CHAPTER III

Page 14

Constitutional Agitation versus Secret Conspiracy,-John Mitchel's Views,-'98 and '48,

IGHTLY .had Mr. Duffy said In his retiring address, that his property in the Nation had passed into the hands of " two young Irishmen bred up in its doctrines." One of those doctrines-temporarily abandoned during the insurrectionary movement of '48, but after­wards restored to public favour-was that a re-establishment of the Irish Parliament could be won by constitutional agitation, vigorously and wisely carried on. The Young Ireland leaders did not share O'Connell's views as to the iniquity of having recourse to arms to effect the liberation of their country ; but during the greater part of their public life they held that the recovery of Irish legislative independence by peaceful means was well within the bounds of possibility, Another of their doctrines was that, war or no war, pikes or no pikes, there should be no recourse to secret conspiracy. They believed that in the existing con­dition of the country no wide-spread conspiracy could be safe from Government spies and informers, and that consequently the authorities could come down upon and destroy any such organisation at whatever time might seem to them best for the effectuation of that purpose. John Mitchel, at the very start of his avowedly revolutionary journal, The United Irishman, put this view very clearly. In one of his public letters addressed to the Viceroy, Lord Clarendon, whom he

usually styled " Her Majesty's Executioner General and General Butcher of Ireland," he wrote :-

An exact half century has passed away since the last Holy War waged in this Island, to sweep it clear of the English name and nation. And we differ from the illustrious con­spirators of 'Ninety-Eight not in principle-not an iota- but, as I shall presently show you, materially as to the mode of action. Theirs was a secret conspiracy-ours is an open one. They had not learned the charm of open, honest, out­spoken resistance to oppression : and through their secret organization you wrought their ruin. We defy you, and all the informers and detectives that British corruption ever bred. No espionage can tell you more than we will proclaim once a week on the house-tops. If you desire to have a Castle de­tective employed about The United Irishman Office in Trinity Street, I shall make no objection, provided the man be sober and honest. . . . So that you see we get rid of the whole crew of informers at once.

There was grim humour in those words, but also an element of good sense. Mr. Mitchel's plan of insurrec­tion, however, did not work out to a success, for the simple reason that the Government were too strong for their foes, no matter whether they declared their plans and projects in the newspapers or concerted them under conditions of supposed secrecy. But this much can be said for the system of action he recommended, that its failure did not bring such an amount of legal raiding and scourging on the country as in later (as well as in earlier) years followed the break-up of movements founded on a different principle. In the one case, generally speaking, overt acts had to be proved against the .accused ; in the other, mere membership of a treasonable society was sufficient, if established, to bring on the conspirators sentences of penal servitude or long terms of imprisonment under the harshest conditions.

The first number of Mr. Mitchel's astonishing journal

was published on the 12th of February, 1848 ; in the following May its bold editor was arrested and put on his trial for treason-felony ; on the 26th of that month he was convicted and sentenced to transportation for fourteen years; on the 27th he was placed on board a Government steamer and shipped off for Bermuda, and on the same day the office of his paper, The United Irishman, was raided by Dublin Police, the types seized, and the paper suppressed.

At the time of Mr. Mitchel's conviction he enter­tained a strong belief that the insurrection on which he had set his heart and staked his life would soon be started by the brave comrades he was leaving behind. A few weeks afterwards-in the month of July-they made the attempt, but it was ill supported, and the affair was over in half a day. The people did not respond to the call of their leaders. One of those gentlemen, speaking subsequently to Mr. Duffy, said : " The towns bade us try the rural districts; in the rural districts the farmers would not give us their arms, and the labourers had none ; the priests opposed us, and the clubs sent about one per cent, of their number to our aid." At the barricade at Ballingarry, writes Mr. Duffy in his " Four Years of Irish History " there were " twenty-two guns and pistols, about as many pikes and pitchforks, and seventy or eighty men and women armed with stones." Mr. John B. Dillon, who was able to speak from personal knowledge, estimated the armament of the crowd at " about 30 rust-eaten fowling-pieces, with an average of one round of ammuni­tion for each." A poor equipment surely with which to face the forces and resources of the British empire.

Most of the '48 leaders were arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to terms of penal servitude. Mr. John B. Dillon escaped to America. While " on the run " in England a curious incident occurred. An Irish Protestant

clergyman, a personal friend of Mr. Dillon, talking with a young Englishman who had visited the famine districts in Ireland in 1847, said, " What a position would be mine if he (Dillon) came to me for shelter! He knows well enough I would not betray him; but we could not give him room," The answer was " Send him to me ; he would be quite safe here ; no one would suspect a Quaker," That hospitably-inclined gentleman was the "Buckshot Forster" of after years in Ireland, and had the son of Mr. John B, Dillon. under lock and key in Kilmainham Prison for following-to a certain extent-in the footsteps of his father,

The collapse of the insurrectionary movement, the wreck of the people's hopes, the quick change in the political atmosphere from summer heat to winter cold, was very trying to the temper of many earnest Nation-alists. In the columns, of their favourite journals ante Ballingarry they had got songs, poems, and articles glowing with high hope and battle-passion. One could almost warm one's hands at them. With what a meteoric blaze and rush came D'Arcy McGee's fine lyric " The Shearers' Song," on the minds of the excited people :-

The first number of the revived Nation had another

poem from the same pen. It was entitled " Discipline," and opened thus :-

Close the starry dream-portal,
We must tread earth again;
Flashes no light immortal
Now on life's dreary plain.
We must wait, like the Stoic,
Brave, enduring, and strong,
Till the soul's strength heroic
Bend the fetters of wrong.

There was a great difference in the tone of the two compositions ; but in the interval-May, '48, to September, '49-many things had befallen to sadden the poetess and bring sorrow to the heart of every lover of Ireland.

HE outbreak of the war with Russia, in March, 1854, caused a great quickening of the hopes of Irish Nationalists and gave cheer to their hearts. England was now at war with a first-class European power, and who could tell what developments might take place ere the close of the conflict ? The situation, however, from their point of view, was grievously complicated by the fact that, under the guidance of Napoleon the Third, France became an ally of England, and thus the triumph of Russia would involve the humiliation of an old friend. They knew, moreover, that Russia was the chief actor in the partition of Poland, a crime as cruel as England's conquest and oppression of Ireland ; but even so, they gave their sympathies and best wishes to the power at war with the misrulers of their own country',

The National journals reflected and stimulated the popular feeling. In the columns of The Nation it got vigorous expression. The mismanagement of 1he campaign, in its earlier stages, by the British generals gave opportunity for much satirical writing ; even the London Times waxed angry over it, and allowed a contributor to travesty the despatches of the Commander-in-Chief in the following not too elegant effusion : -

Lord Raglan might in September have taken
Sebastopol duly and truly,
But the weather (he raves about weather) was warm,
And he wished to take it - coolly !

October, November, December came on
As if missioned his army to kill off,
"The weather is now too cold," quoth he,
" I'll take it-with the chill off."

Thus whether the weather be foul or fair
Sebastopol 'scapes the blow-
Then, down with the weather-glass ! give us a man
Who will take it-whether or no !

Some other stanzas of the composition were even more bitter than the foregoing. Our Nation bards did better I think. The Times, in one of its leading articles having dolefully and oracularly said : "It is Head, Head, Head that is wanting in the Crimea," one of our literary craftsmen sent us some verses on that text, from which I take a few lines :-

'Tis very, very sad to know
How quickly spreads this mortal ill;
The heart was flabby long ago,
We thought the head was he
althy still;
We know a nation may endure The treasure spent, the life-blood shed
, The only want without a cure
Is Head, Head, Head.

