generously aided Irish patriotic, charitable, or religious purposes. The deposed official, however, did not submit to the application of the society rules. He set up a rival association, a course in which he was supported by the Irish Head Centre; and a painful scene of factious and acrimonious contention between the two parties thus antagonized, caused the English government to hope-nay, for a moment, fully to believethat the disappearance of both must soon follow.

This hope quickly vanished when, on reliable intelligence, it was announced that the Irish-Americans, under the Roberts' presidency; were substituting for the unreal or insincere project of an expedition to Ireland, as the first move, the plainly practicable scheme of an invasion of British North America in the first instance. The Times at once declared that now indeed England had need to buckle on her armor, for that the adoption of this new project showed the men in America to be in earnest, and to have sound military judgment in their councils. An invasion of Ireland by the Irish in the United States all might laugh at, but an invasion of Canada from the same quarter was quite another matter; the southern frontier of British North America being one impossible to defend in its entirety, unless by an army of one hundred thousand men. Clearly a vulnerable point of the British empire had been discovered.

This was a grievous hardship on the people of Canada. They had done no wrong to Ireland or to the Irish people. In Canada Irishmen had found friendly asylum, liberty, and protection. It seemed, therefore, a cruel resolve to visit on Canada the terrible penalty of war for the offences of the parent country. To this the reply from the confederate Irish in the States was, that they would wage no war on the Canadian people; that it was only against British power their hostility would be exercised; and that Canada had no right to expect enjoyment of all the advantages, without experiencing, on the other hand, the disadvantages of British connection.

It seemed very clear that England stood a serious chance of losing her North American dependencies. One hope alone

remained. If the American government would but defend the frontier on its own side, and cut the invading parties from their base of supplies, the enterprise must naturally and inevitably fail. It seemed impossible, however, that the American government could be prevailed upon thus to become a British preventive police. During the civil war the Washington executive, and, indeed, the universal sentiment and action of the American people, had plainly and expressly encouraged the Fenian organization; and even so recently as the spring as 1866, the American government had sold to the agents of Colonel Roberts thousands of pounds' worth of arms and munitions of war, with the clear, though unofficial, knowledge that they were intended for the projected Canadian enterprise. Nevertheless, as we shall see, the American executive had no qualms about adopting an outrageously inconsistent course. By the month of May, 1866, Roberts had established a line of depots along the Canadian frontier, and in great part filled them with the arms and material of war sold to him by the Washington government. Towards the close of the month the various "circles" throughout the Union received the command to start their contingents for the frontier. Never, probably, in Irish history was a call to the field more enthusiastically obeyed. From every State in the Union there was a simultaneous movement northwards of bodies of Irishmen : the most intense excitement pervading the Irish population from Maine to Texas. At this moment, however, the Washington government flung off the mask. A vehement and bitterly-worded proclamation called for the instantaneous abandonment of the Irish projects. A powerful military force was marched to the northern frontier; United States gunboats were posted on the lakes and on the St. Lawrence river; all the arms and war material of the Irish were sought out, seized, and confiscated, and all the arriving contingents, on mere suspicion of their destination, were arrested.

This course of proceeding fell like a thunderbolt on the Irish! It seemed impossible to credit its reality! Despite all those obstacles, however-a British army on one shore, an American army on the other, and hostile cruisers, British and

American, guarding the waters between-one small battalion of the Irish under Colonel John O'Neill succeeded in crossing to the Canadian side on the night of the 31st May, 1866. They landed on British ground close to Fort Erie, which place they at once occupied, hauling down the royal ensign of England, and hoisting over Fort Erie in its stead, amidst a scene of boundless enthusiasm and joy, the Irish standard of green and gold.

The news that the Irish were across the St. Lawrence-that once more, for the first time for half a century, the green flag waved in the broad sunlight over the serried lines of men in arms for "the good old cause "-sent the Irish millions in the States into wild excitement. In twenty-four hours fifty thousand volunteers offered for service, ready to march at an hour's notice. But the Washington government stopped all action on the part of the Irish organization. Colonel Roberts, his military chief officer, and other officials, were arrested, and it soon became plain the unexpected intervention of the American exccutive had utterly destroyed, for the time, the Canadian project, and saved to Great Britain her North American colonies.

Meanwhile O'Neill and his small force were in the enemy's country-in the midst of their foes. From all parts of Canada troops were hurried forward by rail to crush at once by overwhelming force the now isolated Irish battalion. On the morning of the 1st of June, 1866, Colonel Booker, at the head of the combined British force of regular infantry of the line and some volunteer regiments, marched against the invaders. At a place called Limestone Ridge, close by the village of Ridgeway, the advanced guard of the British found O'Neill drawn up in position ready for battle. The action forthwith commenced. The Irish skirmishers appeared to fall back slowly before their assailants, a circumstance which caused the Canadian volunteer regiments to conclude hastily that the day was going very easily in their favor. Suddenly, however, the Irish skirmishers halted, and the British, to their dismay, found themselves face to face with the main force of the Irish, posted in a position which evidenced consummate ability on the

part of O'Neill. Booker ordered an assault in full force on the Irish position, which was, however, disastrously repulsed. While the British commander was hesitating as to whether he should renew the battle, or await reinforcements reported to be coming up from Hamilton, his deliberations were cut short by a shout from the Irish lines, and a cry of alarm from his own -the Irish were advancing to a charge. They came on with a wild rush and a ringing cheer, bursting through the British ranks. There was a short but desperate struggle, when some one of the Canadian officers, observing an Irish aid-de-camp galloping through a wood close by, thought it was a body of Irish horse, and raised the cry of "cavalry! cavalry!" Some of the regular regiments made a vain effort to form a square -a fatal blunder, there being no cavalry at hand; others, however, broke into confusion, and took to flight, the general, Booker, it is alleged, being the fleetest of the fugitives. The British rout soon became complete, the day was hopelessly lost, and the victorious Irish, with the captured British standards in their hands, stood on Ridgeway heights as proudly as their compeers at Fontenoy-"The field was fought and won."

LXXXVIII. THE UNFINISHED CHAPTER OF EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SEVEN. HOW IRELAND, OFT DOOMED TO DEATH," HAS SHOWN THAT SHE IS "FATED NOT TO DIE.”

UDGED by the forces engaged, Ridgeway was an inconsiderable engagement. Yet the effect produced by the news in Canada, in the States, in England, and of course, most of all in Ireland, could scarcely have been surpassed by the announcement of a second Fontenoy. Irish troops had met the levies of England in pitched battle and defeated them. English colors, trophies of victory, were in the hands of an Irish general. The green flag had come triumphant through the storm of battle. At home and abroad the Irish saw only these facts, and these appeared to be all-sufficient for national pride.

He was

O'Neill, on the morrow of his victory, learned with poignant feelings that his supports and supplies had been all cut off by the American gun-boats. In his front the enemy were concentrating in thousands. Behind him rolled the St. Lawrence, cruised by United States war steamers. ready to fight the British, but he could not match the combined powers of Britain and America. He saw the enterprise was defeated hopelessly, for this time, by the action of the Washington executive, and, feeling that he had truly "done enough for valor," he surrendered to the United States naval commander.

This brief episode at Ridgeway was for the confederated Irish the one gleam to lighten the page of their history for 1866. That page was otherwise darkened and blotted by a record of humiliating and disgraceful exposures in connection. with the Irish Head Centre. In autumn of that year he proceeded to America, and finding his authority repudiated and his integrity doubted, he resorted to a course which it would