Russell suggests that, consistent with his admiration for Carlyle, Mitchel retained from his education under Dr Henderson in Newry and at Trinity College a classicist mindset of fixed hierarchies maintained, as in ancient Rome, by a ruthless lack of sentiment. The Ireland he dreamed of seeing one day free, was a rural hierarchical "pre-Enlightenment Ireland" peopled by “innumerable brave working farmers" who would never trouble themselves about worthless notions of progress. His earliest biographer, William Dillon, characterises Mitchel social philosophy somewhat differently.John Mitchel had no faith in Social Utopias of any kind. In reply to the reproach that he did not believe in "the future of humanity," he once wrote to a friend--"I do believe in the future of humanity. I believe its future will be very much like its past; that is, pretty mean.