Thomas Irwin-a most interesting personality and a genuine poet-contributed to The Nation several pieces in this scoffing and caustic vein. From one of them, which greatly caught the public fancy, I take the following verses:

Come, boys, and gather round me here,
And let's lament on England's ruin;
Old Saxon Lion, staunch and dear,
Must we surrender you to Bruin ?
I'm sure I thought I had a tear
To weep your fall-but then 'tis brewing-
Pass the liquor, Paddy Cooney,
Tim O'Farrell, Teddy Mooney-
I'm sure I thought I had a tear
To weep your fall-but then 'tis brewing-
Lend me one of yours, Mulrooney !

They say the Russians never built
A town that she can't match her might with ;
They say she's men in coat and kilt
To storm their walls and scale their heights with
I think there's nothing but the hilt
Of her old weapon left to fight with.
What do you think, Paddy Cooney,
Tim O'Farrell, Teddy Mooney ?
- I think there's nothing but the hilt
Of her old weapon left to fight with ;
Where's its Irish blade, Mulrooney ?
Well, well-some say her voice is gone,
Though loud and hoarse she tries to roar it;
fhey hint her tyrant race is run,
And I'd be sorry to ignore it:
I think as sets her blood red sun
Our emerald star may glitter o'er it-
What do you think, Paddy Cooney,
Tim O'Farrell, Teddy Mooney ?
I think as sets her blood red sun
Old Erin's star may glimmer o'er it-
Do you take my* sense, Mulrooney ?

Another contributor, Mr. E. L. Doyle, made merry over the fact that go where you would among " society people " you could not get away from gabble about military matters-batteries, trenches, redoubts, lines of circumvallation, and so on. The following lines are from a skit of his entitled " The War Bore " :-

Would some kind person take me where the people sometimes
are
Not talking of the Allies and that Billingsgated Czar,
Of Russian sortie parties-now can these re-unions be
As stupid as tea parties here, such deuced bores to me ?
Such bores, such awful bores, indeed : last night two grim
old maids,
Quite stunned me about bombshells, cannon balls and " bloody
blades."

One, her cousin, " dear Fitzphips," had led his troops not many
paces,
When his brains, for once, surprised his men by dashing in
their faces;
The other's friend, MacSnooks-" MacSnooks, dear, you
remember,
Who ran away with Mrs. Slope, a year on last December "-
Rain, rags, have changed his temper so, oaths are his only
speeches,
He's called " the storming party" now, he raves so much
for breaches.

" Reason," as some old proser says, " was tottering on her
throne,"
When a hill of fat and satin bore down on me alone :
I knew the dame of old ; I knew the war-bend of her nose,
Her full resounding speeches, their opening and their close
. The rest is dim ; I know not how I gained my room at last-
I dreamt a dozen Inkermans before the night was passed.

The Crimean war brought no advantage to Ireland. Russia was overborne and defeated by a combination of four Powers-France, England, Turkey, and Sardinia. Then the Irish people had no resource and no policy open to them except to try what they could do for the removal or mitigation of their grievances by the agencies of constitutional agitation and Parliamentary action. The " extreme party "-for such a party still existed-might scoff at these things, but they had no practical alternative to offer.

A vigorous agitation for a reform of the land system had grown up in Ireland during those comparatively quiet years " when the war-drums throbbed no longer and the battle-flags were furled." The tenant farmers could not see in the failure of the physical force move­ment any reason why they should lie down under the feet of their landlords and make no struggle against the legalised injustice of which they were the victims. A

" Tenant League" was formed to set forth their grievances and agitate for redress. The League spread rapidly, and soon became a great national organisation. The foremost Irish politicians, with many of the most energetic and popular priests, became its leaders. Charles Gavan Duffy, George Henry Moore, and Frederick Lucas-editor of the Tablet, at that time published in Dublin-were in the front rank of its fighting line. The Presbyterian farmers of the North showed much sympathy with the movement, for they, too, though not so hardly used as the Catholic tenantry, had reason to complain of landlord exactions. For a time, through the agency of some of their ablest spokesmen, clerical and lay, those Ulsterrnen carried on a sort of "working alliance with the tenant-righters of the other three provinces. This co-operative action gave much pleasure to Irish patriots generally, who regarded it as an omen of a still larger union at no distant date. It was poetically designated by Mr. Duffy " The League of the North and South." His associate editor, Mr. John Cashel Hoey, broke into lyrical poetry on the inspiring theme ; a joyous lay of his, entitled " A Song for the League," of which I quote two verses, appeared in the Nation of August 3rd, 1850 :-

There's union now 'twixt North and South,
From Waterford to Derry,
From the swelling slopes of pleasant Louth,
To the iron cliffs of Kerry.
Hurrah for Munster, true and" brave!
For Ulster, sure and steady!
For Connaught, rising from the grave
I For Leinster, rough and ready.
The news shall blaze on every hill,
And ring from every steeple,
, And all the land with gladness fill-
We're one united people !

The nation's cursed foe is he,
And born to stretch a halter,
Who mars the march of Liberty
By feud of race or altar.
So all appeared to be going well for the tenant cause ; but soon came a woful change. In the political as in the physical world from time to time, storms burst forth unexpectedly, contrary winds arise, and cross currents are created, often resulting in shipwreck. Such a disaster came upon the Tenant League when, in November, 1850, Lord John Russell, Prime Minister of England, started an anti-Catholic agitation, in the stress of which all less exciting questions were swept aside. He published a letter, addressed to the Protestant Bishop of Durham, denouncing in violent terms the conduct of the Pope in recasting the organization of the Catholic Church in England by restoring to it its hierarchical form, reconstituting a number of Catholic sees, and conferring on their archbishops and bishops territorial designations.

This proceeding the irate Prime Minister treated pretty much as if it were a foreign invasion and the advancement of a claim to lord it over the soil of England. Almost immediately the Protestant bigotry of the country was aflame. Anti-Catholic riots broke out in London and some of the provincial towns; Catholic churches were attacked and desecrated ; and the newly-appointed Archbishop of Westminster, Dr. Wisernan, was burned in effigy. The highest repre­sentative of the law in England, the Lord Chancellor, was not above pandering to the passions of the mob. Responding to a toast at the Lord Mayor's banquet he quoted the lines which Shakespeare, in his " Henry VI,," puts into the mouth of Gloster :-

Under our feet we'll stamp thy Cardinal's hat In spite of Pope or dignities of Church. Page 26

The agony was prolonged by the introduction (Feb. 7th, 1851) and the passing into law (Aug. 1st, 1851) of a Bill to prevent the assumption of territorial titles by Catholic ecclesiastics in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The state of feeling thus created was not favourable to united and friendly action between Irish Catholics and Protestants on any imaginable subject, and the co-operation between them on the land question gradually weakened and died out. That, however, was not what ruined the Tenant-Right movement; the mischief was wrought by the hands of traitors and place-hunters within the party.

In Ireland this " no Popery " agitation created deep resentment, and evoked a storm of popular indignation. Within some two or three weeks after the passing of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act a " Catholic Defence Association " was formed in Dublin to protest against the measure and clamour for its repeal; also to demand a reform of the laws affecting the higher education of Catholics, and press for the establishment of an Irish Catholic University. The Nationalists of Dublin and throughout the country did not quite like this Catholic Defence Association ; they found no fault with its principles, but they had no faith in its leaders, whom they regarded as being-with some few exceptions-a lot of" Cawtholic " loyalists, whigs, and " West Britons."

