FENIANISM AND IRISH DISAFFECTION. 75 



bottom understands his neighbour's motives and his 

 game. No one places undue weight on his words, or 

 thinks the worse of him for acting differently from 

 the way he had said he would act, or ought to act, 

 should interest lead in that direction. Every one 

 would do the same himself if he had the chance. 

 For example, when a swindler, .whom every one 

 knows to be a swindler, and would not trust with 

 five shillings, is a leader of a movement like Home 

 Eule, that is no objection at all even in the eyes of 

 men of fair character. They will join the movement 

 all the same, and think they can use it for their 

 own ends. The whole machinery of agitation, the 

 newspapers, meetings, speeches, lies, are so thoroughly 

 understood and worked, that any one might be de- 

 ceived by it. 



It is because men living in the country have the 

 same battle with untruth to fight every day of their 

 lives, that they often take so much less serious a 

 view of Irish agitation than those who know Ireland 

 less well. The great fact that no one really trusts 

 another, and the weakness this causes in any 

 seditious movement, is simply fatal to it. It is an 

 old moral that some truth is needed even for success- 

 ful wickedness. 



One of the most remarkable results of Fenianism 

 was how, directly it was over, everybody sprang 

 upon it to make political capital out of it. The 

 murder of the police officer at Manchester and the 



