202 A LIFE'S WORK IN IRELAND. 



years ago as a Tory, and was made a free-trader by 

 facts which common sense would not let him ignore, 

 one view alone is possible, of the reason why so 

 many Liberals, in dealing with Ireland, set at naught 

 every sound principle of free-trade and the universal 

 gain of free -dealing, with which they thrashed us 

 formerly into good sense. The curse of party politics 

 is upon them. Partly for party ends, and partly from 

 sentimentalism, they have for years flattered the im- 

 agination of the farming classes in Ireland with hopes 

 of what is really Communism, and what cannot be 

 realised till England has ceased to be England. Talk 

 about the upas-tree, and rooting natives in the soil 

 that an eviction is the same as the death-warrant of 

 a tenant ; it is these words of Mr. Gladstone that 

 have done most of the evil. We are reaping what 

 he then sowed. No declarations, like Mr. Forster's 

 excellent one, that the law shall be enforced, weigh 

 in the least. The flattery is believed, the threats are 

 disbelieved, as is ' natural. We, who see and know 

 what becomes of broken tenants, are sure such words 

 have no shade of truth in them ; but the hopes they 

 raise are unbounded. Playing with fire in a straw- 

 yard is nothing compared to such talk, and this too 

 from the Prime Minister. It is not for me to draw 

 the moral. 



Hitherto the immense magnitude and difficulty of 

 such a task as the Government settling rents has been 

 felt by all independent men of any intelligence and 

 forethought. 



