FENIANISM IN IRELAND.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 1, Issue 141, 19 August 1880, Page 2

FENIANISM IN IRELAND.

Cablegrams from London give us t© understand that there is a certain amount of uneasiness in the United Kingdom regarding the movements :of the Fenians. It is stated that four hundred Fenian emissaries have arrived in Ireland, that four hundred rifles have been purchased in Dublin and taken to,Cork, while the same message hints the possible existence of a complete Fenian organisation in Ireland. The message that gives this informa tion follows on the heels of one that told us of six boats, containing Fenians, being in. Cork harbor, and their crews boarding a vessel, overpowering the captain and crew, stealing three cases' of rifles, and escaping scot free. The recent famine in Ireland, the failure of crops and total collapse of the agricultural interest in that unhappy country, followed by the rejection; in the House of Lords of the Tenants Compensation Bill, a measure intended in some degree to ameliorate the condition of the Irish fanner, have doubtless greatly aided in spreading disaffection amongst that portion of the Irish people whose love for England is the reverse of warm. Agrarian outrages, too, consequent on evictions of tenants from their holdings for non-payment of rent, have intensified the bitterness of feeling against the Imperial Government 3 add. the opposition to Home Rule, so ardently desired by many Irishmen, whose hopes of seeing it an accomplished fact have been so often deferred, and causes are not wanting why disaffected men, with memories of old grievances still green and rankling, should believe the present time a critical one, and a fitting opportunity for raising the standard of rebellion. However hopeless their cause may appear, the “National” Irishmen have ever been misguided enough to believe Ireland united could win its independence from England, and several times they have made abortive attempts in this direction—knowing, too, that Ireland was not united on this subject It is chiefly from American soil that the disaffection is fermented, as it is in America that most of the Fenians have taken refuge when their own country became too hot to hold them, and it is to American partisans that Irishmen look for aid when these apparently periodical ebullitions arise. ; A later cablegram tells us that fh'e farmers throughout Ireland have been holding numerous land meetings, at one of these, at Kildare, the M.P. for Tipperary made several seditious speeches. We have no fear of any serious consequences from a simple rising of a few Fenian fanatics, but when the great land sore has burnt itself into the heart of the people, and the deep-seated grievance that the Irish tenant has ever held against his landlord is shown, by the almost suicidal stubborness of the “ hereditary legislators’” to- be farther than ever from removal, there appears to be some reason to fear that the rumors of trouble in the “ ould clart ” are more portenteous than usual, j