venture to try the steel. Other approved modes of moral resistance might gradually be added to these, according as we should become trained to the system; and all combined, I imagine, and well worked, might possibly task the strength and break the heart of the empire. Into artistic details, however, I need not and do not choose to enter for the present.

"It has been said to me that such a war, on the principles I propose, would be looked on with detestation by Europe. I assert the contrary. I say such a war would propagate itself throughout Europe. Mark the words of this prophecy: the principle I proposed goes to the foundations of Europe, and sooner or later will cause Europe to outrise. Mankind will yet be masters of the earth. The right of the people to make the laws; this produced the first great modern earthquake, whose latest shocks even now are heaving in the heart of the world. The right of the people to own the land;

Train your hands and

this will produce the next. your sons' hands, gentlemen of earth, for you and they will yet have to use them. I want to put Ireland foremost, in the van of the world, at the head of the nations; to set her aloft in the blaze of the sun, and to make her for ages the loadstar of history. Will she take the path I point out-the

path to be free and famed and feared and followed, the path that goes sunward? Or onward to the end of time will wretched Ireland ever come limping and lagging hindmost ?”

That question has been answered in the year 1880, and the path that James Fintan Lalor pointed out has been found at present to lead to the jail, and not to glory. How his programme was carried out by another generation of conspirators, I will narrate in a succeeding chapter.

CHAPTER VI.

THE LAND QUESTION-continued.

SUCH were the doctrines of James Fintan Lalor upon the land question in 1848. They were fully adopted in the next great revolutionary movement in Ireland in principle, but Stephens only looked upon the land question as a matter to be decided when the great battle of Irish independence had been fought and won. Lalor, on the other hand, from the first saw that the land was the most effective weapon to win that battle, and his remarkable scheme, excavated from its obscurity in America and worked by the Land League, has, in fact, brought the whole question of the Repeal of the Union once more before the world. A well-known Irish lawyer,* a Catholic and formerly a member of Parliament, used to say, with Attic point, there were three questions in Ireland-the church question, the education question, and the land question. The Irish

*The late Vincent Scully, Q.C., M.P.

Church," he used to say, "is the English question, as being an admitted wrong in politics; the Irish education question is the Roman question, as being that which most interested the Church of Rome; but the Irish land question is the Irish question."

The theories of Lalor, and the success with which they have hitherto been attended, would seem to corroborate this remark. During the Fenian times, it is quite certain that the possession of land was held out as a bait to the populace to become secret revolutionary brethren, and the writing in the Irish People, the organ established by Stephens for the purpose of imbuing the masses with the principles of revolution, coincided entirely with all Lalor wrote. The Irish People was first published in December, 1863, and ran with extraordinary success until it was seized and suppressed in the summer of 1865. The effect produced by its plain, pointed writing was quite unequalled in the annals of revolutionary journalism. In a short time it was very clear that, for the first time in the history of Ireland, the masses were urged to give their clergy the go-by, and depend upon their own efforts in the cause of "liberty, fraternity, and equality.' ""*

Though treating the land

* "Superstition is fast yielding to common sense in this country. Experience proves that submission to certain Irish bishops in political matters is equivalent to slavery. . . . With reflection this

question as outside the region of revolution, it was used for the purpose of inflaming the passions of the people against the landed gentry, precisely as it has been used during the past two years. A few extracts are sufficient to show this; e.g.:

"They are but given some sparks of the sacred fire of '98, and, lo, the whole is all ablaze. . . . We now know that this island through and through is ours-the Irish People's, and that, being ours by right, it is our duty to make it so in fact."-Irish People, December 5, 1863.

"It is territorial magnates of the British empire who are the grand obstacle in the path of Ireland's prosperity, and never, till they and the accursed land laws which in their own interest they have enacted are swept clean away, and the land restored to its rightful proprietors, the Irish people, will there be an end of those horrors which have astonished

truth comes, that the priesthood have a right to enforce obedience on their flocks only so far as spiritual matters are concerned."-Irish People, May 14, 1864.

"Can any one, save a knave or a fool, deny the malignant and persistent hostility of most of the clergy to the national cause since '48 ?"-Irish People, June 4, 1864.

"PULPIT DENUNCIATIONS AND PRIESTS IN POLITICS.-Now it is declared a mortal sin to read the Irish People. . . . Was not John Mitchel drawn to declare that there was no hope for Ireland till her whole people should be excommunicated with bell, book, and candle ? 'Tis an old story. We ought to have it by heart long ago.”—Irish People, September 24, 1864.