in the words
of A.J. Kettle, M.P.:--

"On its roll of membership there are no landlords or
ex-landlords, few merchants, fewer Irish manufacturers. There
are few of the men who are managing the business of Ireland
in city or town, connected with the League. The bankers who
regulate our finances, the railway or transit men who control
our trade, internal and external, even the leading cattle men
who handle most of our animal produce, are not to be found in
its ranks."

In further evidence of this it may be noted that in spite of all the
efforts of the League at collecting money, the subscriptions to the
Irish Parliamentary Fund do not amount to a halfpenny per head of the
population; as J. Dillon has remarked: "The National cause in Ireland
could not live for six months if it were deprived of the support of
the Irish across the Atlantic."

Closely allied with the League is the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a
secret political and exclusively Roman Catholic association, of which
J. Devlin, M.P. (the Secretary of the League), is President. It is
also called the Board of Erin, to distinguish it from the American
branch. The American branch, I may remark, is also known as the Molly
Maguires, as it was under that name that it conducted the series of
murders and outrages at the Pennsylvanian mines thirty years ago.
Hence the Irish branch is sometimes nicknamed the "Molly Maguires."
The Order is very religious, in the sense that part of its programme
is to deprive heretics of every means of earning their livelihood; as
a Nationalist who did not sympathize with the operations of the Order
expressed it: "If Protestants are to be robbed of their business, if
they are to be deprived of public contracts, and shut out of every
office and emolument,--what is that but extermination?" The political
principles of the Order can be gathered from the Address presented by
them to Captain Condon on the occasion of his visit to Dublin in 1909.
Captain Condon, I may explain, had been a prominent Fenian and member
of the Irish Republican brotherhood, and had taken part in the riot at
Manchester in 1867 which resulted in the murder of Sergeant Brett; he
now resides in America. In 1909 he visited Ireland on the invitation
of J. Redmond; and the address presented to him by the Ancient Order
of Hibernians contained the following words:--

"In you, O'Meagher Condon, we recognize one of those
connecting link