.S8T2 N.? James Stephens, ^ W»s<«»* CHIEF ORGANIZER OF THE IRISH REPHBLIC. EMBRACING AN ACCOUNT OP THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE FENIAN BROTHEEliOOD. v^ SEMI-BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OP JAMES STEPHENS, WITH THE STORY OF HIS ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT; ALSO HIS ESCAPE FROM THE BRITISH AUTHORITIES 4^ NEW YORK : Carleton, Publisher, 413 Broadway. M DOCO LXVI. BOSTON OOUBm. U&HfV^'i Entered, according to Act of Congi-ess, in the yea? 1S66, by GEO. W. CAELETON, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District tvf JSIew York. The New York Printis« Company, 81, 83, and 85 Centre Street, New York. PREFACE. A *' Biography of James Stephens" cannot yet be written, for his life has not yet terminated, and his work is not accomplished. Kor can the " His- tory of Fenianism" be indited while the freedom of Ireland from British rule is an unaccomplished fact. He who shall write the one, must neces- sarily indite the other. At the present time, a brief sketch of the work performed by the one, and the progress made by the other, may serve to throw some light upon the condition of Ireland and assist in her redemption. There will, doubtless, be found some inaccura- cies in this little book, but the material points of which it treats are substantially correct. In the absence of any official records to which to refer, the author has been compelled to rely mainly upon oral statements, and the current newspaper reports of the day for his facts. By condensing, IV PRE FA GE. BiCling, and collatin*^ tlicsc, ho lias striven to write as near tlie truth as possible. There are some faults of omission as well as commission in this narrative. While there are yet a hundred thousand Irishmen in their native land, who have been identified with the recent revolutionary movement there, it would be man- ifestly improper to relate the facts which would com])romise them and subject them to penalties ])rovidcd by English law. Conscientiously using the material Avithin his reach, the author has CTulcavorcd to deal fairly with all parties interested. That his efforts may contribute towards developing among Irishmen in America a pure and holy sympathy for their miibrtunate country, and serve to persuade them to more united efibrts, is his most fervent wish. New York, May 2Sih, 18G6. INTRODUCTION. IRELAND — ITER GRIEVANCES AND HER PROTESTS. The few pages which arc to introduce a brief sketch of the hte of the Litest Irish (;onH|)irator, and the story of the organi/:ition of wliic.h he is tlie head and heart, arc a(hlressed less to Irishjiien, tlian to those whose idea of Irish grievances is indefinite — to those who, with but a vague knowledge of either the country or her wrongs, and an imperfect one of her people, yet leap at the wish to set her free of English rule, more from an intuitive know- ledge that freedom is her light, than from conclu- sions forced upon them by familiarity with her history. And to that other class, by individual members of which the question is often asked, " But wl>at has Ireland to complain of now ? is she not an integral portion of the British em])ire, duly represented in its government, and sharing in its influence and progress?" To these it ought to be enough to say, " read Irish history ;" more than enough to say, " you cannot get these two nations to work smoothly together ; fire and ice are scarcely less congenial ; centuries of experimenting have failed to discover the aflinities; centuries of subjec- tion and efforts at amalgamation have failed to break down the barriers dividing them." The Eng- 6 JAMES STEPHENS. lisli and the Irish people remain this day as dis- tinct in each characteristic feature as any two nationaUties in existence. The Irish have within themselves all the elements of independence, all the elements of becoming a useful if not a powerful member of the family of nations. It can be no longer doubted that it is the wish of this people to be independent ; they struggle for it, and are discon- tented failing to secure it. What American can withhold his respect for that discontent ? Freedom is this people's right, and this alone ought to be argument enough for the wisdom of their dis- content. If a people through successive generations fail to appreciate the beneficence of a government which, in the first instance, was forced upon them, and ever since sustained by brute force only, opposed to their solemn and reiterated protest, and in defiance of repeated outbreak (whether all this be a result of their ingratitude, their obstinacy, or their want of appreciation of the blessings of such obtrusive friendship, it matters little) ; it must be accepted as evidence of the