The Sun.
London, England, 1865-09-30 00:00:00

An American View of the Feniane.

(From the New York Times, Sept. 15)
By the news from Europe this morning, it will be
seen the British Government are becoming so,
alarmed at the progress of Fenianism in Ireland
that they have determined to increase the military
force stationed in that portion of the United
Kingdom.

It can hardly be any business of ours to reflect
upon the disposition that may be made of the British
army on the home stations. But it is noteworthy
that a so-called political organisation, the strength
and character of which is so well known here as to ex-
cite only good-humoured jest, is magnified on the
other side of the Atlantic into a formidable league,
demanding immediate suppression by military force.
In the city of New York alone we could probably
turn out more " Fenians" than could be mustered in
the whole of Ireland. And yet, were the purposes
of the order as hostile to our Government as they
are ostensibly to that of Great Britain, we should
hardly think of any measure of repression that
might not, with the utmost safety, be left in the
hands of the metropolitan police.
The trouble with the Queen's Government, we
suspect, is that they are not altogether satisfied
that they are in the right. Let them declare
absolute religious freedom in the sister island—
let them abolish the scandal of a pampered State
Church, which is not the church of one-twefth part
of the population of Ireland—let them trust the
yeomanry of Ireland as they trust those of England
and Scotland when volunteers have to be raised—
and let them give the Irish people a fairer and fuller
representation in Parliament. Having done this the
British Government could afford to reduce the con-
tingents in the Irish garrisons at pleasure, and
whistle at the universal Fenian brotherhood in both
hemispheres.
It strikes us forcibly as lookers on that this in-
crease of the British forces in Ireland gives to the
Fenian order a pivstige which its most sanguine
leaders in this country never dreamed of its acquir-
ing in the present century, We may be mistaken
as to the sincerity of the more ignorant members of
the society. But that those of them who have any
intelligence soberly believe that they can take even
one practical step towards securing the independ-
ence of Ireland we utterly discredit. The leaders of
the association are perfectly well aware that a crusade
for the " liberation" of Ireland would encounter the
fiercest, the most desperate, and the most effective
opposition from the Irish people themselves.
The entire hierarchy—without a single exception—
are the avowed enemies of the order. The lower
orders of the clergy, almost to a man, denounce
its declared purposes, and have placed their ban
upon its membership. The landlords of the coun-
try, with few exceptions, are; from self-interest,
the determined foes of revolutionary uprisings.
And the great middle class—the well-to-do farmers,
the merchants, and master mechanics, content them-
selves with a steady, patient, and persevering advo-
cacy of constitutional reform. To suppose that a
few partially organised bands of ignorant peasantry,
prompted as these may be by non-resident propa-
gandists, are to rise up against the wishes and
interests of the sober, industrious, and educated
majority in Ireland, and are to rise up with even the
remotest chance of disturbing the existing Govern-
ment, is simply preposterous. The best section of
the Irish people—without distinction of faith—
might be safely left to-day to dispose of Fenianism
in Ireland, were there never a British soldier in the
island. No Irishman of ordinary intelligence or of
ordinary honesty doubts this. But every true-
hearted Irishman longs to see the day when the
British Government will find it to be its own inte-
rest to terminate that vicious system of class legis-
lation and sectarian favouritism under which the
country has groaned for centuries, and against
which the noblest and the best of Ireland's sons—.
both Protestant and Catholic—have contended, at
the risk of fortune, of political advancement, of
court patronage, and of all that intelligent and
high-minded men might, under other circumstances,
honestly covet. It is the solemn protests of such
patriots as these that the British Government have
to fear to-day—much more than the bravado and
nonsense of these Phcenician madcaps. The
wrongs of Ireland are solemn realities which must
some day be atoned for ; the fanfaronade of her
liberating leagues simply furnish a subject for
sport.