The founders of The Nation were three young men – two Catholics and one Protestant – who, according to the historian of the newspaper T. F. O'Sullivan, were all "free from the slightest taint of bigotry, and were anxious to unite all creeds and classes for the country's welfare.".

In the Prospectus, which was written by Davis with the exception of one sentence, it was stated,[5] The projectors of the NATION have been told that there is no room in Ireland for another Liberal Journal; but they think differently.

The Liberal Journals of Ireland were perhaps never more ably conducted than at this moment; but their tone and spirit are not of the present but the past;—their energies are shackled by old habits, old prejudices, and old divisions; and they do not and cannot keep in the van of the advancing people.

The necessities of the country seem to demand a Journal able to aid and organise the new movements going on amongst us—to make their growth deeper, and their fruit 'more racy of the soil'— and, above all, to direct the popular mind and the sympathies of educated men of all parties to the great end of nationality.

He covered a wide range of subjects, including the Great Famine, on which he contributed some influential articles which attracted significant attention.

In 1847, when he severed his connection with The Nation, he wrote, "I had watched the progress of the famine policy of the Government, and could see nothing in it but a machinery, deliberately devised, and skillfully worked, for the entire subjugation of the island—the slaughter of portion of the people, and the pauperization of the rest", and he had therefore "come to the conclusion that the whole system ought to be met with resistance at every point, and the means for this would be extremely simple, namely, a combination among the people to obstruct and render impossible the transport and shipment of Irish provisions; to refuse all aid to its removal; to destroy the highways; to prevent everyone, by intimidation, from daring to bid for grain and cattle if brought to auction under 'distress' (a method of obstruction which put an end to Church tithes before); in short, to offer a passive resistance universally; but occasionally, when opportunity served, to try the steel."

To recommend such a course would be extremely hazardous, and was besides in advance of the revolutionary progress made up to that time by Mr. Duffy, the proprietor of The Nation, Mitchel therefore resigned from the journal, and started his own paper, The United Irishman.

[10][11] Eithne (Marie Thompson), Finola (Elizabeth Willoughby Treacy),[12] Ruby (Rose Kavanagh) and Thomasine (Olivia Knight) were others.

In July 1848 Jane Wilde and Margaret Callan assumed editorial control of The Nation during Gavan Duffy's imprisonment in Newgate.