that condition in which he stood before the Land Act, because he was deprived of his usual means, and had to contemplate eviction for non-payment of rent, and, as the consequence of eviction, starvation. It is no great exaggeration to say that in a country where agricultural pursuits are the only pursuits, rent are entirely destroyed for the time by the

and where the means of the payment of the

visitation of Providence, the occupier may regard the sentence of eviction as coming very near to a sentence of starvation."

In connection with this passage we quote two others. Speaking in one of the debates on the Land Bill of 1870, Mr. Gladstone said:

"What is the greatest of all loss to a man? To lose his improvements is something, to lose his future profits is something; but what is the greatest loss to a man? To lose his daily bread to lose his means of livelihood.

When we think of loss, it may be loss of profit; but in Ireland it is the loss of livelihood-the right to live."

66

And in the same speech, on the Disturbance Bill, from which I have already quoted, he summed the meaning of the eviction figures as showing that 15,000 individuals would be ejected from their homes, without hope and without remedy, in the course of the present year." In other words, the Irish landlords in the year following that in which there had been the worst potato crop since the Great Famine-the Irish landlords decreed 15,000 sentences of eviction, or, to use Mr. Gladstone's words, 15,000 sentences of starvation. I observed that Sir Stafford Northcote, in his speech at the Colston banquet, blamed Mr. Gladstone for the use of such expressions as I have quoted, pointing out the arguments it placed at the disposal of the Land Leaguers. This is very characteristic of the attitude of the present leader in the House of Commons of the Tory party. He does not stop to inquire whether Mr. Gladstone's definition of eviction is just or unjust, true or false; it should not have been given, whether just or unjust, true or false, because the Land Leaguers might be able to utilize it. I am not surprised at the attitude of Sir Stafford Northcote; a higher regard for the effect of statement on party discussions than for their truth or their falsehood is

*Times, July 6th.

Hansard, 3 S., cc. 1318-19.
Ibid. ccliii. p. 1666.

intelligible in the humble lieutenant of Lord Beaconsfield and the faithful colleague of Lord Salisbury.

I have now, I think, proved my two propositions-(1) that there was fair ground for anticipating a famine in 1879; and (2) that the landlords would be ready to take full advantage of that famine to evict their tenants; and I have thus established an analogy between the epoch of distress in the last three years with the period of famine between 1846 and 1849. I proceed to show how, with these facts before them, the Land League and its leaders acted.

1. The first thing to be done was to prevent a famine. To whom are we to attribute the prevention in 1879 of the scenes of 1847? Not to the landlords, for, as has been seen, they increased their harshness with the increase of the distress. Not to the Ministry, because they did not take one single step to meet the distress until months after they had

been warned of its existence.* I claim that the credit of having prevented a belongs absolutely, entirely, solely to recurrence of the scenes of 1847 in 1879 Mr. Parnell. It will be immediately asked if I give no credit to the Duchess of Marlborough for raising the cry of distress and collecting vast sums of money to relieve it? Have I forgotten the Seeds Act? Do I give no credit to the Government for the introduction of is simply this: that the Marlborough the Relief of Distress Act? My answer fund was a flank movement to the agitation of Mr. Parnell, and the Seeds and Relief of Distress Acts were the children impute evil motives. of his agitation. In saying this I do not The motives which originated the Relief Fund and the Relief Acts were doubtless good; but everybody who has watched the hisneither Relief Fund nor Relief Acts tory of the subject must know that

would have ever existed but for Mr.

* On March 27, 1879, the attention of the then Government was called to the probability of severe distress in Ireland. Mr. Lowther, at that time Chief Secretary, said he “was glad" to think that "that depression"—in Ireland-" was neither so prevalent nor so acute as the depression at present existing in other parts of the United Kingdom!" (Hansard. 3 S., ccxlvi. p. 1399.) Nothing was done till November 22d, when the circular was issued authorizing loans of money to landlords.

