FROM THE ARCHIVES:As war threatened between Britain and Russia over their imperial claims to India, the Fenians in America offered 5,000 men to help the Russians fight the British. This editorial viewed the offer with a mixture of derision and anger. – JOE JOYCE
THE FENIANS appear to be making their death struggle. With the wild audacity of maniacs grasping at a shadow, they have appealed to the Russian Government to give them equipment for some 5,000 men, so that in case of war they, with the Russians, may be able to assail England. This is not the first time that discontented Irishmen – or rather, Irishmen discontented with English rule in Ireland – have espoused the cause of enemies of England, and fought against her. [...] The abortive struggles of Irish-Americans, who call themselves Fenians, to subvert the Constitutional order of things in our country, have made them ridiculous in the eyes of the world, as well as a by-word of shame with all the peace-loving people of the civilised globe. They strove with their dupes to do battle here, but failed in a most despicable manner. [...] What is to us if a reprobate 5,000 offer their services to Russia? Such a contingent could not augment to any alarming extent the forces of the Muscovite were we compelled to declare war against him to-morrow. And we are sure that Russia herself would treat the offer of such a factious crew rather as an insult than as a compliment. The Times Philadelphia correspondent seems not to have been aware that the proposal met with an uncourteous refusal, and that the Russian Minister implied by his answer that the Fenians had already enough to do with the settlement of their own quarrels, and not to volunteer to mingle with those of others. This was such an answer as they deserved.
What is the numerical strength of the Fenians? On paper it may appear large; but we suspect that it is in reality scarcely worth mention. Morally their influence is nothing. They lack that stability and unanimity that seditious sodalities must possess to become powerful and dangerous.
They have no union; they squabble and fight amongst themselves in such a manner that their action, either in peace or insurrection, must ever be as the ludicrous portion of a worthless comedy.
Russia has, it seems, marked her contempt for them by discarding their proposition. She would not be hampered, were she ever so much in want of men, with such a senseless set of firebrands, whose aim is profit, whose sole aspiration is the despoiling of the ingenuous and the ignorant. America has always been a favourable field for adventurers of this class: but they waste themselves out in time with their own obnoxious fires. To this pass the Fenians have come. The society is now a nonentity to all intents and purposes, and if not a nonentity for evil, it is scarcely more than the hideous skeleton of what was once a weak, uncomely deformity. The days of Fenianism are past, if it ever had days that could be said to have seen it alive.