The process, when maintained over a considerable period, of professing opinions and intentions for the execution of which no occasion is afforded, is apt to become artificial. The most blood-curdling oaths and sentiments tend to degenerate into ritual. They may preserve in all their vivid squalor the hateful memories of the past; they cannot be said to exert much influence upon the politics of the present. Had the flag of Ireland been unfurled in civil war, the Fenian societies would have assumed a gigantic importance. Pending that event, they stood aside and allowed the English Government to proceed on its path unmolested. They had long despised Parliamentary agitation. They regarded the House of Commons, not without reason, as a school for Anglicising Irishmen. They expelled from their order any man who took the Parliamentary oath. They abhorred constitutional methods, however effective they might be, as involving some tacit recognition of British institutions. They paid no attention to social movements or to agrarian conflicts. Looking with profound distrust upon all who would not go the whole way with them, they remained a great, secret, silent army, gathered around the watch-fires of unquenchable hatred, morosely forecasting the chances of a battle on which the day would never dawn. The rise of Parnell in Parliament and the anger which his obstructive tactics evidently excited in England filled these fierce dreamers with a new interest. The impression which his reserved yet commanding personality made upon all who were brought into contact with it, was intense. The deepening discontent and distress of the peasantry seemed to herald the approach of a new opportunity. Fenian opinion was perplexed and divided. Some scorned the hateful alliance with constitutionalism. ‘Freedom comes from God’s right hand.’ A pretence of loyalty, but in reality treason all along the line, would dishonour a national movement and end in sham loyalty and sham treason. Others urged with Davitt that unless the Fenians threw their hearts into the real stirrings of the Irish people, and helped them in their immediate and material need, they would cease to represent the life of their country. In 1879 the principles of doctrinaire treason were preferred. In 1880 a more practical view prevailed and the ‘new departure’ was sanctioned.