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A.D. 1866.]

ARRESTS OF FENIANS THROUGHOUT IRELAND.

posed of it with equal celerity. But the royal assent had to be given, before the measure could become law; and the Queen was at this time at Osborne. As soon as the bill had passed the Lords, a telegram announcing the result was sent to Earl Granville, who was in attendance on her Majesty at Osborne, and who thereupon solicited and obtained the Queen's signature to the usual formal document, authorising her assent to be given to the bill by Commission. The sittings of both Houses were suspended till 11 p.m., by which time it was calculated that the special train conveying the document might have arrived. But midnight came, and still the messenger did not appear; at half-past twelve, however, the despatch box, bearing the important document, was brought to the Lord Chancellor. Some time elapsed before it was properly filled up, and then the clerk entered, carrying the Royal Commission. The House of Commons was sent for to hear the royal assent given to the bill in question, and soon the Speaker, accompanied by about fifty members, appeared at the bar of the House. The Commissioners then stated that it was Her Majesty's will and pleasure to give her assent to the bill, and it became law. This was about twenty minutes to one on the Sunday morning. Probably no statuto could ever pass with much more celerity than this, the first Act of the new Parliament.

But rapid as were the operations of the legislature, the Dublin executive considered the state of affairs so critical as to justify it in anticipating the passing of the law. On Saturday morning, February 17, the arrests of suspected persons commenced, and were continued through the day, nearly 250 persons being in custody at nightfall. No resistance was in any case offered to the police, nor were any captures of arms effected on this day. Thirty-seven American citizens, of Irish extraction, most, if not all, of whom had served in the civil war, were among the persons arrested. The suddenness of the blow appears to have utterly disconcerted the conspirators. The suspicious-looking strangers, who had for weeks past haunted the streets of Dublin, disappeared; the steamers to Liverpool were crowded with passengers; and for several days the steamboats sailing for America took away numbers of bellicose gentlemen, who found that the Irish revolution was not to come off just yet. The authorities, however, neglected no necessary precaution; the vans conveying prisoners to Kilmainham or Richmond were guarded by troops; all the soldiers of the garrison not on duty were confined to their quarters all night, ready to turn out at a moment's notice; and no strangers were admitted within the gates of the Pigeon-house Fort, which guards the mouth of the Liffey, on any pretence. The most important arrest was believed to be that of Patrick J. M'Donnell, said to have been at the head of the movement since the escape of Stephens. In the provinces some noteworthy incidents occurred. On the same night on which the arrests were effected in Dublin, a body of Fenians were practising drill at a place called Cullen in the county Tipperary; a patrol of police came up and endeavoured to disperse them; the Fenians then fired upon and wounded some of the police, one man mortally.

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At Trim, in the county Meath, several arrests were made, among them that of Mr. Malone, one of the wealthiest and most respectable merchants in the town; other persons moving in a respectable position were also captured. At Queenstown, about a month later, two of the Town Commissioners were arrested. These instances showed that the passage in the Queen's speech at the opening of the session, speaking of the Fenian movement as “a conspiracy adverse alike to authority, property, and religion, and disapproved and condemned alike by all who are interested in their maintenance," was unfortunately not quite exact.

In making a great display of force at the outset, the Irish executive was probably pursuing the wisest and also the most humane course. Troops kept pouring into Dublin; the 1st Battalion of the Coldstream Guards and the 85th Regiment arrived there before the end of February, and were followed by the 6th Dragoon Guards and a body of artillerymen, as well as a detachment of the Military Train corps from Woolwich. The most stringent measures were taken for stamping out any signs of disaffection that might manifest themselves among the troops; nor was this severity without cause, for not privates only, but several non-commissioned officers, were found to have either taken the Fenian oath, or uttered treasonable language, or been seen habitually in the company of notorious Fenians. Through the greater part of March frequent arrests continued to be made; and by that time the ranks of the disaffected were so depleted and discouraged, partly by the arrest of the leaders, partly by the rush to America and England of those who knew themselves to be most compromised among their followers, that all fear of an outbreak was at an end.

