[64] By many degrees the best account of the Land League movement will be found in the ‘Report of the Proceedings of the Special Commission of 1888-89,’ republished by the Times in four volumes. Reference may also be made to ‘Parnellism and Crime,’ a series of essays in the Times; to the ‘Truth about the Land League,’ by Mr. Arnold Foster; to ‘The Continuity of the Irish Revolutionary Movement,’ by Professor Brougham Leech; and to a pamphlet called ‘The Queen’s Enemies in America.’ A kind of apology for the conspiracy will be found in ‘The Parnell Movement,’ by Mr. T. P. O’Connor, M.P.; but the Irish ‘Nationalists’ have judiciously been reticent on the subject. I may refer to my ‘Ireland, 1798-1898,’ ch. viii.
[65] These infamous speeches, worthy of Marat and Hébert, were continued for years, and fill a large part of the evidence in the proceedings of the Special Commission. I select a sample or two taken at random. Mr. M. Harris said, ‘If the tenant farmers of Ireland shoot down landlords as partridges are shot in September, Mat Harris would never say a word against them’ (vol. ii. p. 38). The same worthy, afterwards an M.P., exclaimed on another occasion (vol. i. p. 26), ‘Mrs. Blake of Keenoyle is no better than a she-devil.... Mr. Robinson called the people of Connemara vermin; the people of Connemara ought to treat him as vermin. Leonard of Tuam I will say nothing about. I will denounce him at his own door.’ So, too, a Mr. Boyton said (vol. iv. p. 277), ‘We have seen plenty of them, landlords and agents, that deserve to be shot at any man’s hand. I have always denounced the commission of outrages by night, but meet him in the broad daylight, and if you must blow his brains out, blow them out in the daytime.’ Multiply such speeches addressed to an excitable peasantry, and the results which followed can easily be understood.
[66] This has been established by conclusive evidence, and should be carefully borne in mind. Mr. Egan, one of the treasurers of the League, said, ‘On my own behalf, and on behalf of my friends of the League, both in prison and outside, I can say that we regard the land question only in the light of a step towards national independence, which is, and shall continue to be, the goal of all our efforts.’ Mr. Healy, M.P., said, ‘This is a movement to win back from England the land of Ireland, which was robbed from the people by the confiscating armies of Elizabeth and Cromwell.... But I would remind you that Mr. Parnell ... explained the basis of the movement when he told the Galway farmers that he would never have taken off his coat in this movement were it not with Irish nationality as its object.’ Parnell occasionally let out the truth; he said, ‘Let every farmer, while he keeps a firm grip of his holding, recognise also the great truth that he is serving his country and the people at large, and helping to break down English misrule in Ireland’ (Report of the Proceedings of the Special Commission, vol. iv. pp. 203, 204). These speeches were, in hundreds, imitated and followed by other speakers.
[67] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 486.
[68] I was at this time judge of the County Kerry; these demands increased more than twofold at a single Quarter Sessions.
[69] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. pp. 522-525.
[70] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522.
[71] Some of the cynical and wicked utterances of Parnell in proclaiming and expounding the new policy of ‘boycotting’ must be quoted. These, it is needless to say, were exaggerated in scores of speeches by orators of the League. In view almost of the corpse of a land agent who had been foully murdered, the arch-conspirator coolly remarked (Proceedings of the Special Commission, vol. iv. p. 257): ‘I had wished in referring to a sad occurrence which took place lately, the shooting or attempted shooting of a land agent in the neighbourhood (uproar)—I had wished to point out that recourse to such measures of procedure is entirely unnecessary and absolutely prejudicial where there is a suitable organisation amongst the tenants themselves.’ The methods to be adopted in ‘boycotting’—the word was so named from a Captain Boycott, who was one of the first sufferers—were those set forth by Parnell (Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 498): ‘Now, what are you to do to a tenant who bids for a farm from which his neighbour has been evicted? (Various shouts, among which, “Kill him!” “Shoot him!”) Now, I think I heard somebody say “Shoot him” (“Shoot him!”); but I wish to point out to you a very much better way, a more Christian and charitable way, which will give the lost sinner an opportunity of repenting. (Hear, hear.) When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted, you must show[A] him on the roadside when you meet him, you must show him in the streets of the town, you must show him at the shop counter, you must show him in the fair and in the market-place, and even in the house of worship, by leaving him severely alone, by putting him into a moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his kind as if he was a leper of old. You must show him your detestation of the crime he has committed, and you may depend upon it, if the population of a county in Ireland carry out this doctrine, that there will be no man so full of avarice, so lost to shame, as to dare the public opinion of all right-thinking men within the county, and to transgress your unwritten code of laws.’
[A] In other, possibly more correct, reports, the word is ‘shun,’ not ‘show.’
[72] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522.