DEATH OF JOHN MITCHEL.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 301, 31 May 1875, Page 3

DEATH OF JOHN MITCHEL.

(j From the correspondent of the Times.')

Dublin, March 20

John Mitchel died this morning at eight o’clock, at Dromalane, near Newry, where he had been for only a few days. This is the last item of startling intelligence associated with his name. A short telegram received last night, which stated that he was dangerously ill and sinking fast, was the only intimation that his eventful life was so near its end, and the letter which he addressed to the electors of Tipperary, dated only on the 17th instant, retained so much of the originality and vigour which characterised his style of composition, that few persons could have supposed it was the last rally of his intellectual and physical energies before absolute prostration. His last moments were calm and peaceful, in suggestive contrast to the excitement of his life. All the fierce passion which he avowed and felt is now at rest, and an irresistible feeling of sympathy will spring up in the breasts of his bitterest opponents. Mitchel’s nature presented two opposite aspects in public and in private. The wild revolutionist whose appeals to his countrymen were marked With traits of savage and ferocious virulence, who seemed to scruple at the use of no means, however truculent and sanguinaryto effect the overthrow of the hated British rule in Ireland, was in his personal and domestic relations, one of the most gentle and

tender-hearted of his kind. The -nan who was feared and hated with an intensity which only terror could produce was endeared to those who knew him intimately as an affectionate relation and a sympathetic friend. His public life has been a terrible mistake, unfortunate for his country, and still more calamitous to himself. There was a presentiment that under the show of unabated mental energy and inflexible resolution which he assumed there was the wreck of his physical powers, and that it would be found, as it has been, that he came home, not to renew a hopeless war against the British Government, but to die. John Mitchel was the son of the Rev John Mitchel, Unitarian minister in Newry, and was born in 1811 or 1812. He was by profession a solicitor, and in partnership with aMr Frazer. He was in a fair and respectable business until he plunged madly into the vortex of revolutionary politics which, in 1848 and the year preceding, drew many on the Continent and in the United Kingdom into its destructive current. He relates in his own journal, and there is no reason to doubt the truth of this statement, that he was driven to madness by witnessing the Irish famine, and that in him were aroused the passions of deep sympathy with the sufferers and fierce resentment against the system of government, which in the political manifestoes of the time was charged with having guiltily aggravated, if it did not indirectly cause, the terrible visitation. He was an active member of the Irish Confederation, an offshoot of the Repeal Associa tion, from which its members in fact seceded, as they condemned the principle of strictly moral force agitation which O’Connell consistently advocated. The language of the leaders having attracted the notice of the Government, and dangerous consequences having been apprehended from the inflammatory appeals which were made on the platform and the press, the Treason Felony Act was passed in order to apply an effectual check, the law being divested of its repulsive severity, but rendered more certain in its administration, Mitchel’a answer to the Government was the publication of the United Irishman, in which articles of the most seditious kind, written in terms of studied contempt and violence, appeared every week and challenged prosecution. If the Executive had desired to spare him he rendered it impossible, not merely by his taunts and defiance, but by his incendiary appeals to the “ men of no property.” At length the prosecution came, and the end is known. Mr Mitchell was brother-in-law of Mr John Martin, M.P. His death occurred at Dromalane, the residence of Mr Hill Irvine, his brother-in-law. The event will not in any way help to solve the problem of the Tipperary election, but may rather, perhaps, serve to create a new difficulty. It was only to-day that the petition against his return was lodged, and there is now the awkward fact that there is actually no one to defend the return. The petition will be prosecuted upon legal grounds, but, the result cannot be as satisfactory as if there were a full investigation, with counsel to represent the interests of the elected member, and raise every point which could be advanced in support of the return. It is possible that a question may be raised whether there is any right to petition at all, or, there being nothing but the sheriff’s return of John Mitchel, who is no more, the seat should be declared vacant and a new election held.