are solemnly pledged to labour earnestly and continuously for the regeneration of our beloved Ireland. That pledge, with the blessing of Divine Providence, we shall redeem; and when the wished-for hour will have arrived, we shall be prepared, with you, to meet the implacable persecutors of our race in battle array, to put an end for ever to the accursed system under which our unhappy people have suffered such cruel tortures, or die like men in the attempt. And in what holier cause has man ever died? We know you are ready; nine-tenths of the Irish people • This misuse of "will" is explained by the nationality of the would but expose the ardent and the brave to the vengeance of cruel despots, and, be it remembered, that such writers. VOL. IX.-No. 425. ... sacrifices beget no noble aspirations. No enslaved people ever regained their independence, or became formidable to their enslaver, without illegal (in the enslaved sense) pre-organisation. . . . Here we have soldiers armed and trained (thousands of them trained in the tented field, and amid the smoke and thunders of battle), with able and experienced generals to lead them. Let the cities and towns and parishes of Ireland have their brigades, regiments, battalions, and companies of partially disciplined soldiers of liberty silently enrolled. Above all things, let every man be pledged to obey the commands of his superior, and pledged also never to move without such commands, for obedience to command is the first and the most important requisite to the soldier; all the rest is secondary. Thus you will not only be prepared to strike with effect, but all rash attempts at insurrection will be prevented. Without such an organisation as we contemplate, partial uprisings of the people will be sure to occur, having no results but the sacrifice of brave men, and perhaps the ruin of our cause. When we strike, let us strike home; and are there not strong arms within the enemy's own shores to second the blow? Circumstances are in our favour such as Providence never before vouchsafed to an enslaved people. We have but to act as becomes brave and reasoning men, and ours shall be the pride and the glory of lifting our sorrowing Erin of the streams to her place among the nations. Brothers, rely upon us. We rely upon you. "JAMES GIBBONS, Pennsylvania, Chairman; JOHN O'MAHONY, New York, President and Head Centre of the Fenian Brotherhood; RICHARD O'DOHERTY, Indiana, DANIEL GRADY, District of Columbia, and DANIEL CARMODY, Wisconsin, Vice Presidents; HENRY O'C. MCCARTHY, Illinois, and JOHN A. STUART, Indiana, Secretaries." In the possession of one of the convicted prisoners, by name Moore, a blacksmith, was found a pamphlet containing the rules and bye-laws of the Fenian Brotherhood, from which the following passages are extracted. They are sufficient to show that the Fenian movement is or was a thing undertaken in earnest by serious men. CONSTITUTION AND BYE-LAWS. "1. The Fenian Brotherhood.-The Fenian Brotherhood is a distinct and independent organisation. It is composed, in the first place, of citizens of the United States of America, of Irish birth and lineage; and in the second place, of Irishmen, and of friends of Ireland, living elsewhere on the American continent, and in the provinces of the British Empire wherever situated. Its head-quarters are, and shall be, within the limits of the United States of America. Its members are bound together by the following general pledge :— "2. General Pledge.-I [. . .] solemnly pledge my sacred word of honour as a truthful and honest man, that These names show the extent to which the organisation has reached in the Western states a dangerous symptom, for those states are certainly not "centres of corruption," as New York city is sometimes said to be. I will labour with earnest zeal for the liberation of Ireland from the yoke of England, and for the establishment of a free and independent Government on the Irish soil; that I will implicitly obey the commands of my superior officers in the Fenian Brotherhood; that I will faithfully discharge my duties of membership as laid down in the constitution and bye-laws thereof; that I will do my utmost to promote feelings of love, harmony, and kindly forbearance among all Irishmen; and that I will foster, defend, and propagate the aforesaid Fenian Brotherhood to the utmost of my power. "3. Form of Organisation.