Fenianism.

nate event, a great number of persons have been arrested; large seizures of arms have taken place, and, the conspiracy having been suddenly stifled, there is no fear of a rebellious outbreak. But Ireland, though for the moment quiescent, remains in a state which all must regret, ruled undisguisedly by mere force, her rights and liberties in suspense, her people notoriously full of disaffection.

The explosion of these elements of disorder induces us to review briefly the condition of Ireland in its different bearings. As there is little evil without some good, so Fenianism, ominous and mischievous as it has been, has been attended with this advantage that it has proved that not only the upper classes, but the great majority of the middle ranks, are on the side of order in Ireland. Addresses from the nobility and gentry have poured in to the Irish Government, congratulating it on its vigorous policy; the juries, chosen with scrupulous justice from the orders of traders and agriculturists, have invariably, at the late state trials, returned verdicts according to the evidence; the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland have denounced Fenianism in vehement language; and there is reason to believe that the farmers, as a body, have little sympathy with an insurrectionary movement. There is some truth in Mr. Gladstone's remark, 'That 'the Executive must acknowledge with gratitude the strong ' and genuine Irish sentiment which has been developed upon this painful and critical occasion, and which has given strength to the law and its representatives.'

Yet those who would infer from these symptoms that Ireland as a nation is contented with its existing position and institutions, that the Irish people are loyal subjects, and, above all, that the state of the country need cause no alarm to the statesman, would fall into very serious error. It is, we fear, but the simple truth that in three of the four provinces of Ireland the large majority of the lower orders are hostile to the British Government and to the law under which they live; and though quiet at this moment, they could not be relied on if a rebellion were once to assume a formidable aspect. Ascending higher in the social scale a feeling exists among the agricultural classes, almost the only middle class in Ireland, that they are more or less exposed to injustice from the state of their relations to the soil; and though it is doubtful whether, in any event, they would give aid to an insurrection, they are not, except perhaps in the North, attached sincerely to the Constitution. As for the Catholic clergy, who possess an immense influence over these classes, they indeed condemn the Communistic outbreak which was a part of the Fenian programme; but no one can doubt

that they are opposed openly to many of the institutions of the country, and especially that they inculcate the doctrine that Ireland is an oppressed and injured nation. Even among the higher orders in Ireland there is a sentiment that something is wrong in society, an opinion that some reforms are inevitable; while, as regards the economic state and prospects of the nation as a whole, though, taking a period of twenty years, there has been a great and happy improvement, a retrogression of late is apparent, and during the last thirteen years comparatively little progress can be traced.

The immediate causes of these phenomena are not difficult to be determined. The Fenian movement, in the shape it assumed, with its socialistic and republican theories, its organisation abroad and at home, and its vision of an Ireland regenerated by a vast Celtic crusade from the West, is obviously of American origin, and owes its existence to the military fervour created by the great war with the South, and to the sympathy between the millions of Irishmen settled in the United States, and their countrymen still remaining at home. The idea was propagated by a set of fanatics who had either witnessed or taken part in the scenes of the American contest, and it soon found a formidable embodiment among the masses of the Irish race, which spread on either shore of the Atlantic. Nor need we be surprised at the fact, if we recollect that, since 1846, two millions and more of the Irish people have emigrated from their native country with feelings, in the great proportion of cases, of bitter hostility to the Britith Government and to the ruling classes in Ireland, and that these sentiments, in many instances, are reciprocated by those who continue in Ireland and sympathise with their expatriated countrymen. Such a state of things was certain to produce disaffection more or less serious; and those who are really acquainted with the tendencies of the poorer classes of Irish in the southern, eastern and western provinces, will not be surprised that numbers among them should at least not disapprove of Fenianism. As for the Roman Catholic priesthood, any one who has studied their attitude towards the State for years, and their views on almost all Irish questions, can only expect that, though they abstain from encouraging violent and hopeless insurrection, they would stand aloof from the Government and its supporters, and would continue to urge strenuously what they think their own claims and those of the people. And as for the dissatisfaction of the upper classes,though in part, as we shall endeavour to show, the result of complex political causes-and the recent decline of Ireland in opulence, the principal immediate cause of this is, that the

Immediate Causes of it.

5

country between 1860 and 1864 experienced a series of unfruitful seasons which have greatly reduced the incomes of the wealthy, have sapped the sources of the national prosperity, and, even now, after two years, are only beginning gradually to disappear.

