This “plan of campaign,” one of the boldest conceptions ever accepted by a great political party, consists simply in lodging into the coffers of the League, and for its use, the rents that were pronounced excessive by its committee, and that the landlords refused to abate. Let us mention in passing that the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin publicly accepted the responsibility of this tremendous war-measure. It has, we must add, been exercised with obvious moderation, in specific cases only, and by way of example. The true weapon of the League, that which it used most liberally up to the present day, is the boycotting, or social interdict pitilessly pronounced against any one who disobeys its behests.
From a legal point of view, the League has met with various fortunes. Suppressed in 1881 by an Act of Parliament, it was compelled to put on a mask and to disguise itself under the name of the Ladies’ League. A year later it underwent a new incarnation and became the National League.
Now the Tory Ministry has suppressed it once more proclaimed it, as they say (clameur de haro), in virtue of the special power conferred on it. It appears improbable that the health of the association should suffer much for this; on the contrary, it will probably be all the better for it. In former days it would have been content to undergo a fourth avatar by taking the name of Celtic League, Irish Babies’ League, or any other name that would have done just as well to deride its adversaries. A special provision of the Coercion Act will prevent its having recourse to this expedient. By the 7th article of the Act, the Lord Lieutenant is empowered to suppress any new association formed with a view to continuing the affairs of the old ones.
But one never thinks of everything. Precisely because it is so explicit, the 7th article cannot apply to the old Irish societies, different from the National League, and which can easily be substituted in its place. Those associations, Home Rule Unions, Liberal Federations, &c., are numerous through the country. One of them could easily accept the inheritance of the League, and it would be necessary to convoke Parliament to suppress it. If Parliament suppresses it, it will be easy to find something else. And so on for ever, through ages, to the crack of doom.... In the meanwhile there will be protestations, agitations, interpellations, and before the end, “the King, the ass” ... or the Ministry shall have died, as La Fontaine said.
Lord Salisbury may close two hundred offices of the League in the counties of Clare and Kerry. How shall he close the offices beyond the sea, which are the real ones?
In fact, the League is indestructible, because it is impossible to get hold of it. One can arrest its chiefs, as has been done often enough, intercept its correspondence, oppose cavalry regiments to its public demonstrations, and retroactive measures to its secret acts; they cannot destroy the faith the Irish people have put in it; they cannot grapple with the essence of an association which rests on the most vital interests of the peasantry.
Political persecution is fatally doomed to failure when exercised in a free country, if it does not begin by attacking the press and the right of meeting. And who shall dare to touch those two pillars of the British edifice? The English government is the government of opinion, or it is nothing: now, the opinion of the majority of Irishmen, of the majority of Scotchmen, and of an imposing minority of Englishmen, is in favour of the League.
To say the truth, all parties are agreed in petto upon the necessity of abolishing landlordism. It is only a question of settling who shall have the credit of doing it, and how it shall be managed so that neither the landlord’s creditors nor the public exchequer should suffer too much by that unavoidable liquidation. Therefore all the measures taken against an organism that incarnates such general feeling can only be an empty fooling, a holiday sport. Their only effect must be to awaken rural passions and provoke new acts of violence. One might even believe such was their only aim. For, to be able to ruin a perfectly lawful association like the League, in a country of free discussion, it is indispensable first to throw dishonour upon it.
They have not yet succeeded in doing this, in spite of the most strenuous efforts. Not only has it always been impossible to charge the League with any act contrary to the current standard of morals, but it is beyond any doubt that its influence is especially directed towards the prevention of agrarian crimes, and even against individual resistance to landlordism. Wherever there is popular emotion or possible disorder, its delegates are present, and endeavour to enforce respect for the law. If it happen that the orations of some underlings overstep the mark, the general methods of the League none the less remain unimpeachable. It has taken for mandate the ruling of revolutionary action, the legalizing it, the task of giving it a scientific character. It is to its honour that it has succeeded up to the present day. One may reasonably suppose that it will not change its tactics at the hour when its true chief is no longer Mr. Parnell, but practically Mr. Gladstone.