,«(^. 
 
 w 
 
 7 : ■."'tViU^%. , 
 
 
 -:'-^?
 
 WMm 
 
 U N IVERSITY 
 or ILLINOIS
 
 t
 
 THE STATE OF IKELANI). 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 DELIVERED Bi' THE 
 
 Rt. Hon. D. PLUNKET, Q.C, I.P., 
 
 AT 
 
 LEICESTER, 
 
 ox 
 
 MONDAY, DECEMBER 13th, 1881 
 
 PUBLISHED FOK 
 
 THE LEICESTER & LEICESTERSHIRE CONSERVATIVE CLUB, 
 BELVOIR ST., LEICESTER.
 
 THE STATE OF IRELAND. 
 
 •to 
 
 A MEETING of Conservatives was held on Tuesday evening, 
 December 13, in the Leicester Temperance Hall, to consider the 
 state of Ireland. The hall was densely crowded, and the meeting 
 was enthusiastic. Mr. Albert Pell, M.P., presided, and many of the 
 neighbouring gentry attended. A resolution, " that the present 
 deplorable condition of Ireland demands immediate and energetic 
 action on the part of Her Majesty's Government with a view to 
 the restoration of law and order and the security of life and pro- 
 perty," having been proposed by Major-General Burnaby, M.P., and 
 seconded by Mr. Heygate, J.P., Mr. Plunket, who was received with 
 great cheering, after some preliminary remarks, said : Gentlemen, — 
 I am grateful to you for the opportunity you have given me of 
 speaking to you this evening, and of telling you, and whoever may 
 read my words, what is really happening in Ireland at this moment. 
 For I deem it of urgent importance that loyal, law-abiding men 
 throughout the three kingdoms should realise the amazing and 
 awful fact that, bad as has been the state of my unhappy country 
 during the last twelve months, great as has been the peril to society 
 in Ireland, and even to the safety of your empire, never before 
 have these difficulties and dangers been so great and formidable 
 {IS they are at this moment ; and the gloom groY\'s darker every 
 day. If it were merely my purpose this evening to make a party 
 attack upon the Government, I could spend all the time that you 
 could give me, and much more, in recalling the history of reckless- 
 ness and timidity, of weakness and procrastination, of divided 
 counsels and disastrous delays that have made acts of the largest 
 concession come to a demoralised people without conciliating them, 
 and acts of strong coercion to fall upon them almost without effect. 
 (Applause.) One might expend all the epithets of condemnation 
 and all the ammunition of ridicule without exhausting the topic 
 of this dismal failure to govern. (Hear, hear.) But to-night 
 the dangers of the present and the future to all that is dear to both 
 great parties in the State are too grave for such treatment (hear, 
 hear), and I desire, in the first place, at all events, to realise for 
 you, if I can, the actual state of affairs in Ireland (hear, hear), and 
 to rouse the people of this country, so far as my voice can reach, 
 from the apathy in which it and its Government seems to be
 