The Act for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus was originally passed for six months only, and would have expired on the 1st of September; but as the new Ministry felt that to allow it to expire would endanger the public peace, they sought and obtained from Parliament at the beginning of August the enactment of a bill renewing the former Act for an indefinite period. Lord Naas, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, stated that from the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act up to the 23rd of July, 419 persons who had been imprisoned had been discharged, generally on condition that they should leave the country. From every authority he learned that it would be dangerous to permit the sudden and simultaneous liberation of the 320 prisoners who remained in custody; yet such liberation was unavoidable if the Act were allowed to expire. He spoke of the fact that, although suppressed in Ireland, at any rate as to any public manifestations, the Fenian conspiracy still existed in force in another country; that there were still in Ireland newspapers advocating the Fenian cause, which disseminated seditious and treasonable sentiments through the country; and that secret drillings of the popula tion had been lately renewed. Mr. Maguire protested against the renewal of the Act, on the ground that there was no disorder now in Ireland which the ordinary powers of the law were not adequate to deal with. On

the other hand, Mr. Gladstone-while stating his opinion that the renewal of the Act burdened the Government with a very heavy responsibility, and made it incumbent on them to investigate with renewed ardour, and to remove by wise legislation, whatever grievances and inequalities, existing in the laws and institutions of Ireland, supplied a necessary aliment to the disaffection of the Irish people-declared that if the late Government had been still in power it would have been their duty to have made the same application to Parliament as that which was then being made by the existing Government. The bill was passed by a large majority in the Commons, and on being sent up to the House of Lords, was supported in a remarkable speech by the Earl of Kimberley, formerly Lord Wodehouse. The ex-Lord Lieutenant declared that if he had remained in office he should have recommended the adoption of this bill by Parliament. No one except those intimately acquainted with the facts could be aware how formidable the Fenian conspiracy had been. Since 1798 there had not existed so dangerous a condition of the public mind as in the past year. The promoters of the scheme had not been found in the poorer and more ignorant classes, but belonged to the class which was best described as artisans and small tradesmen; whilst in the south-west of Ireland, if a rebellion had broken out, there was no doubt the farmers also would have been ready to take part in it. Adverting to the alleged grievances of Ireland, the speaker observed that the question of land tenure was one which must shortly occupy the earnest attention of Parliament, and that the anomaly of the Irish Church must also be considered. This sentence supplies, it must be owned, some sort of confirmation to the oft-repeated taunts of the Irish national press, to the effect that the Irish Land Bill and the Irish Church Bill were not dictated by a spontaneous desire to remedy the grievances of Ireland, but were extorted from England by the dread of Fenianism. The bill soon became law; and, although nothing like an open rising was attempted during the remainder of the year, nor was a drop of blood shed, still it is impossible to doubt that the extraordinary powers placed in the hands of the executive enabled them to act with far greater promptitude against the first symptoms of insurrection, and with far less of friction and popular irritation, than would have been possible in conjunction with the somewhat cumbrous safeguards and formalities which in quiet times protect the personal liberty of the subject. In the hands of a despotic and irresponsible executive, animated by motives of interest, fear, or hatred, such an arbitrary power of arrest as that now confided to the Irish Government might easily be abused-as it often has been abused-for the vilest purposes of tyranny. But in the present case, behind the Irish Government stood the Cabinet in England, and behind the Cabinet stood a free and watchful Parliament, and behind the Parliament stood the constituencies of the United Kingdom; so that three separate and successive grades in the great hierarchy of political responsibility remained for the protection of the peaceable and law-abiding Irishman, although the palladium of the Habeas Corpus Act was for the time

removed from sight into the inner courts of the sanctuary of the constitution.