We then had the Catholic Association and the Tenant League working simultaneously. The people in general and most of the clergy regarded the League as the more important of the two ; but certain of the Bishops, with the Most Rev. Dr. Cullen as chief among them, gave their exclusive support to the Association. Mr. William Keogh, Q.C., M.P. for the Borough of Athlone, having personal aims and ambitions very near his heart, gave the light of his countenance to both organizations, but sought to recommend himself to the Bishops above

all. On the platforms of the Association, he stormed against the new Act. " I now," said he, on one occasion, " as one of Her Majesty's Counsel, whether learned or unlearned in the law, unhesitatingly give his proper title to the Lord Archbishop of Armagh." This was merely a piece of pretentious and safe bravado ; there was nothing in the Act to prevent his calling the Archbishop by any title he might choose. In the same speech he spoke the following remarkable words, anticipating by many years the oratory and policy of the Parnell and Biggar period :-

If you send to Parliament forty, or even thirty, representa­tives determined to stand together as one man, and to say to the Minister of the day, " We require such and such measures for the people of Ireland, and we require above all the repeal of this penal measure,"-if your representatives say, " We will have no terms with any Minister, no matter who he may be, until he repeals that Act of Parliament and every other which places the Roman Catholic on a lower platform than his Protestant fellow subject,"-believe me if you send re­presentatives into Parliament determined to act after the fashion some twenty-live of us have acted already, they will return to you after another session able to tell you they have succeeded in repealing this Act, and prevented the passage of any other measures restrictive of your religious independence.

At meetings of the Tenant League Mr. Keogh was no less emphatic in declaring his fealty to the Tenant cause. On at least two occasions he publicly swore that, no matter what party might be in power, he would be no friend or supporter of any government until a Tenant Right Bill, equal at least to that introduced by Mr. Sharman Crawford, should be passed into law, and the Titles Act repealed. The man was clever, courageous, unprincipled. He was thus noisy and flambuoyant because he knew that his integrity was doubted, and that his character as an impecunious and unscrupulous political adventurer was correctly appraised by many

close observers. He was conscious of his talents ; he had brains to sell, and he meant to make market of them on the first opportunity.

His chance came when, in December, 1852, the Tory goverrnent of Lord Derby was defeated in the House of Commons, and Lord Aberdeen took office with a Coalition Ministry. The next piece of news that reached the ears of the Irish people was that the leaders of the so-called " Irish Brigade," the champions of the Tenant cause, the fulminators of reverberating thunder against the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, had gone over to the Government, jumping delightedly at the places and the pay that had been offered them. William Keogh was appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland ; John Sadleir was made Junior Lord of the Treasury; Edmond O'Flaherty got the post of Chief Commissioner of Income-tax.

Honest men were grieved and shocked by this treachery. The Nation was almost savage in its denun­ciation of the traitors. Mr. Duffy wrote as though his heart would break. But one chance of punishing the knaves, and defeating this plot of the government for the disruption of the League, yet remained. It was necessary for the place-takers, on their acceptance of office, to get re-elected to Parliament; and now if the constituents of those unfaithful members would only reject them at the polls the situation, to some extent, would be saved. Unfortunately what happened was very different, " At every election," writes Mr. Duffy in his " Four Years of Irish History," " dishonest candi­dates were preferred by the people, and the worst of them, John Sadleir and William Keogh, were able to present themselves to their supporters, like Richard III., leaning on two bishops." Their lordships had been induced to believe that those perfidious politicians could render better service to Catholic interests while

holding government offices than they could while figuring as " agitators " on platforms. Not all the bishops, however, were of that way of thinking; some of them, notably Dr. MacHale, Archbishop of Tuarn, and the Bishops of Meath and Killala, published strong letters in condemnation of the place-takers. But the harm was done ; a great scandal had been perpetrated, and a blow had been given to political action of the constitutional order, the evil effects of which have not yet passed away.

CHAPTER V

The question of " Priests in Politics."-A Fierce Controversy.- Action of Archbishop Cullen.-The Popular Leaders stand up for the rights of the Clergy.

HE Tenant League did not long survive the Sadleir and Keogh treachery. " The scambling and unquiet time did push it out of further question." The unfriendly-not to say hostile -feeling between the leaders of the League and those of the Catholic Defence Association tended to paralyse political action. The Association bishops disapproved of the speeches of the League priests, which they con­sidered too violent, and not conducive to the obtaining of concessions from the government. Several of the more energetic of the clerical tenant-righters were admonished to abstain from attending political meetings ; others were penalised by removal from the spheres of their activity to remote, poor, and inert parishes. Archbishop Cullen, Papal Legate, and afterwards Cardinal, who had been transferred from Armagh to Dublin, enforced this policy of suppression with a strong hand. The League party, with Mr. Duffy, Mr. George Henry Moore, and Frederick Lucas in the front, stood up bravely for their clerical friends; they argued, they remonstrated, they pro­tested-but all to little purpose. They sent Mr. Lucas as a delegate to Rome to lay the case before the Holy Father, Pope Pius IX. ; but in an appeal of that kind progress is naturally, if not necessarily, slow. Mr. Lucas returned empty-handed. In a matter so nearly con­cerned with ecclesiastical discipline the Papal Legate was too strong for the Irish politicians. Most of the League priests were put to silence, and the organization

so discouraged and enfeebled, dwindled away and died. The advisability or otherwise of the participation- or, as some would call it, the interference-of the Irish priests in Irish politics has long been a vexed question. It has come to the front again and again, and has been hotly contested. After the collapse of the '48 Movement, some writers and speech-makers charged the priests with having held back the people. But did they hold them back ? A Protestant writer, the Rev. W. A. O'Connor, B.A., in his " History of the Irish People,"* gives the following account of their behaviour :-

The conduct of the clergy has been variously represented. The fact is, that they stood aside for a time and let things take their course ; but when they saw that course leading to inevitable ruin, they came to the rescue of their flocks. They could not be expected to take the initiative, but they gave ample opportunity to others. Had the people risen, the priests would not have deserted them.

Mr. Duffy, well qualified to give a weighty opinion on the subject, thus writes in his " Four Years of Irish History " :--

There was bitter wrath among the clubs at the opposition the priests had offered to the movement. They had ruined the insurrection, it was said; but . . . priests who opposed it because they were convinced it had no chance of success only did their duty.

At a great demonstration held in Thurles, in December, 1854, Mr. G. H. Moore, M.P., said :-

Amidst all their wrongs the Irish people have hitherto held fast to one sacred right which, though often menaced, has never been betrayed-their right to that which has been their sword and shield in doubt, in trouble, and in danger ; their right to that one social blessing that has brightened their past and cheers their future history ; their right to that leadership
* Heywood, Manchester, 1887.

Speaking at a banquet which was held at the close of the meeting, Mr. Duffy said :-

Let laymen understand this, that our national cause has prospered in exact proportion to the interest taken in it by the priesthood. . . I have seen the clergy of many countries in Europe, and I believe it is an indubitable fact that where they take the largest interest in the secular affairs of the people the feeling religion is most genuine and intense.

I have made the foregoing quotations to register the tact that the popular leaders of that time had no sympathy with the cry of " no priests in politics " which is sometimes raised by men who claim to be patriots of a very advanced and enlightened type. But The Nation party never held that the clergy should be made the ruling power in the political field of action ; they knew that priests and bishops, like other people, could make mistakes in that domain; but rightly regarding the assistance of their sacred order as invaluable m the struggle for Irish rights, they wisely sought to retain it for the country.

The other side of the question was advocated chiefly -and not unskilfully-in the Dublin Weekly Telegraph, a paper started for his own personal purposes by Mr. John Sadleir, M.P., and maintained by him up to the day of his self-inflicted death, out of the plundered

money of the Tipperary Bank. From one of a series of letters signed " A priest of the Diocese of Dublin," which appeared in its columns in 1856, I take the following passage :-

The public meeting, with all its thrilling excitement, is not the place for the priest, the minister of. peace. The tricks and schemes and manoeuvres of the electioneering contest have nothing in common with the simple uprightness of the Ambassador of Truth. The hustings and the polling booth are very awkward substitutes for the pulpit and the confessional; the intemperate orgies, and the still more intemperate speeches of the public dinner, can have no charms for the truly sacerdotal heart, which seeks its pure enjoyment in nobler occupations, and delights to render services to humanity in a manner such as God, the Church, and conscience will approve. It is always a calamity to tear away the priest from his own proper functions-to make him a man of the world-to mix him up with the uncharitable disputes of the world-to convert him into a politician whose mind is engrossed with the contentions of the world, instead of leaving him in his congenial retirement under the peaceful shadow of the sanctuary, there to discharge, in behalf of the world, the holy offices of his Ministry of Reconciliation.