 steeped. (Applause.) You have read, no doubt, from day to day, 
 in the news that comes from Ireland, awful instances of agrarian 
 crime, and of the state of terrorism that they have produced (hear, 
 hear) ; you have read of instances of the oppression of the poor, and 
 of the robbery of the rich, by the action of that lawless organisa- 
 tion which has so long been allowed to overpower the authority of 
 our gracious Queen, and the laws of the realm, till you have begun, 
 perhaps, to think that these are merely sensational stories of news- 
 paper correspondents ; and I observe that Liberal politicians tell you 
 that they are but the consequences, inevitable and hardly to be 
 regretted, of an agitation whose objects have been satisfied, and 
 that they still appear as the ocean swell survives the storm which 
 has spent its force. (Applause.) Gentlemen, I have lived the 
 best part of the last three months in Ireland, and I have watched 
 the crisis which is upon us : I have taken counsel with the wisest 
 men I could find on the spot, and now I tell you that the newspaper 
 reports are not exaggerations. I do not speak, of course, of every 
 incident narrated, but of the general meaning of the testimony 
 which they bear. I tell you that murder and arson are rife 
 throughout the greater part of Ireland, and the terror which 
 accompanies such acts of violence in Ireland adds force to the 
 intimidation which is practised there by conspirators who go 
 unpunished and undismayed. (Shame.) I tell you that the oldest 
 men cannot remember a time when the conscience of the Irish 
 people was so demoralised, and the attitude of the lawless so 
 fierce and defiant. I could tell you, from what I have myself seen 
 and heard, tales of the wrongs and sufferings of individuals that 
 would make you blush for shame, and of the ruin of unoffending 
 families that would wring your hearts with pity for these loyal 
 subjects of your own. (Applause.) But it might still be said that 
 I was an excited partizan, misled by antagonism to the aggressors, 
 or by sympathy with their victims. I will therefore trespass upon 
 your kind patience while I found myself upon official documents 
 which cannot be gainsaid ; and the deliberately recorded opinions 
 of the highest and most impartial public officers who serve the 
 Crown in Ireland. I w^ill not now recall the statistics of agrarian 
 outrage which form the earlier annals of the Land League ; these 
 were stated and proved in both Houses of Parliament by Ministers 
 when they asked for large powers of coercion to repress, and for 
 large measures of concession to conciliate the agitators. What I 
 want to impress upon you is this — that, bad as was the case then, 
 it has since become worse, and is growing daily more desperate. 
 Three months have elapsed since the Land Act was passed — six 
 months have passed since the Coercion Bills were carried into law ; 
 yet such has been the utter failure of the Government (applause) 
 that the present state of Ireland is absolutely worse than it was a 
 year ago, and that its future seems at this moment to be more 
 gloomy than ever. (Applause.) Here is the Dublin Gazette of last 
 
 uiuc
 
 week ; let me quote some figures from this official return of agrarian 
 crimes for November, and compare them with the corresponding 
 record for the preceding month of October. There was a terrible 
 total of 490 agrarian oti'enccs in tnat one month of October, but in 
 November the total rose to 520 ; and let me observe that it is, unfor- 
 tunately, in just the class of crimes which most strike terror and add 
 to the authority of the conspiracy that the increase is greatest. The 
 number of oftences of tiring at the person in October was 7, in 
 November it was 17 ; of firing into dwelling-houses in October, 14, 
 in November, 28 ; of incendiary fires and arson — perhaps the most 
 dreadful of all forms of terrorism as the winter closes in more darkly 
 around the dwellings of the people (hear, hear) — of incendiary 
 fires and arson there were in October, 7, in November no less than 
 46 ! (Sensation.) It needs no words of mine to make you feel 
 what must be the effect, quite apart from the heinousness of these 
 crimes, of such events upon the minds and imaginations of an 
 excitable people. (Hear, hear, and applause.) But let me brin^ 
 before you another kind of evidence even more striking and con- 
 clusive. During the last week the Winter Assizes have been 
 opened in Ireland. I will quote a few passages from the charges 
 of the learned Judges to the grand jury in each of the three 
 Southern Provinces. In Connaught, Baron Fitzgerald said : " The 
 most alarming feature of the country is that in the face of the 
 determined efforts of redress which the Legislature afforded, the 
 class of agrarian crimes continued, increased, and was still increas- 
 ing." Mr. Justice Barry, speaking last Wednesday to the grand 
 jury in Kilkenny, said, in the course of his most interesting charge : 
 "It is impossible for any candid man to deny that we are in a 
 worse state this December of 1881 than we were in 1880. . . 
 It is clear to every man that there is more discontent, dis- 
 order, party intimidation, and general lawlessness in the country 
 than there was twelve months ago ; day after day we hear of 
 crimes of violence of every degree — murder, violent assaults, incen- 
 diary fires, posting threatening notices, and intimidation which 
 indicate not merely ordinary crime, but a general insubordination 
 and defiance of authority." And all this in spite of the recent 
 Land Act^ which Judge Barry describes as exceeding " what the 
 most fanatical advocate of the tenant-farmer ever in his wildest 
 moments of imagination had conceived." (Loud applause.) But the 
 most remarkable of the three is the charge of Mr. Justice Fitzgerald, 
 delivered last Tuesday to the grand jury in Cork. He, like Judge 
 Barry, is in religion a Roman Catholic, and in politics an advanced 
 Liberal. You will remember with what courage and foresight this 
 leai'ned and independent Judge warned the people and the Govern- 
 ment in the winter of last year of the anarchy which was then 
 growing apace in Ireland. (Hear, hear.) In his recent charge he 
 refers to that earlier statement, and says that though the observa- 
 tions he then made were subjected to severe criticism, he has
 