Seditious and alarmist articles in Irish papers, rumours carefully propagated of Fenian expeditions about to land on some point of the Irish coast, and the certainty that arms were being continually manufactured or imported, and distributed through the country, kept the Government on the qui vive all through the autumn; but the rumours were probably malicious, and certainly false, and no actual outbreak occurred. In America matters did not proceed quite so smoothly. Since the arrival of Stephens in the United States, the Fenians in that country had been distracted by a split which arose between their leaders. That the British empire should be destroyed was a political axiom admitted both by Sweeny and Stephens; it was only upon the modus operandi that these redoubtable chiefs differed. Sweeny appears to have considered that it was necessary to annex Canada first, and thence proceed to the conquest of Ireland; Stephens, on the other hand, desired that all other plans should be made subordinate to the preparation of a formidable Fenian expedition, which should disembark at some point in the west of Ireland. Loud was the debate, and voluble the discussion. The Fenian “senate" and most of the American Fenians adhered to Sweeny, while the Irish whose expatriation was of recent date swore by Stephens. Sweeny denounced Stephens as a "British spy," and doubtless Stephens was not at a loss for a fit epithet by which to characterise Sweeny

"Strange all this difference should be
'Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee!"

The valiant Sweeny, as the year wore on, took measures to test the soundness of his strategic plan for the invasion of Ireland via Canada. On the morning of the 1st June, 1866, a body of Fenians of the Sweeny faction, numbering 1,000 men, under the command of a Colonel O'Neil, crossed the Niagara river from Buffalo, where it enters Lake Erie, and occupied the farm or hamlet called Fort Erie on the Canadian shore. The news of this absurd raid, with which the Fenians of the United States had been threatening Canada for months past, quickly reached Toronto; and the authorities there at once dispatched all the troops they could collect to the scene of action. 1,500 men, mostly regulars, under the command of Colonel Peacocke, marched by way of the Falls of Niagara and the village of Chippewa; while 500 militiamen, under Colonel Dennis, were sent by rail to Port Colborne. The Fenians made no forward movement that day, nor were they molested at Fort Erie; but by some extraordinary aceident Colonel Dennis and a few of his men allowed themselves to be taken prisoners by them. The command of the militia then devolved upon Colonel Booker, who, on the morning of June 2, led his men forward from Port Colborne, along the margin of Lake Eric, to attack the invaders. Colonel Peacocke, misled by a report that the Fenians were marching upon Chippewa, led his forces to that place, and thus had no share in the trifling action which ensued. Arrived at a village called Ridgway, about half-way between Port Colborne and Fort Erie, Colonel

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Booker fell in with the Fenian column, which was advancing along the lake. A skirmish ensued, in which six militiamen were killed and forty wounded, the Fenians suffering about equally. Finding himself outnumbered, Col. Booker retired towards Port Colborne. The Fenians did not pursue; probably by this time they had heard of the proximity of Colonel Peacocke with his regulars. Wisely deeming discretion the better part of valour, they recrossed the Niagara on the night of the 2nd, leaving a few of their wounded and some stragglers—in all about sixty men-in the hands of the loyalists.

Another raid, still more foolish and reckless than the first, was executed by the Fenians on the 7th June, when, to the number of 2,000 or 3,000 men, led by a General Spear, they crossed the frontier from the State of Vermont and occupied a little village called Pigeon Hill, not far from Montreal. Some slight skirmishes between this force and some small bodies of yeomanry and militia that were hastily sent against them are reported; after which Spear led his warriors back again, and was immediately arrested, along with Sweeny and another Fenian leader called Roberts, by the United States authorities. Indeed, nothing could be more honourable than the conduct of the American Government during the whole affair. President Johnson issued a proclamation denouncing the act of the Fenians in carrying war into the territories of a friendly nation as A gross violation of the laws of the United States, and requiring all Union officials to repress such illegal acts by every means in their power, and to place under arrest any persons who should be found committing them. The indignation of the Canadians at these outrages-as disgraceful as they were absurd-was very great; and the funerals of the slain militiamen were celebrated with extraordinary pomp, and attended by an immense concourse of persons.

