ABSTRACT

Alexander Carlyle's relations with Ireland, and in particular with the Irish nationalist intellect and culture, are predictably forceful but paradoxically startling. Carlyle's conquest of Young Ireland was nonetheless carried out with Irish troops. Sartor Resartus was brought into being by Irish voices. William Maginn helped shape Carlyle's hatred of politics and politicians, nourishing his interest in people beyond power and alerting him to the revolutionary potential of the Irish in Britain. Carlyle had given Young Ireland suppers more strong meawith the publication of Chartism and Past and Present. Carlyle may have eased Charles Gavan Duffy's own departure from the Young Ireland movement. John Mitchel would have recognised that Duffy was a stopgap editor, and that he – an Irishman of Scots Presbyterian ancestry – was the real leader of the movement. Carlyle's letter foreshadowed the breach between Mitchel and Duffy, which resulted in Mitchel's foundation of his own newspaper, the United Irishman.