of sanely judging the conflict, and a struggle in which no quarter was given was naturally marked by extreme savageness; but in looking back upon it, English writers must acknowledge with humiliation that if mutiny is ever justifiable, no stronger justification could be given than that of the Sepoy troops.

Many of my readers will remember an exquisite little poem called 'The Forced Recruit,' in which Mrs. Browning has described a young Venetian soldier, who was forced by the conscription to serve against his fellow-countrymen in the Austrian army at Solferino, and who advanced cheerfully to die by the Italian guns, holding a musket that had never been loaded in his hand. Such a figure, such a violation of military law will claim the sympathy of all, but a very different judgment should be passed upon those who, having voluntarily entered an army, betray their trust and their oath in the name of patriotism. In the Fenian movement in Ireland, one of the chief objects of the conspirators was to corrupt the Irish soldiers and break down that high sense of military honour for which in all times and in many armies the Irish people have been conspicuous. The epidemic '[of disaffection], boasts a writer who was much mixed in the conspiracies of those times, was not an affair of individuals, but of companies and of whole regiments. To attempt to impeach all the military Fenians before Courts Martial would have been to throw England into a panic, if not to precipitate an appalling mutiny and invite foreign invasion.'1

I do not quote these words as a true statement. They are, I believe, a gross exaggeration and a gross calumny on the Irish soldiers, nor do I doubt that most, if not all,

1 Contemporary Review, May 1897. Article by William O'Brien,

'Was Fenianism ever Formidable?'

FENIANISM IN THE ARMY

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the soldiers who may have been induced over a glass of whisky, or through the persuasions of some cunning agitator, to take the Fenian Oath would, if an actual conflict had arisen, have proved perfectly faithful soldiers of the Queen. The perversion of morals, however, which looks on such violations of military duty as praiseworthy, has not been confined to writers of the stamp of Mr. O'Brien. A striking instance of it is furnished by a recent American biography. Among the early Fenian conspirators was a young man named John Boyle O'Reilly. He was a genuine enthusiast, with a real vein of literary talent; in the closing years of his life he won the affection and admiration of very honourable men, and I should certainly have no wish to look too harshly on youthful errors which were the result of a misguided enthusiasm if they had been acknowledged as such. As a matter of fact, however, he began his career by an act which, according to every sound principle of morality, religion, and secular honour, was in the highest degree culpable. Being a sworn Fenian, he entered a regiment of hussars, assumed the uniform of the Queen, and took the oath of allegiance for the express purpose of betraying his trust, and seducing the soldiers of his regiment. He was detected and condemned to penal servitude, and he at last escaped to America, where he took an active part in the Fenian movement. After his death his biography was written in a strain of unqualified eulogy, but the biographer has honestly and fully disclosed the facts which I have related. This book was recommended to the American public in an introduction by Cardinal Gibbons, one of the most prominent Catholic divines in the United States. The reader may be curious to see how the act of aggravated treachery and perjury which it revealed was judged by a

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personage who occupies all but the highest position in a Church which professes to be the supreme and inspired teacher of morals; the upholder, amid benighted nations, of ideal sanctity and truth. From first to last there is not a single word in the introduction implying that O'Reilly had done any act for which he should be ashamed. He is described as a great and good man,' and the only allusion to his crime is in the following remarkable terms. In youth his heart agonises over that saddest and strangest romance in all history-the wrongs and woes of his motherland-that Niobe of the Nations. In manhood, because he dared to wish her free, he finds himself a doomed felon, an exiled convict, in what he calls himself the Nether World. . . . The Divine faith implanted in his soul in childhood flourished there undyingly, pervaded his whole being with its blessed influences, furnished his noblest ideals of thought and conduct. . . . The country of his adoption vies with the land of his birth in testifying to the uprightness of his life. . . . With all these voices I blend my own, and in their name I say that the world is brighter for having possessed him.'1

' Roche's Life of John Boyle O'Reilly, with introduction by Cardinal Gibbons.

MORAL COMPROMISE IN THE LAW

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CHAPTER IX

THE foregoing chapter will have shown sufficiently how largely in one great and necessary profession the element of moral compromise must enter, and will show the nature of some of the moral difficulties that attend it. We find illustrations of much the same kind in the profession of an advocate. In the interests of the proper administration of justice it is of the utmost importance that every cause, however defective, and every criminal, however bad, should be fully defended, and it is therefore indispensable that there should be a class of men entrusted with this duty. It is the business of the judge and of the jury to decide on the merits of the case, but in order that they should discharge this function it is necessary that the arguments on both sides should be laid before them in the strongest form. The clear interest of society requires this, and a standard of professional honour and etiquette is formed for the purpose of regulating the action of the advocate. Misstatements of facts or of law; misquotations of documents; strong expressions of personal opinion, and some other devices by which verdicts may be won are condemned; there are cases which an honourable lawyer will not adopt, and there are rare cases in which in the course of a trial he will find it his duty to throw up his brief.

But necessary and honourable as the profession may

be, there are sides of it which are far from being in accordance with an austere code of ideal morals. It is idle to suppose that a master of the art of advocacy will merely confine himself to a calm dispassionate statement of the facts and arguments of his side. He will inevitably use all his powers of rhetoric and persuasion to make the cause for which he holds a brief appear true, though he knows it to be false; he will affect a warmth which he does not feel and a conviction which he does not hold; he will skilfully avail himself of any mistake or omission of his opponent; of any technical rule that can exclude damaging evidence; of all the resources that legal subtlety and severe cross-examination can furnish to confuse dangerous issues, to obscure or minimise inconvenient facts, to discredit hostile witnesses. He will appeal to every prejudice that can help his cause; he will for the time so completely identify himself with it that he will make its success his supreme and all-absorbing object, and he will hardly fail to feel some thrill of triumph if by the force of ingenious and eloquent pleading he has saved the guilty from his punishment or snatched a verdict in defiance of evidence.

It is not surprising that a profession which inevitably leads to such things should have excited scruples among many good men. Swift very roughly described lawyers as 'a society of men bred from their youth in the art of proving by words, multiplied for the purpose, that white is black and black is white according as they are paid." Dr. Arnold has more than once expressed his dislike, and indeed abhorrence, of the profession of an advocate. It inevitably, he maintained, leads to moral perversion, involving, as it does, the indiscriminate defence of right and wrong, and in many cases the knowing suppression