CHAPTER XII.
THE LEAGUE.
Ennis.
The county Clare, and more especially Ennis, its chief town, have played an important part in the contemporary history of Ireland. It was here eight years ago (in 1879) that Mr. Parnell, at a great autumn meeting, gave his famous mot d’ordre on social and political interdict.
“If you refuse to pay unjust rents, if you refuse to take farms from which others have been evicted, the land question must be settled, and settled in a way that will be satisfactory to you. Now, what are you to do to a tenant who bids fora farm from which another has been evicted? You must shun him on the road-side where you meet him,—you must shun him in the shops,—you must shun him in the fair green, and in the market-place, and in the place of worship: by leaving him severely alone, by putting him in a moral Coventry; by isolating him from the rest of his countrymen, as if he were the leper of old, you must show him your detestation of the crime he has committed.”
Those words contained a whole programme, faithfully carried out since, and which has already borne fruit. They took exceptional force from the fact that Mr. Parnell, at the time he pronounced them, was already the acknowledged leader of Irish opposition. They were in some sort the registration of birth of the League.
The League! Every moment, travelling through this island, one comes in contact with this power, mysterious though positive, anonymous and yet implicitly recognized. The League houses and feeds evicted families; it settles that such a landlord or such a farmer shall be boycotted; it decrees that the rents of such an estate shall be reduced 30 per cent.; that of such another the rents shall be lodged in the League’s own coffers; it patronises candidatures, chooses the place and time of meetings, presides over all the phases of social life. What is that League? is the question one asks.
At first one naturally supposes it to be an electoral association such as exists in every free country. But little by little one perceives that it is a far bigger affair. Electoral associations are not in the habit of inspiring such persistent enthusiasm, of covering during eight long years the extent of a whole country; they do not send roots to the most remote villages, nor do they count among their members three-quarters of the adult population. It is not their custom either to fulminate excommunications, or if they do they have but little appreciable effect on the ordinary tenour of life. One never heard that they disposed of important capital, and one would be less surprised to hear that they had entered into a lawsuit with their printer about an unpaid bill for five or six thousand placards, than one would be to hear that they have several hundred thousand pounds in the bank.
And yet it is precisely of hundred thousand pounds that one constantly hears in connection with the League. Where does it get all that money, in a country worn so threadbare as this? Whence is it that it is so universally respected, so religiously obeyed? All the smiles are for the League, while the functionaries of the Crown pocket only snubbings. All the doors open before the League, while they close and even barricade themselves at the bare mention of the Lord Lieutenant’s name.