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Parnell rackrents and of promoting the transference of the ownership of the land to the occupiers. A manifesto, addressed by the executive to the Irish race, appealed for support for the league on these terms. But the league had other than agrarian objects. Four of the original officers were, or had been, members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and all sympathised with the demand for legislative independence. The league was intended to advance that cause; but, in order to attract to it all men of nationalist opinions, in accordance with the principles of 'the new departure,' it was judged prudent not to define its political aims. The Irish Republican Brotherhood, however, remained inflexible, and as a body declined its aid, although the directory believed in the genuineness of Parnell's hatred of England, and received the advances he made to them in a friendly spirit. But, despite the action of the 'old fenian' leaders, many unofficial members of the fenian body joined the land league and worked under Parnell's command. Parnell devoted himself with infinite energy to consolidating the new association. At Navan, on 11 Oct., he advised the farmers to offer what they considered fair rent, and, if it was refused, to pay none until the landlords came to their senses. He told the Irish electoral league at Manchester on 10 Nov. that Ireland had struck against the payment of unjust rents. Fair rents, he thought, should be paid for thirty years, and the land should then become the property of the tenant.

At the first meeting of the league Parnell had been invited to proceed to America to obtain pecuniary assistance. Accordingly, on 21 Dec. 1879, he embarked at Queenstown for New York, and arrived off Sandy Hook on 1 Jan. 1880. On 4 Jan. he addressed some seven thousand persons at Gilmore's Garden, New York. He solicited contributions both for the home-rule organisation and for the famine-stricken peasantry; the two funds were to be kept separate (New York Nation, 8 Jan. 1880). Five hundred pounds was handed to Parnell, and was distributed in Mayo and Galway. But neither relief of distress nor the collection of funds for either the parliamentary party or the land league exhausted the objects of Parnell's mission. His leading object was to exert his personal influence on the Irish revolutionists in America so as to induce them to accept fully 'the new departure,' and to co-operate in the movement for legislative independence. In a conversation with a New York journalist on the outward voyage, while referring with satisfaction to the diminution in the value of land already effected by the land-league operations, he confessed his need of undivided fenian support if the system of Irish government was to be altered. Personally he would join no illegal body or secret society, but the fenian organisations and fenian sympathies he required to have at his back. In the opinion of a shrewd and experienced Irish nationalist member, Parnell's policy was impracticable. 'He will have to talk treason in America. How will he run the gauntlet of the House of Commons afterwards?' But Parnell's negotiations with the Clan-na-Gael succeeded. He soon won the confidence of its leaders, who formally adopted 'the new departure.' Parnell at the same time avoided making himself responsible for the violent acts of the clan, and cultivated no genuine intimacy with its organisers. He spared no effort to gain an ascendency over the rank and file, and to convince them that the policy of combining constitutional and revolutionary agitation was the only means of bringing England to her knees. But the inner machinery of the clan he neither studied nor sought to control.

After accepting Parnell as their ally, the clan organised his meetings in America, filled the halls where he spoke, and contributed to his fund for the distressed tenants. At the same time he was anxious to win all the sympathy and pecuniary aid possible, and therefore did not adhere solely to the mode of appeal which suited the revolutionists. He varied his tone so as to satisfy not only the fenian but the pacific land reformer and the home-ruler among Irish-Americans, and he often confined himself to purely philanthropic utterances so as to effectually reach the impartial American public. The leading citizens of the United States appeared with him on the platform. Henry Ward Beecher supported him at Brooklyn on 9 Jan., and Wendell Phillips at Boston three days later. After speaking to large audiences at Philadelphia, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Peoria (Illinois), Cambridge (Massachusetts), Albany, and other places, he was accorded, as in the case of Kossuth, Dr. John England [q. v.] in 1826, and some other visitors, the honour of an invitation to address the House of Representatives at Washington on the evening of 2 Feb. This distinction was secured mainly through the efforts of Captain O'Meagher Condon, a member of the Clan-na-Gael, and a fenian of 1867. The galleries were crowded, but the members present are said to have been few. Parnell spoke chiefly of the means by which he proposed to revolutionise the land tenure of Ireland by expropriating the landlords after they had been fairly compensated for their interests (Report, pp. 19-20). On 4 Feb.