It would be very difficult to deny that the movement is Socialistic, if not in its end, at least by the means it employs for its success. Evidently the principal leaders have deliberately made up their minds. But the others, do they know what they are doing? I do not believe so, for here is an extract from a speech pronounced at the great meeting which I alluded to above, the one that assembled when Mr. Thompson sent to the Cork Union to get his grass mown.
“What the Land League requires,” said the orator, “is to succeed in making the State dispossess the landlords in consideration of a fair indemnity, in order that afterwards the State may give the land to the tenants, making them repay the advances and the interest by means of successive annuities. Some people say that acting in this way is Socialism, but the Irish protest against such accusations. If we were Socialists, we should agree with Gambetta, that faithless man who spoke against us, when, throughout Europe, we had only friends. We should agree with the Parisian communists! those wretches who know neither justice nor virtue, who dyed their hands with the blood of an archbishop! (prolonged groans!) who were not ashamed to destroy the monument erected to celebrate their fathers’ victories! We have no more sympathy for them than they have for us! (Immense acclamations.) No! we are not Socialists because we demand the dispossession of the landlords! If this idea were Socialistic, it would not be approved of by the newspaper published under the shadow of the Vatican.”
The speaker was Father McCarthy, the parish priest of a neighbouring village; but now here are the expressions of one of his colleagues, Father Sheehy:—
“Have not all these people, the Thompsons, the X——s, retained all the best land of the country for already too long a time, my friends? And what is left for all of you?—the right to go and die of hunger in the workhouse.
“The office in which Mr. Thompson receives his slaves resembles a prison.
“He speaks to his tenants through his office-wicket, for he is a coward who has not courage to look them in the face.”
Now it is Mr. W. H. O’Sullivan’s turn. Mr. O’Sullivan is the spirit-dealer, the member of Parliament whom we met to-day.
“I am going to read you some clauses from the lease they are trying to impose upon some of the tenants in the neighbourhood. This is a very interesting document, judge for yourselves:
“First, it is stipulated that the tenant cannot plough either of his fields without the landlord’s written permission. (Groans.) It then says that each year the farmer must lay down in grass a certain portion of the land which is given him in plough. (Violent groans.) The next clause forbids the tenant to sell his straw or hay. Everything should be consumed on the farm. (Explosion of murmurs.) Then come the following items [bonds]:—The tenant must preserve all the buildings given to him in their present condition, he is forbidden to let any of the outbuildings as dwelling-houses; he must keep and give them up in good repair; lastly, the taxes are all to be paid by him.” (Prolonged murmurs, cries, and howls.)