When the law had consummated its crime, and the doom of the felon was pronounced against John Mitchel, there stood in the group that pressed round him in the dock and echoed back the assurances which he flung as a last defiance at his foes, a thoughtful, delicate looking, but resolute young Irishman, whose voice perhaps was not the loudest of those that spoke there, but whose heart throbbed responsively to his words, and for whom the final message of the unconquerable rebel possessed a meaning and significance that gave it the force of a special revelation. "Promise for me, Mitchel," they cried out, but he had no need to join in that request; he had no need to intimate to Mr. Mitchel his willingness to follow out the enterprise which that fearless patriot had so boldly commenced. On the previous day, sitting with the prisoner in his gloomy cell, John Martin of Loughorne had decided on the course which he would take in the event of the suppression of the United Irishman and the transportation of its editor. He would start a successor to that journal, and take the place of his dear friend at the post of danger. It was a noble resolve, deliberately taken, and resolutely and faithfully was it carried out. None can read the history of that act of daring, and of the life of sacrifice by which it has been followed, and not agree with us that while the memories of Tone, of Emmet, and of Russell, are cherished in Ireland, the name of John Martin ought not be forgotten.
A few days subsequent to that memorable scene in Greenstreet court-house, John Martin quitted his comfortable home and the green slopes of Loughorne, separated himself from the friends he loved and the relatives who idolized him, and entered on the stormy career of a national leader and journalist, at a time when to advocate the principles of nationality was to incur the ferocious hostility of a government whose thirst for vengeance was only whetted by the transportation of John Mitchel. He knew the danger he was braving; he knew that the path on which he entered led down to suffering and ruin; he stood in the gap from which Mitchel had been hurled, with a full consciousness of the perils of the situation; but unflinchingly and unhesitatingly as the martyr goes to his death, he threw himself into the thinning ranks of the patriot leaders; and when the event that he anticipated arrived, and the prison gates opened to receive him—then, too, in the midst of indignities and privations—he displayed an imperturbable firmness and contempt for physical suffering, that showed how powerless persecution is to subdue the spirit that self-conscious righteousness sustains.
His history previous to the conviction of his friend and school-fellow, John Mitchel, if it includes no events of public importance, possesses for us all the interest that attaches to the early life of a good and remarkable man. John Martin was born at Loughorne, in the lordship of Newry, Co. Down, on the 8th of September, 1812; being the eldest son of Samuel Martin and Jane Harshaw, both natives of that neighbourhood, and members of Presbyterian families settled there for many generations. About the time of his birth, his father purchased the fee-simple of the large farm which he had previously rented, and two of his uncles having made similar investments, the family became proprietors of the townland on which they lived. Mr. Samuel Martin, who died in 1831, divided his attention between the management of the linen business—a branch of industry in which the family had partly occupied themselves for some generations—and the care of his land. His family consisted of nine children, of whom John Martin—the subject of our sketch—was the second born. The principles of his family, if they could not be said to possess the hue of nationality, were at least liberal and tolerant. In '98, the Martins of Loughorne, were stern opponents of the United Irishmen; but in '82, his father and uncles were enrolled amongst the volunteers, and the Act of Union was opposed by them as a national calamity. It was from his good mother, however, a lady of refined taste and remarkable mental culture, that young John derived his inclination for literary pursuits, and learned the maxims of justice and equality that swayed him through life. He speedily discarded the prejudices against Catholic Emancipation, which were not altogether unknown amongst his family, and which even found some favour with himself in the unreflecting days of boyhood. The natural tendency of his mind, however, was as true to the principles of justice as the needle to the pole, and the quiet rebuke that one day fell from his uncle—"What! John, would you not give your Catholic fellow-countrymen the same rights that you enjoy yourself?" having set him a thinking for the first time on the subject, he soon formed opinions more in consonance with liberality and fair play.
When about twelve years of age, young Martin was sent to the school of Dr. Henderson at Newry, where he first became acquainted with John Mitchel, then attending the same seminary as a day scholar. We next find John Martin an extern student of Trinity College, and a year after the death of his father he took out his degree in Arts. He was now twenty years old, and up to this time had suffered much from a constitutional affection, being subject from infancy to fits of spasmodic asthma. Strange to say, the disease which troubled him at frequently recurring intervals at home, seldom attacked him when away from Loughorne, and partly for the purpose of escaping it, he took up his residence in Dublin in 1833, and devoted himself to the study of medicine. He never meditated earning his living by the profession, but he longed for the opportunity of assuaging the sufferings of the afflicted poor. The air of the dissecting-room, however, was too much for Martin's delicate nervous organization; the kindly encouragement of his fellow-students failed to induce him to breathe its fetid atmosphere a second time, and he was forced to content himself with a theoretical knowledge of the profession. By diligent study and with the assistance of lectures, anatomical plates, &c., he managed to conquer the difficulty; and he had obtained nearly all the certificates necessary for taking out a medical degree, when he was recalled in 1835 to Loughorne, by the death of his uncle John, whose house and lands he inherited.
