already performed all the functions appertaining to their office, each in a diocese assigned to him. Nevertheless the order received from Rome produced a regular burst of anti-Popery fury in England, to which Lord John Russell, the Premier, pandered by the introduction of his "Ecclesiastical Titles' Bill" (February, 1851), by which any ecclesiastic of the Catholic Church was forbidden to assume a title from any place in the United Kingdom. The Bill passed, but was, from the beginning, a dead letter. No one took any notice of its provisions; no one was punished for disobedience to them. In Ireland, however, the effects of the measure were important and disastrous.

The comments of the English Press on the Papal Bulls, which were echoed by the Orange journals, still more than the action of the Parliament had excited great indignation amongst the Irish Catholics. Some were really fearful of possible injury to the interests of the Church. Others merely desired to make capital for themselves out of the situation, and acquire a cheap popularity. Of these latter, two, William Keogh, a barrister by profession, and John Sadleir, a Tipperary banker, were the chief. Both were men of undoubted ability, and Sadleir was supposed to possess great wealth. As a result chiefly of their efforts, a Catholic Defence Association was formed.

In vain such men as Gavan Duffy pointed out that this movement would endanger the work of the Tenant League; that a renewal of sectarian animosities would dissolve that union in it of men of different creeds which alone made it formidable, and gave it hopes of success. "The Pope's Brass Band," as the Sadleir party was nicknamed by its opponents, succeeded in a great measure in turning the people's attention aside from the real and formidable foe of landlordism, and inducing them to expend their energies in attacks on a mere phantom.

In spite of the division in its ranks, the League was still strong. At the General Election of 1852, almost half of the members returned for Irish constituencies were pledged to support the resolutions of the Dublin Conference. It appeared as if nothing further was needed to insure success than an independent policy in Parliament. Scarcely any Government would be strong enough to resist the force of a solid band of fifty who steadily opposed it; scarcely any would deem its support too dearly bought at the price of agrarian reform. But defeat came when triumph seemed at hand. When the list of appointments made by Lord Aberdeen, the new Premier, appeared (January, 1853), it was read in Ireland with rage and horror. The "Brass Band" had sold itself to the Government-Keogh was Solicitor-General for Ireland; Sadleir was a Lord of the Treasury; some of their followers received minor appointments.

By this treachery the Tenant League was ruined. The peasants whose cause it had championed remained without defence. Disunion and disaffection spread. Of the members who entered Parliament pledged to support the League, more than half deserted it. In 1855, Gavan Duffy, who, with the assistance of a little band of patriots, had struggled on so far, abandoned the contest in despair and left Ireland for Australia.

CHAPTER XVII

THE FENIANS

FOR the next few years there was tranquillity in Ireland. The activity of the constitutional politicians had ceased; the "physical force " party gave no sign of life. Within a decade each had made a great effort; both had failed. The English people in general believed that the Irish were at last "settling down," and that agitations and rebellions would be heard of no more. In truth, however, the apparent peace was but "smothered war.”

The Phoenix Clubs.-Under the surface and little extended at first, a new revolutionary movement had begun. In Skibbereen, Co. Cork, a few young men founded, in 1856, a club, half literary, half political, to which they gave the name of the "Phoenix." The moving spirit was one Jeremiah O'Donovan, later to be known as "Rossa," from the place, Ross, where his family resided. The "Phoenix" men might have done little were it not that their activities came under the notice of James Stephens, who had taken part in the '48 rising, and had afterwards escaped to France, where he gained much information of the methods. of secret conspiracy. In 1858, he visited Skibbereen, and aided O'Donovan to reorganise the club as a secret society. Branches were formed in many places in Cork and Kerry, and secret drilling was begun. Stephens had had opportunities of gauging the hatred of England which filled the hearts of those whom the Famine and the "clearances " which followed had driven across the Atlantic, and which their children had imbibed. He now confidently promised that, if a new rising were attempted in Ireland, American aid would not be wanting.

The Government, through its spies, became acquainted with every detail of the new movement, and in December 1858 it struck its blow. The "Phoenix" clubs were raided, and many of the most prominent members arrested.

