No nobler and braver man has appeared in modern Irish history than William Smith O'Brien, but at the head of an insurrectionary movement he was incompetent.

There was none of his lieutenants who, in his position, could not have made the insurrection to some extent formidable.
That it could have been successful, few will believe.

Mitchel and Meagher agreed that 1848 would not have been the year of Liberation.

But the former held very justly that the insurrection if it grew to respectable dimensions might have forced terms from England.

The attitude of France at the time was a factor in the situation.