Duffy, SIR CHARLES GAVAN

Duffy, SIR CHARLES GAVAN, Irish patriot, was born in County Monaghan in 1816, and early devoted himself to journalism in Dublin and Belfast, returning to the former in 1842 to start along with Thomas Davis and John Dillon the famous Nation newspaper, as the organ of the Young Ireland party. Tried and convicted for sedition with O'Connell in 1844, but saved by the House of Lords quashing the conviction, he aided his great chief in the agitation for repeal, next helped him to found the Irish Confederation, and gave his heartiest sympathy to the patriotic dreams of Smith O'Brien. Again tried in 1848 for 'treason-felony,' he was acquitted, next revived the Nation, and carried in 1852 the borough of New Ross in the teeth of the Under-secretary for Ireland. He had an active share in promoting the Tenant League and the Independent Irish party, and on the break up of the latter, emigrated to Australia in 1856. After some time of practice at the Melbourne bar, he drifted into politics, and after the establishment of the Victorian constitution, rose in 1857 to be Minister of Public Works, of Lands in 1858 and 1862, and prime-minister in 1871. He was defeated next year, was knighted in 1873, and in 1877 elected Speaker of the Legislative Assembly. His little work, The Ballad Poetry of Ireland, had been for thirty years a household book in his native country, when in 1880 he published his striking Young Ireland, 1840-50, followed in 1883 by Four Years of Irish History, 1845-49. See the autobiographical My Life in Two Hemispheres (1898).