There was much force in those observations; but the special circumstances of the Irish people were held by many to warrant a modification of such rules and principles. A sound view of the case, to my thinking, was put in an article of The Nation, of which the following is a portion :-

We every day hear it said, according as it suits the partial views of particular parties, that such and such a class of persons, priests especially, should take no part in politics, their part being pure morality and religion. ... It appears to us plain that the great evils, the positive ruin with which politicians have at various times swept the surface of society, often over­whelmed and destroyed it, sprung generally from the extradition of religious belief, and the want of well-directed moral sentiment. We cannot escape the conviction that to eliminate from practical politics the wholesome guidance or assistance of practical

moralists, priests especially, is to hand over society to its natural enemies, and to intercept the influences of religion in those high departments where, Heaven knows, it is most needed. . . . We say that nowhere, to our mind, is religion called upon to exercise its functions so faithfully, so fearlessly, Und so inces­santly as in the domain of politics ; and as a corollary we add that it is from the inadequate application of religious principles that this department of life has become a howling wilderness, a scandal to the weak, and an universal disgrace.

It will be observed that throughout those contro­versies the clergy were treated on all sides, with the respect due to them. No offensive language was sped against them from any quarter in the alleged interest of Irish nationality.

OR some years after the exile of the '48 men, warlike designs were apparently abandoned ; but the revolutionary sentiment did. not die-Nothing had happened to change the minds of the people. England's mode of dealing with the famine did not commend itself to their appro­bation ; the tremendous emigration that then set in, taking away the flower of the population, had no loyalising influence on their hearts; no legislative reforms had been granted ; the power of Irish land­lordism was unbroken; the Parliamentary franchise was a fraud ; the " representation " that came of it was largely rotten. Constitutional agitation was dis­credited ; English public opinion, as represented in the press, was offensive to the Irish people ; and there was no promise of a better state of things. Those conditions and circumstances taught no lesson of love for the British Government, and ere long there grew up amongst earnest Irishmen on both sides of the Atlantic, the idea that a. new movement to bring about an armed struggle for Irish independence should be started, the organisation to be worked this time on the secret system. The project was readily taken up by young men in Dublin, Cork, and other places, but developed most quickly in the formerly famine-stricken districts of Skibbereen, Bantry. and Kenmare. The master-spirit of the movement in those parts was the man who some years before had placed the remains of

the poor famished Jillen Andy in her coffinless grave- Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa.

" Rossa," as he was popularly called, was one of the founders of the Phoenix conspiracy in the South, after­wards merged in the Fenian organisation. How it originated he tells in his volume of " Recollections " :-

I remember when Gavan Duffy left Ireland, I think it was in 1854. . . . Two years after the time I am speaking of, a number of young men in Skibbereen, realising the sad state of things, came together and started the Phoenix National and Literary Society. I think that Society was started in 1856. I remember the night we met to give it a name. Some proposed that it be called the " Emmet Monument Association," others proposed other names. I proposed that it be called the " Phoenix National and Literary Society "-the word " Phoenix " signi­fying that the Irish cause was again to rise from the ashes of our martyred nationality. My resolution was carried, and that is how the word " Phoenix " comes into Irish national history.

From the outset this society felt more interested in military than in literary studies; its inclination in that direction was confirmed under the following circumstances :-

James Stephens came to Skibbereen one day in the summer of 1858. He had a letter of introduction from James O'Mahony, of Bandon, to Donal Oge-one of our members. He initiated Donal Oge (Dan McCartie) into the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood. Donal Oge initiated me the next day; I initiated Patrick J. Downing and Morty Moynahan the follow­ing day ; and so the good cause spread.

"In two or three months," writes Rossa, "we had three or four baronies of the South-west of Cork organized. We had drillings at night in the woods and on the hillsides." In his " Prison Life " Rossa gives an amusing account of some of the adventures of " the boys" while out for those nocturnal military exer­cises :--

Before the autumn months had passed away we had the whole

district of country in a blaze. In October we had a drill-master sent to us from Dublin ; he had served a period in the American army, and well and truly he did his work amongst us, despite all the police watchings and huntings. One night we were on a mountain-side, another night in the midst of a wood, another in a fairy fort, and another in a cellar. We had outposts on every occasion, who signalled to us of any approaching danger ; in the darkness of the nights many things were signalled as dangers that were quite harmless, and we had many adventures in scattering which were subjects for amusement at the next meeting. In Loriga wood one evening, the sentry gave us the signal to scatter, and we ran in the direction opposite to that from which we apprehended the danger. I was the second man ; he who was before me got up on a ditch and made a leap to cross a large dyke at the other side of it, but slipped, and didn't get across clear. As he lay at the other side I leaped upon him, the next man leaped upon me, and before a minnte nine or ten of us were sprawling in the dyke.*

Some friends of the young men now began to feel concerned for their safety, and endeavours were privately made to dissuade them from the enterprise on which they had entered, or, at all events, from conducting it on the lines they had so far adopted. But they would not listen to such counsels. They were able to argue in support of their own views, and in their own opinion to confute every argument urged against them. And it must be remembered for them that a popular uprising against the armed forces of the Crown did not in their time look so utterly hopeless an adventure as it would be now, when military armaments are so much more scientific and costly than they were at that period. But there were other difficulties in their way, of which the promoters of the Phoenix movement did not take due account. They should have known that their oath-bound conspiracy would surely be condemned by the Catholic clergy; and they should have borne

* What are called "ditches " in England are called " dykes " in many parts of Ireland.

in mind that, judging from all previous experience in Irish political movements-as well as the history of political plots in other countries-the Government would have spies and informers in their midst who would " give them away" whenever the authorities might choose to proceed against them. But none of those considerations appeared to weigh with the young patriots of Cork and Kerry.

The inevitable thing occurred. The priests of Kenmare, Baritry and Skibbereen in sermons from their altars (in the first week of October, 1858) referred to the Phoenix Society and warned their flocks against having anything to do with it. Father John O'Sullivan, P.P. of Kenmare, spoke on the subject at Mass, on Sunday, October 3, and on the next day sent copies of the oath to the Chief Secretary, Lord Naas, at Dublin Castle, with a view to having an early stop put to a movement which he thought likely to get a good many of his parishioners into trouble. Paragraphs relating to the organisation began to appear in the Press. The first of the national papers to make editorial reference to it was the Dublin Irishman, then edited by Mr. Denis Holland. In its issue dated 9th of October, 1858, replying to a correspondent who had complained of the conduct of the Parish Priest of Kenmare, Mr. Holland said :-

We do not quite understand the letter of " Kenmare." If there be any absurd Secret Society existing in his parish, the Priest is quite right in warning his people to shun it. Those societies are most frequently organised by Castle spies and informers of the Jemmy O'Brien class, who make a trade in the blood of honest, simple, credulous men. We earnestly join our advice to that of the Priest, and implore the peasantry to shun those treacherous midnight associations. Believe us, that is not the way in which Irish independence is to be worked out.

The Dublin Evening Mail, in its number for October

27th, had the following communication from Bantry, signed " A Subscriber " :-

I am sorry to inform you that seditious societies have been discovered in this as well as in other places in the West of the County of Cork They are also creeping inland, and have made some progress in the neighbouring County of Kerry. A strange peculiarity pervades this movement. The members of this Society bind themselves not to divulge their plans to the priests, and when spoken against from the altar they denounce the priests as despots as bad as the rest of their tyrants. They are supposed to derive inspiration from America, and money also. They declare their intention to rise in arms whenever there may be any difference with France or America. The Government is, I believe, aware of these facts.

