In October 1842, his friend John Martin sent Mitchel the first copy of "The Nation" produced in Dublin by Charles Gavan Duffy, previously editor of the O'Connellite journal, "The Vindicator", in Belfast, and by Thomas Osborne Davis, and John Blake Dillon, both like himself Protestants and graduates of Trinity College. "I think "The Nation" will do very well", he wrote Martin, while at the same time revealing that he knew how the country "ought to take" news that an additional 20,000 British troops were to be deployed to Ireland but would not put it on paper for fear of arrest.