But one of the most far-seeing of the party—­J.F.  Lalor—­perceived that mere repeal would never be strong enough to be a popular cry—­it must be hitched on to some more powerful motive, which could drag it along.  As he clearly explained in his manifesto, his objects were the abolition of British government and the formation of a National one.  He considered that neither agitation nor the attempt at military insurrection were likely to attain those objects, but that the wisest means for that end were the refusal of obedience to usurped authority; taking quiet possession of all the rights and powers of government and proceeding to exercise them; and defending the exercise of such powers if attacked.  He saw that the motive power which would carry itself forward and drag repeal with it, was in the land.  He held that the soil of the country belonged as of right to the entire people of that country, not to any one class but to the nation—­one condition being essential, that the tenant should bear true and undivided allegiance to the nation whose land he held, and owe no allegiance whatever to any other prince, power or people, or any obligation of obedience or respect to their will, their orders, or their laws.  The reconquest of the liberties of Ireland, he argued, would, even if possible by itself, be incomplete and worthless, without the reconquest of the land; whereas the latter, if effected, would involve the former.  He therefore recommended (1) That occupying tenants should at once refuse to pay all rent except the value of the overplus of harvest produce remaining in their hands after deducting a full provision for their own subsistence during the ensuing year; (2) that they should forcibly resist being made homeless under the English law of ejectment; (3) that they ought further on principle to refuse all rent to the present usurping proprietors, until they should in National Convention decide what rents they were to pay and to whom they should pay them; and (4) that the people, on grounds of policy and economy, should decide that those rents should be paid to themselves—­the people—­for public purposes for the benefit of the entire general people.  In that way a mighty social revolution would be accomplished, and the foundation of a national revolution surely laid.

But these views, though shared by J. Mitchel and other leaders, were not at the time generally adopted; and the next agitations were more distinctly political than agrarian.  The Fenian movement of 1865—­1867, the avowed object of which was the establishment of an independent republic, arose in America, where it was cleverly devised and ably financed.  In Ireland it met with little sympathy except in the towns; and the attempted outbreaks, both there and in Canada, were dismal failures.  Two of their efforts in England, however, led to important results.  Gladstone made the remarkable statement that it was their attempt to blow up Clerkenwell prison that enabled him to carry the Act for the Disestablishment of the Irish Church.  Many years afterwards, when this encouragement to incendiarism had done its work, he denied that he had ever said so; but there is no doubt that he did.