In England the situation is very different. A man dismissed from Lord X——’s land may perhaps be unable to become a tenant of Lord Y——, another great landowner in the neighbourhood, but there are twenty factories in the environs where he can always earn his living. Expulsion from the farm where he is working does not necessarily end in emigration.
It is now more than a hundred years since France commenced her evolution towards absolute political liberty. Of the orators and authors who have placed their thoughts on paper to aid their ideas, every one without exception has taken Great Britain as an example. To all those who feel alarm at the rapidity of the movement, they always answer, “What are you afraid of? The absolute freedom of the press, the right of meeting, the right of association—all these liberties of which you dread the abuse, have existed in England for centuries, and have never injured either order or property.”
I will not give an opinion on the root of this question, that would entail too long a digression. I would only prove that the comparison is fundamentally wrong, and consequently, argument is of little value. It is very true that at all epochs the Irish or English agricultural labourers have had the right of assembling, when they liked, on the highways, around one of their number, and of there comfortably listening to the most furious diatribes against the established laws. The police had no right to interfere, and so they abstained from interference.
Only, the following day the orators, and, if requisite, some of the assembly, receive notice from the agent that they would have to remove, sometimes at twenty-four hours’ notice, more frequently at the end of the lease; and this notice is equivalent to a sentence of transportation, at least as far as concerns the Irish. In England the consequences are less serious; but it is not less true that in most of the rural counties, only an infinitesimal number of electors have the right of avowing political opinions which differ from those of the chiefs of the two great national parties. The result is that an action, which, although illegal in France, would only entail a fortnight’s imprisonment to the man who committed it, is in England followed by the most terrible consequences, although it is perfectly legal in the country. The English Government, ultra Liberal in theory, which now poses to all Europe as a model of Liberalism, has therefore only worked until a very recent period through a system which suppressed in an almost absolute degree all political liberty amongst the lower classes. Now, for some years, particularly in Ireland, these classes have begun to appreciate the situation; they wish to have in fact the rights they had only in theory; and they have been able, by coalition, to paralyse the anonymous powers which formerly ruled them, and above all, which encircled them so efficaciously.
And now the Government has ceased to act at all! I require no other proof than the speech made by Baron Dowse.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] If any of my readers are interested in the misfortunes of the poor people of Kenmare they will be pleased to learn that owing to his forcible eloquence and diplomacy Mr. Trench was able to induce the grand jury to make an order, which charged the whole county with the sum that the barony alone ought to have reimbursed through the collector’s theft. The taxpayers at Kenmare had then good reason to congratulate themselves upon having confided to him the care of their interests.
[4] Here are two of the old couplets, which confirm the claims of the Blarney stone:
“There is a stone there
That whoever kisses,