 6 
 
 nothing to retiact, notliing to alter, nothing to wish unsaid ; and 
 then, having carefully analysed the various calendars of offences 
 which were before him for the present time, he says : " The general 
 deduction from the statistics which I have laid before you seems 
 to be that in many and large parts of the four counties which 
 constitute the Munster Winter Assize Commission, life continues 
 to be insecure, or is rendered so miserable as to be worthless ; 
 right is disregarded and property is unsafe ; the spirit of lawless- 
 ness and disorder, marked by an insolent defiance of law and of 
 authority, continue to prevail : it is only by the aid of an over- 
 whelming military force that the process of the law can be executed ; 
 the humbler classes continue to be oppressed by an odious tryanny. 
 . . . The list of outrages, after making all deductions for 
 exaggeration and eliminating all cases of ordinary crime, still leave 
 a list of outrages so formidable as to be inconsistent with public 
 peace and security, and which, if suftered to continue unchecked 
 and unrepressed, threaten the very existence of the fabric of society." 
 (Applause.) Judge Fitzgerald also refers to the Land Act, which 
 he, too, says the most sanguine advocate of tenant-right could 
 not have anticipated twelve months before (hear, hear), and he 
 asks, " Has the public obtained the fruits in the restoration of 
 peace and order '?" to which question he answers, "Certainly not 
 as yet in Munster. Are we, therefore, to give way to despondency ? 
 It is too soon to despair." And then he notes as one element 
 of hope that the intelligent farmers appreciate the great con- 
 cessions they have received, and are as a class inclined to withdraw 
 from the trammels of illegality. The people at large, too, he 
 adds, " cannot fail to perceive that the results of the present state 
 of the country are that capital has fled the country, there is no 
 industrial enterprise, no employment for the labouring classes, trade 
 does not flourish, and I should fear to estimate the immense 
 depreciation of all Irish securities and Irish properties," and he 
 calls upon all men to join for the restoration of peace and order. 
 (Hear, hear.) Gentlemen, no one can fail to sympathise with the 
 Judge in his eloquent appeal to his fellow-countrymen. (Hear, hear, 
 and applause.) I opposed the Land Act of this year, and I an- 
 ticipated that it would do great injustice. (Hear, heai.) My worst 
 fears have been realised. The Act seems likely to work even less 
 good and greater evil, and a more immediate and wholesale ruin of 
 the most needed classes in Ireland even than we then predicted 
 (hear, hear) ; but I would gladly snatch at any ray of light, even 
 from that baleful planet, which seemed to point a way out of the 
 gathering darkness of the present moment. (Applause.) But I ask 
 you how this element of hope, which alone stands between Judge 
 Fitzgerald and total despair, is to be developed. How is that or 
 any other influence to hold its ground on the side of law, or 
 strike a blow in defence of order, if all this crime and terrorism is 
 suffered to continue — nay, steadily to increase ? (Hear, hear, and
 
