Excerpt from Young Ireland: A Fragment of Irish History, 1840-1850<br><br>I have written this book in the intervals of a busy life, because I believed it was the best and last service I could render to Ireland. It contains a memoir of the public affairs of that country during a period of abnormal political activity a period to which may be traced, as to their fountain-head, many of the Opinions now universally current among the Irish people.<br><br>My first aim was to make a new generation familiar with the truthfulness, simplicity, and real moderation of the men with whom, it was said, a new soul came into Ireland. The Young Ireland party, as their enemies in the first instance named them, and as they came in the end to name themselves, after having been long misrepresented, have in latter times been vindicated and. Applauded more than enough, but they have never I think been understood. What they aimed to do, and what they accomplished; their actual motives and their means of action, as disclosed in their private correspondence, and interpreted by one who shared their counsels, are set down in this book for the first time and will be found I think worthy of study by statesmen and publicists accustomed to meditate on the afiairs of Ireland.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.