man in the United States was in his heart an enemy of Eng. land, there might probably be found instances enough the other way to discredit the literal accuracy of the asser tion. But we do not know with what contempt Dr. Johnson spoke of the literal accuracy which replied to the statement that a certain orchard contained no fruit, by showing that it actually had three apples and four pears. To all who do not insist on that sort of accuracy it will be proper to say that, speaking generally, all the Irish population in the United States is animated by feelings of hostility to English dominion in Ireland. Filled with this feeling the Irish in the States made their political organizations the means of keeping up a constant agitation, having for its object to secure the co-operation of American parties in some designs against England. One of the great political parties into which the Northern States were divided made it a part of their electioneering business to conciliate the Irish vote in the populous cities. They professed great affection for Ireland and sympathy with Irish grievances; they gave the word of order to their American followers to patronize the Irish; their leaders were often to be seen on the platform at Irish meetings; the municipal authorities of some of the great towns took part in the Irish processions on St. Patrick's Day; more than once the American mayor of an American city exhibited himself arrayed in garments of green on that anniversary. The Irish vote was at one time absolutely necessary to the Democratic party in the States; and the Democratic party were ready to give a seeming countenance to any scheme which happened for the moment to allure the hopes of the Irish populations. After the Civil War the feelings of almost all the political parties in the States, in the South as well as the North, were hostile to England. At such a moment, and under such a condition of things, it cannot be matter of surprise if the hopes of the Irish populations were excited to the highest degree. The

confidence felt by so many persons in this country that the Alabama controversy had been dropped forever by American statesmen, had not the slightest support from the bearing or resolve of any of the great American parties. It is quite easy to imagine a condition of things just then, which would have led a light-hearted American President to try to bring together all classes of the American population in a war against England. The length of the almost indefensible Canadian frontier line would have given America the im. mense advantage of being able to choose her own battleground. Such a war would at one time have been welcomed with enthusiasm all over the States. The objections of calm and cautious minds would have been borne down and swept away in a very wave of popular passion. It is not surprising if, under such circumstances, many of the Fenian leaders in America should have thought it easy to force the head of the government, and to bring on a war with Eng. land. At all events, it is not surprising if they should have believed that the American government would put forth little effort to prevent the Fenians from using the frontier of the United States as a basis of operations against England.

The Civil War had introduced a new figure to the world's stage. This was the Irish American soldier. He had the bright, humorous countenance of the Celt, with the peculiar litheness and military swagger of the American “boy in blue." He had some of the Amerian shrewdness grafted on to his Irish love of adventure. In thousands of cases he spoke with an American accent, and had never set foot on the soil of that Ireland from which his fathers came, and which, to do him justice, he loved with a passion at once romantic and sincere. He might have fought for the North, or he might have fought for the South. He might have ranged himself under the colors borne by Thomas Francis Meagher-" Meagher of the Sword" or he might have fol

lowed the fearless lead of "Pat Cleburne." Perhaps he was one of the Irish brigade who joined in the desperate charges up the heights of Fredericksburg; or perhaps he was one of the equally brave men who successfully held those heights for the South. It was all the same when the interests came to be concerned; he was ready to forget all 'differences in a companionship on that question. Many of these men-thousands of them-were as sincerely patriotic in their way as they were simple and brave. It is needless to say that they were hastened on in some instances by adventurers, who fomented the Fenian movement out of the merest and the meanest self-seeking. Men swaggered about Union Square, New York, as Fenian leaders, who had not the faintest notion of risking their own valuable lives in any quarrel more dignified than a bar-room row in the Sixth Ward-the "Big Sixth" of New York. Some were making a living out of the organization-out of that, and apparently nothing else. The contributions given by poor Irish hackdrivers and servant girls, in the sincere belief that they were helping to man the ranks of an Irish army of independence, enabled some of these self-appointed leaders to wear fine clothes and to order expensive dinners. Of course something of this kind is to be said of every such organization. It is especially likely to be true of any organization got u in a country like America, where the field of agitation is open to everybody alike, with little of authority or prescrip tion to govern the taking of places. But in the main, it is only fair to say that the Fenian movement in the United States was got up, organized, and manned by persons who, however they may have been mistaken as to their ends and misguided as to their means, were single-hearted, unselfish, and faithfully devoted to their cause. It is necessary that this should be said somewhat emphatically; for the mind of the English public has always been curiously misled with regard to the character of the Fenian organization. In this,

as in other instances, the public conscience of England has too often been lulled to sleep by the assurance that all who reject the English point of view must be either fools or knaves, and that there is no occasion for sensible men to take any account of their demand or their protestations It may be well, too, to emphasize the fact that the plans of the Fenians were not by any means the fantastically foolish projects that it is the custom here to believe them. They resembled in some respects the projects of the Polish insurgents, which we have described in another chapter of this work. Like the Polish schemes they were founded on calculations which did not turn out as might have been expected, but which, nevertheless, might very easily have come right. The Polish rebellion was started in the hope that some of the European powers would come to the help of Poland; and no European power did come to its help. But there was at one time, as we know now, a very great chance indeed that such help would be strongly given. The Fenian rising was inspired by the hope that the United States and England would be at war; and we know now that they were more than once on the very verge of war. It is, we believe, quite certain that the officers were already named by the American authorities who were to have conducted an invasion of Canada. Those who did not happen to have known America and American life in the days shortly after the close of the Civil War can have hardly any idea of the bitterness of feeling against England that prevailed then all over the States, in the South just as much as in the North. If the English government had peremptorily and absolutely rejected the idea of arbitration with regard to the Alabama claims, at any time between 1865 and 1868, it is all but certain that America would have declared war. An American invasion of Canada would have made a Fenian rising in Ireland a very different trouble from that which under the actual conditions it afterward proved to be.

Meanwhile there began to be a constant mysterious influx of strangers into Ireland. They were strangers who for the most part had Celtic features and the bearing of American soldiers. They distributed themselves throughout the towns and villages; most of them had relatives or old friends here and there, to whom they told stories of the share they had had in the big wars across the Atlantic and of the preparations that were making in the States for the accon.plishment of Irish independence. At this time the Fenians in the States were filling the columns of friendly journals with accounts of the growth of their organization and announcements of the manner in which it was to be directed to its purpose. After a while things went so far that the Fenian leaders in the United States issued an address, announcing that there officers were going to Ireland to raise an army here for the recovery of the country's independence. Of course the government here were soon quite prepared to receive them; and indeed the authorities easily managed to keep themselves informed by means of spies of all that was going on in Ireland. The spy system was soon flourishing in full force. Every considerable gathering of Fenians had among its members at least one person who generally professed a yet fiercer devotion to the cause than any of the rest, and who was in the habit of carrying to Dublin Castle every night his official report of what his Fenian colleagues had been doing. It is positively stated that in one instance a Protestant detective in the pay of the government actually passed himself off as a Catholic, and took the sacrament openly in a Catholic church in order to establish his Catholic orthodoxy in the eyes of his companions. One need not be a Catholic in order to understand the grossness of the outrage which conduct like this must seem to be in the eyes of all who believe in the mysteries of the Catholic faith. Meanwhile the Head Centre of Fenianism in America, James Stephen, who had borne a part in the movement of