 applause.) No, I will not despair of my country. (iVpplauso.) As 
 long as I have power to act, or voice to utter, I will struggle for the 
 liberty and the happiness and the honour of Ireland (loud applause), 
 which, in the midst of all this misery and shame, has still for me 
 proud traditions and happy associations. (Applause.) But all the 
 more do I appeal to you and to the Government at least to realise 
 the awful gravity of the present moment, and cast away the 
 dangerous doctrines, the mumbling superstitions of some of their 
 followers, which have hitherto hampered and still seem to paralyse 
 their every act. (Loud applause.) Gentlemen, I have as yet said 
 nothing of the efiects this reign of terror and the refusal to pay 
 rents have had upon those classes in Ireland whose income is 
 derived from the ownership of land. Time will not permit me, nor 
 indeed do I desire, to harrow your feelings by tales of individual 
 hardship, endured by loyal men of blameless lives ending too 
 often in absolute ruin of themselves and their families. (Hear, 
 hear.) I could tell you of ladies, delicately nurtured, and 
 unused to hardship, sinking day by day into absolute penury 
 (shame), and after enduring all the other humiliations 
 of poverty, driven at last to the dojr of the poorhouse 
 (shame) — aye, and in one instance of which I myself know, driven 
 within the walls of the lunatic asylum. (Sensation, and cries of 
 " Shame.") But let us now turn to the attitude which the Govern- 
 ment has taken up in the presence of the grave crisis which I have 
 sought to realise for you. (Hear, hear.) Gentlemen, ^ome very 
 remarkable speeches have lately been delivered by Cabinet Ministers 
 on this subject. (Hear, hear.) I allude more particularly to those 
 of Lord Hartington and Sir VVm. Harcourt on the one hand, and 
 of Mr. Chamberlain on the other. (Laughter and cheers.) The two 
 former speakers offered apologies for the condition into which 
 Ireland had been brought by their policy, and combined with those 
 excuses very daring attempts to shift some of the blame on to the 
 shoulders of their predecessors in office. (Laughter and applause.) I 
 was rather amused than annoyed by the charge that the Conserva- 
 tive Government were responsible for the present state of Ireland, 
 because they had not sooner inquired into the Land question with 
 the view of redressing the alleged grievance (laughter), for I 
 remembered that, as a matter of fact, they had before leaving 
 office issued a Pioyal Commission for that purpose (hear, hear), 
 and I could not help smiling when I remembered that only 
 three years before the accession to office of the present Govern- 
 ment (in 1877) — on an occasion when it was proposed by an Irish 
 member to issue a Commission of Inquiry into the working of the 
 Land Act of 1870, what was the attitude of Lord Hartington. 
 Why, gentlemen, he was then still so hostile to the policy of the 
 three " F's " afterwards adopted in the Act of 1881 that he said, 
 speaking as leader of the Liberal Party, that, though not opposed 
 to such an inquiry on other grounds, " he should be adverse to it
 
 8 
 
 if it were supposed by the people of Ii-eland that it was intended 
 to be a prelude to legislation on new principles for the purpose of 
 establishing fixity of tenure and fair rents !" That is funny enough 
 to think of now. (Laughter and applause.) But when I read that 
 these two distinguished but unhappy Whigs (laughter) charged the 
 late Government with not having mastered obstruction in the 
 House of Commons, I could not help laughing outright. I 
 fully agree that unless both parties in the State work cordially 
 together to put down obstruction it cannot be done. (Hear, hear, 
 and applause.) But has Lord Hartington forgotten the kind 
 of aid we got when in office from many who were then his 
 supporters, from some who are now his colleagues ? (Applause.) 
 Indeed, I recollect that an Irish member, when charged during 
 the debates of last Se^ion with practising obstruction, reminded 
 the Minister who had thus taunted him that when the Liberal 
 Party were in opposition there were no such friends of Ireland as 
 they. (Applause.) I remember well that Mr. O'Connor distinctly 
 stated that when the members of the Irish party were indulging 
 in obstruction " that the Liberal members came and privately told 
 them how the game was to be played (laughter), that their 
 greatest skill lay in disposing of the good manners of the Irish 
 members, and that their higher prestige came to the assistance of 
 the beleaguered Irish," and so on. (Laughter and applause.) That 
 challenge was openly made in the House of Commons. It was 
 never taken up, and I venture to predict it never will be answered. 
 (Hear, hear, and applause.) But further, these two distinguished 
 statesmen argued that they did not create the Land League, that it 
 was in existence before the general election of 1880, and they 
 added, "your Peace Preservation Bill was too weak for the crisis." 
 This was rather a reason, one would think, in favour of their getting 
 a stronger one instead of their dropping it altogether, as they did. 
 (Laughter and applause.) Whether the Peace Preservation Bill 
 would have proved insufficient if it had been maintained and 
 firmly administered by the late Government, I do not know ; but I 
 do know that we were pledged to continue it and to enforce it, and 
 to demand such further measures of precaution as might have been 
 necessary to keep down the agitation and prevent it from spreading 
 and gathering fores. (Hear, hear.) I know that the present Minis- 
 ters, on coming into office, deliberately abandoned it, that after they 
 had left the country twelve months without it they came to Parlia- 
 ment again and begged for its re-enactment, and by the mouth of 
 their Home Secretary they humbly admitted that in trying to get 
 on without it they had made a generous experiment, " but that it 
 was an experiment which had failed." (Laughter.) This curious 
 theory about the mildness of the Peace Preservation Act of the 
 late Government, which I observe has become fashionable with 
 Liberal advocates, is but another weak attempt to shift and share 
 the blame of their own disastrous mismanagement. (Hear, hear, and
 
