Page:Rome and Fenianism.pdf/3

 long interval by others which will still further satisfy the popular longings. It is expected that the benefits of the Land Act will be extended to house-holders, and that to all occupiers of the soil facilities will be afforded for purchasing the fee of their holdings and becoming proprietors of their farms. The Royal University, intended for Catholics. will, it in said, he placed on a loss niggardly footing. The primary education system may be rendered still more agreeable to the feelings of the Catholic people. And it is rumoured that the British Ministry is disposed to entertain the idea of granting to Ireland. at no distant date, the privilege of governing itself in some matters not involving the integrity of the empire.

Yet, precisely at a time when enormous material benefits have been conferred upon the farming classes and further benefits were impending. when u disposition was shown to render concessions to popular demands in the matter of education, and when even a large measures of Home Rule was not beyond the hopes of the people, a spirit of disloyalty to the British Crown and of hatred to England was actively manifested among Irishman at home and alumni. Associations were formed, in Ireland secretly, in America openly, to make war upon England by means against which, it might have been supported, the hearts of Irishmen and Catholics would have revolted. Agrarian and political murders, of a character to shock the civilized world, were perpetrated. The Maamtrasna massacre and the Phœnix Park assassinations revived the worst memories of 1798, and evoked the astonishment of many, who fondly believed that Irishmen and Catholics were in the present day incapable of such atrocities. The sympathies of the people were shown towards the assassins. Dublin mobs cheered tho men arrested and tried for these horrible crimes. The judges, the jurors, tho witnesses and all concerned in bringing the guilty portion to justice were menaced with death, so that it was darned necessary to protect them, not Only in court but at their homes, and in spite of all precautions, attempts, in one instance nearly successful, were made upon their lives. The popular press gave little assistance towards the punishment of crime, but. whenever it was possible, sought to render more difficult the conviction of criminals. Much was written concerning the barbarity of Coercion Laws, the brutality of judges, the packing of juries, the exclusion of Roman Catholics from the jury box and the worthlessness of the evidence of informers, but not a word was said to uphold the majesty of justice or strengthen the moral weight of convictions and sentences, in cases where the evidence was incontrovertible and the guilt beyond doubt.

The Irish popular press is eminently a Land League pines, and therefore endeavours to minimise the effect of the agrarian and political crimes which undoubtedly are the outcome of tho agitation carried on by Mr. Parnell and his followers, an agitation which has proceeded through the gradations of "Boycotting" and “No Rent" manifestoes [sic] to the butcheries of Maamtrasna and the cold-blooded assassinations in the Phœnix Park, as well as to the attempts to destroy by dynamite the principal public buildings in Great Britain. The promoter of the Land League calmly declare murders to be unnecessary for their purpose; they say that the assassination of Mr. Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish was damaging in their cause, and that they are not to he held responsible for the dynamite doings of Irish-American Fenians. Their cold repudiation of horrible crimes seems consistent with the conduct of the Philadelphia Convention, which proclaimed its complete accord with Mr. Parnell, admitted O‘Donovan Rossa as a member, and deliberately abstained from passing a word of censure upon the assassination and dynamite party.

The Parnellite movement never professed to be agrarian merely, but, on the contrary, Land measures were openly declared by the lender to form but an incident in the campaign, which was instituted for far other purposes than the amelioration of the condition of Irish formers. "None of us,"—so spoke Mr. Parnell at Cincinnati, on the 23rd of February, 1852—"whether we are in America or in Ireland, or wherever we may be—will be