-The Fenian Brotherhood shall be subdivided into state organisations, circles, and sub-circles. It shall be directed and governed by a Head Centre, to direct the whole organisation; State Centres, to direct state organisations; Centres, to direct circles; and Sub-Centres, to direct sub-circles. The Head Centre shall be assisted by a central council of five; by a Central Treasurer, and Assistant Treasurer; by a Central Corresponding Secretary, and a Central Recording Secretary; and by such intermediate officers as the Head Centre may from time to time deem necessary for the efficient working of the organisation. "4. The Head Centre shall be elected annually by a general congress of representatives of the Fenian Brotherhood, which congress shall be composed of the State Centres and the Centres, together with elected delegates from the several circles of the organisationeach circle in good standing being entitled to elect one delegate." These two documents are sufficient to show the kind of organisation, and the nature of the designs of the brotherhood. Although a prosecution had been resolved upon before either of them came into the hands of the autho rities, enough was known to make severe measures not only justifiable, but necessary, if Ireland was to be saved from civil war. Lord Wodehouse (soon afterwards created Earl of Kimberley) was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at the time, and the credit or responsibility of most of the measures taken rests with him. The blow of authority first fell on the Press. A paper called The Irish People had for some time been published in Dublin, and widely circulated, which made no secret that its design was to incite the people of Ireland to insurrection and to a forcible severance of the union with England. A Privy Council was held at the Castle on the evening of the 15th of September; Mr. Stronge, the Chief Magistrate, was instructed to draw out warrants; a strong body of police was told off for sudden duty. None had known till that moment that anything was to be done. The warrants were given to the police, and they were marched to Parliament Street, to the office of the Irish People. The usual tactics were observed; bodies of police were placed at every point of egress, and the door was forced. Ten persons were arrested in the house, the principal of whom was the famous Mr. O'Donovan Rossa; and an immense amount of letters, printed papers, type, and numerous important lists of Fenians were seized, and carried off to the Castle yard. Very little disturb ance, and absolutely no resistance, ensued. The prisoners A.D. 1865.] rescue. ARREST AND ESCAPE OF STEPHENS. hardly protested; the crowds which collected together and followed the police on their return attempted no Nor was any greater difficulty encountered by the Cork police, who made a descent upon the Fenians in that city at the same time. Indeed, the Irish police in general showed themselves very active at this juncture, and many of the southern towns were the scene of interesting captures. Each important arrest led to more, or gave a direction to the search, from the discovery of papers compromising other people. One person, for instance, who gave his name as Charles O'Connell, but whose real name was Rafferty," was arrested as he entered Queenstown harbour in a steamer from New York. He had been an American captain; and his papers gave an illustration of the aid which Fenian agents had received from officers of high rank on the Federal side a kind of set-off against the conduct of England towards blockade-runners and Confederate cruisers. O'Connell had numerous passes" signed by American generals and others; one, a very significant one, may be given : 66 "Executive Department, Indianopolis. "May 6, 1864. The bearer hereof, J. Daly,* wishes to visit the army of the Cumberland and the Mississippi departments. He requests he may be permitted for the purpose of visiting the Irish soldiers therein. "Morton, Governor of Indiana." The document given above shows what was meant by the term "Head Centre." There were at this time two Head Centres-one in the United States (John O'Mahony), and one in Ireland (James Stephens). This latter-a personage of the highest importance in the brotherhood-was known under many names; his commonest designations being "J. Powell," and "James Stephens;" though he occupied his comfortable house in the neighbourhood of Dublin under the name of James Corbett. Stephens, it ought to be related, had passed three years in the country previous to the establishment of the Irish People. He had traversed and re-traversed the country in a variety of disguises, and under a cloud of aliases, sounding the peasantry as to their readiness for rebellion, and succeeding even in corrupting the loyalty of small portions of the Irish regiments. He went so far as to try his capacity for "organisation" by making overtures to by making overtures to the Orangemen of the North; but his advances were coldly repelled, and he found it useful to confine his illdirected efforts to the other provinces. In these his fiery eloquence and bland persuasiveness prevailed with the lower part of the population. It is historically probable that, if the funds which afterwards poured in in such abundance from America had arrived in time, or had even been utilised when they did arrive, for the purpose for which they were contributed, there might have been a darker end to the disloyal conspiracy. But the movement was doomed to failure almost from its inception. When the long-threatened blow was on the eve of being struck, discontent broke out amongst the rank and file of This was one of the aliases of Stephens. 