westward, which is as necessary
to he watched, and is as much neglected by American as the original
eastward current is by British public men.

In this letter of 1868 to Earl Grey, the Archbishop of Westminster
desiring, as an Englishman, to counteract, if possible, this influence
which was drawing Ireland away from the British monarchy, and towards
the American Republic, maintained that by two things the "heart of
Ireland" might be won, and her affections enlisted with her interests in
the support of the unity, solidity, and prosperity of the British
Empire. One of these two things was "perfect religious equality between
the Catholics and the Protestants of Ireland." The other was that the
Imperial Legislature should by statute make it impossible for any
landlord in Ireland to commit three wrongs,--"first, the wrong of
abusing his rights by arbitrary eviction; secondly, by exacting an
exorbitant rent; thirdly, by appropriating to his own use the
improvements effected by the industry of his tenants."

Perfect religious equality has since been established between the
Catholics and the Protestants of Ireland. The three wrongs which the
Archbishop called upon the Imperial Legislature to make impossible to
Irish landlords have since been made impossible by Statute.

Yet it is on all hands admitted that the "unity, solidity, and
prosperity" of the British Empire have never been so seriously
threatened in Ireland as during the last ten years. Was the Archbishop
wrong, therefore, in his estimate of the situation in 1868? Or has the
centripetal influence of remedial British legislation since 1868 failed
to check a centrifugal advance "by leaps and bounds," in the
"assimilating power" of America upon Ireland?

IV.

Just ten years ago, in 1878, Mr. Michael Davitt and Mr. John Devoy (the
latter of whom had been commissioned in 1865 by the Fenian leader
Stephens, as "chief organiser of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the
British army"), being then together in America, promulgated, Mr. Davitt
in a speech at Boston, and Mr. Devoy in a letter sent to the _Freeman's
Journal_ in Dublin, the outlines of a scheme for overthrowing British
rule in Ireland by revolutionising the ownership of land in that
country.

The basis of this scheme had been laid thirty years before, in 1848, by
Finton Lalor, John Mitchel, and the present Archbishop of Cashel, then a
simple curate.

It was thus stated by Lalor in his paper, the _Irish Fe