On October 30th, 1858-nearly a month after the earliest references to these matters had appeared in print-the Nation published an article on the subject. The editor had become aware that it was being whispered to some of the Phoenix recruits not only that he approved of the movement, but that he was a member of the organisation ; he had also learned on good authority that the names of its members were listed at the Castle, and that the Government were only waiting to have a fuller net. before making a haul out of the Society. Under these circumstances, he deemed it his duty to express his own views of the situation and to warn his young countrymen of a peril of which they appeared to be unconscious. The article was written in a friendly spirit, couched in general terms, and inspired by the most patriotic motives. No one misunderstood it at the time, but years afterwards its nature was grossly misrepresented by some organs of the " extreme" party especially by the Irishman, then owned by that pure-souled patriot, Mr. Richard Pigott, and in con­sequence much annoyance was experienced by Mr. Sullivan during some years of his life.

When the enrolment of recruits for the Phoenix

About four o'clock on the morning of the 5th of December (1858), I was roused out of bed, and I found my house sur­rounded by police. I was taken to the station, and there I met some twenty others of my acquaintance. Many of them had left my house only a few hours before, for we were sitting up doing the honours to one of our company who was leaving town next morning; and as we met in the police barrack, we commenced joking at the ominous appropriateness of the last song sung by Mortimer Moynahan :-

Almost immediately on learning of the arrests, Father O'Sullivan wrote to the Chief Secretary requesting him to deal leniently with the youths. " I beg to assure your lordship," he said, " that since the 3rd of

· This was a little song of mine, published in the Nation of December 27th, 1856. It was written to an American air known as " The Lone Starry Hours." When the " Phoenix boys " were lodged in Cork jail and had their prison tasks set out for them, one of the party whispered to another : " Well, this is a change. Yesterday our tune was " The Lone Starry Hours ; " to-day it is " Oakum to me when daylight sets."

October-the Sunday on which I first denounced this Society-not one single person has joined it. I make bold to ask your lordship to intercede with his Excellency for the liberation of those foolish boys-for boys they are," The request was not complied with, A. M. Sullivan had a better conception of what was likely to be serviceable to the prisoners-amongst whom, by the way, were no fewer than eight Sullivans. He knew they needed to have a first-class legal defence, and set to work to procure it for them. He published in the Nation an appeal for a " Fair Trial Fund," and the call produced a generous response. A committee was formed in Cork to take charge of the case ; a strong bar was retained for the accused; for their solicitor they had the popluar Mr. McCarthy Downing of Skibbereen, afterwards M.P. for Cork County; their counsel included Thomas O'Hagan, Q.C., afterwards Lord Chancellor of Ireland ; Edward Sullivan, Q.C., also in later years Lord Chancellor of Ireland ; John O'Hagan, Q.C., a poet of the Nation, afterwards Land Commissioner ; and Mr. John Edward Pigot, a son of Chief Baron Pigot, afterwards for a time editor and proprietor of the Irishman-but no relation to Richard Pigott, who subsequently filled that position.

The trials commenced at the Kerry Assizes on March 14th,, 1859. One of the accused was a school-teacher named Daniel O'Sullivan-and the '' approver " who stepped on. the table to give evidence against him and his companions was a full namesake and possibly a kinsman of his own. This informer, known in the locality as " O'Sullivan Goula," a process-server by occupation, gave, in his sworn depositions, an account of how he was induced by an acquaintance to join the Society :-

secret to tell me; I went with him, and after having some drink he said he could not tell me without swearing me. . . . I at first hesitated to take the oath of being a member; but when he told me that other respectable people that I knew- the editor of the Nation, Alexander Sullivan, and such people- were members, I agreed to become a member, when he again handed me the book and swore me to the following oath.*

The trial proved abortive ; the jury disagreed and were discharged ; the prisoners were put back ; the court was adjourned for about a fortnight, and away went the judges and the Crown lawyers to open the assizes at Cork, where the Skibbereen and Bantry men were awaiting trial. They were not tried, however, at that time. At the opening of the proceedings the Attorney-General asked that the cases should be post­poned to the next assizes, and the court acceded to his application. Five of the accused, including the master­spirit of the movement, O'Donovan Rossa, were kept in custody; the remainder were released on bail.

On March 30th, 1859, the new trial of the Phoenix-men was commenced at Tralee. The three put forward to start with were Daniel O'Sullivan (the schoolmaster), Florence O'Sullivan, and J. D. Sullivan.

The Crown lawyers packed the jury effectively. Daniel O'Sullivan, whose case was to be taken first, seeing that his conviction was a foregone conclusion, refused to be a party to the proceeding, instructed his counsel to retire from the case and let the Government take its course. This having been done, the Crown prosecutors went on as if nothing had happened, brought up their informer, tendered their evidence, and submitted the case to the jury, who had no difficulty in finding a verdict of " guilty." The Solicitor-General having announced that the other prisoners would not be tried at that assizes, Baron Greene proceeded to
* Copied from the printed deposition of the witness, sworn 30th November, 1858.

solemnly lecture the convicted man, and to pass on him a sentence of Ten Years' Penal Servitude.

The scandalous packing of the jury in this case evoked a storm of indignation throughout the country. Loyalists as well as Nationalists felt bound to protest against it. A great meeting was held in Tralee, attended by local gentlemen of position and of various creeds, at which the following resolution was proposed by The O'Donoghue, M.P. for Tipperary, and passed unani­mously :-

That with a view of restoring confidence in trial by jury in this country a petition be presented to both Houses of Parlia­ment, praying that the legislature may, in its wisdom, adopt such measures as will prevent a recurrence of the evil practices complained of.

The national journals inveighed vehemently against the action of the Government; some of the English journals also denounced it; the Morning Star said :-

The mode in which these trials have been conducted is a disgrace to English Law. . . . To call the proceeding a trial would be a mockery. . . . Once for all, if the Roman Catholics of Ireland are to be stigmatised as perjurers by pro­fession, and excluded from the constitutional right of sharing in the administration as jurors, let it be so stated, and let Catholic Ireland be governed by the Protestant executive as a conquered people.

The Government were .somewhat impressed by those demonstrations, and when the time came for proceeding against the Cork prisoners-who had then been in jail for about eight months-they offered to compromise the matter. They gave it to be understood that if the prisoners would plead guilty, not only would they be set at liberty under easy conditions, but their comrade O'Sullivan, then in penal servitude, would soon be liberated. The prisoners accepted those terms, and on the 26th of July, 1859, Rossa and his companions were free men again.

OSSA'S eight months' experience of Cork jail had no effect in chastening his spirit. He came out of that establishment as light-hearted, undaunted, and incautious as he went in. He speedily resumed his old line of operations in Skibbereen. He tells us :-

I recommenced my pursuits, political and commercial, a few inonths after my release from prison, and I found it much more difficult to be successful in the legal than in the illegal one.

In fact the broken threads of the conspiracy were being industriously re-knit in Ireland and America.One is remnided of Moore's lines: -

Although Rossa's first tussle with the Government did not cool his ardour in the Irish cause, one may Wonder that it did not teach him to be somewhat less demonstrative while engaged in " spinning the bright tissue again." What effect it had in that direction may be judged from his own account of his proceedings:

The authorities had frightened the simple portion of the community very much by our arrests, and I found the people under the impression that if any kind of military weapon was

found with them they would be sent to jail. It was hard to disabuse them of this, and 1 took a practical method of doing it.

I was in possession of an Enfield rifle and bayonet, a sword, and an old croppy pike, with a hook and a hatchet on it, for­midable enough to frighten any coward, and these I hung in a conspicuous part of my shop ; yet this would not satisfy some that I could keep these articles with impunity, and I had many a wise head giving me advice. . . . The arms remained in their place, and on fair days and market days it was amusing to see young peasants bringing in their companions to see the sight. "peuc ! peuc!" (Look! look!) would be their first exclamation on entering the shop ; and never did artist survey a work of art more composedly than would some of those boys, leaning on their elbows over the counter, admire the treasured weapons they longed to use one day in defence of the cause of fatherland.