Parnell and the Land League agitation. They are both post hoc and propter hoc. 2. Mr. Parnell and the Land League had to deal with eviction, eviction being the inevitable sequel of distressed times. As will have been seen from the figures I have quoted, the work of destruction was not wholly prevented; the proportions that work of destruction did reach were enough to shock the mind of a just and humane man like Mr. Gladstone. I ask him, and all like him, this home question: How many more evictions would there have been had not the Land League existed? The highest total of eviction was apprehended in the present year 15,000 people were to be ejected from their homes without hope and without remedy." A terrible total, truly, in the year following a partial famine in some, and a complete famine in many, parts of Ireland; but how small in comparison to the total of 300,ooo in the year 1846, and 50,000 in the year 1849! The enormous disproportion between the eviction figures of the two epochs of distress is not wholly to be attributed to the disproportion between the intensity of that distress, for the failure of the potato crop of 1879 was not so very much less than the failure of 1847; nor is it to be sought in the greater kindness of the landlords. The only agency which did exist in 1879 and 1880, and did not in 1847 and 1848, and the only agency, therefore, that can have caused the decrease in evictions is the Land League.

3. The third great danger against which the Land League had to contend was that the spirit of the people would be so thoroughly broken by the distress that they would patiently submit to whatever steps the landlords might take; the tenants might, under the pressure of famine, pass on to the workhouse, the emigrant ship, or the grave, as did their fathers in the Great Famine, with no sign beyond impotent wailings against a resistless fate. I take the cries of rage and fear which have issued from the landlord party; the hurricane of abuse through which the Land League leaders have been passing; the active, unscrupulous, and skilful conspiracy of calumny against the character of the Irish tenants, which has been working for so many weeks past-I take all these things

as proclamations of our success in saving the Irish tenants from the abject spirit of their fathers. To me, indeed, nothing in this great movement has been so astonishing-nothing has been a cause of such exultation of spirit, and such hopefulness of heart-as the change which the Land League movement has made in the temper of the Irish tenant. A race of abject, cowering, and helpless slaves has been transformed into an organized force of spirited, self-reliant, and even defiant freemen.

I next come to the consideration of the agencies through which the Land League has worked. Its main principles have been that only a fair rent should be paid, and that no one should take a farm from which another person had been unjustly evicted-and it has recommended combination among the tenants for self-protection. I will not discuss the legality or illegality of such advice-that question has been referred to the legal tribunals. It will be sufficient to briefly note some of the main objections, not of a legal character, which have been brought against those counsels. In order to understand the motives which dictated the prohibition against the taking of a farm from which there has been an eviction, it is first necessary to grasp this great and central fact of the land system of Irelandnamely, that the want of any other means of earning a livelihood has made the competition for land fierce, uncalculating, and self-destructive. Mill, in his "Political Economy," devotes several pages to this disastrous feature in our peasant life, quoting one remarkable case in which a farm, which was really worth £50 a year, was taken by a tenant at a rental of £450. This fact leads to two conclusions-(1) That a combination is advisable among tenants to keep the demand for land within rational limits; and (2) That the money paid for the good-will or in the rent of a farm in Ireland is no guide whatever as to the real value of a farm. The first conclusion justifies the counsel of the Land League not to take a farm from which a tenant has been evicted, for it is the power of eviction which enables the

*Mill's "Political Economy," Book ii. cap. ix. p. 196.

landlord to stimulate unhealthy competition. There is, besides, this further and stronger argument in favor of the advice, that anything which suspends the power of eviction takes away from the landlord that power of issuing a decree of life or death which is the key to his citadel. The second conclusion from excessive competition-that the rent of a farm is no test of its real valuethrows considerable light on the advice not to pay an unjust rent. The rent in most parts of Ireland is, in point of fact, a rack-rent; at all events, a rent which in ordinary times would be unfair, becomes in times of distress a rack-rent. Before I leave this point, let me just call attention to a matter which, I think, was too much lost sight of in the discussion on the Disturbance Bill. The 9th section of the Land Act of 1870, as is known, allows compensation for disturbance in cases of capricious eviction; but disallows compensation when eviction takes place for non-payment of rent. In the latter case, however, an important proviso is made; it is that the rent, the non-payment of which bars compensation, must not be "exorbitant." Now as a rent which in ordinary times is fair becomes in times of distress exorbitant, the rents in nearly every part of Ireland in the last two years became exorbitant; and, accordingly, the non-payment of such a rent showed not act as a bar to compensation for disturbance. It was found out in practice that the proviso, bringing the fairness or exorbitancy of a rent into the subjects of judicial discussion in the Land Courts, had proved a dead letter; and the Disturbance Bill, in insisting on the discussion of this question in times of distress, appeared to me always to have no further effect than that of making plain a provision which in the Act of 1870 was rather obscure, and of making effective a provision which in practice had proved inoperative. By rejecting that Bill the House of Lords placed a premium on eviction, and, so doing, supplied the agrarian criminal with the strongest temptation to crime.

