Daily union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1865-1866, 1866-01-06
rhe secret Of Fenlan,sn.

4 InR OttLtl % MCa9atn41sEs
| From the New YorieWorld1
The Fenians in America have succeeded in
| making their movement more or less ridicu-
! lous by their intestine quarrels, and by that
curious talent which angry lrishmen have
for combining the formidable in passion
with the grotesque in expression.
But it is neither philosophical or just to
treat Fenisnism as nothing more than an IN
efectual and extravagant joke. A move
ment which generates literature of Its own,
which enrols hundreds of thousands OF peo-
pie in what the wosld regards as hopeless
enterprise, and which extends ITSELF without
leadership, or, so far as we know, without
any person of marked ability to control It,
is fact Of very great significance.
The British rule in Ireland certainly is
not likely to be broken down, even by sub
scriptions Of million dollars year paid
into the treasury Of an imaginary Irish Re
public. established at New York or Chicago.
If we in America have learned nothing else
from the terrible experience Of the last four
wears. we have learned at least that war in
moiern times is the most expensive of ali
possible luxuries. More money than has
vet been consigned to the keeping OF the Fe-
nian financiers has been spent over and over
again in a single week of obscure and
uneventful campaigning among the hills of
the Shenandoah, or in the swamps of the
Gulf But the probable political importance
of Fenianism is one thing, and Its certain
historical interest quite another. An article
recently transferred 10 these columns from
the London AtkeResm threw a striking light
upon this latter aspect of the Fenian move
ment, by developing the fact that Fsnianism
already possesses literature of its own, es-
sentially differing from the literature of all
previous revolutionary epochs in the con-
neetion Of Ireland with England. The lit
eratrre of the Irish struggle for indepen-
dence in '9S, and of the Young Ireland y
movement in 1913, were rot more unlike
each other than the literature OF the Fenian-
ism of to-day is unlike both. The Young
Irelanders" in particular, though men of
nnduestionable ability and earnestness, seem'
to have been almost entirely powerless to
move the popular heart Of Ireland. They
wrote passionate poems and published el0-
quent appeals against the English domina-
ton; but under the terrible pressure Of the
great famine, 80 awfully and so truthfully
pictured by Aubrey De We're, the peassntry
Of Ireland were far more intent upon escap-
ing from, a sorely smitIen land to the Canaan
of peace and plenty beyond the Atlantic,
than upon doing battle in the midst Of their
misery and their rags with the well-fed and
well-appointed armies of the empire.
To-day, on the contrary, the voice of Fe-
nianism in ireland comes from the lips and
goes to the hearts Of the cotter and the ditch
er, of the poor and plain people Of the green
island. We have taken pains 10 collect
from Cis-Atlantic sources quite a number OF
these contemporary songs and ballads, which
we publish elsewhere, and in which there
will be found something Of the intense and
pathetic character which belongs to the pop
ular poetry Ct such countries as Poland and
Bohemia The reader of these effusions
will be especially struck by their perpetual
reference to the decay Of Irish nationality,
to the eviction of the Irish peasantry from
their small holdings, and to the divorce Of
the Irish clergy from the national cause.
The secret of this dominant tone of the cur
rent Feuian literature probable furnishes
the truest key at once to the strength and
the weakness Of the Fenian movement.
Ever since the great famine, and the en-
actment of the Encountered Estates Bill y
by the British Parliament, change has been
silently but steadily going ON in the social
constitution Of Ireland analogous to that
which has been gradually accomplished in
the I1lZnldn0S Oh CtOttdUU. lnC tcuuCit1l VI
things in the one case, as in the other, has
been to convert the land into great sheep
folds and cattle-farms for the British market.
The work attempted by Cromwell with fire
and sword-the depopulation, namely, of
Celtic Ireland, and the resettlement of the
island with English and Scotch Protestants-
has been resumed, and with far moresuccess,
through agencies more potent, precisely be-
cause they are more pacifc-capital and en-
ierprise making more progress in decade
han violence and rapine in century.
Quick to appreciate and resolute TO act upon
III real notifications in the condition Of an
lge or people, the Roman Catholic clergy
n Ireland seem to have perceived the greater
Importance to the Church of retaining solid
lold upon the actual Ireland around them
han Of passing into an exodus with the Ire
and of the past. It is very doubtful whether
he recent progress of Protestantism in Ire
and has been at all commensurate with the
recent depopulation Of the hereditsrily Ro-
nan Catholic element; and what may strike
me at first as an incipient Irish Protestant
SIN in the anti-clcrieal tone Of many Of the
Fenian songs and ballads, is probably to be
attributed to an unconscious recognition by
he Fenian feeling Of the fact that Ireland
nay possibly cease to be Irish without there
ore ceasing to be Roman Catholic.