The Famine and its causes became a major platform for emigrant anger, as it was the main cause for most of them being emigrants in the first place. John Mitchel, a journalist by trade (who had written for Thomas Davis's newspaper, "The Nation" before leaving to set up his own paper, only to be arrested, tried for sedition and transported to the penal colony of Van Diemen's Land) proved to be a superb campaigner against British rule in Ireland. Analysing the famine, he wrote: