ntroduction, a letter
I had sent to my friend about a month previously. I was somewhat
suspicious about this. I told him there was nothing to show that my
letter had ever been in Breslin's hands at all. The gentleman agreed
that I was right, and said he would merely ask to be allowed to leave
his luggage for a short time.

I got a careful watch kept on his movements in Liverpool, but nothing
more suspicious was reported than that he had been seen to enter a
Catholic church, where he had gone to Confession.

My friend William Hogan was in my place when my messenger returned, and
when he heard this, exclaimed, in his usual impetuous style--"He's a
spy!"

The deduction might not seem obvious, but, doubtless Hogan had in his
mind one or two of the worst cases of the anti-Fenian informers, who
made a parade of great piety a cloak for their treachery.

The gentleman returned and reclaimed his luggage, and I heard nothing
further of him for about a month afterwards, when I had a letter from
Michael Breslin, saying that his friend, whom I had treated with such
suspicion and such scant hospitality, was Mr. John B. Holland, the
famous submarine inventor. He was, I believe, in this country in
connection with his invention.

It may be asked, after all, what did Fenianism do for Ireland? To those
who ask the question I would answer that no honest effort for liberty
has ever been made in vain. If Fenianism did nothing else, it kept alive
the tradition and the spirit of freedom among Irishmen, and handed them
on to the next generation. In so far as the men who took part in it were
unselfish, were whole-souled lovers of their country, and prepared to
risk life and liberty for their country's sake--and I think with pride
of the thousands of such men I knew or knew of--then the whole Irish
race was ennobled and lifted up from the mire of serfdom.

But it did more than merely make martyrs. Its strength, its spontaneity,
and the devotion of its adherents were such that they undoubtedly
awakened not merely some alarm, but also some sense of justice in
England.

Gladstone admitted that what first prompted him to set in motion the
movement for the disestablishment of the Irish Church was "the intensity
of Fenianism." But the result did not end there. For many an Englishman
was moved to the belief that surely there must be something wrong with a
system which provoked such a movement, something not wholly bad about a
cause for which me