to it when acquired. No men who honestly intended to aid the men at home to free Ireland--which is the fundamental principle of the V. C.--would begin their official careers by deceiving their colleagues in Ireland and persisting in carrying on any policy against their protest. Since the disastrous gathering, miscalled a convention, which met in Boston twelve months ago, the organization has been going from bad to worse. The deceit and trickery by which three members of the F. C. were enabled to continue themselves in power, and so to change the whole form and object of the order, as to make it a convenient instrument for the furtherance of personal ambition, at the expense of the sacred cause of Ireland, have continued to play havoc in our ranks. The strength and vitality of the national movement have been shattered. The oldest and strongest D's are being driven out one by one, and a system of repression of free speech and sham trials, copied from the worst features of British tyranny in Ireland, is brought into requisition for the purpose of crushing all independence of thought, and stifling the voice of patriotism. No honest man in the V. C., who sees and hears what is going on around him, can fail to recognize that ruin and disintegration must speedily make shipwreck of our hopes, if a strong and vigorous remedy be not soon applied. No intelligent man can fail to see that every effort of the three men who have usurped the governing authority of the V. C., every dollar intrusted to them for the advancement of the cause is being devoted to the maintenance of their power, and to the work of driving from the organization every man who charges them with wrong-doing, or who advocates an investigation of the charges made. That the aims and objects of the organization, and also its money, are being sacrificed to the necessities of the war of self-defense, waged by three desperate men, must be plain to every intelligent man, and it must be equally plain that an honest, impartial investigation of the serious charges, made against these men, would put a speedy end to all this trouble, by either convicting them of wrong-doing or their accusers of falsehood. In either case the organization would be freed from evil-doers and restored to harmony. Why, then, is such an investigation refused? The men who make the charges are ready to substantiate them and take the consequences. The accused men shirk an investigation, drive their accusers out of the organization, so that their evidence may not be available, and hold on with the grip of desperation to the positions they are accused of disgracing.