Now came the turn for the unchanged and exasperated section of the ’48 war party. Few in numbers, and scattered wide apart, they had hissed forth scorn and execration on Duffy’s parliamentary experiment as a departure from the revolutionary faith. If he in 1849 answered to their invectives by pointing to the fiasco of the year before, they now taunted him with the collapse of 1853. Not more than two or three of the ’48 men of any prominence, however, took up this actually hostile attitude. Most of them—O’Brien, Dillon, Meagher, O’Gorman, and even Martin—more or less expressly approved the recent endeavor as the best thing practicable under the circumstances in Ireland. Now, however, the men who believed in war and nothing but war, in total separation and nothing short of separation, would take their turn. The Fenian movement thus arose.
If neither of the sections or subsections of the Irish nationalists in 1848 could be said to have succeeded in rallying or representing the full force, or even a considerable proportion, of Irish patriotism, this new venture was certainly not more fortunate in that respect. Outside its ranks, obstinately refusing to believe in its policy, remained the bulk of the millions who had followed
O’Connell or Smith O’Brien. Yet the Fenians worked with an energy worthy of admiration—except where the movement degenerated into an intolerance that forbade any other national opinions save those of its leaders to be advanced. In truth, their influence on Irish politics was very mixed in its merits. In some places it was a rude and vaunting rowdyism that called itself Fenianism; in others an honest, manly, self-sacrificing spirit of patriotism marked the men who were its confessors and martyrs. If in their fall they drew down upon Ireland severities worse than anything known since 1798, it is only fair, on the other hand, to credit in a large degree to the sensations aroused by their trials the great awakening of public opinion on the Irish question which set in all over England at the time.
And now once more the board was clear. England had won the game; not a pawn remained untaken on the Irish side. Not an Irish association, or society, or “agitation,” or demand of any kind challenged Britannia’s peace of mind. Once more it was a spectacle of the lash and the triangle; state-trials, informers, and prosecutors; the convict-ship and the hulk; the chain-gangs at Portland and Chatham.
“Who will show us any light?” exclaims one of the Young Ireland bards in a well-known and beautiful poem. Such might well have been the exclamation of Ireland in 1867. Was this to be the weary cycle of Irish effort, for ever and for ever? Was armed effort hopeless, and peaceful effort vain? Was there no alternative for Irishmen but to become “West-Britons,” or else dash their brains out against a dungeon wall? Could no one devise
a way whereby to give scope and vent to the Irish passion for national existence, to give a field to Irish devotion and patriotism, which would be consonant with the spirit of manhood, without calling for these hecatombs of victims?
Suddenly a new element of consideration presented itself; new, indeed, and rather startling.
It was Irish Protestantism offering the hand of reconciliation to Ireland.
The Tory party had come into power in the course of the Fenian prosecutions, and had carried on the work in a spirit which Cromwell himself would approve. They really held office, not because they had an effective majority in the House of Commons, but because the liberals were broken up and divided, unable to agree on a policy. To turn to his own account the “Fenian scare” was Mr. Gladstone’s brilliant idea. To make a dash on the Irish Church establishment would rally all the mutinous fractions of liberalism, on the principle of “hit him, he has no friends.” It would gratify all England as a sort of conscience-salve for the recent dragonnades and coercion laws. Yes; this was the card with which to beat Disraeli. True, Mr. Gladstone had only a few years before put down his foot and declared that never, “no, never,” could, would, or should that Irish Church be disestablished or interfered with in any way. What was he to say now to cover this flank movement, made for purely party purposes? In all Britain there is no brain more subtle, none more fertile of strategic resource, than that of W. E. Gladstone. He put it all on Fenianism. He had changed his mind, not because he was out of office with a weak and
broken party, and wanted to get back with a strong and united one, but because he had opened his eyes to Fenianism! He never hit on a more successful idea. On the cry of “Down with the Irish Church!” he was swept into office at the head of the most powerful majority commanded by any minister since Peel in 1841. It must not be thought that Mr. Gladstone was insincere, or meant anything but service to Ireland (while also serving his party) by this move. He has the faculty of intensely persuading himself into a fervid conscientiousness on any subject he likes, whether it be Free Trade, Church Establishment, Church Disestablishment, or Vaticanism.