During the four years following he lived at Loughorne, discharging the duties of a resident country gentleman as they are seldom performed in Ireland, and endearing himself to all classes, but particularly to the poor, by his gentle disposition, purity of mind, and benevolence of heart. In him the afflicted and the poverty-stricken ever found a sympathising friend, and if none of the rewards which the ruling faction were ready to shower on the Irishman of his position who looked to the Castle for inspiration, fell to his share, he enjoyed a recompense more precious in the prayers and the blessings of the poor. The steps of his door were crowded with the patients who flocked to him for advice, and for whom he prescribed gratuitously—not without some reluctance, however, arising from distrust of his own abilities and an unwillingness to interfere with the practice of the regular profession. But the diffidence with which he regarded his own efforts was not shared by the people of the district. Their faith in his professional skill was unbounded, and perhaps the confidence which they felt in his power, contributed in some measure to the success that attended his practice.
In 1839 Mr. Martin sailed from Bristol to New York, and travelled thence to the extreme west of Upper Canada to visit a relative who had settled there. On that occasion he was absent from Ireland nearly twelve months, and during his stay in America he made some tours in Canada and the Northern States, visiting the Falls, Toronto, Montreal, Philadelphia, New York, Washington, Pittsburg, and Cleveland. In 1841 he made a brief continental tour, and visited the chief points of attraction along the Rhine. During this time Mr. Martin's political ideas became developed and expanded, and though like Smith O'Brien, he at first withheld his sympathies from the Repeal agitation, in a short time he became impressed with the justice of the national demand for independence. His retiring disposition kept him from appearing very prominently before the public; but the value of his adhesion to the Repeal Association was felt to be great by those who knew his uprightness, his disinterestedness, and his ability.
When the suicidal policy of O'Connell drove the Confederates from Conciliation Hall, John Martin was not a silent spectator of the crisis, and in consequence of the manly sentiments he expressed with reference to the treatment to which the Young Ireland party had been subjected, he ceased to be a member of the Association. There was another cause too for his secession. A standing taunt in the mouth of the English press was that O'Connell pocketed the peoples' money and took care to let nobody know what he did with it. To put an end to this reproach Mr. Martin asked that the accounts of the Association should be published. "Publish the accounts!" shrieked the well-paid gang that marred the influence and traded in the politics of O'Connell: "Monstrous!" and they silenced the troublesome purist by suppressing his letters and expelling him from the Association. In the ranks of the Confederates, however, Martin found more congenial society; amongst them he found men as earnest, as sincere, and as single-minded as himself, and by them the full worth of his character was soon appreciated. He frequently attended their meetings, and he it was who filled the chair during the prolonged debates that ended with the temporary withdrawal of Mitchel from the Confederation. When the United Irishman was started he became a contributor to its columns, and he continued to write in its pages up to the date of its suppression, and the conviction of its editor and proprietor.