want of that integrity of parts so necessary to the peace and prosperity of a nation as a whole. To all students of Irish history, it is known that there is no chapter there unmarked by protest in some shape or other against English rule ; not a few of them written in the blood of the malcontents ; in fact, the only history that Ireland has to show for centuries is the story of her successive protests against what she takes the liberty to call the usurpa- tion of her government by English rulers. Let us FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 7 sketch in a sentence or two the story of these protests. With the presence of Strongbow on Irish soil began the struggle between the English and Irish people, lashed into fury at times, with periods of calm intervening, for over four hundred years. Then came the conquest of the gentle Mountjoy, who boasted that he gave to his no more tender- hearted mistress " a country of carcasses and ashes." A period of churchyard silence here succeeds, but a resurrection follows it, and the tongue which is spoken is still the language of the Celt. Elizabeth gave place to James, and James to Charles. Charles gave his head to Cromwell. The English people were under the iron heel of the Dictator, but the Irish, the resuscitated Irish, were in rebellion ! Again the spoiler was upon them. This time the work of devastation was complete ; fire and sword had sway unlimited ; lands were laid waste ; homesteads pil- laged, and, in the name of God, the followers of Cromwell possessed themselves of Irish maids, and lands and gold, and made her rich soil richer still with the blood of her slaughtered sons. This time she is not only dead but buried. Before, like the son of the widow of Nain, she had arisen from the bed of death. This time she is entombed. But even from out the grave, dug by the swords of mer- ciless soldiery, she once more emerges ; the stone is rolled away for her resurrection, and she stands again to battle for her nationality. She protests once more against England's rule and England's king, and fights with a broken sword against William of ISTassau and his hireling soldiery. This time she is not beaten, 8 JAMES STEPHENS. but she capitulates, and the treaty of Limerick is signed. For the right to worship God after the fashion of their fathers, the Irish laid down their arms. With or without arms they still protest. The father who succumbed begat sons to whom he left the legacy of his hate. The English, no more faith- ful then than they are now, and the record of their truthfulness is fresh upon our memories, taking advan- tage of the first symptoms of another protest, broke through the sworn-to treaty, and enacted through their tools in the so-called Irish Parliament the ac- cursed penal laws, the prominent features of which may be written as follows : Catholics were excluded from every profession except the medical, and from all official stations without exception. Catholic children could only be educated by Pro- testant teachers at home, and it was highly penal to send them abroad for education. Catholics were forbidden to exercise trade or commerce in any corporate town. Catholics were legally disqualified to hold leases of land for a longer tenure than thirty-one years, and also disqualified to inherit the lands of Protest- ant relatives. A Catholic could not legally possess a horse of greater value than five pounds, and any true Protest- ant meeting a Catholic with a horse worth fifty or sixty pounds, might lay down the legal jDrice of five, unhorse the idolater, and ride away. A Catholic child, turning Protestant, could sue its parents for maintenance, to be determined by a Protestant Court of Chancery. FENIAN BR OTEEBHO OD. 9 A Catholic's eldest son turning Protestant re- duced his father to a tenant-for-life, the reversion to the convert. A Catholic priest could not celebrate mass under severe penalties ; but he who recanted was secured .a stipend by law. That this code wrought long and well is a well- known story. This monster, begotten on Irish soil, a lineal descendant of the Reformation, a child of the " glorious revolution," did its work bravely. As Burke says of it : " It was a machine of wise and deliberate contrivance, as well fitted for the oppres- sion, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." It did its work bravely indeed. Hear how the seventeenth century ended : " The manufacture of wool into cloth had been totally destroyed by law. Acts of the British and Irish Parliament (the latter being wholly subject to the former) prohibited the export of woollen cloth from Ireland to any country whatsoever except to England and "Wales. The exception was delusive, because duties amount- ing to a