Meanwhile the Government had been temporizing with the land question. They had brought in a very feeble Compensation for Disturbances Bill and they had allowed it to be further weakened by amendments. This Bill was rejected by the House of Lords, with the result that the number of evictions in Ireland grew hourly greater and the agitation of the Land League against them; outrages, too, were of common occurrence and increased in intensity.
Speaking at Ennis on September 19th Mr. Parnell enunciated the principle which has since gone by the name of "The Boycott."
"What are you to do," he asked, "to a tenant who bids for a farm from which another tenant has been evicted?"
Several voices cried: "Shoot him!"
"I think," went on Mr. Parnell, "I heard somebody say 'Shoot him!' I wish to point out to you a very much better way—a more Christian and charitable way, which will give the lost man an opportunity of repenting. When a man takes a farm from which another has been unjustly evicted, you must shun him on the roadside when you meet him; you must shun him in the shop; you must shun him on the fair-green and in the market-place, and even in the place of worship, by leaving him alone; by putting him into a sort of moral Coventry; by isolating him from the rest of the country, as if he were a leper of old—you must show him your detestation of the crime he has committed."
Forster, the Irish Secretary, who had some amount of sympathy for the tenants, was, however, a Quaker, and the outrages horrified him more than the evictions. Nor, strangely, was he able to connect the one with the other. Undoubtedly the evictions almost ceased, but, said he, they have ceased because of the outrages, and the outrages were the work of the Land League; and he pressed for the arrest of its leaders. This was unwise, considering that it was Parnell who had advocated the abandonment of violence for the moral suasion of the boycott.
On November 3rd Forster decided to prosecute the leaders of the Land League, and among them Parnell, Dillon, Biggar, Sexton and T. D. Sullivan. Two days later, in a speech at Dublin, Parnell expressed his regret that Forster was degenerating from a statesman to a tool of the landlords. Biggar when he heard the news exclaimed, "Damned lawyers, sir, damned lawyers! Wasting the public money! Wasting the public money! Whigs damned rogues! Forster damned fool!"
DUBLIN,[[1]]
November 4, 1880.
MY DEAR MRS. O'SHEA,—I take advantage of almost the first moment I have had to myself since leaving you to write a few hasty lines. And first I must again thank you for all your kindness, which made my stay at Eltham so happy and pleasant.