 9 
 
 applause.) I take the whole bundle of such apologies, and I say 
 that before the general election of 1880, Lord Beaconsfield, (loud 
 and enthusiastic cheering) had recognised the gravity of the crisis 
 (applause) which the Land League was creating, though then the scope 
 of its operations was strictly limited, and the deadly influence of its 
 teachings was almost entirely confined to the narrow area of a famine- 
 stricken district. (Hear, hear.) The old Irish difficulty had entered 
 upon a new and formidable phase. (Hear, hear.) It required the 
 most patient, but at the same time the steadiest and the firmest 
 treatment. (Hear, hear, and applause.) I say that Lord Beacons- 
 field (loud applause) had the wisdom to foresee and the courage 
 to warn the people of the magnitude of the danger (applause), and 
 staked his reputation as a statesman and the fate of his Administra- 
 tion upon the justice of his apprehensions, and the necessity for a 
 calm but uncompromising hostility to the agitators. (Loud cheers.) 
 And I say to these Whig apologists," You chose an opposite course, 
 you professed an optimist opinion as to the state of Ireland, you 
 sought and obtained the support of the Land Leaguers at every 
 contest where the Irish vote had power. (Applause.) I know that 
 after you had turned out our Government you were again warned 
 of the danger, and oflered every assistance in our power if you 
 would deal resolutely with it (hear, hear) ; and now, when you 
 have allowed the Land League to grow and spread, till nearly 
 the whole island is enveloped in its deadly embrace, and 
 you have at last been driven to adopt far more stringent measures, 
 it is far too good a joke to turn round and say ' the League was in 
 existence in the time of Lord Beaconsfield, and his Peace Preservation 
 Act was too mild a measure.' " (Loud applause.) I think such poor 
 recriminations seem but sorry stuff" in the presence of the great 
 revolution which is being accomplished in Ireland to-day (hear, 
 hear), but I dare say they fairly enough reflect the feebleness and 
 vacillation which have marked the career of these modern Whigs all 
 through this Irish crisis. (Loud applause.) But there is another 
 member of the Cabinet who has spoken lately upon this subject. 
 He makes no excuses for the Government, he palliates nothing, he 
 does not seek to share the responsibility with his predecessors in 
 office. Why should he ? He stands over his past policy and its 
 results ; he takes no notice of his penitential colleagues — these 
 vague persons and their vain excuses. (Laughter and cheers.) This 
 is Mr. Chamberlain. Consider for a moment ajid you will see that 
 he is the man whose views and whose will have controlled the 
 Government at the most critical conjunctures of their Irish policy. 
 (Hear, hear.) Believe me, he is the man with whom in the future 
 we shall have to count. (Hear, hear.) He is in the House of Com- 
 mons and in the country the special leader of a well-defined party. 
 (Hear, hear.) They may not be the ablest or the best states- 
 men, but they are the most vigorous. (Hear, hear, and applause. )l 
 This section of the Liberal Party can break it up at any moment,
 