My pikes were doing great mischief in the community, it seems, and rumours were going around that others were getting pikes too. Tim Duggan, whom I spoke of as being in Cork jail, was employed in my shop. Tim should always be at some mischief, and taking down the pikes one day to take some of the rust off them, no place would satisfy him to sit burnishing them but outside the door. This he did to annoy a very officious sergeant of police named Brosnahan, who was on duty outside the store. Next clay I was sent for by my friend McCarthy Downing, who was Chairman of the Town Commis­sioners, and a magistrate of the town. He told me that the magistrates were after having a meeting and had a long talk about what had occurred the day before. Brosnahan represented that not alone was Tim Duggan cleaning the pikes, but showing the people how they could be used with effect-what beautiful things they were to frighten exterminating landlords and all other tools of tyranny. Mr. Downing asked me if I would deliver up the arms, and I said certainly not ; the law allowed me to hold such things, and hold them I would until the district was proclaimed

" Now," added he, " for peace sake I ask you, as a personal favour, to give them up to me. I will keep them for you in my own house, and I pledge you my word that when you want them I will give them to you." " Well," I replied, " as you make so serious a matter of it, you can have them."

I went home, put my pike on my shoulder, and gave another to William McCarthy. It was a market day, and both of us walked through the town and showed the people we could carry

arms; so that we made the act of surrender as glorious as possible to our cause, and as disagreeable as it could be to the stipendiaries of.England.

In such action there was plenty of moral courage- and an element of humour. Of course, as the country was not then under proclamation, it was lawful for Rossa to have the arms and for Tim Duggan to burnish them under the eyes of the officious sergeant Brosnahan ; but a question of prudence arose in the case ; -it did not appear to weigh heavily on the minds of the young men; they chose their own course, they cheerily took the risks and faced the consequences.

By this time the Irish revolutionary parties in America had " pulled themselves together " and the " Fenian " organisation was founded* The name was well chosen ; it had a historic flavour, having been that of a military brotherhood in ancient Ireland, renowned for chivalry and valour, praised and pane­gyrised by all the bards of Erin. The title was probably suggested by John O'Mahony, a good Gaelic scholar, well versed in the olden records of his country, and whose mind dwelt very much in the period " ere Norman foot had dared pollute her independent shore." He became "Head Centre" of the Association in America; his first lieutenant, appointed to lead the movement in Ireland, was Mr. James Stephens, a young man said to have been implicated in the attempted rising in '48. In a hopeful and resolute spirit those men, with a number of equally earnest confreres, entered on the task of reconstructing a fighting force in Ireland, saying, perhaps, to themselves as said the prophet of old, " The bricks have fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones ; the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars." The Phoenix men became Fenians, and straightway applied themselves to the congenial labour of popularising the

new scheme of patriotic action. In Cork and Dublin it caught on quickly ; thence it spread to nearly all the leading towns of the whole country. Large numbers of respectable young men-mechanics, clerks, shop-assistants, with a sprinkling of medical and law students, and, later on, farmers' sons and men of the labouring class-joined the ranks. In the course of two or three years the Society had assumed large proportions; it had sympathisers all over the British empire; a numerous membership in the United States; and friends in many other parts of the world; so that -for a time-its adherents might have parodied the British boast and said that the sun never set on the Fenian Brotherhood, Conscious of this great development of strength, the leaders of the movement became over-confident, incautious, and intolerant of svery form of patriotic thought and action except their own. Any criticism of their projects or methods coming from men who claimed to be Nationalists, they treated as treason to Ireland ; any advocates of the [rish cause who declined to go the whole way with them they satirised and denounced as mock patriots, political frauds, shams, and humbugs. By way of proving their case they referred to Sadleir and Keogh, and other noisy Parliamentarians who, while professing eternal fidelity to the national cause, intrigued to obtain place and pay from the government and clutched them as soon as they got the chance. But the physical force men might have known that every party has its ragged edges, its weak brethren, and bad members. They had many in their own ranks. Corydon and Nagle were at least as vile characters as Sadleir and Keogh. Possibly to some minds it may seem a debat­able question which would be the more unpleasant experience-to find one's self deceived by dishonest members of Parliament, or sent to penal servitude

The Fenian humorists were wont to make fun out of the military style of speech affected by the Parliamentary men when referring to their operations " on the floor of the House" Their phraseology would suggest the idea of " bloody wars “; it would almost conjure up visions of Benburb, Fontenoy, Austerlitz, and Waterloo, also of the Nelsonic combats of Trafalgar and The Nile. Dr. John Charles Waters, a clever contributor to The Nation and other national journals, irreverently jeered at their bombast in some amusing verses, the first of which went thus :-

Eureka, boys ! the word is Greek;
" Hurroo," I think, is the right translation-
Some Sunday in the middle of the week
We'll win the rights of the Irish nation.
We'll riddle the Government through and through,
We'll smash their planks and shiver their timbers-
-Och, won't we leather them black and blue
With thirty thundering Irish mimbers !
Tearing mimbers,
Swearing mimbers,
Thirty thundering Irish mimbers!

On this squib the comment of one of the constitution­alists was that there was another class of " swearing members,” who did not seem to be doing any better for Ireland.

With the Catholic clergy the relations of the war party grew more strained and unpleasant day after day. The priests, indeed, had no choice but to condemn a secret oath-bound association; the decrees of the Church and the instructions of their bishops made it incumbent on them to do so ; but the Fenian leaders refused to accept what they called "priestly dictation," and spoke bitterly of the clergy for referring to the subject from their altars. By an

absurd system of reasoning they sought to make out that the priests were declaring it to be a sin " to love Ireland," and then they argued that as it certainly was no sin to love one's country, no case of conscience could properly arise, and no one was under any obliga­tion to say anything on the subject of Fenianism to his confessor, or to accept any admonitions he might deliver in relation to it. They got some of the young lads to believe them. Rossa tells the following illus­trative story: -

The first check we met was from the Catholic clergy. Our men came to us telling that they were driven away from the confessionals, and would not get absolution unless they gave up the oath. We asked them did they think they committed a sin in taking an oath to fight for their country's freedom, and when they said they did not, we told them to tell the priests that they came to confess their sins and not their virtues, and to ask the priests if they had sworn to fight for England against Ireland, would they not get absolution? The priests were getting vexed with us, and we were getting vexed with the priests. The most amusing stories were afloat of how simple country boys argued with their clergy on the subject of fighting for Ireland. A pastor one day told his penitent that the Society was illegal, when the penitent softened his confessor's heart to give him absolution by exclaiming: " Yerra, father, what do I care about their illegal? I care more about my sowl."

Thenceforward the relations between the Fenians and the clergy developed into open war. Mr. John O'Leary, in his " Recollections of Fenianism," says: -

I go on, with as little of the dryasdustian spirit as I can help, to give the reader some notion of the war we waged against the priests some thirty years ago; or perhaps I should say of the war the priests waged against us; a war the like of which is being fought over again before my eyes as I write, and which I fear will have to be fought over and over again, before Irishmen can possess their souls in peace or their bodies in safety. *

* This was a reference to the contentions that arose out of the Parnell divorce case in 1890,

The Fenian party had for their war organ at this time Mr. Denis Holland's Irishman, It did not spare itself-or spare anyone else-in their service. It puffed the promoters, defended their principles, and assailed the opponents of their policy with much coarse vigour. But after some time the idea occurred to Mr. James Stephens, and was approved by his chief officers, that they had better have a paper of their own. They "believed they had in their inner circle the right men for the work, an abundance of literary talent, and a directing head equal to any requirement that might be put upon it. Many of the brethren doubted the wisdom of setting up a weekly newspaper as an official organ of a nominally secret society; but they yielded to the arguments pressed upon them by Mr. Stephens, who represented that in addition to the impetus the move­ment would receive from the specially suitable literature of the new journal, there would be the further advantage that it could not fail to bring in a handsome profit to the Society. As funds were much needed, that con­sideration settled the question, and the publication of a paper, to be called The Irish People, was decided on.

