lity, to do
justice, or to show mercy in such an iniquitous system. It was the
system, not the landlord, that was vicious. Eviction has done as much
as famine to depopulate Ireland. It has driven millions of Irishmen
into America; and the cruelty and even ferocity with which it has been
carried out cannot be overstated. Whatever the weather, for the sick,
or even for the dying, there was no pity. Out they must go; and to
make sure that they would not return, the cabin was unroofed! And
then, if the wretched being died under the stars by the road-side, he
might, in the words of Mitchell, "lift his dying eyes and thank God
that he perished under the best constitution in the world!"

At the close of the American civil war it was believed by Irishmen that
the strained {244} relations between England and America would lead to
open conflict. An organization named Fenians (after the ancient Feni)
formed a plan for a rising in Ireland, which was to be simultaneous
with a raid into Canada by way of America.

The United States Government took vigorous action in the matter of the
Canadian raid, and the failure of this and of other violent attempts at
home put an end to the least creditable of all such organizations.

It was in 1869 that Mr. Gladstone realized his long-cherished plan for
the disestablishment of the Church in Ireland. The generations which
had hoped and striven for this had passed away, and in the Ireland
which remained, there was scarcely spirit enough left to rejoice over
anything. The words Home Rule were the only ones with power to arouse
hope. With the Liberal Party on their side, this seemed possible of
attainment. In 1875 Charles Parnell entered the House of Commons and
became the leader of a Home Rule Party. But the question of evictions,
of which there had been 10,000 in four years, became so pressing, that
he organized a National Land League, which {245} had for its object the
relief of present distress, and the substitution of
peasant-proprietorship for the existing landlord system; an agrarian
scheme, or dream, to which Mr. Parnell devoted the rest of his life.
Mr. Parnell's weapons were parliamentary. He introduced an obstructive
method in legislation which caused extreme irritation and finally
antagonism between the Liberal Party and his own. This, together with
the unfounded suspicion of complicity in the murder of Lord Frederick
Cavendish, in 1882, militated against Mr. Gladstone's Ho