height that, one by one, they were hanged, under certain circumstances without the formality of a trial." Still more violent outrages naturally followed, and the murder-societies grew fiercer in their reprisals, until their operations attained to almost the dimensions of a rebellion, and it was with difficulty, and not till after a considerable time had elapsed, that they were suppressed. But it was a rising of people almost literally for leave to live, and no thought of influencing legislation stimulated or at all moved them.

Redress, however, came, but slowly and grudgingly. The Catholics were emancipated to avert a civil war, tithes were commuted into a rent-charge payable by landlords, and some minor concessions made; but the landlords' privilege to plunder their tenants and confiscate the fruits of their labours remained practically intact until quite recently-until, in fact, the passing of the Land Act of 1881.

The population continued to increase, until the famine of 1847, wholesale evictions, and emigration reduced it in something more than a quarter of a century by three millions. And the decrease still continues. The Ribbon Society first grew formidable after the famine. Its operations were directed against the "land grabbers" rather than the hereditary landlords, who, as a rule, were not over-exacting. The evictions of this period were marked by much wanton caprice and great cruelty. "The right," wrote Mr. Froude, " in these evictions lay with the tenants; the wrong with their oppressors." This is quite true. Oppression alone produced outrage, and outrage was relied upon to justify the exceptional severity of coercive laws and their vigorous administration; but not till our time were similar laws accompanied by measures for the redress of admitted and grievous wrongs. British Governments, Whig and Tory, seemed to hold landlord rights as too sacred to be at all infringed upon-to consider that, as Lord Palmerston phrased it, "tenant right meant landlord wrong."

In this obstinate refusal to remove the abuses which affected the rights, feelings, and even existence of the great bulk of the population, lay the power of Ribbonism. It had its ramifications all over the country. In the North it had also to encounter the Orangemen ; in the West and South its operations were confined to acts of retaliation for the exactions of " felonious" landlordism. It was responsible. for every outbreak of agrarian crime from the famine time, when first it became formidable, down to that which took place in county Westmeath in 1871, when the Westmeath Act may be said to have given it its coup de grâce. Since then it has ceased to exist as an organized body. Emigrants carried its principles to America, and there founded, so long ago as 1848, the "Ancient Order of Hibernians," which still lives, but chiefly only as an agency for the collection of subscriptions for the support of the semi-agrarian, semi-political, and really wholly

anti-national League organization. The "intensity of Fenianism" it was that first awakened a powerful British Minister to the gravity of the causes which gave birth and strength to these murder-societies; and before the vigorous legislation devised and carried by him Protestant ascendency went down, and a strong curb was placed on landlord rapacity. And when, later, another and a successful effort to secure to the tenant the full fruits of his labour and entire protection against unjust exaction which, in fact, raised him to co-proprietorship with the landlord in the soil at the very time when every cause that could palliate the disorders, tumults, and outrages of the past had been removed, they again broke out with infinitely greater intensity and more murderous virulence than ever before. Now, why was this?

The reason is found in the legacy of an evil past. The expatriated Celt, whom landlord greed and oppressive laws drove out of his native land, as a rule, prospered beyond the Atlantic. He there nourished his hate for the oppressors of his country, born of a sense of the bitter wrongs endured at their hands. He constituted the mainstay of Fenianism, Land Leagueism, and will continue to support any other "ism" which gives promise of proving troublesome to the British "enemy." He is never so happy as when he is permitted to subscribe his money to any association or combination which proposes to make the British Government in Ireland difficult, if not impossible. He is ever ready with his dollars when called for on behalf of the "old land," but though he does not inquire too closely what precisely is done with them, he naturally likes to have some value for his money. Tumult and disorder, murder and outrage in Ireland give him unalloyed gratification; and these provided, he is a perfectly inexhaustible mine of wealth to the professional patriots who trade on his bitter irreconcilability to British rule in his native land. It is his good opinion, and not that of Englishmen, whether sympathizers with Ireland or not, that the League leader has frankly confessed he sets store on possessing. And with reason: without his money the League cannot live. At the same time he is mainly responsible for the murders and atrocities of the last three years in Ireland, as we shall see.

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After the collapse of Fenianism our typical emigrant Celt for a brief period lapsed into the quietude which succeeds foiled expectancy, and was long a prey to morose melancholy, for want of a cause" to sustain which he could empty his pockets of his superflous cash. At last one was provided for him. The Fenian "rising" proved to Irish patriots that in "honourable warfare" Ireland was no match for England. Plainly, therefore, there was nothing for it but dishonourable warfare. Accordingly a notable plan was designed which preposed to blow up, burn, and destroy whenever and wherever it was

1

found to be practicable, British ships, public buildings, dockyards, and, as a last resource, to murder British ministers. By this means it was hoped that the dense intellects of the people of Great Britain and of its rulers would become convinced that, after all, ruling Ireland against the wishes of its people was quite too costly and troublesome an enterprise to persevere with, and that they would, once for all, give over the Emerald Isle to its own people. To sustain this plan, of course money, which is the root of all Irish agitation, as it is of all evil, was needed, and a "Skirmishing Fund" was established, into which the dollars of our Transatlantic Celtic exemplar flowed freely. Soon a large amount was realized; but, sad to say, no "skirmishing" was effected. At last the contributions ceased, and the subscribers began to raise a clamour. They wanted some account of their money. There was absolutely nothing to show for it. They were quieted with the assurance that, at all events, the money was safe. It was vested in trustees of high honour, and so forth; but, like the League Fund in Ireland, no account could be published of its expenditure. Some discontented subscribers thereupon formed an 'investigating" committee, and published a report. This document, read in connection with events which occurred previous and subsequent to its publication, throws much light on the revelations of the "Invincible" informers.

