to Australia,
and the property was given to his brother."