These causes, however, of the ills of Ireland are only immediate and superficial, and, in fact, are merely the symptoms of causes, deep lying and of ancient origin, to which the state of the country may be traced. The discontent of the Irish people, widespread in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, their hostility to English government and law, their antipathy and that of the Catholic priesthood to the order of things they see around them, nay, even to a considerable extent, the landed system and economy of Ireland, and the phenomena of her material condition must be ascribed to a variety of circmstances which the course of her history has produced; and which can only be understood by glancing at its principal incidents. The first great fact which marks the relations of Ireland with the rest of Great Britain is, that Ireland is a conquered country, not subjugated quickly and by overwhelming force, but overrun in the lapse of five centuries, and gradually appropriated by a foreign race, who destroyed the old institutions of the nation, uprooted slowly its leaders from their possessions, and reduced the people to bondage and serfdom by a long series of acts of oppression. Ireland, early invaded by Henry II., not even nominally subject to England throughout the long Plantagenet period, assailed vehemently by the Tudors, but not really annexed by them, and the theatre of bloody war under the Stuarts, was not thoroughly and finally conquered until she sank under the sword of William at the Revolution of 1688. But, during this lengthened space of ages, Ireland was being gradually colonised and settled by successive swarms of English and Scotch, who, in spite of fierce and unceasing opposition, spread by degrees over the whole of the country, eradicated the national usages and laws, thrust out the native chiefs from their lands, broke up the organisation of the native tribes, and planted themselves as lords and masters on the necks of a broken but resentful people. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Ulster had become very nearly English and Scotch, the Irish race being much diminished it; but in the remaining three provinces, while the owners of the soil and the upper classes were almost all of English origin, the aborigines formed the mass of the people, and continued rooted in myriads on the land which they still fondly considered their own, and from which they believed that their chiefs had been torn by every kind of wrong and injustice.

A conquest of this peculiar character-a long struggle of hostile races which terminated in the elevation of one to a position of mastery over the other throughout more than threefourths of Ireland, and in the ruin of the Irish in Ulster-was a settlement in which it is impossible to suppose that the Irish people would contentedly acquiesce. Ulster, since the Revolution of 1688, has been attached to the British connexion, and loyal to the Government and the law; but-setting aside some other causes the principal cause of this has been that Ulster is essentially English and Scotch, and that the subjugated Irish race are only a feeble part of the population. In Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, however, where the descendants of the old conquered nation are still the large majority of the inhabitants, dissatisfaction and disloyalty survive, occasionally smouldering and apparently extinct, but occasionally becoming more visible; nor can we doubt that the main cause of this-we shall touch on other causes afterwards-was the singular and unfortunate manner in which this part of Ireland was subdued, the conquerors and conquered being of different origin, exasperated against each other by long animosities, and locally associated while morally hostile. This cause should never be kept out of mind, when dealing with Fenianism or any other distemper which exhibits itself in the frame of Ireland; as Mr. Gladstone says, it explains why some ills of Ireland are inveterate, can be only palliated and treated indirectly, and cannot be remedied by any sudden process.

Unhappy, however, as were the circumstances under which Ireland was conquered and settled, time might, perhaps, have removed their effects, and ere now have united her races in mutual sympathy and loyalty to Great Britain had it not been for another influence which operated powerfully to keep them asunder, and to alienate the mass of Irishmen from England. In the great changes of the sixteenth century, England as a nation became Protestant, and the English and Scotch colonists of Ireland were almost all adherents of Protestantism. But the Irish people, with hardly an exception, remained steadfast to the old faith, and even to this day their descendants form the most Roman Catholic race in Europe. Thus the dissension of hostile religions came to increase the hatred produced by conquest; and Ireland became the melancholy battle-field, not only of mutually adverse races, but of Protestantism and Catholicism in fierce conflict. These religious dissensions were aggravated and embittered by a long train of acts of violence, confiscations, civil wars, and spoliations continued during more than a century, so that at last the national struggle took the shape of a sectarian

Its More Remote Causes.

7

contest. At the settlement effected in 1688-90, Ulster was not only peopled by colonists, but was also in a great degree Protestant; while in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, the aristocracy was English and Protestant, the mass of the nation remaining Catholic, the two distinctions of race and creed dividing nearly the same classes. This state of things inevitably led to discontent and a feeling of dislike to the institutions and laws of England among the vanquished Catholic people; and it may be asserted that much of the sentiment of disaffection existing in Ireland is the result of the religious animosities inherited from the sixteenth century.

Yet even the fatal lines of demarcation caused by the distinctions of race and creed might have been gradually effaced in Ireland, had not Government and Legislation interfered to make them impassable and lasting. The Reformation which emancipated England from dependence upon the See of Rome, imposed on Ireland a State Church, representing only the faith of the conquerors, a monument of victory and confiscation, and opposed to the will of the mass of the people. This unjust and absurd institution arrayed against the influence of England the power of the Irish Catholic priesthood and the sympathies of their devout flocks; and even, from the first it was vehemently denounced as founded on sacrilege and sheer oppression. Then followed a series of penal laws, framed for the purpose of upholding the Church and limiting the rights of citizenship to its supporters; and these when vigorously applied to a nation of which five-sixths were Roman Catholics, became edicts of general proscription. These laws, growing by degrees more severe through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, shut out the Roman Catholic people of Ireland from most of the rights of British subjects, and produced of course their natural fruit in alienation, hostility, and disaffection. They did not, however, attain their climax until after the Revolution of 1688, when the celebrated Code of William and Anne was enacted by the Irish Parliament. The object of this detestable Code was to place the State Church in absolute supremacy and the Protestant aristocracy in complete ascendancy, and to reduce the entire Roman Catholic people into abject degradation and vassalage. The means adopted, as Burke has said, were well fitted for the odious purpose. The State Church was not only protected by every imaginable kind of device, but received the monopoly of education; every office and every liberal profession was appropriated to a Protestant oligarchy, and care was taken that the landed property of the country should centre in Protestants only. As for the Roman Gatholics that is, the nation in three out of the four provinces