prohibition prevented the Irish cloth from entering Eng- land or "Wales. Before that time Ireland had a good trade in woollen drapery with foreign countries, and undersold the Eng- lish Therefore the British Parliament addressed King "Wilham, urging him to suppress the traffic. Tlie House of Lords used this language : * "Wherefore we most humbly beseech your most sacred Majesty that your Majesty would be pleased, in the most public and effectual way that may be, to declare to all your subjects in Ireland that the growth and increase of the woollen manufactures there hath long been and will bo ever looked upon with great jealousy by all your subjects of this kingdom, and if not timely re- medied may occasion very strict laws totally to prohibit it and suppress the same.' King William, the Deliverer, replied that he would do his utmost to ruin his Irish subjects. ' He would do all that in him lay to discourage the woollen manufactures of Ireland ;' and he was as good as his word. 1* 10 JAMES STEPHENS. Now, for a hundred years, Catholic Ireland is gagged ; but she still protests against British mis- rule with the Protestant tongues of Swift, and Lucas, and Molyneux. It was not necessary for the mother to be Catholic that hate for England might mingle with that mother's milk ; it was only necessary for her to be Irish. English cupidity, and the monopo- lies born of it, did their work ; the country was im- poverished ; the people were swept to their graves by the thousand. No coroner's jury tells the story of their dying, but it is written in a language as in- delible as the stars — " starvation." The century drew near its close ; a generation had passed away without a sign. The Protestant element was a strong one now, but it was Irish Protestant. The thunders of Napoleon's cannon were echoed by the cliffs of Dover — England was in clanger. Pro- testant Ireland v^as appealed to, and she answered with eighty thousand bayonets. The Frenchmen did not come, and the bayonets were no longer needed. But in the meantime, " England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity." The star of the unhappy land rose above the horizon for an hour. Backed by these eighty thousand bayonets, an independent par- liament made laws in College Green, and for a space she gloried in her ancient title of the " Sovereign Kingdom of Ireland." Then upon Irish cannon was the motto, " Free trade or else" — that free trade meaning the right of the Irish people to regulate their commerce as best suited Irish, not English, in- terests ; the right to levy duties for the support of an Irish, not an English, government. For eighteen years the Irish people rejoiced iu FENIAN BR OTHERHO OD. H an independent government, obeyed the laws which emanated from the Parliament at Dublin, and prospered under the protection of its paternal care. Manufactories sprang up again. The pro- verbially discontented Irish gave respectable evi- dences of a love of industry and of the good things purchased by its exercise. The agricultural produce of the country found a home market in exchange for native manufactures. Fat cattle ceased to crowd the ships for English shores, and broadcloth ceased to be a heavy inward freight. The public revenues were expended at home. Dublin grew beau- tiful in public buildings, this day her pride and shame. Landlords began to stay at home and spend their rentals there. The beautiful city on the Liffey was sufficient attraction for the most fastidious, when she bore the prestige of independence. But could this state of things last ? Could Eng- land afford to lose so good a customer for her manu- factures, so good a market wherein to buy her beloved beef ? Could she afford to permit a rival shopkeeper at her very door, who, a short time before, had been her customer, but now threat- ened to share even her foreign trade, if not, from peculiar facilities of manufactures, drive her com- pletely out of the markets where she had hitherto held monopoly? Of course not. The rival shop- keeper must be crushed, not by honest competi- tion ; no, that would be a tedious and uncertain pro" cess ; but by any and every means her innate selfish- ness could devise by which to effect her object. With eighty thousand muskets to protect her neighbor's trade, she dare not attempt to drive her from the 12 JAMES STEPHENS. market. ISTo, but she would kill her witli kindness. Every concession was made ; all that Ireland asked was given ; England was for the first time her true and tender-hearted sister. Now the time was come when the peaceful relations of the world, and especially of these two loving sisters, asked for the disbanding of this great army of Irish volunteers. The English standing army was suf- ficient for