 10 
 
 and I daresay they don't much care how soon. (Laughter.) They 
 are, therefore, always masters of the situation. (Applause.) Per- 
 haps this is not hkely to come to pass so long as Mr. Gladstone 
 chooses to remain Prime Minister. Mr. Gladstone still holds together 
 the heterogeneous majority which he snatched at the last general 
 election as an old eagle grasps his prey in his talons. (Laughter 
 and applause.) But Mr, Gladstone has lately made his political will 
 and named his political executors, and eminent Liberals have been 
 bewailing the hopeless confusion which will follow in the Liberal 
 Party when Mr. Gladstone retires from the stage (laughter), and 
 leaves the Whigs and Radicals to their own devices. I venture to 
 predict that when that time comes Mr. Chamberlain will not long fail 
 his followers for a loader. (Applause.) But be that as it may, so far as 
 this Irish question is concerned, Mr. Chamberlain alone claims credit 
 for absolute consistency. If you sum up his policy as he revealed 
 it the other day at Liverpool, it will appear that he did not approve, 
 and indeed he was willing to punish the crimes that accompanied 
 the Land League, but he was not willing on any account seriously 
 to interfere with the agitation. He desired a strong Land Bill for 
 Ireland, and in order to carry it over the heads of those who might 
 differ from him in Parliament (hear, hear), this agitation was neces- 
 sary. (Loud applause.) That is the impression which the most 
 important part of his speech left on my mind. (Hear, hear.) He 
 seems to think that he has no reason to regret it ; he says if it had to- 
 be done he would do it again ; in fact, he wanted a certain article, 
 namely, the Land Act, and he considered that the continuance of 
 Mr. Parnell's agitation was not too high a price to pay for it. 
 That is a fair issue. Let us consider now briefly what was the 
 article which the nation, under Mr. Chamberlain's influence, has 
 purchased in the shape of this Land Act, and what is the price 
 which the nation has paid, is paying, and is likely still to pay 
 for the bargain. (Hear, hear.) I shall not now attempt to weigh 
 the abstract merits of the Land Act. Everybody knovv^s that it was 
 a retrograde measure, not defended on grounds of sound 
 principle, but of alleged expediency. (Hear, hear.) I desire 
 only to consider what have been the actual results of 
 its working so far. Neither shall I now attempt to peer 
 into the future, nor ask how far it will satisfy the hopes which 
 were raised while Mr. Parnell's agitation was tolerated for its 
 sake ; I will not venture to forecast whether the tenantry who have 
 so long enjoyed their lands practically rent free will willingly pay 
 the rents adjudicated by the Land Commission. (Hear, hear.) I 
 wish at present only to call your attention to this article that was 
 purchased by those twelve months of bloody agitation, and inquire 
 how the Land Act of 1881 has so far been working. No one is 
 more opposed to the so-called principles of this Land Act than I am. 
 (Hear, hear.) But once it passed, my desire was that it should 
 work not only the least possible harm to the landlord, but also the
 