As I have said, the Ribbon Confederacy was stamped out in 1871 by the Westmeath Act. From that date until the murder of the Earl of Leitrim in the month of April, 1878, there was a notable absence of serious agrarian crime. That crime, however, was evidently the work of an organization of men accustomed to the ways of conspiracies, so carefully was it planned and carried out, and so perfect was the obliteration of all trace of the assassins. From the report of the Skirmishing Fund investigating committee, we learn that, at the time of its commission, one of the trustees of the fund was in Ireland on "special business," and had obtained a large sum for his expenses. From certain oblique hints and insinuations which appeared in the Irish American papers afterwards, the conclusion might be drawn that the murder was arranged, carried out, and paid for by the Skirmishing Fund trustees; that failing other means of satisfying the longings of the subscribers for results, they had taken in hand the "removal" of especially obnoxious Irish landlords. However that may be, there is no doubt at all that the crime was the work of an organization presumedly having its location in America, since none such was known to exist in Ireland. Moreover, at this time there was no land agitation and no incendiary oratory to instigate individuals to its commission; unruffled calm, not to say stagnation, was the chief characteristic of the political life of the country. Nevertheless, the Earl of Leitrim

was slain at the same time that an emissary of an Irish American confederacy to obtain freedom for Ireland from British rule, and which included in its means of working the murder of Irish landlords, was in the country.

Shortly after, in October, 1878, the Skirmishing Fund trustees publicly made overtures to Mr. Parnell for an alliance between the American Fenian party and that which acknowledged his lead in Ireland. They invited him to set an agitation on foot for the acquisition by the tenants of the ownership of their farms, which the Fenians would support. Whether the invitation was accepted or not does not clearly appear. But we learn from the Skirmishers' Report that Mr. John Devoy, another of the trustees, came to Ireland early in 1879, with the avowed object of establishing a modus vivendi between the extreme and moderate Nationalists-the Fenians and non-Fenians that is; and that his mission was successful would appear from the facts that the Land agitation soon after was set going, and that amongst its most prominent leaders were well known Fenians. But whether actually in alliance or not, there is no doubt at all that the two parties acted in concert to attain the same ends-that is to say, the party of agitation and the party of murder and outrage both operated on parallel lines to produce the same results-namely, perennial tumults, perpetual disorder, and prolonged terrorism, with the view of "starving out" the landlords, and ultimately of rendering British rule in Ireland impossible.

How the agitators succeeded, by appeals to the greed of an ignorant and therefore credulous and impressionable people, in inducing repudiation of lawful obligations, and exciting class hatred and social confusion, is now an old and shameful story, as is the manner in which they were sustained by their reputed confederates, the murderers and outrage workers. Of course, the so-called "legal and constitutional" patriots professed to be quite shocked at the atrocities perpetrated by their co-workers. They attributed them to the spontaneous exasperation" of an enraged people—that is, of a people who had had granted them by the Imperial Parliament every reasonable concession asked in their name-at refusal of redress. No doubt, on their side, the murderers would urge that they murdered for the general good, in order to obtain the concession of impossible demands from the British Government. The Land Act, if allowed to exercise its healing influence, would have quite spoiled the game of both : therefore they united to condemn it. The "exasperation," in truth, was made to "order;" the murders suborned and paid for in "current coin."

The circumstances attending the issue of the "no rent" manifesto make this quite clear. No rent was ordered to be paid until "the suspects were released." Non-payment of rent produced evictions;

evictions, murders and outrages. That the latter are directly traceable to the combination of Leaguers and Fenian "Invincibles," the Kilmainham revelations leave no manner of doubt whatever. And the murders and outrages in Dublin itself were plainly meant as reprisals in the first instance for the imprisonment of Land League leaders, and, later on, for the execution of assassins who perpetrated murders in enforcement of Land League decrees.

It is, therefore, plain that the recent outbreak of crime, outrage, and disorder was deliberately excited and stimulated by a number of unscrupulous men-designing knaves and sham patriots-some of whom make their living by professing patriotism, and duping ignorant people, and others of whom lust for political influence, and for whom tranquillity means obscurity; and was in no sense the result of exasperation, as is pretended. They succeeded in exciting by turns the greed, the hopes, and the fears of the peasantry. By holding out the expectation that by not paying rent, they would ultimately obtain their land for nothing, and have no rent to pay ever after, and of material support in the event of their temporarily losing their farms by eviction, they induced too credulous men to set all law at defiance. And by threats of "social ostracism"-which in League argot means Boycotting, the most odious form of social tyranny-they compelled obedience to their decrees. Moreover, their influence was immensely strengthened by the concessions which were made to appear as having been won by them for Ireland from the present Parliament, and by the indiscriminate support accorded them by some of the leading lights of the philosophical radicalism of England.

The moral of all this is so plain that all "who run may read." It teaches that Irish crime and outrage and incitements thereto must be rigidly suppressed; that it must be made clear that beneficial legislation for Ireland is not undertaken under pressure of anarchy and disorder; and that the very worst and most deadly enemies of Ireland are her patriots and those in high places who countenance and insensibly assist them in carrying out their machinations. When British Ministers resolve to be guided by these facts, Irish Americans will soon learn that there is no reasonable chance of having their money's worth of trouble for England in Ireland, and will cease to subscribe to the League Fund. Patriotism being then found to be no longer profitable will be abandoned by its professors, and Ireland be at peace.

RICHARD PIGOTT.