protection of the " Sister Islands." The confiding Irish believed the story, and the volun- teers were disbanded. This was the initiatory step to the " Act of Union." But the proposed union was unpalatable to the people. Even a corrupt Parliament, which might be cleansed some day, in Dublin, was better than a sixth of the representa- tion in the London one. The scheme, however, which began with the disbanding of the volunteers could not end there; the union must be accom- plished. The premature rising of '98 was brought about. By what villanies generated and how fomented is but too well known, as is the story of the sacrifice which left its blood-stain upon many a threshold. England had conquered once again ; terrorism was rampant ; public meetings were dis- persed by the soldiery; the national press was bribed ; a muzzled and a hireling one hed its utmost ; the Irish Parliament was packed with English instruments, and by corruption and intimidation the Act of Union was carried.* The twenty years which followed were twenty * For the modus operandi by which this Act was brought to a successful issue, read the black list appended to Sir Jonah Bar- rington's "Kise and Fall of the Irish Nation." FENIAN BR OTHERHO OD. 13 years of prostration of spirit, of lingering death to manufacture, of concentration of all power in Eng- land, and of an exodus from Ireland of that wealth which, expended at home, had given stimulus to trade and confidence to the people. Gloom and poverty settled down upon the land, till 1817 found the people again dying of starvation. Many of the inhabitants of the Western and North-western coasts dragged out a miserable existence on sea- weed, and to thousands potatoes were a luxury ; the people died by wholesale of famine-fever, not in the poorer districts only, but in the best counties in the country. During this famine and that of 1822, and the intervening years, most strange to stay, the English peasant throve and fattened ; there was no fever cloud to fling its shadow over his happy fields; English looms were busy and her artisans were fed. What ! had Providence stricken Irish fields with barrenness in condemnation of her near-sighted- ness ? Had it cursed her with famine for her folly ? 1^0 ; strange to say, there was neither murrain among the cattle nor a blight upon the wheat, but the poor of the towns were unemployed ; there was food, but not the means to buy it. English looms were musical, Irish looms were rotten with disuse. The petty manufactures had followed the greater ones, and shops were closed, for the custom- ers had gone, and the money with them, to the theatres of power and place in England. I^o, there was no dearth of food ; a loaf might be had for six- pence, as in preceding years, but there was no six- pence to buy withal. In 1817 there were exported 14 JAMES STEPHENS. to England from Ireland over 700,000 quarters of grain alone, and vast herds of cattle; and in 1822, over one million quarters of grain. Did the money come back to Ireland for all this ? Oh, no ; it stayed in England to pay the rent, or followed to the Con- tinent the landlords who had forsaken their homes, and entrusted the paternal cares of their estates to the management of their agents and their tenants to their mercy. On the debate in the House of Commons in 1822, "William Cobbett, an honest Englishman, writes in this fashion : — " Money, it seems, is wanted in Ireland. Now people do not eat money. No ; but the money will buy them something to eat. Whatl the food is there then, pray observe this, reader, pray ob- serve this, and let the parties get out of the concern if they can. The food is there, but those who have it in their possession will not give it without the money. And we know that the food is there; for since this famine has been declared in Parliament, thousands of quarters of corn have been imported every week from Ireland to England." The records of this time alone are so accursed that could Irishmen forget the tyrannies of six hun- dred years preceding, their hopes of vengeance dare not perish whilst this one memory remains. Starva- tion in the midst of plenty. Persecuted thus in body, as they had been in spirit for centuries ; famished in the midst of fruitful fields, and their souls restrict- ed under penalty to orthodox devotion, did they drop upon their knees and cry peccavi ? prostrate themselves and place their necks within the English halter? Oh no! they had not done joro^es^m^ yet- Then was the birth-time, among the moderate and the cowardly, of the Catholic Relief Agitation, and amongst the more earnest, because most suffer- ing, ofRibbonism and the Society of the Whiteboys. FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 15 Catholic