not generally believed, any more than Parnell's statement that he had been no party to the brutal murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish; and the prestige of Fenianism was lowered. Still, the Irish Republican Brotherhood was in existence as a centre of separatist and republican thought and the imminence of Home Rule could not but stimulate its interest. Its members must either decide to lend their support to Mr. Redmond as it had once been lent to Parnell, or to come out, whether openly or in private, as his opponents. The Irish Republican Brotherhood was not the only centre of republican thought in Ireland. In 1896 the Irish Socialist Republican Party had been founded in Dublin by James Connolly, the ablest organizer and writer which Irish Labour has yet produced. Under his editorship _The Workers' Republic_ became an organ of Socialism and Republicanism in their application to Irish conditions. The new party took its part in Irish political activities. It joined the movement to commemorate the Rebellion of 1798, the work of the United Irishmen whose political creed had been republican. Along with other Irish Nationalists it joined in the work of the Irish Transvaal Committee and helped to organize and equip the Irish Brigade which fought on the side of the South African Republics. But till after the General Election of 1910 it made no attempt to enter Irish politics as an independent party. It remained in its constitution a purely trade union party though sympathetic with, and ready to lend its aid in, the Irish national movement. In 1911 the proposal to found a combined political and industrial movement was defeated by only three votes at the Congress held at Galway, and in the following year the Clonmel Congress decided to found "an Irish Labour Party independent of all other parties in the country, in order that the organized workers might be able to enter the proposed Irish Parliament as an organized Labour Party upon the political field." Though the Irish Labour Party was not professedly republican, and though its political activities were confined for the time to the enforcement of the political interests of Irish Labour, yet the leaders and a considerable number of the rank and file were undoubtedly republican in their aims and sympathies.