123 the insurrectionary battalions. Hundreds of men who had worn the American uniform, and won their epaulettes on the battle-field, were starving in the garrets and kennels of Dublin and London; whilst the great Head Centre and financial fountain himself was living in an extravagant manner, and denying himself no indulgence. Disgusted at their treatment, about fifty of the immigrants proposed to end the matter promptly by shooting him, and precipitating a rebellion on their own responsibility. Stephens was warned of the plot, and took steps to pacify his infuriated subordinates. He distributed money amongst them freely, and to this sudden outburst of judicious liberality he probably owed his life. This generosity came too late, for America unexpectedly ceased to send supplies, and the old murmurings broke out again with redoubled vehemence. This it was which broke the back-bone of the conspiracy and saved Ireland, let us trust for the last time, from the horrors of civil war. The police discovered that this James Corbett was the man they were in search of, and accordingly surrounded his house early one morning. They met with little resistance, though Stephens and his friends were well supplied with arms. In the same house with Stephens three other prominent Fenians were arrested, one of them being the "Charles J. Kickham" who had been looked for ever since the razzia upon the Irish People newspaper. When the prisoners were brought up for examination, Stephens protested most indignantly against the very existence of the law under which he was to be tried; he refused to take measures for his defence, and defied punishment. As it happened, and as perhaps he had guessed beforehand, he never came in want of legal assistance or in danger of punishment. "Bolts and bars could not hold him." He escaped from Richmond Bridewell on the night of November 24, and no amount of police activity or Government reward could secure his recapture. The naked truth is, that at a meeting of the Fenian Secret Council, held in Townsend Street, in Dublin, on the morning of November 22, it was decided to spend £250 in rescuing the imprisoned chief. The service had been offered, the reward was punctually paid, and the General," as his followers called him, was rescued from his gaolers. The deliverance was effected in the middle of a night of rain and storm. Stephens' cowardice on this occasion dealt the first blow at his supremacy. Irish-American soldiers could not conceal their contempt for a man who, in his nervous panic, dropped the revolver with which he was furnished to fight his way, if necessary. It was plainly impossible that an escape of the kind, managed simply by unlocking seven of the prison doors one after another, could have been effected without collusion with some official or other. So the Government thought, and suspended the Governor of the gaol, and got Byrne, the turnkey, committed for trial. But Stephens never came back. It was not without reason that he had defied English punishments. is issued by the Crown with a definite and special intent; it does not go beyond that intent; it is not limited by time or place, as in the case of ordinary assize trials; and it acts with additional judicial force, and a special jury. In this case the judges were Baron Fitzgerald and Justice Keogh-both of them men of marked ability, and neither of them likely to act with much leniency towards convicted political prisoners. Their work lasted more than a fortnight in Dublin; then they went to Cork; and then again returned to Dublin, where it was several weeks before the work was over. An example of the mode of trial and of the evidence produced, may be found in the case of Thomas Clarke Luby (a man whose father was a Senior Fellow, and who was himself a student of Trinity College), which was the first that came before the court. point a committee of appeal and judgment, the functions Side by side with this document, which, while it incriminated Luby, threw further light upon the proceedings of the Fenians, came the evidence of the two informers, Pierce Nagle and Patrick Power. They were both Fenians; Power at least had taken the Fenian oath, and Nagle "acted as a member of the society, but did not take the oath." Nagle told of meetings of the society, mostly near Clonmel; of intriguing in America, in which he had had a part; of "swearing in" new