emancipation was conceded to the former in 1829; and this concession to the manes of their fathers, who tasted the first rigors of the penal laws, and of the hunted priests who died by them, satis- fied for a time the sick at heart, but failed to bring a soothing bahn to the bulk of the people, in whom the music of their church bells, heard for the first time in centuries, could not drown for ever the dy- ing groans of the massacred and the famished that filled up the space between. It is known the part which O'Connell took in the agitation which led to the emancipation of the Catholics, as it is known the hold which from that time he had upon the affections of the Irish people. A peri- od of rest now follows, or, what was worse, of peace- ful agitation. The Precursor Society was followed by that organization, having O'Connell for its leader, and for its object the repeal of the "Act of Union," How O'Connell manoeuvred the passions of the Irish people, and how he in turn was manoeuvred and be- praised by that people's enemies, whose game he played, is a painful story within the memories of most of us. But there came a time when the people's heart grew sick with the hope deferred, for the " Repeal" which had been promised them as the fruit of each incoming session of Parliament grew no more certain as the years went by, but the ruin of the country grew more certain daily. The monster meetings of 1843, in the might of their 7norao strength, had failed to intimidate the English Government, and O'Connell was afraid (whether for Mmself or for the people, God knows) to use the power he held to awake that physical force which 16 JAMES STEPHENS. he might have controlled at will, and, as his country- men then and now believe, directed to success. But the paternal government was in action during all this time, in its own way, for Irish amelioration. Laws had been enacted disfranchising the holders of petty freeholds ; their votes no longer available to their landlords, they were swept from their misera- ble homesteads by the thousand. To make eject- ment in every shape of easy execution, laws un- known to the English Common Law were made and put in force, resulting in the desired consolidation of farms, and in the pauperism of the ejected. Li 1846 the famine came, and the country was ripe for it ; ripe for the harvest of death, and the reaper. Hea- ven knows, had a busy time of it. The story of that horror, the Irish famine, is as well known in America as it is in Ireland. A famine which swept into untimely graves a million people. A famine in a land from which had been exported the year before over $80,000,000 worth of produce to England; and in one day of the self-same year, 1847, shipped for the London market over eleven thousand quar- ters of wheat. From Newry alone, within five days, in the end of September, there sailed eleven ships for England laden with grain, exchisive of two large steamers, which sailed four times a week, laden with cattle, eggs, and butter. From Drogheda, that same week, were shipped 1,200 cows, 3,500 sheep and swine, 2,000 quarters of grain, 211 tons of flour and meal, butter, eggs, and lard. From Waterford, in the same week, 250 tons of flour, 1,100 sheep and pigs, 308 head of cattle, 5,400 barrels of wheat and oats, '7,'700 firkins of butter, and 2,000 flitches of bacon ; FJENIAN BR OTHERHO OD. 17 and all the while the cry for bread arose on every acre. Parents, mad with hunger, struggled with their fa- mished children for the morsel of food which charity or chance had brought them. Hundreds died upon their hearthstones without a cry. In many places, including entire villages, the living were too weak to bury their brethren who had died from hunger. On the island of Innisbofin, off the coast of Galway, may be seen this day, among the ruins of an old chapel there, and lying in a corner, a pile of human bones, the skeletons of those who were carried to that consecrated spot by the poor old priest of the island. There were not men enough on the island who were able to give burial to the dead. Along the coast of Conemara, the people lived for many months exclusively on seaweed and such fish as they were able to obtain. And so it was on the coasts of Donegal and Antrim. Even in prosperous Bel- fast, men and women quarrelled along the quays for the particles of grain — drippings from the bags of the cargoes of corn being delivered. In one au- thenticated instance, an infant was found seeking sustenance from the breast of its mother, w^ho had died of hunger, and alone. Starvation was checked by the munificent charity of America, and by the generous contributions of other nations. Still the people were swept off by tens of thousands by starvation in the midst