movement very general support; they found numerous allies in thousands of Irishmen disbanded after the great conflict between the North and the South. The Fenian conspiracy was launched on its course; its directors made skilful attempts to debauch whole regiments, and to stir up the passions of the mob in many of the towns of Ireland; and they especially turned their attention to the mass of the peasantry. Here, however, their policy was injudicious and ill-conceived; they promised the Irish land as a spoil to those who would join the ranks of the 'patriot Irish army;' but all this alarmed the occupiers of the soil, whose only object was to acquire a better mode of tenure for their farms, and who rightly thought the Fenian movement made their possessions insecure, a belief generally encouraged by the Catholic priesthood. A short-lived rising, conducted by a few American soldiers, and backed by the rabble of a few villages and towns, found no real support in Ireland, and was finally quelled in 1867; but in England there was a spurt of Fenian disorder, and this, though easily quenched, made a profound impression. It was generally felt in England and Scotland that, notwithstanding the optimism of a generation of public men, there was still much that was rotten in the state of Ireland, and that this should be removed by large and searching reforms. The chief sign of this change in British opinion was seen in the result of the General Election of 1868; Mr. Gladstone, who, hitherto, had taken comparatively little part in Irish affairs, but who, with his keen instinct of every turn in the public mind, had been vehemently enlarging on the wrongs of Ireland, was placed in power with a great majority, and at once addressed himself to the task of Irish reform.[54] CHAPTER IV THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--THE IRISH LAND ACT OF 1870--THE LAND LEAGUE AND THE NATIONAL LEAGUE--THE LAND OF 1881--SUBSEQUENT LEGISLATION AS REGARDS THE LAND SYSTEM OF IRELAND