For the Fenian party this was a calamitous decision, The Irish People ruined the Fenian movement. Its writings alarmed and shocked not merely " the priests," but multitudes of Catholics of every station in life; it supplied the Government with a mass of evidence which was used with deadly effect in the prosecution of the Fenian leaders-and it never paid.

One of the first things to be done for the bringing put of the paper was the procurement of premises to serve as editorial and publishing offices. Of all places in Dublin, a shop-fronted house, in a busy street, within a stone-throw of Dublin Castle, where government officials, soldiers, and police are continually moving about, was chosen for the central bureau of the

conspiracy. Then came the selection of a staff for the literary and commercial working of the journal. For the position of editor-in-chief, Mr. John O'Leary was selected; for associate editors he had Mr. Thomas Clarke Luby and Mr. C. J. Kickham, all three being capable literary men, thoroughly devoted to the cause. To the position of manager, Mr. O'Donovan Rossa was appointed.

On November 28th, 1863, the first number of this portentous newspaper was issued. Mr. Stephens had reserved to himself the honour of writing its first leading article. And an extraordinary production it was, quaintly entitled, " Isle-Race-and Doom." To the eagerly expectant brotherhood the effusion was a disappointment, A correspondent, who was unaware of the authorship, wrote to a member of the staff, com­ plaining that it was " all dashes, commas, and bosh." A writer who had an inside knowledge of the working of the whole concern, published in the Irishman, in 1874, a series of papers entitled " Fenianism Photo­ graphed," in which he gave the following account of the labour expended by Mr. Stephens on this rambling and disjointed composition: -

The time and labour which Stephens spent upon the article which was to establish his fame would scarcely be credited by anyone unacquainted with the facts. It is no exaggeration to state that he occupied a fortnight in preparing his materials before he sat down to the actual work of composition. He read De Quincy for the opium-eater's inspirations; he bought Mrs. Hall's Sketches of Irish scenery for pictures of Killarney and the Golden Vale of Tipperary ; and he rummaged all his own stock of poetical knowledge for fancy touches of grace and ornament. The day before going to press came, and found all the leaders in hands. Stephens was not yet ready. He stayed up that night writing, and he left orders with one of the men employed at the office to be at his lodgings, in Lower Mount Street, at six o'clock in the morning. Mistaking the hour, the man rose at three o'clock, and hurried to the

'* Captain's " quarters in time to find that the long incubation had not yet brought forth the second page of manuscript. Several sheets had been written and destroyed in succession, and the morning waxed bright before the end had come.

Two more articles from the pen of Mr. Stephens were as much as Messrs. O'Leary and Luby were able to stand. After the third he dropped out of the editorial columns of the Irish People, and devoted himself to the more congenial task of supervising and directing the work of the organisation. Messrs. O'Leary, Luby, and Kickham then took command of the paper, in Which they boldly advocated the insurrectionary idea, ridiculed and denounced constitutional agitation, and blazed away vigorously at everybody and everything they regarded as standing in the way of the Fenian movement.

HE greatest of the obstacles confronting them, the Fenian leaders held to be the political power and influence of the Catholic clergy. That power they resolved to combat, and to conquer if they could. Mr. O'Leary, in his " Recollections," quotes from an article of the Irish People, which he attributes to Mr. Kickham, the following passage: -

We saw from the first ecclesiastical authority In temporal affairs should be shivered to atoms before we could advance a single step towards the liberation of our suffering country. Yet shallow fools and designing knaves wonder why we " attack the priests."

Other quotations of a like kind are given by Mr. O'Leary from the writings of Mr. Kickham. Indeed he intimates that the working of what he calls the " anti-clerical campaign," was left almost entirely in the hands of that gentleman. " I have now," he says, " gone a long way with Kickham in his anti-clerical campaign; " and again, " As I have said before, we allowed Kickham, as a good Catholic, to tackle the priests," - curious sayings, having in them an element of frankness at all events. Until the publication of Mr. O'Leary's " Recollections," few knew anything of the authorship of those articles, and of other remarkable contributions to the Irish People; but in that work it is stated that the correspondent signing himself " Hugo del Monte,"

Simultaneously with those journalistic attacks, all the con­fessional boxes in Dublin-I suppose more or less those all over Ireland-were shut in the faces of all Fenians. Some of our men, not believing their oath a sin, would say nothing about their Fenianism to the priests. But these would officiously ask them were they members of our body, and finding they were, would refuse to give them absolution. In short, that commodity* could hardly be procured by a Fenian for love or money, save (it is only just that I should mention it) from the Jesuits; at least so I have been informed. . , . Stephens once told me of some man or other who went direct to Cullen himself. When he had stated that he was a Fenian, the Archbishop at once exclaimed: " You are excommunicated." But the man being resolute, and showing a determination to argue the point, Cullen speedily toned clown and asked : " Don't you think it a sin ? " " No, certainly not," replied the man. " Then go to Father so-and-so, and say I sent you," replied the old Kalmuck fox.

In a footnote to the foregoing passage, Mr. O'Leary explains :-" The allusion to the Kalmuck fox, who to my mind had more of the bull-dog than the fox in his nature, has reference to the strongly marked Mongolian type of Dr. Cullen's face, which was quite that of a Chinaman, save for the absence of obliquity in the eyes." When the Archbishop of Dublin could be thus
* "Commodity " !

spoken of by leading members of the Fenian party, it is easy to imagine how the clergy in general were dealt with by the rank and file. Here is a specimen from, the correspondence of The Irish People of November 26th, 1864 ; it refers to a sermon delivered by a Father Michael Burke in a Catholic Church in Clonmel :-

Father Mick sthutthered so much in his rage that a young ruffian who I'm shure was a Fenian, or a Fenian's son, an' was kneeling just beside me, wid his head stuck betune the railins, said, " Arrah isn't it a wonder he wouldn't sing it out, 'till we now what he's sayiri."

" Hould your tongue, you young scamp," says I, ." or I'll knock your head against the rail."

"Maybe you wouldn't, thin," says the young ruffian, "nor a, better man than you. Wouldn't I want to know 'bout the Fenians as well as you ? "

I said no thin' more to this chap, but listened to the sarmon. Well, sir, I never did see a man half so mad as Father Mick. Why he was like a bull in a pound. . . . Well, he had so much to say about the Fenians an' such a short time to say it, that half his words made a short cut through his nose. The grate big words entirely used to stop in th' apple of his throat, thrusting his two eyes outside his head, filling his mouth wid froth, which betune haycups and sthutthers, he churned into a bairreac abuse of the Fenians an' The Irish People. . . ., . . But as I'm in a hurry now, Mr. Editor, I must put off telling all I have to say 'bout a Father Burke and usury, and Barrister Howley, and the Tipperary sessions. One thing I know you'll be sorry to hear of, an' that is, that Father Mick is no longer a fat, sleek, little Friar, for th 'other Sunday he put his hand on his belly an' declared to the congregation that he didn't fill it rightly since he left Clonmel.

Other contributions to the correspondence columns of the same journal, though not so coarse, were not less objectionable. Some bad ones came from the pen of " De 1'Abbaye." In one of them, referring to a sermon delivered by a Father McNamara in Cork, he reports the priest as having said :-" To whom but the drunkard is the secret oath administered ? Who are the re-

volutionists but the drunkards ?" Whereupon " De 1'Abbaye " proceeds to say: -

When on that solemn occasion Father McNamara uttered those words from the pulpit he knew as well as I that he was conveying to his hearers what was untrue. ... I wonder is he a Maynooth man? . . . . . I am sure Father McNamara estimated far below its value the intelligence of those he addressed . . .. He did not hear the people say to each other-" Does Father McNamara imagine we don't know he has told us two big lies? What on earth does he mean by telling us those lies? What does he get by it? "-" Arrah don't you know it was to please the bishop; sure he was behind the altar all the time."

