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highly ornamental in the processions, and at meetings, celebrations, or on a deputation, his gentlemanly deportment and polished flippancy of tongue were exercised to some account. Finn was an attache of the Herald newspaper, of which M r . George Cavenagh was proprietor and nominal editor. Cavenagh was utterly insincere, figuratively as hollow as "the big drum," a sobriquet by which he was k n o w n ; but it paid him to stand well with the Irish cum R o m a n Catholic population, and he freely permitted his employe to do as m u c h as he liked in "cracking u p " the St. Patrick Society—no small boon, for the Herald was then the leading and widest-read newspaper. Lane was about as ignorant as a sod of turf from the far-famed " Bog of Allan;" but though roughly, still impetuously energetic and well-meaning. H e was a thriving publican, and free alike with his money and his nobblers. T o O'Shanassy and Finn in connection with the Society he was a kind of general lackey, and, short of committing suicide, turning insolvent, or eating meat on a Friday, there is hardly anything else he would not do for the sake of the cause in which they were now working together. T h e clean sweep thus made, revolutionary as it was, 'might- be pronounced the salvation of the Society, and amongst all the Irishmen from time to time associated with it, to no two persons was it more indebted than to O'Shanassy and Finn, for they brought zeal and ability, assiduity, and unpaid patriotism, to their aid, and laboured long and anxiously for its success. It is no exaggeration to declare that but for them the St. Patrick Society instead of being one of the living realities of to-day would have disappeared long ago in the extinct world of myths, amongst which the kindred Fraternities of St. Andrew and St. George found forgotten resting-places. T h e first step taken was the removal of the place of meeting from the Lord Nelson to Lane's Hostelry, situated in Little Collins Street, opposite the Herald office of that d a y — t h e site of Alston and Brown's late furnishing establishment. Tim's groggery was k n o w n as the Builders' Arms, but after the Irishmen m a d e it their headquarters, M r . William Kerr, the editor of the Patriot, Courier, and Argus respectively, derisively nicknamed it " T h e Greek and C o . Stables," for he could be sarcastically low when he liked. From him and his newspapers the Society was systematically libelled with a foul-penned ribaldry, unprecedented in the annals of decent or indecent journalism; but the Society had ample opportunity of self-defence through the Herald, and its Secretary was a rough-and-ready hand at the typographical shillelagh when his " back was up." T h o u g h he never tried to compete with Kerr in Billingsgate, the assailant, as a rule, got as m u c h as he gave. In the course of the year the existent code of laws underwent considerable revision. T h e qualification foi membership was enlarged so as to render admissible not only persons born of Irish parents, but all others of Irish descent. This extension in course of time secured some valuable adherents, not to speak of validating the Stephen title, the subject of occasional sneering animadversion. A n e w rule was introduced intended to effectually exclude political or religious differences, and any person even introducing for discussion a subject of either kind was de facto liable to expulsion. T h e prohibited political element was not (as often erroneously stated) confined to what is phrased "local politics," but was intended by the draughtsmen to be interpreted in the widest meaning of the term " politics "—whether local or provincial, civic or parochial, Australian or Imperial. Though its phraseology was in after years somewhat modified, its essence was preserved, and the original intention remains unweakened in the Rules supposed to be in force at the present day. Whether this vital principle to which the Society has been solemnly pledged from its cradle was violated by the action taken in connection with the R e d m o n d Mission, of 1883, is a question upon which a certain difference of opinion is supposed to prevail, though to any person conversant with the Society's history, and capable of offering an intelligent and unfettered opinion, no difficulty in arriving at a correct conclusion could exist. T h e manner in which the R e d m o n d s were received by the general community is altogether a different issue, and should be put aside in determining whether the St. Patrick Soc.ety was justified or otherwise under the Charter of its existence, in, as a body launch.ng into an Irish political agitation. I have in a preceding chapter dealt, as I hope, impartially with the O.angemen, and I should be falsifying the position assumed through these C H R O N I C L E S , if I flinched from expressing an opinion that, in officially recognizing the R e d m o n d s as delegates from an Irish Political League, and further in appointing Representatives to the Convention springing