As he had written while a schoolboy at Stonyhurst against slavery in the United States, he now mounted a vigorous takedown of state-sanctioned human bondage in Van Diemen’s Land. Coming from a convict, these words carried more than a hint of self-interest. But Meagher was on the side of inevitability. Of late, the Young Ireland felons had been welcomed into the homes of solid, landowning citizens of impeccable English lineage. In just a few years’ time, Her Majesty’s proper subjects in the penal colony had been won over by the Irish poets, orators, statesmen and wits exiled in their midst.