I fancy that amongst the readers of the Irish People there must have been some who were not charmed with De 1'Abbaye's story of a priest, in the pulpit, deliberately telling " two big lies " to -please the Bishop, who stood listening " behind the altar! " In another letter the same correspondent wrote: -

If the present attitude of the bishops and priests is to be persevered in, the consequences could not but be injurious to the faith and religion of the people, but the people have it in their power quickly and finally to put a stop to their mad folly. To such priests as Fathers Mawe and Collins they should say: " If you are resolved to persist in your course of conduct, hateful to us and inconsistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church, we must dispense with your ministry-we will have none of you."

Further, " De 1'Abbaye " solemnly warned the Bishops and priests of the harm that might come to religion, in case of a successful revolution in Ireland, if they should continue hostile to the movement; " but," he asked, " on whom would rest the responsibility of any evil results? Would it not be on those who would have created antagonism between the church and the people, by proclaiming it a sin to think or speak of making Ireland free? Away then with preachers of such

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heretical doctrine." Mr. O'Leary quotes Mr. Kickham as having made a like allegation in the following terms: - " When the priests turn the altar into a platform, when it is pronounced a ' mortal sin ' to read the Irish People, a ' mortal sin ' even to wish that Ireland should be free," &c. It is needless to say that no priest ever proclaimed it a sin " to think or speak of making Ireland free," or a mortal sin " even to wish that Ireland should be free." The Irish priests have ever held that within the bounds of prudence and morality, patriotism is a virtue. It is with regard to the methods employed for giving effect to that patriotism that ecclesiastical interference is sometimes called for, and made a duty. In the autumn of 1865 Fenianism was looking some­what formidable, both in Ireland and America. It was at all events very clamorous and minatory. A feeling got abroad that some practical move was about to be made. The author of " Fenianism Photographed," thus sketches the situation: -

A few weeks previous to the I5th of September, there was a hum of preparation on both sides. It has been thought that we were surprised by the sudden swoop. Not so much as was generally believed. We felt that the time was approaching when something should be done by us or by the Government. It was a question of who would take the initiative.

Notwithstanding those presages of a coming storm, the staff of The Irish People did not adopt the precaution of " clearing the decks "-in other words, of destroying or secreting the mass of compromising documents, letters, lists of " centres," account books, &c. -they had kept on the premises, and most of which could be of no further use to them. Dearly did they pay for their lack of ordinary prudence. On the evening of September 15th, 1865, the Government " came down like a wolf on the fold." The People office had been shut up for the night; the employees had left in the happy con-

Amongst the several surprises caused by the explosion that autumn not the least of them was the overwhelming body of documentary evidence which the accused had preserved for one object, and which the Government utilised for another. The ruling passion with these conspirators was to store up every scrap of paper which bore record of secret transactions. Leaders more than followers were addicted to this fatal weakness; and so much the worse, because they had possession of the most important correspondence and communications. With the United Irishmen were found books and letters, but no Irish conspiracy turned up so many damning documents as were discovered in Dublin within two or three months after the first arrest. What was then talked of as " the Frazer letter " was almost equal in weight to all the others; and when it was thrown into the scales against the prisoners, an acquittal was hopeless.

The " Frazer letter," otherwise the " Executive document," was found in the house of Mr. Luby, It was a formal appointment by Mr. Stephens of Messrs. O'Leary, Luby, and Kickliam to exercise his functions with regard to the organisation during his absence in America. " It was," says the writer, above quoted, " the most worthless paper written in connection with the Fenian movement, and it proved to be the most mischievous withal. No one can dispute the truth of Judge Keogh's observation that the Executive document was the backbone of the case against the prisoners."

Amongst the papers seized at the house of Mr. Luby, one of the most sensational, though not the most im­portant, was a letter addressed to him by Christopher Manns O'Keeffc, giving suggestions for the effective working of the intended revolution. It was the pro­duction of a clever but half crazy man, setting forth a number of atrocious plans and propositions. Mr. Luby had no responsibility for the article, and not a shadow of sympathy with the ideas it expressed; his fault lay in not destroying the manuscript after he had read it. His own account of the matter was that the letter amused him; he handed it across the table to his wife, that she also might have a laugh over its contents; after she had perused it she wisely suggested that it should be burned, but Mr. Luby said no, inas­much as it was " a literary curiosity." Here are passages from the document he treated so lightly: -

You are doubtless aware that when the existing war com­menced in New Zealand, the natives were foolish enough to confine their hostility to the privates, because the latter, they perceived, were actively engaged in firing on them. . . . They have since learned that it is sheer folly to waste their powder on the common men ; that it is far better to kill those who utter the word of command. . . . They have learned that when the colonels and captains are swept away, the privates will fly like a flock of sheep. Now [Here Mr. O'Keeffe gives

the names of three Irish noblemen, owners of large estates] may­be regarded as the officers of that grand army of exterminating landlords who banish the Irish people from their native country. . . . The French exterminated their aristocracy, and every honest revolution must imitate that of France, We must do the same. But you ask me, " How are we to get at these men? " My reply is, " How did the French get at them? " They first wrote them down by the pens of their Voitaires, and then slew them by the hands of their sans-culottes. We can do as much. . . . Eastern travellers tell us that the Thugs are, individually considered, excellent fathers, kind husbands, and benevolent neighbours ; but they are not the less Thugs. That is, they are members of an institute which is incompatible with the well-being of their fellow men. ... If the Thugs have been destroyed by the British Government, the Irish aristocracy must be hounded down by the liberal press and slain after­wards by the hands of an aroused and infuriate people.

That letter was not a thing to be kept " as a literary curiosity," by one of the heads of a revolutionary movement against which the authorities were certain to take action at no distant date. But the attitude of the Fenian " executive " towards their neighbours in Dublin Castle was positively Arcadian in its trustfulness and simplicity.

When the captured men were brought up for a pre­liminary examination before a police magistrate, on September 3oth, 1865, Mr. Charles R. Barry, Q.C., M.P., Law Adviser, in stating the case for the Crown- speaking from the brief which had been furnished to him-made the following statement: -

The operations of this revolution, as it is called, were to be commenced by an indiscriminate massacre-by the assassination of all those above the lower classes, including the Roman Catholic clergy, against whom their animosity appears, from their writings, to be especially directed.

When those words were said the prisoners looked at other and smiled, evidently regarding the allegation

as ridiculous. At the close of the proceedings Mr. Luby said :-

Mr. Barry, Q.C., made a charge in the early part of his state­ment that we had projects of assassination, but I can say for myself that nothing was further from my mind than anything like assassination. I understood him to say that there were speeches made at the meetings of the Fenians inciting to assassination; but I can only call to mind having seen one speech having that tendency, and in one of the numbers of The Irish People you will find an article disavowing the expressions of the speaker.

The prisoners were returned for trial, and were arraigned before a Special Commission which commenced its sittings on November 27th, 1865, the presiding judges being Mr. Justice Keogh and Mr. Justice Fitzgerald. In the meantime a Pastoral Letter of the Most Rev. Dr. Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin, was given to the press in which his Grace referred to " the charges lately made" against the originators of the Fenian movement, in which they were " said to have proposed " the massacre of certain classes of people; and he said: -

Whatever is to be said of such fearful allegations, which we hope are only founded on vague report, it is certain that the managers of the Fenian paper called The Irish People, made it a vehicle of scandal and circulated in its columns most per­nicious and poisonous maxims. Fortunately they had not the wit nor the talents of Voltaire, but according to appearances they did not yield to him in anxiety to do mischief, and in malice.

Referring to the allegation that the priests had declared patriotism to be a sin, his Grace went on to say: -

So far from condemning patriotism, I would wish to see everyone anxious to serve his country and to establish a claim to be called its benefactor. ... In short, though patriotism is a noble virtue, we are not to forget that the word is often­times misus