“England is unquestionably the freest – that is the least unfree – country in the world, North America not excepted,” wrote Friedrich Engels, no admirer of her social structure. “As a result, an educated Englishman has a degree of independence about him that no Frenchman, let alone a German, can boast of.” Less surprising was the opinion offered by the LondonTimes. It identified as the creed of the Englishman a conviction that it was “natural and easy for a man to be free” so long as he was provided with a “King, an Upper and Lower Chamber, the right of refusing...

Keen to obtain reliable information on the transatlantic allies of domestic subversives, following the exposure of the “Phoenix Conspiracy,” the Irish Executive despatched an experienced officer to the United States to investigate.The great body of New York’s Irish Americans had no immediate intention of crossing the ocean to engage in an insurrection, he reported in the summer of 1860, for most of them were convinced that rebellion could only succeed if the United Kingdom was at war with either France or the United States. He identified the Fenian Brotherhood as a potential future threat to Ireland’s peace, and before long...

John O’Mahony’s commitment to action in Ireland divided American Fenians. A faction led by William Roberts, an Irish-born, politically ambitious, highly successful dry goods merchant, advocated the seemingly simpler and more practical strategy of invading British North America. Fenian invaders were assured of considerable local support by Michael Murphy, the Brotherhood’s Canadian leader, who boasted of a membership in excess of 125,000 and the penetration of every British regiment stationed in the province. The confused state of American politics in the immediate aftermath of the civil war, and the republic’s tense relationship with Britain, also appeared to point firmly northwards....

The Irish Executive had reason for continued vigilance despite the swift and successful suppression of the insurgency. Several of the Fenian Brotherhood’s “working men” were still industriously recruiting future rebels, and Thomas Kelly was whispered to be in Dublin. Daniel Ryan’s confirmation of the earlier reports that the elusive Fenian chief had devised “a system of retaliation” in the form of an “assassination circle,” to deal with Crown officials, policemen, jurors, witnesses, informers, and the likes of Condon (Massey), who had turned Queen’s evidence following his capture, merely added to the overworked Thomas Larcom’s worries. He ordered the extraordinary precautions...

Most members of the Cabinet were too preoccupied with an Abyssinian punitive expedition, for which popular enthusiasm was waning as the costs swelled, to concentrate on Britain’s Fenian problem. Moreover, they had Strathnairn’s assurance that, absent some understanding with the trades unions and the Reform League, the Fenian Brotherhood would engage in little more than isolated “coups de main” in an effort to create an illusion of strength that might see troops withdrawn from Ireland and Irish-American purse strings loosened. However, Irish America and the American government could be expected to follow closely the case of the alleged Fenians arrested...

The Tory government’s Irish policy was disparaged by the Opposition as neither fish nor fowl, neither “rigorous repression” nor genuine “ conciliation.” Only Liberals, one leading member of that party claimed, could prevent the Irish people from taking the “wretched Fenians at their word, and believe that no measures of redress [would] be of any avail.” The British needed to consent to policies for the people of Ireland that “they would not choose or permit for themselves.” There remained scant likelihood of the Derby Cabinet introducing reforms of this nature, especially with a general election in the offing. The church...

Three persons who had been observed loitering near the Clerkenwell House of Detention were detained by the police immediately following the explosion. One of them, Anne Justice, had earlier that day visited Casey, ostensibly to deliver a meal at the request of his mother. A second, Jeremiah Allen, claimed to be working for the police, while the third, Timothy Desmond, was already known to the police. A Soho tailor, he came from an Irish community believed to be deeply infected with Fenianism. That Justice attempted suicide once behind bars strengthened the suspicion of her involvement in the conspiracy, suspicion an...

When Parliament reopened early in February 1868, Fenian violence threatened to shape the political agenda. Lord Frederick Cavendish, a younger son of the duke of Devonshire, admitted to his wife, a Gladstone relative, that it was making him think much of Ireland’s rights and wrongs. He favoured disestablishment of the Church of Ireland and a land reform that would give tenants an interest in the soil and security of tenure. John Stuart Mill made a similar case in his pamphletEngland and Ireland. The true significance of Fenianism, he wrote, was the evidence it provided of the hardening of Irish...

“Disraeli is surprisingly sanguine about the Elections. I confess I am not. I think there is a foregone conclusion in the mind of the country that Gladstone should have a turn now but I think he will have a fall over the Irish Church,” one parliamentary undersecretary admitted to another. What was best for the interests of the party was for him “always the same as the country,” the prime minister responded when questioned on the wisdom of appointing Protestant firebrands to vacant preferments. His election address, effectively the party’s manifesto, was similarly sectarian. The Tories would maintain Protestant institutions...

William Gladstone was approaching the end of his sixtieth year when he finally formed a government in December 1868, and he surely foresaw neither the length his political career had yet to run nor the extent to which it would be dominated by the Irish problem. Although he commanded a large majority in the Commons, there was a suspicion it would not be “very manageable.” If much depended on his “tact in leading,” he now appeared to be better equipped to provide it. He struck observers as calmer, more moderate, and less excited than he had been earlier. Highly intelligent,...

The Fenians were more active and better organized than at any time since the rising, Daniel Ryan reported as the winter of 1869 arrived. They had completed another internal reorganization. Power was concentrated in a Supreme Council, biennial elections were to be held for most offices, and members were to pay small but regular subscriptions. Greater financial self–sufficiency helped to make possible the launching of an ambitious scheme to import arms, and the rank and file, who may have numbered 40,000, included “thousands more with firm convictions on the subjects of physical force and republicanism than had ever followed...

The strength of Irish nationalism lay in the quality of its leadership and the quantity of its “followship.” Politicians, professionals, publishers, pedagogues, and priests provided the officer corps and peasants the rank and file of the swelling army of Irishmen disillusioned with the constitutional structure erected in 1800. The decades–long struggle for Catholic emancipation allowed “explicitly nationalist ideas” to be advanced within a religious context, while its belated concession failed to eradicate the grievance of a Protestant Established Church in an overwhelmingly Catholic land. Daniel O’Connell’s subsequent Repeal Association was dedicated to a somewhat imprecise degree of home rule,...