Fenianism had its victims in America; in Ireland, as has been seen, its ebullitions were so far bloodless. The day preceding Christmas-day, which rumour had assigned as the date of a rising, passed off in tranquillity; and the threats and predictions of the national journals were found to be mere wasted breath. The conspirators must have been conscious that their proceedings hitherto had been less formidable than ridiculous, and they determined, if they could, to give the authorities some justification for the additional precautions which had been taken. But the Fenian exploits at Tallaght, Manchester, and Clerkenwell must be reserved for a future chapter.

Among the deaths of this year, that of the ex-Queen of the French, Marie Amélie, was sincerely bewailed-far more so than is the usual lot of princes and princesses both by the friends who knew her worth, and by the poor whom her charity and piety had consoled. Herself a Neapolitan Bourbon, daughter of Ferdinand IV. of Naples, niece of Marie Antoinette, and grand-daughter of Maria Theresa, she passed her youth amid the storms which attended the great French Revolution, and having accompanied her father into exile in Sicily, in 1802, was residing at Palermo in 1808, when another princely exileanother of those stately wrecks which the revolutionary tempest had stranded on every coast-visited Sicily. This

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was the Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe. He became intimate with the family of the ex-King; an attachment sprang up between him and Marie Amélie, and they were married. Great purity and elevation of character, and deep religious fervour in the young bride afforded the foundation for a married life of singular beauty and harmony. Of her and her two sisters it used to be said, when they were children, that one was la bella, another la dotta, and the third-Marie Amélie-la santa. She and her husband came to France in 1814 in the train of the returning Bourbons, and Louis Philippe fell into his natural place at court as a prince of the blood; but the Hundred Days drove them again from France, and having taken refuge in England, they did not, after the second Restoration, return to Paris till 1817. When the Revolution of July had driven Charles X. from the throne, and a constitutional crown was offered to her husband, Marie Amélie, herself strong in Legitimist faith, and not believing that the mob of Paris had a right to dispose of a sceptre which had been swayed by a St. Louis and a Henri Quatre, was extremely averse to his closing with the proposal. But when she could not prevail, her duties as a wife outweighed the bias of her political predilections and aversions, and she entered as a mistress the halls of the Tuileries. The hand of affliction visited her maternal heart with the keenest strokes of sorrow; in 1839, her beautiful and gifted daughter, the Princess Marie, was cut off by an untimely death; and in 1842 her eldest son, the Duke of Orleans, having sustained a mortal injury through a fall from his carriage, expired in her arms. Yet she suppressed her own grief in order to minister comfort to her bereaved daughter-in-law, whom she tenderly loved. A few years later, this life of strange vicissitudes was visited by a storm perhaps the most unexpected, the most undeserved, of all. Unwillingly she had seen her husband mount the throne, but nothing in herself could have enabled her to realise the thought that, once installed there, he could ever pusillanimously resign it at the bidding of a mob. Lamartine, with his wonted grace and power of style, describes the scene at the Tuileries, where the Queen, her grey locks contrasting with the fire of her eyes and the animated flush of her cheek, said to the King, in language worthy of her Hapsburg ancestry— worthy of the grand-daughter of Maria Theresa—“ Go and show yourself to the disheartened troops, and to the irresolute National Guard; I will place myself in the balcony with my grand-children and my daughters, and, if you fall, I shall see you die in a manner worthy of yourself, of your throne, and of our common misfortunes." When the King declared his intention of abdicating, she rebuked him with passionate earnestness. She cared not, she said, what was thought in or out of the Tuileries; but in her estimation revolution was ever a crime, and abdication a cowardice. According to Lord Normanby's report, her words were:-' -"Sire, n'abdiquez pas; montez à cheval, mettez-vous à la tête de vos troupes, et je prierai Dieu pour vous.' When the Revolution was an accomplished fact, Marie Amélie, again an exile at Claremont, devoted herself partly to cheer and sustain her stunned and stricken consort, partly to the fulfilment of those