 11 
 
 speediest reconciliation between the various classes of societj' in 
 Ireland. (Hear, hear, and applause.) I am sorry to say that, so far^ 
 all such hopes have been disappointed. It ought to have been 
 administered from the first on broad principles. (Hear, hear.) For 
 instance, rents long ago fixed, and always hitherto paid, ought to 
 have been respected (hear, hear); ample justice should have been 
 done where real wrong was proved, but there should not have been 
 petty interferences. (Hear, hear, and applause. ) But it is one of the 
 most mischievous consequences of the long triumph of Mr. Parnell's 
 teaching that the enormous concessions made by the Land Act to 
 the tenant were discounted beforehand (hear, hear, and applause), 
 and the great object of securing for the Bill a hearty reception from 
 the Irish peasantry was exactly defeated by this policy of " masterly 
 inactivity." (Applause.) And so in order to win away the 
 peasantry from the standard of "No Rent," it must have seemed 
 to those who had to administer the Act a temptation amounting 
 almost to a political necessity to hold out the expectation of inter- 
 ference with existing contracts in every case, (Applause.) The result 
 seems to be, as far as w^e can yet judge, that, with scarcely an 
 exception, the rents brought into Court have been lowered all round. 
 (Hear, hear.) This is exactly the opposite of what was professed 
 by the Government who passed the Bill. (Applause.) The procedure 
 by which the Act is enforced would be most comical, if the 
 results were not so serious. You know that the duty of 
 fixing fair rents has been delegated to sub-commissions. How 
 are these sub-commissions composed ? In each case there is 
 one barrister who, with scarcely an exception, has such little 
 standing at his profession that his appointment to any other 
 judicial office would be treated with derision. (Laughter and 
 applause. ) The lay members are in many instances farmers, who, 
 even if their sympathies permitted them occasionally to decide for 
 the landlord, w^ould run the risk of having their cattle houghed and 
 their hayricks burned. (Hear, hear.) I have heard of one case, for 
 instance, in which such a Commissioner sat within ten miles of his 
 own farm, and the disturbed state of the district may be judged 
 from the fact that there were two extra police barracks in the 
 village, and a land agent, coming into court to give evidence, was 
 protected by six constables. I am told that the applause of farmers 
 in the court-house follows every popular decision, and a deep 
 angry hum, like the sound of the sea, marks any disappointment 
 of their hopes. Lay Commissioners sit as co-ordinate members of 
 the Court, with lawyers to hear legal arguments they don't under- 
 stand (hear, hear), and the unhappy lawyer is taken steeplechasing 
 over the country to examine soils and improvements of farms of 
 which he has no knowledge. (Laughter and applause.) The time 
 available is necessarily very short, and so they value large farms 
 in an hour and a half which would take at least two days to 
 inspect seriously ! But the result of all this absurdity is that
 
 12 
 
 the rents of the landlord are being reduced all round, I am 
 told so far on an average of at least 25 per cent. The Act 
 was asked for to redress exceptional injustice. It seems to 
 be used to wean away the people from the Land League, by the 
 sacrifice of all landlords, good and bad. (Hear, hear.) The delays of 
 an over-worked Court, combined with non-payment of rent, will 
 starve many landlords into submission — not because they doubt 
 the justice of their cause, but because they cannot afford to wait. 
 (Hear, hear.) If this goes on, the result will be that while some 
 of the greater landlords, even now usually absentees, may weather 
 the storm, the smaller men, who form a most useful element of 
 country life, will disappear. (Shame.) These men, who are friends 
 of British connection, and local c-ntres of civilization, will vanish ; 
 and with them the light of Protes tantism will go out in the outlying 
 parishes of the south and west. (Shame.) I cannot now enter on the 
 large question of compensation, but it seems clear as daylight that if 
 these proceedings be sanctioned and confirmed, compensation must 
 be made to the landlords, or else in the name of justice to one class 
 of the people the greatest wrong will have been done to another. 
 (Applause.) I say that if you regard these proceedings as a real valua- 
 tion of rent, it is a farce (hear, hear) ; if you regard it as a Court of 
 Justice or arbitration, it is a trap in which a vast number of the land- 
 lords of Ireland will be ruined and nearly all of them robbed (hear, 
 hear) ; but if it is to be regarded as a last resource to conciliate the 
 peasantry by sacrifice of landlords' property, then the only parallel 
 I can find for this wholesale abatement of legal obligations is in 
 the old parable of the unjust steward, who, when he wanted to 
 make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness, called to him 
 the debtors, and said, " How much owest thou to my lord ? " "A 
 hundred measures of oil." " Take thy bill, sit down quickly, and 
 write fifty." (Laughter and applause.) Let us now turn again for 
 ifi moment to the price which this nation has to pay for this 
 measure. Did the Cxovernment realise what- that delay of twelve 
 months meant in its influence upon the minds and habits of the 
 Irish people ? I have spoken of outrage, I have quoted the Judges 
 as to the open defiance of the law which is still increasing in 
 Ireland. These are but the outward signs of an inward disease, 
 which is far more terrible. (Applause.) That is what is meant by 
 the demoralisation of a people. (Applause.) For twelve long 
 months they have been combined in an organisation in defiance 
 of the law, and in defiance of the teachings of the most respected 
 ministers of their religion. (Hear, hear.) They were also drilled so 
 well during that time in the partial non-payment of rent that, 
 as Mr. Parnell said to his interviewer at Kilmainham, they have 
 found it much easier to continue in refusing to pay rent at all. 
 (Hear, hear.) Eveiy day, aye, every hour, the poison was creeping 
 further into every vein of the social system. (Hear, hear.) In such 
 times of revolution moments are more precious than months in
 
