have worn themselves threadbare, and public indignation will probably set in against sectarian squabbling, because it interferes with practical work. The causes which occasion religious squabbles will one by one be removed; and, as they get to practical work, School Boards will more and more be composed of practical men. Give them this work of marshalling to do, let them have to work out such a system of school-fees as I have hinted at, let them have to adjust the claims of labour and schooling, let them have to arrange a system of halftime schools, and denominational questions will be more likely to subside into their proper places, to make room for practical matters, the solution of which will require practical men. Especially will this be likely to be the case in rural districts, where the religious difficulty is theoretically the greatest. The parents and the employers of labour would become more and more interested in the work of the Board, as labour questions and the working of compulsion became mixed up with it, and they would be sure in the long run to elect their own men upon the Boards as well as the clergyman. The so much feared" Jupiter of the village Olympus" would soon be found to be one only in the council of the gods. The national conviction in favour of local self-government would be respected, and in every parish there would be a standing reminder that the English educational system was meant to be national as well as compulsory.

I have before pointed out that in order to carry out the half-time principle to all kinds of labour, a local authority will have to be provided. If School Boards be the proper local authority, why should not the opportunity be taken in the "half-time schooling Act" to provide for the election of School Boards everywhere?

To sum up the suggestions I have made. I advocate the honest attempt to remove religious difficulties (even including those which may be but crotchets) out of the way of the practical working of the Education Act; not by the repeal of any of its main provisions, but by whatever further legislation is necessary to carry out its principles to their legitimate results, under circumstances as they may arise.

But still more earnestly I advocate immediate legislation which shall at once convince the masses of the people that for the sake of their children the system is really going to be made national in the sense of being made to meet the practical every-day needs of the people.

The interests of the masses of the people and their children seem to me to require such immediate legislation as shall secure—

(1.) Such a marshalling of the schools and arrangement of schoolfees as shall place the bottom rounds of the educational ladder fairly within their reach.

(2.) Such an elastic half-time system of schooling as shall fairly adjust the claims of labour and education, and enlist employers of labour, as well as parents, in the working of education.

(3.) The election of School Boards in every parish, entrusted with the work of carrying out the foregoing arrangements, and securing the attendance of the children who are now growing up untaught.

I believe that the earnest attention of Parliament to these points would do more to raise in the minds of the masses of the people faith in the realisation of a truly national system, and in the blessings it ought to confer, than any amount of legislation against religious difficulties which affect the consciences of those above them rather than their own. Let us remember that it is after all for the masses of the people that the long-delayed boon of national compulsory education is asked, and that the question between Church and Dissent is, after all, only a side issue, to be fairly and justly met to the best of our ability, but not to be magnified by either party into a matter of such immense importance, as that for it another generation of children are to be allowed to grow up into manhood, unfitted to discharge its duties. Let it be remembered that hundreds of thousands of children are every year going out into the streets instead of the schools, to receive another kind of education from that which it is the intention of the nation to secure an education which no future efforts will be able to undo; an education which will foster poverty and crime, and result too often in inflamed passions, lawless selfishness, and precocious cleverness in sin; an education which will be deplored too late, when so many of our future citizens have suffered irretrievable wrong, when what we call "the dangerous classes" have been reinforced by a fresh infusion of lawless blood; when the foundations of the Churches have been a little more undermined, and the hold of Christianity itself on the nation loosened. It will be a hard blow upon religion in the eyes of the masses of the people if good men, carried away by sectarian zeal, whether churchmen or dissenters, push their rivalries (which, after all, are rivalries. between Christian and Christian) so far as to incur responsibilities so terrible, by deliberately choosing again to intrude ecclesiastical difficulties between the children of the people and their acknowledged rights.

F. SEEBOHM.

THE

HE Irish are an intensely religious race, but even in their religion they are inclined to be "Nationalists," and among some of them at least the Hebrew prophets are not held in higher esteem than St. Patrick, St. Columbkille, and others of minor note, to whom was deigned the gift of prophecy for the comfort of the faithful and the confusion of the stiff-necked Pagans among whom they lived. The utterances attributed to these worthies have been preserved by the Irish-speaking peasantry down to the present hour, and by the labours of antiquaries they have been transcribed and published. A volume of this kind lies open before the writer; and among the many predictions of evil to the Saxon which abound in its pages, there is one which fixes 1867 as "the year in which the English race was to be finally expelled from Ireland." By a singular coincidence, it came about that, in the chapter of accidents, that very year witnessed the attempt at an insurrection, commonly known as the "Fenian Rising." The outbreak of five years ago is fresh in the recollection of all; and yet, so rapidly do events crowd upon one another in these days, that it seems already to have glided into the region of history. Fenianism no longer affords material for panic

mongers; the time has come when it may be made the subject of a plain, unvarnished narrative, dealing with its origin and progress, and the circumstances which produced the "Rising of the 5th of March."

