These doctrines were not quite new; not one of them was absolutely true; but they were undoubtedly held by many thousands of Irishmen, and the Fenian society took care to secure for the journal in which they were advocated, a large circulation.  The office of the Irish People soon came to be regarded as, what it really was, the head quarters of the Fenian organization in Ireland.  To it the choice spirits of the party resorted for counsel and direction; thither the provincial organisers directed their steps whenever they visited Dublin; into it poured weekly from all parts of the country an immense mass of correspondence, which the editors, instead of destroying after it had passed through their hands, foolishly allowed to accumulate upon their shelves, though every word of it was fraught with peril to the lives and liberties of their friends.  In their private residences also they were incautious enough to keep numerous documents of a most compromising character.  There is but one way of accounting for their conduct in this matter.  They may have supposed that the legal proceedings against them, which they knew were certain to take place at one time or another, would be conducted in the semi-constitutional fashion which was adopted towards the national journals in 1848.  If the staff of the Irish People had received a single day’s notice that they were about to be made amenable to the law, it is possible that they would have their houses and their office immediately cleared of those documents which afterwards consigned so many of their countrymen to the horrors of penal servitude.  But they saw no reason to suppose that the swoop was about to be made on them.  On the fifteenth day of September, 1865, there were no perceptible indications that the authorities were any more on the alert in reference to Fenian affairs then they had been during the past twelve months.  It was Friday; the Irish People had been printed for the next day’s sale, large batches of the paper had been sent off to the agents in town and country, the editors and publishing clerks had gone home to rest after their week’s labours—­when suddenly, at about half-past nine o’clock in the evening, a strong force of police broke into the office, seized the books, manuscripts, papers, and forms of type, and bore them off to the Castle yard.  At the same time arrests of the chief Fenian leaders were being made in various parts of the city.  The news created intense excitement in all circles of society, and more especially amongst the Fenians themselves, who had never dreamed of a government coup so sudden, so lawless, and so effective.  The government had now thrown off the mask of apathy and impassiveness which it had worn so long, and it commenced to lay its strong hand upon its foes.  Amongst the men who filled the prison cells on that miserable autumn evening were John O’Leary, Thomas Clarke Luby, and Jeremiah O’Donovan (Rossa).  Before the crown was ready to proceed with their trial, the third editor of the paper, Charles J. Kickham, was added to their company, having been arrested with James Stephens, Edward Duffy, and Hugh Brophy, on the 11th November, at Fairfield House, near Dublin.