208 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



Then, too, this policy of passive and, at times, of even active assistance 

 to the Fenian Brotherhood was the means by which the United States 

 forced Great Britain to settle certain questions then in controversy 

 between the two countries. 



Great Britain knew that the Fenian conspiracy must be overthrown 

 before Ireland would again enjoy peace and industrial progress. For 

 two long years the island had been in a furor of excitement and panic 

 reigned a great portion of the time. The actual loss due to depreciation 

 of property and stagnation of business was enormous. No one could 

 know at what moment the mass of the Irish would rise in rebellion 

 against "British tyranny." For such a widespread unrest there must 

 be some adequate cause and this all England came to realize. For 

 the first time the majority of the English acknowledged that the Irish 

 had grave and serious grievances against England — grievances which 

 any people would be justified in redressing by an appeal to arms — and 

 demanded that Parliament should redress the most apparent of these 

 grievances. 1 Gladstone took up this demand and within a week after 

 the Clerkenwell explosion publicly declared 2 for an Irish policy along 

 Irish lines. 3 The disestablishment of the Irish church in 1869 and the 

 Irish Land Act in 1870, despite the declaration of the Fenians that all 

 such parliamentary measures were "delusions," were the first great 

 fruits of the Fenian movement. 4 



But legislation, however wise and however quickly enacted, could not 

 prevent uprisings in Ireland so long as those uprisings were incited and 

 supported by the Fenians in the United States. American support of 

 Irish revolution must be done away with and both England and the 

 United States well knew that this could be done effectively only by 



1 Quarterly Review, January, 1868, pp. 133-47; Edinburg Review, January, 1867, p. 105; McCarthy, 

 History of Our Own Times, Vol. IV, pp. 230, 240. 



' Speech at Southport, Morley, Life of Gladstone, Vol. II, pp. 241-43. 



3 He said: "When the habeas corpus act was suspended, when all the consequent proceedings occurred, 

 when the tranquillity of the great city of Manchester was disturbed, when the metropolis was shocked and horri- 

 fied by an inhuman outrage, when a sense of insecurity went abroad far and wide, ..... when the inhabitants 

 of the different towns of the country were swearing themselves in as special constables for the maintenance of 

 life and property, then it was when these phenomena came home to the popular mind," and led the English 

 people generally to espouse the cause of Irish reform. 



* In Canada the Fenian invasion gave a great impetus to the adoption of the Confederation because it 

 taught the necessity of union. See, e.g., Bottrinot, Canada, p. 213. 