Such, then, is the object of these pages. It is not intended to speculate upon the causes of Irish discontent, or to deal in theories for its removal, but merely to lay before our readers the story of this extraordinary conspiracy-a conspiracy of which, "after much consideration and reflection," Lord Kimberley deliberately declared in Parliament that it was more formidable than any Irish movement since 1798; and this, moreover, although Ireland had been the scene of two rebellions in the present century, and the opinion of the exLord-Lieutenant was pronounced before the occurrence of any of the startling events that afterwards gained for Fenianism a place so prominent in public attention.

The credit of organizing this conspiracy is due pre-eminently to two individuals whose names have become notorious in connection with it. James Stephens, one of the persons referred to, was a clerk in some business house in his native town of Kilkenny. The other, John O'Mahony, held a farm in the county Tipperary. Both were compromised in Smith O'Brien's rebellion, and fled from Ireland to avoid arrest. Stephens, indeed, was wounded in the affray at Ballingarry; and the story is told, that, to facilitate his flight, his friends gave him a martyr's funeral, and a coffin full of stones, bearing his name upon the lid, was interred with considerable ceremony in Kilkenny. Be this as it may, he succeeded in escaping to France; and in Paris he was joined by O'Mahony and some other refugees. How long these men remained together does not appear, but certain it is that here the new conspiracy was planned. Taught by their recent failure, and guided by the experience of continental revolutionists, they determined, in again organizing a revolt, to insist on greater secrecy than had characterized previous movements in Ireland; and it needed no great genius to discover that powerful aid might be obtained from the Irish population in America. Here, then, were the fundamental principles that should govern the movement they were about to inaugurate; it must not only be oathbound, but absolutely secret; and America must supply the material resources. Thus connected with America, and with the France of 1848, it is not difficult to account for its having in fact assumed so intensely republican a phase.

It was accordingly determined that Stephens should return to Ireland, while O'Mahony undertook to organize the Irish race on the other side of the Atlantic. The "Phoenix" conspiracy, the first result of Stephens's labours, soon afterwards attracted notice in

Munster; but, lacking American support, this society had but little vitality, and was apparently extinguished by the arrest of its leaders, who were brought to trial in 1859. There is no doubt, however, that Fenianism sprung from its ashes. The result of O'Mahony's earlier efforts in America appeared in the establishing of the "Emmet Monument Association; " an ingenious name suggested by the closing passage in Robert Emmet's speech in the dock: "When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written." Other associations of Irishmen were also organized in different states of the Union, under the name of "Phoenix" clubs; and the Phenix newspaper was started by O'Mahony as the organ of "Nationalist " Irish opinion. These societies, however, were feeble and short-lived, and soon gave place to the "Fenian Brotherhood." At a meeting held in New York in the autumn of 1858, O'Mahony was appointed "President" and "Head Centre" of the new organization, which at that moment numbered only forty members.

It may be well here to explain the relations between the Fenian Brotherhood in America and the organization at home which is popularly known by that name. There is no doubt that the Irish Republican Brotherhood, as the conspiracy in the United Kingdom is called, was organized upon the pattern of the continental revolutionary societies-possibly of the "Mari-Anne," a club whose existence first became known to the British public through the pages of "Lothair." According to the design of its founder, it was to be essentially a secret society, every member of which was to bind himself by an oath to pay allegiance to the "Trish Republic," then "virtually established," and to take up arms at a moment's notice in its defence. A certain number of members constituted a distinct lodge or "circle," and each "circle" was presided over by its own officer, who was termed the "centre." The "circles" were grouped together in districts, under the charge of "district centres," and Stephens controlled the entire conspiracy, with the high-sounding title of "Chief Organizer of the Irish Republic." Each section of the Irish Republican Brotherhood therefore, down even to the "sub-circles," into which the lodges were divided, formed a perfect organization in itself; and, in theory, the knowledge of the conspiracy possessed by the rank and file was confined to what passed in their own "circle." The Irish Republican Brotherhood was intended to furnish the soldiers who should accomplish the revolution, and every member was to be instructed in the use of arms and in military tactics. It was designed in fact to be a hidden army, secretly preparing itself for the field. It was in order to subsidize this army, and provide it with war material, military officers, and