300 IRELAND the government having forbidden it, it did not take place. In February, 1844, under the Peel administration, O'Connell and his fellow agita- tors were convicted and sentenced to a short term of imprisonment. An appeal to the house of lords set them at liberty. The agitation did not nourish afterward. In 1846 and the suc- ceeding year a great famine fell upon the land, through the rotting of the potato crop, upon which most of the peasantry depended for sus- tenance, and thousands perished of hunger. Parliament made successive grants in aid, amounting in the aggregate to 10,000,000. Large sums were subscribed abroad ; and among other donations, a cargo of food was sent from the United States. The crops of the two suc- ceeding years were short, but gradually plenty came again. The young Ireland party, which had grown under the auspices of O'Connell, re- jected his peace policy, and remonstrated against his affiliation with the English whigs. It re- ceived great accessions from the country, and on Jan. 13, 1847, formed the " Irish Confed- eration." Although it had upward of 150,000 enrolled men in its clubs, its organization was imperfect, and the amount of arms in its pos- session insignificant. Neither was its purpose distinctly defined or understood. John Mitch- el, seeing nothing in the famine policy of the government but " a machinery deliberately de- vised and skilfully worked for the entire sub- jugation and slaughter or pauperization of the people," advised resistance and a general arm- ing. William Smith O'Brien, 0. Gavan Duf- fy, T. F. Meagher, and the "Nation" party thought this would he a virtual declaration of war. But the French revolution of February, 1848, gave a great impetus to Mitchel's views, and set all the confederate orators on the path of revolution. The confederation sent to France a deputation, with an address which declared that the heroism of the French repub- lic " taught enslaved nations that emancipation ever awaits those who dare to achieve it by their own intrepidity." The parliament hur- riedly passed a "treason-felony" act. Mitchel was arrested, tried, and banished for 14 years. The nationalists desired to wait for the har- vest ; but the government, as on former occa- sions, put forth all its power to force an im- mature rising. The " Nation," " Tribune," and " Felon," which had succeeded Mitchel's " Uni- ted Irishman," were seized, and their writers thrown into prison. The " gagging act " pre- vented freedom of speech at the clubs ; and the suspension of the habeas corpus act compelled those who were objects of suspicion to evade the authorities. Thus the leaders were thrown on the country, and rewards offered for them. Hunted with celerity, they strove to face the emergency in hurried councils and with undis- ciplined material, and having come in contact with the forces at the slate quarries, Mullina- hone, Killenaule, Ballingarry, Abbeyfeale, and elsewhere, they were either captured or found safety in exile. O'Brien, Meagher, McManus, and O'Donoghue were sentenced to death ; Mar- tin and O'Doherty were banished for a term of years to Australia ; and Doheny, Dillon, Devin Reilly, and O'Gonnan found their way to Amer- ica. Later in the year (September) a more per- sistent effort was made by John O'Mahony and John Savage to rally the people in Tipperary, Waterford, and Kilkenny, but it was hopeless. The government had 40,000 troops in the coun- try. None were executed, the sentence of death having been commuted to transportation, and in most instances pardons were extended in 1856. In 1849 came into operation the act establishing courts for the sale of encumbered estates. To May 25, 1857, property had been sold to 7,216 persons, 6,902 of whom were Irish, the rest English, Scotch, or foreigners. The amount realized for the same was over 20,000,000. In 1849 a serious collision took place between some Orangemen and unarmed Catholics at Dollysbrae, county Down, which necessitated the dismissal of Lord Roden and another Or- ange magistrate from the commission of the peace by the viceroy, Lord Clarendon. In the same year Queen Victoria paid her first visit to Ireland, and she again visited it in 1853 to witness the great exhibition of Irish industri- al products, opened at Dublin, May 12. The year 1854 was signalized by the foundation of a Roman Catholic university. The political ex- citements of this period were an agitation by Protestants against the governmental grant to the college of Maynooth, and by the Catholic defence association in favor of perfect religious equality. " Tenant right," with other secular questions, under discussion at the same time, produced considerable effervescence. In 1857 the Phrenix society developed some active rev- olutionary spirit in the south of Ireland. This was followed up by the "Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood," the form under which Fenian- ism became known in the British islands. The rise and progress of the Fenian movement on both sides of the Atlantic is treated under FE- NIANS. It is only necessary here to allude to the measures passed by the British parliament growing out of the Irish efforts from 1857 to 1871. The government put forth its most vigi- lant and effective resources in Ireland, twice suspending the habeas corpus to strengthen the hands of the Irish executive. Mr. James Ste- phens was the controlling influence of the "Revolutionary Brotherhood" in Ireland, and the seizure of his organ, " The Irish People," in September, 1865, and of himself in No- vember, created intense excitement, which was more widely extended by his escape on the 24th of the same month. The rising in March, 1867, gave a great number of active spirits into the hands of the government. Follow- ing the failure, the parliament passed a re- form bill extending the franchise; this was supplemented by Mr. Gladstone's bill for the disestablishment of the Anglican church in Ire- land, which was followed by a land-tenure bill for Ireland and a naturalization bill. Through-
