CHAPTER III. AMERICAN-IRISH REPUBLICANISM. BETWEEN 1849 and 1852 was enacted yet another scene in the political drama of Ireland. Insurrection had been crushed. But the cry for tenant right survived, and found expression in Ulster first, and finally throughout the remaining provinces by means of the Irish Tenant League." In February, 1852, it was at the height of its power, and at the general election in the spring of that year were returned fifty tenant-right members to Parliament, amongst them Charles Gavan Duffy and Frederick Lucas. But the triumph of the new Irish party was brief. The acceptance of Government office by Mr. Keogh and the ruin and suicide of John Sadlier broke up the new National coalition, and "The Brass Band" soon became a byword amongst Irish politicians. In the words of Mr. A. M. Sullivan, "Repeal was buried. Disaffection had disappeared. Nationality was unmentioned. Not a shout was raised. Not even a village tenant-right club survived. The people no longer interested themselves in politics. Who went into or who went out of Parliament concerned them not. The agitator's' voice was heard no more. All was silence-rest and peace, some called it; sullen indifference and moody despair, others judged it to be." It was just the time for a conspirator to commence anew revolutionary schemes. Distrust of agitators, the collapse of the tenant-right movement, the treachery of the "Brass Band" had given the populace a shock which it took them some years to recover. But with the re-awakening of the feeling of nationality came the moment for the revolutionist. During the years of inaction, the people had drunk deep of the literature of Young Ireland, they had imbibed heartily the principles of John Mitchel. The young men were ripe for the hand of the organizer, and their future course of action depended on the impulse then given. It so happened that there was a man ready for the work, deeply implicated in the abortive rebellion of 1848, and ready to throw himself heart and soul into any project of disaffection. This was James Stephens, son and clerk of a poor broker in Kilkenny. On whatever evidence Mr. John Rutherford has founded his "Secret History of the Fenian Conspiracy,"* I have * "The Secret History of the Fenian Conspiracy." 2 vols. 8vo. C. Kegan Paul & Co., London, 1877. very good authority for saying that his account tallies closely with all the private information supplied to the Government upon the whole subject. I see no reason for refusing to believe his account of Mr. James Stephens's early propaganda of the principles of Fenianism, more especially as it is in keeping with all we have since learnt of the methods of organization at home and abroad adopted by his more modern imitators. Stephens had escaped with Michael Doheney from Ballingarry in 1848, and had, after remarkable adventures,* got clear out of the United Kingdom. Doheney went to New York, Stephens to Paris. Here he became a professional conspirator, and learned the science of continental organization, hoping by becoming enrolled amongst the secret societies to obtain aid when he had matured his design of revolutionizing Ireland. During all this period of continental apprenticeship, Stephens was associated with John O'Mahony, yet another of those who had been "out" in the Ballingarry business, a man of good family and cultured tastes. It was to him that Stephens owed all the support which ultimately came to Fenianism from America. O'Mahony insisted that whatever effort was to be made by the Irish against the English Govern * See "The Felon's Track," by M. Doheney. 8vo. Cameron and Ferguson, Glasgow and London. ment could not succeed without the aid of the Irish in America, and to him was confided the task of organizing the Transatlantic Irish. Thus the first programme of the new Irish Revolution was arranged. Stephens returned to Ireland in 1853, and O'Mahony departed for America, where Doheney had been already at work ventilating the ideas which afterwards developed into Fenianism. In company with Thomas Clarke Lubey, lately arrived from Australia, Stephens made a tour of Ireland in 1853, preparatory to making any efforts to commence operations. His journey of observation gave him plenty of food for reflection. The native Irish population-in other words, the peasantry-offered a fine opportunity for an organizer. O'Connell's prolonged agitations had kept alive all the old memories of English oppression and injustice, and fomented sectarian strife and bitterness. The national aspirations, passions, and sentiments inculcated by the Young Ireland republicans were still burning in every peasant's cabin and farmer's dwelling. Peasant conspiracies had for a century spread their network over each province, and this agrarian combination alone, properly utilized, could be turned to good account by a man of tact and daring. In fact, hatred of England, the sense of defeat, the desire for vengeance, the brooding over senti mental wrongs, and the more open efforts of public agitators had already organized Ireland in the rough, before even James Stephens came to take up the materials ready to his hand. Hitherto the commonalty of Ireland had been led by men of culture and position. Stephens took the first step to change all that. He was for a social and democratic revolution, such as Paris only could afford. There were in Ireland two classes, the educated and the uneducated. The former, by associations and by position, were outside his sphere of operations. But in the populace he found to his hand good material, credulous, easily led, and disgusted at the moment with their natural leaders by the treachery of the "Brass Band." From beginning to end, Stephens laboured to form a democratic revolution. There was no mental culture or intellectual refinement to be found in the ranks of his numerous converts, and in this the movement which resulted in the Irish Republican Brotherhood differed essentially from that of 1848, while it afforded a ready model for the Land League of 1879. Meanwhile O'Mahony had arrived in America, and had begun to organize the Irish race there. He found good material ready. Ribbonism had found its way across the Atlantic, and its lodges were found to be favourable to the new schemes of revolution. The militia system of the United States was another |