1848 was a failure--in one sense--because there was no second Mitchel in Ireland when the first Mitchel was hurried off on a British gunboat.
But 1848 was not a failure in the true sense of failure.

For years the Irish people had submitted to any and every imposition of foreign tyranny, taught to believe that forcible resistance to outrage on their national liberties was in itself immoral.

The sneer of the satirist that the Irish were:-- "A nation of abortive men Who shoot the tongue and wield the pen," seemed to have grown a reality.

Young Ireland evoked the fighting tradition of the nation once again.

Without 1848 the spirit that freed the Irish Catholic from being tributary to another Church and regained the land for the farmers would have slept for a century--perhaps for ever.
Driven from his country, Doheny with the companion of his fugitive wanderings, James Stephens, and the chivalrous O'Mahony, founded the Fenian brotherhood in the United States.