But there were other forces at work in Ireland in opposition to the two official parties of Unionists and Nationalists. There were in the first place the survivors of the Fenians, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, whose ideal was an Irish Republic, independent of any connection with England or indeed with any other country. Fenianism had become to all outward appearance practically dead in Ireland. It had suffered, in the opinion of some at least of its members, from the fact that it had put revolutionary action first and the preaching of republicanism second. As one of them wrote afterwards, "The Fenian propagandist work in the sixties was entirely separatist with practically no reference to Republicanism. Rightly or wrongly I have always held the view that the absence of the deeper Republican thought amongst our people accounted for a considerable amount of the falling away after '67." The people whose republican sentiments were weak "dropped back into the easier path leading only to a much modified national independence." Accordingly after 1867 the Fenians attempted to make republicanism an essential part of their propaganda. There had been a large number of Protestant Irishmen among the Fenians, and, as Republican sentiment had been traditional in Ulster since the days of the United Irishmen, it seemed that a movement aiming at an Irish Republic might have more chance of success among Ulster Protestants than any form of "Home Rule." Besides, the "New Departure," the alliance of Fenianism with Parnell in the Land War, had weakened the movement still more. "It was disastrous," says the same authority, "to the Fenian movement as such, but it drove the Land League through to a degree that no really constitutional movement could ever have reached." In allying itself to some extent with Parnell, in abandoning for the time in his interests its revolutionary propaganda, it seemed to have weakened its own moral force, while it did not succeed in winning even Home Rule. And the fact of its being of necessity a secret society brought it under the ban of the Church. Fear of ecclesiastical censure most often kept young Irishmen out of Fenianism. It was not enough for the Fenians to say, as they did, that to the existence of a secret society whose aims were lawful there was no moral or theological objection. The experts in morals and theology said that there was, and their word, and not that of the Fenians, was accepted on the whole as final. And the actions of the Invincibles during the Parnellite struggle had gravely compromised not Parnell only but the Fenian Party, to which they were supposed to belong. As a matter of fact the Irish Republican Brotherhood had nothing to do with them. It had no sympathy with, nor reliance on, their policy of political assassination. A member of the Brotherhood who joined the Invincibles was regarded as having broken his oath to its members and its constitution. But this was