of plenty, whilst those who were able, fled to America, aided in that effort by the instrumentality of their relatives here, or by the sale of the few acres which they owned, or of their lease, if they were fortunate enough to have one. 18 JAMES STEPHENS. Those who remained, starving or approa^'hing beg- gary or starvation, still solemnly protested. The cry for indei^endence, as a cure for all their ills, rose loud and long above the shrieks of famine. The bubble of peaceful agitation burst about O'Connell's ears, and out of the ashes of the party agitating for Repeal sprang the " Irish Confederation." O'Connell died. The French Revolution burst upon startled Europe. The down-trodden nations of the world dreamed that the star of their redemption had arisen. The people of Ireland looked for a new Redeemer from the east! Revolutionary clubs were formed in every town and hamlet. The young men of Ireland, irrespective of creed, or the difference of opinion as to the means to accomplish their country's freedom, w^hich they had hitherto indulged in, shook hands as brothers and prepared themselves for the coming conflict. Arras were purchased in con- siderable numbers, and smithies were busy night and day in the manufacture of pike-heads. Treason was taught openly in the speeches of Meagher, O'Brien, Martin, Traitor McGee, Mitchel and a host of others, and in the pages of The Vnited Irishynen and The Na- tion. The peaceful Protestant north was armed to the teeth, guns and pikes were hidden among the brick-fields near the manufacturing towns and in hay- ricks throughout the country. The people were ripe and ready once again. Then came the counter- action of the government — the arming of the Orange lodges ; the industrious spread of the story, through a paid press, that the purpose of the confederates was that of the communists of France — subversion of all order and religion. Regiments poured in from FENIAN BROTHERHO OD. 19 England ; artillery was paraded through the streets of Dublin. An act was passed by a large majority providing "that any one who should levy war against the Queen, or endeavor to deprive her of her title, or by open or advised speaking, printing, or publishing, incite others to the same, should be deemed guilty of felony and transported." Then followed the arrest of O'Brien, Meagher, and Mitchel, on a charge of sedition. Unable to find a jury sufficiently venal for their purpose, the prisoners wqtq discharged. Mitchel was again arrested, prosecuted under the new act, and, with a new packed jury, was convicted and sentenced to transportation. The day on which Mitchel was to be taken from his prison, in Dublin, to undergo his sentence of transportation, was to have been that for a general outbreak. But this was in May ; the crops were in the fields, not in the haggards ; and a rising, it was deemed by many, ought only to be made in the harvest-time, when the people could find sus- tenance on the field ; in the food within their reach. The leaders of the party, therefore, advised the wait- ing to the harvest-time. They waited; but the delay was fatal. Taken at that hour when the true pulse of Ireland beat steadily ; when the police were rebellious to the heart's core, and not an Irish soldier in the country who w^as not ready to turn his bay- onet towards an English breast, the countrj^ would have burst into a flame, and Ireland would have profited by the best chance she had had for freedom in centuries. Whatever the result, that was her one great chance — she allowed it to pass her by. Troops were poured in in additional numbers ; 20 JAMES STEPHENS. newspapers were suppressed ; martial law was pro- claimed ; diligent search was made for arms in every direction ; weapons were placed in the hands of northern loyalists. Conservative flax-spinners and manufacturers pledged their workmen against secret societies. The appliances to put out the fire were manifold and successful ; for, when the harvest came, came with it the miserable failure at an outbreak, and, following it, the arrest and banishment of many of the leaders. So ended the^^ro^es^ of '48. " Now, surely," said the critics, who had written up this drama and spoken in terms of praise or blame of the actors therein, as their pay or spirit moved them ; " now, surely, these Irish will wind up their national performance with this last act, the last scene of which is sufficiently tragical for a respecta- ble denouement." " Surely," cried the English taskmasters, "these whipped hounds will howl to kennel and obey the lash." " Surely," said the peaceful priests, "good people, you must see that God is not with you in all this thing ; be peaceful, be contented. Have you not a college where your priests are taught