I now come to deal with the objections which have been raised against the operations of the Land League; and though the temptation be strong to reply in hot and passionate words to the vio

lent and even wicked language which has been employed against that body, I shall resist the temptation, and in dealing with this part of my subject, as throughout this article, I shall confine myself to the frigid statement of fact.

The chief objection against the Land League is that it has encouraged, and by encouraging has enormously increased, crime. Before proceeding to some figures which bear on this subject, I would ask any reasonable man whether the substitution of open agitation for secret conspiracy does not tend to the diminution of crime? And has not the Land League substituted open agitation for secret conspiracy? Up to the present epoch the tenant threatened with eviction was an isolated individual, with no weapon of defence but the blunderbuss; to-day the peasant is one of a disciplined and organized force, that finds in combination a weapon of defence far more effective, as it is far safer, than the bullet of the assassin.

Moreover, it is, as will be seen, one of the claims of the Land League that it has enormously decreased, and for some time past has even stopped, evictions altogether. Now every man acquainted with the Irish Land Question knows that if there were no evictions there would be no agrarian crimes; and the Land League, in putting down evictions, has accordingly helped to put down crime.

But it will be said that, however rational this may appear in theory, the fact remains that crime in Ireland was never so rife as since the creation of the Land League. A claim that the Land League has diminished crime will indeed appear something like a mauvaise plaisanterie in face of the fact that columns of the English journals have been filled for weeks with nothing but Irish outrages; in face of the fact that a large number of Liberal journals have been so shocked by the occurrence of these horrible crimes that they have rivalled the Tory organs in the demand for coercive legislation; in face of the fact, to put it shortly, that England is convinced that there never was such a horrible time in the entire history of the Irish Land Question as this epoch, of which the Land League was the parent. Lord Randolph Churchill, speaking at Ports

mouth, put the general English impression on this subject in a convenient form. He declared that there were at present "scenes of discord and anarchy" to which they could find “no parallel since the days of '98."

I will now supply the reader with the opportunity of testing the accuracy of Lord Randolph Churchill's judicial summing-up of English opinion on the present state of Irish crime.

The dates I shall take are 1833, 1836, 1845, 1846, 1848, 1849, 1850-59, and, finally, 1870.

In 1833 there were 172 homicides, 465 robberies, 455 houghings of cattle, 2095 illegal notices, 425 illegal meetings, 796 malicious injuries to property, 753 attacks on houses, 3156 serious assaults, and, finally, the aggregate of crime was 9000. *

In 1836 crime reached even greater proportions. Comparing England and Wales with Ireland, we find that of persons committed the figures stood thus:† England and Ireland. Wales.

Charges.

Against the person.
Against property, with vio-

1,956 7,767

lence

Against property, without vio

lence..

Against property, maliciously

The following table, which I take

from the criminal statistics for the year 1859 (p. 5.), gives the crime between the years 1850 and 1859:

And, finally, the number of agrarian outrages for the year 1870 was 1329.

I now come to the present period. We have not as yet complete returns as to the crime of this year, but we have fair indications as to what its amount is likely to be. A return was presented to the House of Commons during the last session of the" agrarian outrages report

* "Annual Register," 1833, p. 41. t Ibid.

Thom's Almanac for 1880.

ed to the constabulary between 1st of

* "Returns" (Feb. 1, 1847), No. 64, p. 1. + Ibid. p. 2.

