THE SECRET HISTORY OF FENIANISM. (FROM THE "TIMES.")

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXIV, Issue 3353, 15 April 1868, Page 4

THE SECRET HISTORY OF FENIANISM. (FROM THE "TIMES.")

Befoke us lies a pamphlet, the contents of which at this time will be found of some interest. It was published with considerable reserve at Philadelphia, and -vra* not easily procurable even in the United States. It is a manifesto of Fenianism at a time when the organisation was considered to be in its most hopeful condition, and it introduces us, with, as much accuracy as was to be expected, to the history of the conspiracy in 1863 and 1864, and its prospects at the beginning of the year 1865. We may as well remind the reader that Fenianism, though its most active agents appear in the character of disbanded soldiers from the American armies, is of an origin earlier than the civil war in the United States. Mr. James Stephens, who assumes, and is allowed, the credit of setting the whole movement on foot,began the work in 1858, three years before the Southern States proclaimed their secession from the Union. He had been engaged in the rebellion of 1848 with Smith OBrien, had escaped to the Continent, had improved his education in the foreign school of revolution, and turned his acquirements to account in hatching a new rebellion of his own. The characteristic of this conspiracy consisted in American domicile. Instead of organising an insurrection in Ireland, Mr. Stephens conceived the idea of establishing it amongst the Irish population of the United States. This was quite a novelty, and it would be unjust to the inventor to deny the merits of the conception. It is from Fenianism in America that Fenianism in the British Islands has derived such vitality and power as ib may be thought to have displayed. Although, however, Fenians were not called into existence by the military experience of the civil war, it ia certain that until the second year of that war the organisation had assumed no consistence. The Americans, long before the war, were given to soldiering, and a certain number of American-Irish did a little soldiedng on their own account under the denomination of Fenians. When hostilities actually commenced, the Fenianß engaged freely in strife, sometimes taking service by companies together, and losing, as they tell us, a great many of their members in battle, tucb, in fact, was the mortality among them that ib was considered in the Federal army "unlucky to be a Fenian;" but up to the year 1863 Mr. James Stephens had done little more than supply the American Government with willing recruits. Very few persons, even in the United States, except the Fenians themselves, knew anything about Fenianism ; in Ireland, as we shall presently explain, there was no organisation at all. In the month, however, of November, 1863, a singular resolution was adopted. The " Fenian Brotherhood," as the conspirators then styled themselves, determined upon giving their body a civil constitution and shape. Instead of being a small private army, they decided upon becoming'a species of civil power. Mr. John O'Mahony, if we are to take his own word for the fact, was the originator of this new idea, which consisted chiefly in establishing a Fenian republic within the republic of the United States— one of these institutions being the exact counterpart of the other. The disadvantages, says the head centre, of the early military organisation of the brotherhood, "were such as to force upon men the conviction that the organisation should be reconstituted after the model or the free institutions of this country." Accordingly the officers of a regular republic were elected, and a " congress" met at Chicago in November, 1863. Two years later a second "National Congress" was held at Cincinnati. This assembly met on the 17th January, 1865, and the alteration in its tone is remarkable. The conspirators, though still suspicious of the priests, no longer appear to dread interruptions from the Government On the contrary, they anticipate immediate war between Great Britain and America, and reckon confidently on the facilities which would thus be given for their design. For the first time, too, they include not only Ireland, but England and its dependencies, in the sphere of their operations. Their " constitution" was amended, bo as to extend the establishment of the brotherhood beyond the United States to the "provinces of the British Empire wherever situated." Yet even at this time— that is, at the beginning of the year before last — there was no regular Fenian organisation in Ireland. " This American institution, called the Fenian Brotherhood, does not exist in Ireland as an organised body." Those are the words of the President addressed to the Congress, and from them we may learn that Fenianism, when this country first began to hear of it, was just beginning ' to assume a substantive form in Ireland itself. Up to that time it was a purely American i creation — a movement set on foot and maintained by Irishmen in the United States. Shortly afterwards came the actual termination of the civil war, and then the military element of the rebellion appeared in Ireland, and Irish Fenianism acquired an active vitality. It had been determined at Cincinnati that what Ireland needed was " pre-organisation," and that accordingly it should be forthwith "pre-organised." This explains the title of " organisers" assumed by Fenian emissaries, and other notions borrowed from America were introduced at the same time. The United States, it was assumed, would gladly recognise the Fenian insurgents as "belligerents," and proclaim their own " neutrality ;" and therefore the Fenian organisers quietly spoke of the " Irish republic virtually established " at a time when the chief conspirators confess that no Fenian organisation in Ireland existed at all. Mr. Stephens, and his friends, however, proceeded to "organise" with great zeal, and, according to their own belief, with great success. The autum of 1865 was, we have recently been told, the time when Fenianism in Ireland was strongest, but we now wish to indicate to the public certain facts which have hardly received proper appreciation. In January, 1865, the real substantive organisation of Fenianism in Ireland had not commenced ; and yet, on the 15th September in that year, the first blow was struck at the plot by the arrest of the chief conspirators, including Mr. Stephens himself, in Dublin. There was, therefore, very little delay and inactivity to be charged against the Government. It will be seen, too, that the ignominious collapse of that conspiracy is easily accounted for. Fenianism was not a plant of seven years' growth in Ireland, though it was in America. In Ireland very little was accomplished, except in the distempered visions of James Stephens. His paper armies made no show in the field, and were scattered as easily as the " circle" over which he presided. Whatever substance there was in the conspiracy was imported from abroad.