FREE SPEECH IN IRELAND—INTERDICTING A LAND LEAGUE MEETING.
Surely, not for ten pence a week will he tear this woman from the side of her dead husband, and throw her, with her helpless children, out into the cold and wet street?
Yes, but he will, though!
For this family is but one of many thousands on the land which a bad King stole from the people who owned it. Were this the only case he might relent; but should he do it in this case he would have to do it for others, and ten pence a week from thousands aggregates a very large sum, and My Lord Bantry’s expenses are very high, for it costs money to run a castle, and there is his house in London, his house in Paris, and his house in Rome, and his houses the Lord knows where; and then his yacht is rather expensive, as his officers and men must be paid, to say nothing of the larder and wines necessary to entertain his friends; and then there is the terrible expense of entertaining his friends from London during the shooting season, and occasional losses at play, and all that.
Clearly, the Widow Flanagan must either pay her rent or be pitched out into the street to make room for some other widow who can pay, for a while at least, and when she can’t pay there are others who can.
It is needless to add that there is in Bantry Bay a splendid English gunboat armed as in time of war, with burnished guns, with bombs of all sort of explosive power, rifled guns, which would knock poor Bantry into a cocked hat in ten minutes, with fine looking marines, armed to the teeth, which, with the military on shore, would make it very warm for the widow Flanagan and her friends, should they presume to interfere with My Lord’s land agent, and the bailiffs and the soldiers behind them. The widow has nothing to do but to bow her head and submit, and pray that some relief may come to her from somewhere. But where is it to come from? Not from My Lord, for, as I said, he has his private expenses to meet; not from his agent, for he was selected for his especial fondness for pitching women and children into the street; not from England, for England looks upon every country it has anything to do with as either to be plundered or traded with; not from the peasantry about them, for they are in the same boat with the widow.
A LITTLE PATHOS.