What distinguishes Fenianism? Actually, it originates from the 
Irish Americans, Irishmen [living] in America. They are the 
initiators and eavers. But in Ireland itself the movement took root 
(and is still really rooted) only in the mass of the people, the tower 
orpers. That is what characterises it. In all earlier Irish movements 
the people only followed the aristocracy or mimp.e-class MEN, and — 
always the Catholic churchmen. The Anglo-Irish chiefs and the 
priests during the rising against Cromwell; even James II, King of 
England, was at the head in the war against William III; the 
Protestant Republicans of Ulster (Wolfe Tone, Lord Fitzgerald) in 
the 1798 revolution,””* and, finally, in this century the sourcgors 
O’Connell supported by the Catholic clergy, who also played a 
leading role in all-earlier movements excepting 1798. The Catholic 
clergy decreed a ban on Fenianism, which it did not lift until it 
realised that its attitude would deprive it of all influence on the 
Irish masses. 


{I 


Here is what baffles the English: they find the present regime 
mild compared with England’s former oppression of Ireland. So 
why this most determined and irreconcilable form of opposition 
now? What I want to show—and what even those Englishmen who 
side with the Irish and concede them the right to secession from 
England do not see—is that the [oppression] since 1846, though 
less barbarian in form, has been in effect destructive, leaving no 
alternative but Ireland’s voluntary emancipation by England or 
life-and-death struggle. 


Outline of a Report on the Irish Question 195 


iil 


Concerning past history the racrs are available in any history 
book. Hence, I shall give only a few, firstly, to clarify the 
difference between the present epoch and the past and, secondly, 
to bring out a few points about the character of those who are 
now Called the Irish people.