h they were
advocated, a large circulation. The office of the _Irish People_ soon
came to be regarded as, what it really was, the head quarters of the
Fenian organization in Ireland. To it the choice spirits of the party
resorted for counsel and direction; thither the provincial organisers
directed their steps whenever they visited Dublin; into it poured weekly
from all parts of the country an immense mass of correspondence, which
the editors, instead of destroying after it had passed through their
hands, foolishly allowed to accumulate upon their shelves, though every
word of it was fraught with peril to the lives and liberties of their
friends. In their private residences also they were incautious enough to
keep numerous documents of a most compromising character. There is but
one way of accounting for their conduct in this matter. They may have
supposed that the legal proceedings against them, which they knew were
certain to take place at one time or another, would be conducted in the
semi-constitutional fashion which was adopted towards the national
journals in 1848. If the staff of the _Irish People_ had received a
single day's notice that they were about to be made amenable to the law,
it is possible that they would have their houses and their office
immediately cleared of those documents which afterwards consigned so
many of their countrymen to the horrors of penal servitude. But they saw
no reason to suppose that the swoop was about to be made on them. On the
fifteenth day of September, 1865, there were no perceptible indications
that the authorities were any more on the alert in reference to Fenian
affairs then they had been during the past twelve months. It was Friday;
the _Irish People_ had been printed for the next day's sale, large
batches of the paper had been sent off to the agents in town and
country, the editors and publishing clerks had gone home to rest after
their week's labours--when suddenly, at about half-past nine o'clock in
the evening, a strong force of police broke into the office, seized the
books, manuscripts, papers, and forms of type, and bore them off to the
Castle yard. At the same time arrests of the chief Fenian leaders were
being made in various parts of the city. The news created intense
excitement in all circles of society, and more especially amongst the
Fenians themselves, who had never dreamed of a government _coup_ so
sudden, so lawless, and so effective. The government had now th