James Fintan Lalor (1807-1849) was one of the most revolutionary thinkers of Irish Republicanism during the Great Hunger. A native of Laois and a leading voice of the Young Ireland movement, he rejected all schemes of mere political reform and declared that Ireland’s freedom must be won by the people themselves. Writing in The Nation and later The Irish Felon, he proclaimed that the land of Ireland belonged of right to the Irish people and called for its recovery by resistance if necessary. He denied the legitimacy of foreign rule in every form and insisted that no parliament or authority had the right to dispose of the nation or its soil. In the crisis of 1848, he gave clear voice to a doctrine of national revolution rooted in the ownership of the land. Though he died soon after, his principles endured, shaping a tradition of Republicanism that united national independence with social justice and the right of the people to the soil of Ireland.