458 



GKEAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



was Mr. Parnell. In the course of his speech 

 he said : " You must show the landlords that 

 you intend to hold a firm grip on your home- 

 steads and land. You must not allow your- 

 selves to be dispossessed as you were dispos- 

 sessed in 1847. You must not allow your 

 small holdings to be turned into large ones. 

 If rents are not reduced on those properties 

 on which the rents are out of all proportion to 

 the times, you must help yourselves, and" the 

 public opinion of the world will stand by you 

 and support you in your struggle to defend 

 your homesteads." A resolution was also car- 

 ried without a dissentient voice, " That the oc- 

 cupiers being unable to pay the current rents, 

 owing to bad harvests and other depreciations 

 of farmers' produce, any landlord who evicts a 

 tenant for non-payment of an unfair rent is an 

 enemy to the human race, and we pledge our- 

 selves to protect by every means in our power 

 the victims of such oppression." It was re- 

 marked that the clergy had taken no part in 

 the meeting. Indeed, Archbishop McHale had 

 put his veto upon it in advance in a letter pub- 

 lished in the u Freeman's Journal," in which 

 he condemned the meeting as " a combination, 

 organized by a few designing men, who, in- 

 stead of the well-being of the community, seek 

 only to promote their personal interests ; and 

 the faithful clergy will not fail to raise their 

 warning voices, and to point out to the people 

 that unhallowed combinations lead invariably 

 to disaster and the firmer riveting of the chains 

 by which we are unhappily bound as a subor- 

 dinate people to a dominant race." The Gov- 

 ernment at once acted promptly in the matter. 

 A deputy inspector-general of the constabulary 

 was dispatched on a special mission to the dis- 

 tricts concerned, to consult with the magis- 

 trates and local constabulary, and report what 

 additional police were required in order to in- 

 sure full protection to all persons in the exer- 

 cise of their legal rights. Considerable reen- 

 forcements were drafted into the districts con- 

 cerned, and notice was given that in the event 

 of any outrage the cost of these measures would 

 be levied upon the district, where it occurred. 

 Another meeting was held on June 15th at 

 Milltown, County Galway, at which the lan- 

 guage used by the speakers was even more vio- 

 lent than at "Westport. No further meetings 

 were held during the summer, but occasional 

 murders were committed in the disaffected 

 counties. After the close of Parliament, Mr. 

 Parnell made a tour through Ireland in fa- 

 vor of the tenant-right agitation, and meetings 

 were addressed by him at Limerick, Tipperary, 

 Tuam, Ennis, and other places. Large crowds 

 attended these meetings, and the spirit mani- 

 fested by the people was very violent. In his 

 addresses to the meetings Mr. Parnell dwelt 

 1 upon the necessity for a revision of the rela- 

 tions between landlord and tenant, and de- 

 clared that if the tenants would refuse to pay 

 any rent until a satisfactory reduction was 

 made, the landlords would be unable to resist. 



Resolutions were passed calling upon Parlia- 

 ment to consider the depressed condition of 

 Irish farmers, and pledging those present not 

 to occupy any farm from which a tenant had 

 been evicted for non-payment of a rack-rent. 

 At Tullow Mr. Parnell, while denouncing the 

 landlords as rapacious, insisted that the Gov- 

 ernment should appoint a tribunal to determine 

 what are fair rents, and asserted that the land 

 question could never be satisfactorily settled 

 until the occupiers were the owners of the 

 soil. 



An attempt was made by Mr. Parnell to call 

 a national convention, in which he intended to 

 reconstruct the Home Rule party. The attempt 

 failed, however, through the opposition of the 

 more conservative members of the party. On 

 the other hand, Mr. Parnell in October organ- 

 ized a National Irish Land League, of which 

 he was chosen president. The objects of the 

 League were clearly indicated in the speeches 

 made at the different meetings a reduction 

 of rents, and refusal to pay if such a reduction 

 were refused, and, finally, an entire change in 

 the land laws, peasant proprietors to be substi- 

 tuted for the landlord. While Mr. Parnell in 

 his speeches avoided a direct breach of the 

 law, other speakers were not so careful ; and 

 the consequence was that on November 19th 

 three of the speakers at a meeting held on 

 the 2d at Gurteen, County Sligo, were arrested 

 on a charge of having used seditious language. 

 These three were Mr. James Bryce Killen, a 

 barrister, Mr. Michael Davitt, a liberated Feni- 

 an convict, and Mr. James Daly, proprietor of 

 the " Mayo Telegraph." The prisoners after 

 a preliminary hearing were admitted to bail. 

 Large meetings were subsequently held at Bal- 

 la, Dublin, Liverpool, and in Hyde Park, Lon- 

 don. The last was the largest ever held there, 

 being attended by over 100,000 persons, to pro- 

 test against the arrest of Davitt, Daly, and 

 Killen. Resolutions to that effect, as well as 

 calling for a revision of the land laws in Ire- 

 land, were passed. On December 5th one of the 

 secretaries of the Irish National Land League, 

 Mr. Thomas Brennan, was arrested on a charge 

 of seditious language at the Balla meeting on 

 November 22d. He also was admitted to bail. 



The distress in the west of Ireland was de- 

 scribed as very great indeed, and to relieve the 

 suffering the Duchess of Marlborough, wife ot 

 the Viceroy of Ireland, addressed an appeal to 

 the benevolence of the British public. In her 

 address she said : " In the counties of Kerry, 

 Galway, Sligo, Mayo, Roscommon, Donegal, 

 and the south of the county of Cork in fact, 

 in most of the western districts of Ireland 

 there will be extreme misery among the poor, 

 owing to want of employment, loss of turf, loss 

 of cattle, and failure of potatoes, unless a vig- 

 orous effort of private charity is got up to sup- 

 plement the ordinary system of Poor-Law re- 

 lief." 



In England, the agricultural outlook was very 

 poor. Continued rains had seriously damaged 



