James Fintan Lalor (1807-1849) was one of the most original thinkers of the Young Ireland movement, and one of the most frequently appropriated by later Irish activists. From Michael Davitt to James Connolly, a host of self-proclaimed disciples celebrated Lalor in succession as a proto-Fenian rebel, the prophet of Irish land reform, the fourth evangelist of Irish nationalism, and the Irish apostle of revolutionary Socialism. Not all of these definitions...