ship at Trinity. The grasp and reach of his mind in the investigations of exact science soon made him known to the scientific world, and led to his being requested to write the "Bridgewater Treatise" on astronomy. Soon afterwards he produced the great works of his life, first the "History," and then the "Philosophy," of the Inductive Sciences. These are monuments to the rare ability and extraordinary energy of the man, which many generations will not see superseded. He was elected in 1838 Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge, and although his own contributions to ethical science are of no great importance, his excellent edition of Sir James Mackintosh's "Introduction to the Study of Ethical Philosophy" will long be valued by the student. Though at bottom a humane and kind-hearted man, Dr. Whewell, particularly after his nomination to the Mastership of Trinity in 1841, somewhat diminished the enlightening and beneficial effect which such rare powers of mind ought to have diffused around him, by the not very infrequent outbursts of an overbearing temper and the display of arrogant manners. Those who have often met him in society cannot fail to recollect occasions when opposition to his opinions, however mildly expressed, excited and irritated the Master to a degree which no one would have believed possible, and drew down a flood of angry and contemptuous words on the head of the objector. But this blemish detracted but little, after all, from the solid worth and weight of his character. Cambridge men all over the world associated for many years their recollections of the University with the well-known form of the Master of Trinity. That towering and stalwart form, that flashing eye, that strong vibrating voice, the generally menacing and formidable aspect of the man, were ex

duties to her children and grand-children, and to the Society of humbler station around her, which, as a noble Christian matron, it was her pious joy to discharge with scrupulous fidelity. She closed her husband's eyes only two years after the Revolution of February. The only political question which deeply interested her in her later days was that of the Fusion between the Legitimate and Orleanist branches of the House of France. That reconciliation, which was completely accomplished in 1873, was the object of her desire; for faith in, and attachment to, the principle of legitimacy were as clear and unwavering in her as in M. de Berryer, and she could not understand how a solid and unimpeachable title could trace its origin to the half-fortuitous result of a street-fight. Her daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Orleans, with a natural jealousy of all that seemed likely to clash with the right of her son, opposed herself to the project of a Fusion; but this opposition of opinion cast no cloud over the affectionate intercourse which subsisted between the two. She outlived her daughter, the Queen of the Belgians, and even King Leopold, and lived during fifteen years of the Third Empire. She was a truly good woman, and as such attracted the respect and won the hearts not only of all the members of her numerous family, but of all the poor people among whom she lived; for, though a Roman Catholic of the strictest Neapolitan type, she knew no distinction of creed in her charities. To all who needed her aid she was ready to give it, and everywhere about Esher the name of the good French Queen was regarded with affection and veneration. Her life was prolonged nearly to eighty-four years, and her death was singularly peaceful; she had fallen into a gentle sleep, and in it passed away. In accordance with her own wishes, she was buried in the dress she wore on leaving France internal characteristics that deeply impressed every freshFebruary, 1848, for her long exile, and in her widow's cap, in order to show "how unalterably faithful she remained to the two guiding feelings of her life-her devotion to her royal spouse, and her love for her adopted country."