I have not been able to find a complete return for the year 1847; but the crime in that year was so enormous that, as is known, a Liberal Government brought in a Coercion Bill. There is a return for the six months, figures are: Homicides, 96; attempts on life ending in October, according to which the by firing, 126; robberies of arms, 530; firing into dwellings, 116.-Hansard, 3 S. xcv. p. 276.

January, 1879, and 31st of January, 1880." This return (No. 131) was obtained on the motion of the Right Hon. James Lowther.

Twelve of the thirteen months covered by this return belong to 1879-the year when the value of the potato crop had fallen to £3,341,028 from £12,464,382 in 1876; when also the landlords had increased the number of evictions to 2667 from 1749 in the previous year; and in this period also the Land League was in full activity. What, then, was the total of crimes in that year? 977. The only information I have been able to obtain with regard to the present year is one which was brought in on the motion of Mr. Tottenham, the Conservative and landlord member for County Leitrim. This is a return (No. 327, dated July 8, 1880) of the number of offences committed between February 1, 1880, and June 30, 1880, in Galway, Mayo, Sligo, and Donegal - the four most distressed counties; and the number of the offences is 187. As to the murders in the present year, they have all attracted so much attention that everybody is acquainted with them. They are the murder of Ferrick the bailiff, of young Mr. Boyd, of Lord Mountmorres, of young Downing the carman, and of young Mr. Wheeler, at Limerick-in all five murders. I leave the reader now to compare the amount of crime in the last two years with that in former years, as shown in the Tables I have quoted.

We are now able to estimate the accuracy of Lord Randolph Churchill's statement, that to find a parallel for the scenes of anarchy and disorder at present being enacted one must go back to the year '98. The member for Woodstock is a legislator that invites comment; but I abstain from any further remark just now than this: In the same speech in which he made the calculation the accuracy of which I have tested, he declared himself a strong supporter of the union between Great Britain and Ireland. I ask reasonable men whether

wild, reckless calumnies like his on the character of the Irish people are calculated to promote union between the two countries.

I have now, I think, proved that the cry of an unparalleled era of crime in

Ireland, during the present agitation, is entirely baseless; and the next thing I would wish to explain is why it is that, the real state of facts being such as I have shown, the impression in England is so extremely incorrect. The phenomenon is strange, and yet it is most easily accounted for. In the first place, I would account for it by the language of Tory speakers, of which that used by Lord Randolph Churchill is a somewhat exaggerated specimen. Take, for instance, the speech of Mr. Gibson in the Ulster Hall, Belfast. Speaking of the events which followed the death of Lord Mountmorres, the late Attorney-General for Ireland spoke of the refusal by a peasant woman to admit the corpse of that unhappy nobleman into her house as a proof of the evil of the Land League. The Land League had “unsexed" this woman, was the phrase of Mr. Gibson. Now Mr. Gibson, though he employs his great talents for the perpetuation of the worst miseries of Ireland, is an Irishman, and he ought to know, as well as I, that the refusal of this unlettered woman was the result, not of the cruel spirit begat since the foundation of the Land League, less than two years ago, but of a superstition probably centuries old. In all the country districts of Ireland there lingers the belief that even the touch of a person untimely slain brings with it death; indeed, I know of the case of a hapless friend of mine who was allowed to drown in consequence of this o'ermastering idea in the rustics who were standing on the shore. This fact doubtless displays a most deplorable state of ignorance in the Irish peasant, just as the occasional appearances of rustics for assaulting old women as witches proves how old superstitions still linger in rustic England; but assuredly it is ridiculous to put down to the teaching of the Land League an incident which was the creation of a prevalent superstition.*

* Some incidents occurred at the meeting in Ulster Hall which might well make Tory

speakers a little more discreet in their attacks

on the leaders of the Land League. In the course of Mr. Gibson's speech there were several such expressions as " Shoot the priests!" "Shoot Parnell!" etc. Mr. Gibson made no reproof. He afterward wrote to the Freeman's Journal to deny that he had heard these interruptions. Though the Northern Whis