There were many noble and excellent qualities which the friends of John Martin knew him to possess. Rectitude of principle, abhorrence of injustice and intolerance, deep love of country, the purity and earnestness of a saint, allied with the kindliness and inoffensiveness of childhood; amiability and disinterestedness, together with a perfect abnegation of self, and total freedom from the vanity which affected a few of his compatriots—these they gave him credit for, but they were totally unprepared for the lion-like courage, the boldness, and the promptitude displayed by him, when the government, by the conviction of Mitchel, flung down the gauntlet to the people of Ireland. Hastily settling up his worldly accounts in the North, he returned to Dublin to stake his fortune and his life in the cause which he had promised to serve. The United Irishman was gone, but Martin had undertaken that its place in Irish Journalism should not be vacant; and a few weeks after the office in Trinity-street was sacked he reoccupied the violated and empty rooms, and issued there-from the first number of the Irish Felon. There was no halting place in Irish Journalism then. The Nation had already flung peace and conciliation and "balmy forgiveness" to the winds, and advocated the creed of the sword. The scandalous means used to procure a verdict of guilty against Mitchel tore to tatters the last rag of the constitution in Ireland. It was idle to dictate observance of the law which the government themselves were engaged in violating, and the Nation was not the journal to brook the tyranny of the authorities. With a spirit that cannot be too highly praised, it called for the overthrow of the government that had sent Mitchel in chains into banishment, and summoned the people of Ireland to prepare to assert their rights by the only means now left them—the bullet and the pike. And the eyes of men whose hearts were "weary waiting for the fray," began to glisten as they read the burning words of poetry and prose in which the Nation preached the gospel of liberty. It was to take its side by that journal, and to rival it in the boldness of its language and the spirit of its arguments, that the Irish Felon was established; and it executed its mission well. "I do not love political agitation for its own sake," exclaimed Martin, in his opening address in the first number. "At best I regard it as a necessary evil; and if I were not convinced that my countrymen are determined on vindicating their rights, and that they really intend to free themselves, I would at once withdraw from the struggle and leave my native land for ever. I could not live in Ireland and derive my means of life as a member of the Irish community, without feeling a citizen's responsibilities in Irish public affairs. Those responsibilities involve the guilt of national robbery and murder—of a system which arrays the classes of our people against each other's prosperity and very lives, like beasts of prey, or rather like famishing sailors on a wreck—of the debasement and moral ruin of a people endowed by God with surpassing resources for the attainment of human happiness and human dignity. I cannot be loyal to a system of meanness, terror, and corruption, although it usurp the title and assume the form of a 'government.' So long as such a 'government' presumes to injure and insult me, and those in whose prosperity I am involved, I must offer to it all the resistance in my power. But if I despaired of successful resistance, I would certainly remove myself from under such a 'government's' actual authority; that I do not exile myself is a proof that I hope to witness the overthrow, and assist in the overthrow, of the most abominable tyranny the world now groans under—the British Imperial system. To gain permission for the Irish people to care for their own lives, their own happiness and dignity—to abolish the political conditions which compel the classes of our people to hate and to murder each other, and which compel the Irish people to hate the very name of the English—to end the reign of fraud, perjury, corruption, and 'government' butchery, and to make, law, order, and peace possible in Ireland, the Irish Felon takes its place amongst the combatants in the holy war now waging in this island against foreign tyranny. In conducting it my weapons shall be—the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God!" Such "open and avowed treason" as this could not long continue to be published. Before the third number the Felon saw the light, a warrant for Mr. Martin's arrest was in the hands of the detectives, and its fifth was its last. On Saturday, July 8th, Mr. Martin surrendered himself into custody, having kept out of the way for a few days to prevent his being tried, under the "gagging act," at the Commission sitting when the warrant was issued, and which adjourned until August—the time fixed for the insurrection—in the interim. On the same day, Duffy, Williams, and O'Doherty were arrested. Martin was imprisoned in Newgate, but he continued to write from within his cell for the Felon, and its last number, published on July 22nd, contains a spirited letter signed with his initials, which formed portion of the indictment against him on his trial. In this letter, Martin calls on his countrymen in impassioned words to "stand to their arms!" "Let them menace you," he writes from his dungeon, "with the hulks or the gibbet for daring to speak or write your love to Ireland. Let them threaten to mow you down with grape shot, as they massacred your kindred with famine and plague. Spurn their brutal 'Acts of Parliament'—trample upon their lying proclamations—fear them not!"
On Tuesday, August 15th, John Martin's trial commenced in Green-street court-house, the indictment being for treason-felony. "Several of his tenantry," writes the Special Correspondent of the London Morning Herald, "came up to town to be present at his trial, and, as they hoped, at his escape, for they could not bring themselves to believe that a man so amiable, so gentle, and so pious, as they had long known him, could be"—this is the Englishman's way of putting it—"an inciter to bloodshed. It is really melancholy," added the writer, "to hear the poor people of the neighbourhood of Loughorne speak of their benefactor. He was ever ready to administer medicine and advice gratuitously to his poor neighbours and all who sought his assistance; and according to the reports I have received, he did an incalculable amount of good in his way. As a landlord he was beloved by his tenantry for his kindness and liberality, while from his suavity of manner and excellent qualities, he was a great favourite with the gentry around him."
At eight o'clock, p.m., on Thursday, August 17th, the jury came into court with a verdict of guilty against the prisoner, recommending him to mercy on the grounds that the letter on which he was convicted was written from the prison, and penned under exciting circumstances. On the following day, Mr. Martin was brought up to receive sentence, and asked—after the usual form—whether he had anything to say against the sentence being pronounced? The papers of the time state that he appeared perfectly unmoved by the painful position in which he was placed—that he looked round the courthouse in a calm, composed, dignified manner, and then spoke the following reply in clear unfaltering tones:—