brethren; and Mr. Luby had been a registered proprietor of the of Luby's complicity with all this. He described the way Irish People newspaper, jointly, it appears, with in which the enumeration of members was managed :O'Donovan Rossa. Indeed, he was the foremost writer "Papers ruled in squares by means of perpendicular and in that paper; to which Stephens, during his entire con- horizontal lines; the squares did not extend to the top, but nection with its personnel, contributed only one sorry there was a blank space on which the name of the captain article, headed "Isle and Doom." So popular, however, or B was entered; the squares then showed how the cap. did the journal become amongst the disaffected classes, tain, the sergeant or C, and the rank and file or D, were that the older "National" organs had reason to tremble armed, also the strength of the company. . . A'V' for the security of their existence. The Irishman signified a man armed with a rifle. If it was an inverted then conducted by P. J. Smyth-was on the verge of V,' it signified a man armed with a gun or pistol. A bankruptcy, and the Nation was barely holding its stroke signified that a man was armed with a pike. Where own, when the crash came which delivered both from a there was a circle, it signified a man-captain, sergeant, destructive rival. Luby was indicted for the crime of or private-not armed at all." Further on, Nagle treason-felony-a crime newly created by Act of Parlia- describes the mode of enrolling :-"I myself enrolled ten ment. According to the Act which creates it, treason- or twelve into the society. The mode of enrolling a mem felony may consist of either or all of three offences-com-ber was, in the first instance, to administer the oath, which passing or intending to depose the Queen from her royal authority as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland; intending to levy war against the Queen, in order to induce her to change her measures; and conspiring to invite foreigners to invade this realm. It was with these three offences that the prisoner was charged; the AttorneyGeneral for Ireland (Mr. Lawson) prosecuting him, and Mr. Butt defending him. The trial seems to have been meant chiefly as an exposure of the nature of the conspiracy, and that the evidence certainly effected. A vast number of documents were put in-letters from American Fenians, letters from Irish Fenians to each other, proclamations, commissions, resolutions, and, above all, articles from Luby's newspaper; there was the evidence of detectives, and there was that which so few political trials are without the evidence of informers. Among the documents, perhaps the most important was a letter or commission found in the prisoner's house at the time of his arrest, sealed with black wax, and addressed to "Miss Frazer." The police-sergeant who arrested Luby opened this, though he was told it was "a private matter between Mrs. Luby and a lady friend;" and he found it to be the following: "I hereby empower Thomas Clarke Luby, John O'Leary, and Charles J. Kickham, a committee of organisation, or executive, with the same supreme control over the home organisation-England, Ireland, and Scotland-that I have exercised myself. I further empower them to ap 66 in substance was, that the party should be a member of the Irish Republic, now virtually established, and should be ready to take up arms at a moment's notice." Again, "Cornelius Dwyer Keane reported to Stephens that there were nearly 500 new men in the neighbourhood of Clonakilty. Stephens said he did not know what he should do with the number of men he had, there were so many of them." Evidence also was given as to the manufacture of arms in Ireland, especially pikes. 'Give bearer fifty rods," said a note of the Head Centre; and "rods" was the pleasant alias of the formidable "pikes." Lastly, one more document was read at Luby's trial from the packet addressed to "Miss Frazer." It contained three resolutions, and was signed by the great John O'Mahony himself; the first two being, a pledge on the part of the American Fenians to get the Irish Republic recognised by every free Government in the world; and a declaration, "that the national organisation at present existing on Irish soil is almost entirely owing to the devoted patriotism and indomitable perseverance of its Head Centre." What was proved, then, in this trial (for we have given the principal points of the evidence) was the existence of a wide-spread conspiracy, having its roots in America, and having for its object the forcible extinction of English rule in Ireland. Luby, also, was proved to have been a prominent conspirator. Nothing more was laid to his charge - -no instigation to assassination, for instance, and no overt act of rebellion. It was "conspiracy;" the first stage of |