 13 
 
 times of tranquillity (hear, hear), but the mischief was allowed to 
 work and burrow into the hearts of the Irish people, and at last 
 they are openly told that by their conspiracy they have achieved 
 the greatest concession that was ever conferred on the peasantr}^ 
 of any country, and that their agitation was suffered to go on because 
 without it that concession could not have been obtained, (Aj)plause.) 
 But let us now suppose for a moment that law and order is at last 
 restored in Ireland. Suppose that some landlords are left to struggle 
 on with what remains of their property, and that in good times the 
 new Land Act is given a full trial, what think you will happen 
 when next a bad harvest comes, and there is a difficulty in paying 
 the adjudicated rent? Will not the generation of men who have 
 passed through the last twelve months remember the halcyon days 
 when Jack Cade was king, when no rents were paid, and when 
 money poured in from America to support them'; and when their 
 combined resistance to the law was at last crowned with such 
 amazing advantages ? (Loud applause.) How think you the 
 experiences of this last twelve months will encourage or defeat 
 another agitation, should it also be hereafter preached from the 
 Irish in America, and supported by their dollars — an agitation 
 which shall have, perhaps under the fair-sounding name of Homo 
 Rule, no less a purpose than the dismemberment of your empire ? 
 (Hear, hear, and applause. ) Gentlemen, a multitude of other topics 
 suggest themselves to me, but time will not now permit me to enter 
 upon them ; but there is one important point that I wish to raise 
 before I conclude these observations. The friends of the Govern- 
 ment on all sides assure us that they will not propose any change 
 in the Jury Laws of Ireland, founded upon the report of the Lords' 
 Committee of last year. Will they ask next Session for a renewal 
 of the Protection of Life and Property Act under which Mr. Parnell 
 and some 333 other prisoners are now detained without trial in 
 prison ? (Hear, hear.) I ask this question because I see that amongst 
 that number fourteen are so imprisoned because, as this official 
 return, which I hold in my hand, states, they are by the Government 
 reasonably suspected of the crime of murder ; eight others with the 
 crime of shooting with intent to murder, and eight more for treason. 
 I ask Avliether, when the Protection of Life and Property Act expires 
 next autumn, these men are simply to be let loose on society? (Hear, 
 hear, and applause.) Gentlemen, I thank 5"ou again for the oppor- 
 tunity you have now given me of laying before you a terrible, but, I 
 am sorry to say, not an exaggerated picture of the present state of Ire- 
 land. I do not forget or wish to underrate the immense difficulties 
 of the task which it seems that Mr. Forster is left alone to confront. 
 But I would warn the Government that all their acts of vigour have 
 failed hitherto because they have been too long delayed ; " too late, 
 too late," is the hopeless burden of their song. (Hear, hear, and 
 applause.) I am certain that it is with no feeling of hostility to my 
 countrymen, but, on the contrary, with the strongest desire that
 
 14 
 
 they should be brought again into amity and peace with England, 
 that we join to-night in urging the Government to take eflectual 
 measures for the re-establishment of law and order in unhappy 
 Ireland. (Loud applause.) But if they are to succeed in that there 
 must be firmness and constancy as well as vigour shown by our 
 present rulers, or Ireland will continue to drift, day by day, deeper 
 and deeper into lawlessness, crime, and anarchy, and further away 
 from the union with free and happy England. (Loud and pro- 
 longed cheering.) 
 
 The resolution was carried with acclamation.
 
 UPWWP