One of the most strongly marked personalities of the day-that of William Whewell, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge-was taken from English society in the March of this year. He was of humble parentage, his father being said to have been a blacksmith, but he received a good education at the Free Grammar-school at Lancaster, an institution of that class which, through the effect of recent arrangements overriding the intentions of founders, and restricting the entrance to the old foundation-schools of the country to boys who shine in a competitive examination, bids fair, unless special watchfulness be exercised, to be closed for the future against boys like young Whewell, whose parents are unable from poverty to give them an expensive preliminary training. But under any system whatever, it is hard to believe that such indomitable energy, such rare intellectual vigour, as characterised the Lancashire lad, would not have overpowered all social obstacles, and enabled him to "break his birth's invidious bar." In due course he proceeded to Trinity College, became senior wrangler of his year, and second Smith's Prizeman, and was elected to a fellow

man on his arrival, and were never forgotten in after life, But irreverent youth makes game of the most august earthly celebrities; and it is well known that this tremendous personage was familiarly known among the undergraduates by the soubriquet of "Billy Whistle!" Many works on various subjects attested the activity and versatility of his intellect; but it is only those on mathematical and physical problems which possess a high and permanent value. He showed his love for his college, and his generous zeal for the good of its younger members, by providing at his own expense a hostel at a little distance from the college for the recep tion of a portion of the overplus of students who could not get rooms in Trinity itself, and who would otherwise have had to go into lodgings. This excellent and judicious work has been extended since his death by money which he devised for the purpose. He was twice married, first to Miss Cordelia Marshall, sister of Lady Monteagle, and secondly to Lady Affleck, but left no issue by either marriage. He never seemed to have recovered the loss of his second wife, which took place in the summer of 1865; but the immediate cause of death was a fall from his horse while he was riding on the Trumpington Road, near Cambridge.

In the autumn of 1866 a singular and lamentable accident deprived British India of a bishop who was not ene

A.D. 1866.]

SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF BISHOP COTTON.

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of the least worthy successors to Heber in the see of lished: mutual respect and kindly intercourse took the Calcutta. George E. L. Cotton, born in 1813, a fortnight place of mere repression and resistance. Work throve before his father-Captain Cotton, of the 7th Fusiliers under so zealous a teacher; and a civilised out-of-door fell in front of a French redoubt in the battle of the life, in the form of cricket, football, and wholesome Nivelle, was educated at Westminster School, whence sports, took the place of poaching, rat-hunting, and he passed to Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1836, he poultry-stealing."* Cotton was appointed in 1858 to was appointed by Dr. Arnold-for whose character and the vacant bishopric of Calcutta. Of his life in India we work at Rugby he retained through life the highest will only say that, while his episcopal activity bore scanty veneration-to a mastership at that school. His fruit, in the shape of native converts to Christianity, the playful humour and affectionateness of nature, joined influence which contact with his kindly and equitable to unswerving rectitude and much moral earnestness, nature exerted, both on natives and Europeans, in helping endeared him at Rugby to a large band of pupils. After to heal the wounds and close the breaches which the

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the death of Arnold, Cotton became the attached friend and trusted counsellor of his successor, Dr. Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1852, he was appointed Head Master of the great school recently established at Marlborough, and occupied this important post for six years. "His success was complete. He won from the very first the hearty confidence of the singularly varied body of bishops, noblemen, M.P.'s, clergy, lawyers, and county gentlemen, who formed what is now called the governing body' of the school. With their cooperation, a wise economy, combined with entire selfabnegation on the part of himself and the devoted band of old pupils and their friends whom he drew around him, restored the financial equilibrium. Within the school" (which had witnessed under his predecessor an "exciting conflict with authority") "order was re-estab

Mutiny of 1857 and its terrible repression had occasioned, was both great and important. One very valuable work, in accomplishing which his school experience at Rugby and Marlborough came usefully into play, was the foundation of grammar schools in the hills, for the use of the sons of European and Eurasian residents. These schools, founded at Simla, Mussoorie, and Darjeeling, were by his care provided with endowments, and continue to flourish to this day. In October, 1866, the Bishop was returning from a visitation tour in Assam, and had reached a place called Kooshtea on his return to Calcutta. Here, on the afternoon of the 6th of October, he consecrated a cemetery, and, being detained on shore by various affairs, it was nearly dark before he set out on his return to the

'Memoir of Bishop Cotton," edited by his Widow. 1871.

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