They were tried with great solemnity at Tralee, but nothing further than membership of a secret society and engaging in secret drilling

could be proved against them. Acting on advice privately conveyed, they pleaded guilty, and were released. This episode, in itself unimportant, was the beginning of the Fenian movement.

The Fenian Brotherhood.-The idea of engineering an Irish revolution by means of American help was too promising to be easily abandoned. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Ireland had looked to Spain. In the eighteenth she turned to France. Now she held out her supplicating hands to America, but with a surer hope, for those whose aid she sought were not strangers, but her own exiled

sons.

The actual originator of "The Irish Republican Brotherhood," founded in New York in 1858, was John O'Mahony, who, like Stephens, had joined in the '48 rising, and had been obliged, in consequence, to fly from Ireland. He was the first "Head Centre " or chief. A translation which he had once made of Geoffrey Keating's History had interested him in the Fianna, the militia of ancient Ireland, and he adopted as a title for the new society that of the " Fenian Brotherhood," by which it is still generally known and remembered.

The Fenian organisation resembled greatly that of the United Irishmen. The members in each district formed a "Circle," presided over by a Centre." Unlike the earlier society, this was from the first a secret oath-bound association, of which the avowed objective was to achieve, by force of arms, the complete political independence of Ireland. It differed, too, in pushing its propaganda chiefly amongst the lower and lower-middle classes. The task of establishing the Brotherhood in Ireland was confided to James Stephens. He found plenty of material ready to hand. He established numbers of Circles, and in the towns especially, the movement spread rapidly. He was ably assisted by O'Donovan Rossa, John O'Leary, Charles Kickham, Thomas Clarke Luby, and many others; most of them young and inexperienced men, but all filled with the spirit of the purest patriotism, and ready to sacrifice all their possessions, and even their very lives, for what they believed to be the good of Ireland.

Across the Atlantic, too, the Fenians enlisted, especially after 1860, huge numbers of recruits. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, it was said that in some of the Irish regiments practically every man was a sworn member of the Brotherhood. Even in Ireland and in England something of the same sort occurred, though to a much smaller extent. There were Fenians in the army, the navy, the civil service, some even of the jailers and warders of the prisons had taken the oaths. It was this more than anything else which disconcerted the British

Government and the English people. Fenianism was a hidden force, a secret mine; no one could tell how far it had extended its ramifications.

In the Catholic Church, Fenianism found its most dangerous foe. As regards secret societies, that Church has always been uncompromising. She condemns them both on moral and on social grounds. Fenianism was denounced from the altars, and individuals were refused Absolution, if they declined to withdraw from the Brotherhood. The Fenians retorted by condemnation of clerical interference in political questions, or by sneers at the timidity of the ecclesiastical authorities. Undoubtedly, the attitude of the bishops and priests deterred great numbers of Catholics from joining the organisation. The hostility of the Constitutional Nationalist party in Ireland, though much resented by the Fenians, had less influence. The failure of the Tenant Right movement had discredited it with the country, and the new " National League" did not find much favour.

In 1863, a weekly paper called The Irish People was established in Dublin, for the purpose of propagating the principles of Fenianism. Its literary quality was by no means so high as that of earlier publications of a similar kind. The men who conducted it had amongst them no writer to compare with Davis or Mitchel; but its circulation was considerable.

In April, 1865, the American Civil War ended. The Transatlantic Irish of the North and of the South, victors and vanquished, shook hands at the end of their long strife, and many of them, turning their thoughts to their motherland far across the ocean, resolved on striking a blow to wrest the old country from the power of England.

Soon the British Government learnt, through its spies, that almost every ship that crossed the Atlantic brought to Ireland men of military experience, the motive of whose coming was scarcely concealed. In Ireland itself there was said to be a force of some 75,000 men, well drilled and fairly well armed. It was evident that the intended rising would not long be delayed.

Arrest of the Fenian Leaders: The Canadian Raids.-As in '98, the Castle authorities were beforehand. In September 1865, O'Leary, Luby, O'Donovan Rossa and several other prominent Fenians were arrested. The office of The Irish People was raided, and the paper was suppressed. James Stephens eluded capture till November. He was lodged, when at last seized, in Richmond Prison (Dublin), but, by the aid of some of the warders who were themselves sworn members of the Brotherhood, he escaped and got safely out of the country. The others were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.