Now, through all this hubbub and all this mystery, there transpires more and more the anxiety of the Government, that had given way to the pressure of its credulous Irish agents, who, in their turn, were mere playthings in the hands of the Orangemen, how to get out of the awkward fix without losing at once their reputation and their places. At first, it was pretended that the dangerous conspiracy, extending its ramifications from the south-west to the north-east over the whole surface of Ireland, issued from the Americanising Phoenix Club. Then it was a revival of Ribbonism; but now it is something quite new, quite unknown, and the more awful for all that. The shifts the Government is driven to may be judged from the manoeuvres of The Dublin Daily Express, the Government organ, which day by day treats its readers to false rumours of murders committed, armed men marauding, and midnight meetings taking place. To its intense disgust, the men killed return from their graves, and protest in its own columns against being so disposed of by the editor. There may exist such a thing as a Phoenix Club, but at all events, it is a very small affair, since the Government itself has thought fit to stifle this Phoenix in its own ashes. As to Ribbonism, its existence never depended upon secret conspirators. When, at the end of the eighteenth century, the Protestant Peep-o'-Day boys combined to wage war against the Catholics in the north of Ireland, the opposing society of the Defenders sprang up. When, in 1791, the Peep-o'-Day boys merged into Orangeism, the Defenders transformed themselves into Ribbonmen. When, at last, in our own days, the British Government disavowed Orangeism, the Ribbon Society, having lost its condition of life, dissolved itself voluntarily. The extraordinary steps taken by Lord Eglinton may, in fact, revive Ribbonism, as may the present attempts of the Dublin Orangemen to place English officers at the head of the Irish Constabulary, and fill its inferior ranks with their own partisans. At present there exist no secret societies in Ireland except agrarian societies. To accuse Ireland of producing such societies would be as judicious as to accuse woodland of producing mushrooms. The landlords of Ireland are confederated for a fiendish war of extermination against the cotters; or, as they call it, they combine for the economical experiment of clearing the land of useless mouths. The small native tenants are to be disposed of with no more ado than vermin is by the housemaid. The despairing wretches, on their part, attempt a feeble resistance by the formation of secret societies, scattered over the land, and powerless for effecting anything beyond demonstrations of individual vengeance. But if the conspiracy hunted after in Ireland is a mere invention of Orangeism, the premiums held out by the Government may succeed in giving shape and body to the airy nothing. The recruiting sergeant is no more sure to press with his shilling and his gin some of the Queen s mob into the Queen s service, than a reward for the detection of Irish secret societies is sure to create the societies to be detected. From the entrails of every county there rise immediately blacklegs who, transforming themselves into revolutionary delegates, travel through the rural districts, enrol members, administer oaths, denounce the victims, swear them to the gallows, and pocket the blood-money. To characterise this race of Irish informers and the effect on them of Government rewards, it will suffice to quote one passage from a speech delivered by Sir Robert Peel in the House of Commons:
Karl Marx in New-York Tribune 1858