This circular expresses the position of the revolutionists of 1885 and also that of their descendants in the self-same societies to-day. For them there is to be no half-way house in the matter of Irish self-government until the full Republican programme is ceded. They would welcome the achievement of National Government only as a prelude to further organisation and eventual armed revolution. The members of the Dail Eireann have been financed by American funds exactly in the same way as their Parnellite predecessors, who received £7,556 in 1886 and £10,500 in 1887.

The defeat of the Gladstone-Parnellite Home Rule Bill by the secession of many of Mr. Gladstone's followers was a heavy blow to the political movement. Outrage again began to mount up and the National League evolved a system known as the " Plan of Campaign," which was to encourage the tenants to pay no rent at all to the landlords. In 1887 a Crimes Act was passed, and the suppression of the National League proclaimed throughout parts of the South and West of Ireland.

In 1887 The Times newspaper charged Parnell with having incited persons to commit crimes, and published a series of articles on "Parnellism and Crime." The Times action was largely based on certain letters which were later proved to be forgeries, and the case brought against the newspaper for libel by Parnell was decided in his favour. The whole of the Home Rule party was, however, so compromised by the articles that a Royal Commission of Enquiry was appointed.

The findings of the Commission were formulated under various heads, and on the evidence produced personal guilt was not brought home to Parnell, and the Home Rule party as a whole could not be found guilty of a conspiracy to achieve the independence of Ireland as a separate nation. The findings and the evidence, however, were such as to discredit effectively many individual members of the Home Rule party, which was then divided into Parnellites and anti-Parnellites. In 1890 disclosures as to his personal moral character were made, and Parnell, who had long been attacked by the Irish Hierarchy, was thrown over by Mr. Gladstone and rejected as a leader by his own party. In 1891 he died.

The record of firing outrages for the period shows graphically the state of the country during his agitation:

CHAPTER VIII

THE INCUBATION PERIOD

THE close of the era of Parnell marked a phase in the decline of the power of the secret societies. The full weight of the Irish Catholic Church was thrown against them and the Physical Force party was everywhere discredited. The violent political agitation which had been the main source of their obtaining recruits had died down, and from 1894 to 1897 the country was practically free from any open or secret working organisation with a coherent policy of outrage. The unseen members of the societies had, however, decided not to relinquish their aim, but to initiate deliberately an educative movement designed to breed revolutionaries in the coming generation.

It

The I.R.B. became for a period not so much an armed revolutionary and assassination society as a secret propagandist and controlling organisation stealthily preparing for a revolution to come. was its deliberate aim to perpetuate hatred and rancour, to keep alive the memory of long past and long remedied evils, and to inculcate treason and disloyalty in the growing youth of its native land.

We have seen in a previous chapter how the American Clan-na-Gael had concentrated all Irish organisations, however innocuous, in the body of the National League, and had, by controlling the

Committee of the League by its own members, thereby possessed itself not only of a vast field from which to draw funds and recruits, but of the whole co-ordinated political power of the Irish organisations in America. The process developed by the I.R.B. in Ireland was analogous; through its members they were represented on the Committees and Councils of practically every organisation which, in the opinion of its leaders, could be of use to it. The identity of the I.R.B. men was always a secret.

The secret power of the Brotherhood was brought to bear on all questions of appointment to positions and offices in various open associations, and it was its influence and corruption which achieved those mysterious appointments to position of persons singularly devoid of all merit, which were, and are, a marked feature of Irish life.

The functions of the I.R.B. ever since its inception had been divided into two distinct elements, Civil and Military, the Supreme Council having attached to it a "Military Council" which was not permitted to interfere with the decisions of the Supreme Council on matters of policy. The regulations of the I.R.B. at this time are given in detail in Appendix J.

The function of the Vigilance Committee of the I.R.B.* was, and still is, one of the most dreadful features of the organisation. In practice it meant that, when a sentence of death had been passed on any person who had fallen under the ban of the organisation, the selected assassin or assassins were

* See Rules 40–49 in Appendix J.

followed to the scene where the crime was to be committed by two "Vigilance" members whose orders were, on pain of death themselves, to see that the assassin carried out the orders given to him, and to kill him themselves if he failed to do his duty through default.

Although no longer included in the constitution of the I.R.B., these rules still form part of its mechanism and are in operation.

In so far as the activist military policy of the I.R.B. was concerned, the period from 1893 to 1912 was practically negative; the arms stores. dwindled and grew obsolete, the supply of money from America was only sufficient to keep the organisation alive and insufficient for the purchase of arms, and the organisation, in so far as its military side was concerned, was disorganised and dormant.

During the South African War it flickered up and engaged in sporadic anti-recruiting activities, but was again denounced by the clergy and had little influence. The older men were played out, and the younger generation was not ready to enter the society, which had, however, obtained control of excellent organisations to serve as incubators— the notorious Gaelic Athletic Association, and the Gaelic League, to which we shall refer again later.

The I.R.B. had always held that membership of any sectarian secret society, such as the A.O.H., or the Orange Society, was incompatible with membership of the I.R.B.

The Orange Society was, of course, absolutely loyal and violently opposed to the subversive