some Latin, and learn to swear allegiance with the vow of celibacy? Have you not a National school system where, with a little fighting on our part, but a few of you are perverted, and the rest but gradually Anglicised ? What, if you persist in being a virtuous and prolific race, have you not the privilege to take your surplus selves to America, and your blessed pastor with you ? God bless us all ! it might be worse. There was a time when it was worse. I tell you, there was a time when they would have shot me for saying mass, FENIAN BR OTHERHO OB. 21 or for shriving the soul of a dying sinner ; now I can say mass in the broad daylight, and you can kneel before nie till my blessing, to reach you all, has to pass out through the open door, for you are too poor to build a house for God and yourselves and me, God help you. But this is a wonderful change, my chil- dren. Bless God, starve a little, and be contented." For a time it looked as if the critics were in the right ; the curtain seemed indeed to have fallen on the last act of the Irish revolutionary drama. Wily diplomatists in England and the representa- tives of English rule, and the recipients of English bribes in Ireland, the Castle Hacks in Dublin, and the city shopkeepers who scrambled for viceregal pence, and the Orangemen of the north, and the Irish gentlemen, with English names and English proclivities, who had invested capital in spinning- mills and looms and bleach-mills on the banks of the Lagan and the Bann, all these rubbed to- gether their exultant palms and thanked Heaven (no they didn't, they never thought of Heaven), and congratulated each other at the death and burial of Old Ireland and of Young Ireland just consummated. N'ow suppose we rested here, has not proof enough been given of incompatibility of temper as be- tween this English and this Irish people to ask the world's verdict for divorce ? Whom God hath not put together man may break asunder. What need to write grievances, which even the few Conserva- tives in Ireland complain of, to show the inj ustice ot the one contracting party ? But let us see if there remained not some cause of discontent for even those who loved not revolution, and ignored the 22 JAMES STEPHENS. proposition that their country was compelled to a relationship with another, which she hated, and who reciprocated the emotion. Yes, even these quarrelled at a state of things which had led to the loss by Ire- land of her position as a manufacturing country, and to her absolute dependence on England for manu- factures in exchange for her agricultural produce — and at the subjection of the people to a landlord class, of English descent and English affiliation whose first and last duty was the exercise of a per- petual drainage upon their tenantry, that they might spend the proceeds in that country of their affection (the rental estimated as paid to absentee landlords being about thirty millions of dollars annually), and that, as a matter of necessity, paid in the produce of the soil — and at the existence of a State Church, sustained by the presence of British bayonets (pol- ished and kept in point by Irish taxes), only for the especial comfort of English clergymen, the younger sons of English aristocrats, or older ones, who, from deficiency in mental gifts, were supposed to be fit- ted for nothing better, and thrown into the well feathered bosom of the Church in Ireland — and at the collection and absorption of the revenues of Ire- land by English officials, who, having amassed for- tunes amidst Irish poverty, retired for their enjoy- ment to their native island, or their expedition to the Continent, giving place to others of their kin- dred to begin and end in doing likewise — and at the presence in the country of from twenty to fifty thousand British soldiers, a militia at the beck and call of the English Government, a police force of ten thousand men supposed to be FENIAN BROTHERHOOD. 23 loyal also, and supported by an over-burdened and impoverished people — and, to sum up, at the state of things to which all this gave rise, which, while they had no hand in it, in fact ignored it altogether, was a state of things these peace-preserving, patient, peaceful, conservative people did not like ; we mean that state of feeling all around them which was fos- tered in secret societies, and which any day again might develop itself in outbreak and rebellion ; in fact, a state of terrorism which they feared had as- sumed a chronic character, and which, alas! (said they) was ruinous to all projects for the develop- ment and industrial progress of the country. So those who were most content had, at least, all these things to complain of. For a time it looked as if the priests were right, and that the people thought so. Submission to the powers that be, was a doctrine easy to preach and of easy practice, and the rendering unto Caesar of the things that are Caesar's was easy too, for there was but little to give him now, and he was kind enough to come and take it. Well, it is now eighteen years since the protest of '48 ; what has been going on since then ? Since then the happy Irish people have been flying from a country for which they have given some evidences of their affection, as if their God had left it ; per- haps He has, and they have set out ujDon a pilgrim- age to find Him. The population of Ireland in 1846 numbered nine million souls ; to-day it is estimated at four millions five hundred thousand. Of these, three millions have found a home in America ; for the balance, and 24 JAMES STEPHENS. the natural increase unaccounted for, ask Ireland's guardians, and the Poor Law guardians, and the graveyards without walls (they are too wide for that), in Skull, and Skibbereen, and Connemara, and the ditches at whose side the starving wretches lay down and died in Donegal. Whole villages have disappeared; homesteads which had stood for a hundred years or more have fallen in the south and west in every parish, and stone fences have been piled up from their rums to keep in herds of sheep for the English market as of old, but tended this time by English or Scotch shep- herds, and owned by English farmers. The whole agricultural portion of the country is becoming as rapidly Anglicised as the best diplomacy of England can effect for her this wished-for change. America is now the hope of most of the peasantry ; their only wish to rake out the dead ashes on their hearth-stones, leave the widow^'s and the orphan's and the exile's curse for the incoming tenant, and follow the star of their new destiny to the West. And those behind, and who must remain behind, what of them ? Those without the paltry means to pay their own and their wives' and children's passage, without friends on this side to give them help ? What of those who take things as they come — good and bad — and make the best of them ? What of those, and they are many, who would rather starve, or fight and die in Ireland, than live in Eden, if that Eden were unbounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the west, and on the east by the Irish Sea ? What of those during these eighteen years, from '48 to ''QQ'i Are they beaten to the ground at last ? Do they accept FENIAN BR OTHERHO OD. 25 this state of things without a murmur ? Did the last demonstration of discontent die a miserable death at Ballingarry? Did their last hope for Irish re- demption pass away with the exiled confederates ? Not so, by the immortal and rebellious memories of Fitzgerald, of Emmet, and of Tone ! Not so, by the memories of the men of Forty-eight ! As faith- ful as the shamrock to the soil is the seed of revolution ! There is still another protest; and its history is found in the following pages, linked with the name of Stephens. Whatever may be the immediate fo]>N, tunes of the organization in which this protest has taken shape, whatever its trials and its sacrifices, and however long delayed the consummation of its pur- pose, let us hope that this indeed will be the last protest of the Irish people against English rule. ''^TLet us hope that out of the misunderstandings and divisions which have unfortunately arisen among Irishmen in America, a perfect union may be born, no less strong on account of their brief estrange- ment ; and that plans of concerted action with their fellow-countrymen at home may be matured and brought to issue. The presence among Irishmen in America, who, however differing in opinion, have a common object in view, of the man whose whole life is one of sacrifice to his love of country, ought to smooth away all difficulties, and reunite in one com- mon brotherhood all patriotic Irishmen of whatever creed or complexion of opinion. It is as difficult to see how uniformity of action is to be arrived at except through the instrumentality of this man, as it is to entertain the shadow of a hope for the immediate delivery of Ireland without union. 2 26 JAMES STEPHENS. Irishmen in Ireland — those in prison there (some of them doomed to a long life's exile), those who, although not yet within the greedy grasp of English law, are surrounded by the snares of the spoiler, and those who wait with patient, hopeful hearts and ready arms the signal for united action — all look for- ward for their own and their country's salvation to the cooperation of their countrymen in America, with their envoy and chief, James Stephens. JAMES STEPHENS — FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY CARJAL, PARIS. -swn