e of the United Irish League
with J. Redmond as President and J. Devlin as Secretary. In 1901 Mr.
Redmond explained the objects of the League as follows:--

"The United Irish League is not merely an agrarian movement.
It is first, last, and all the time a National movement;
and those of us who are endeavouring to rouse the farmers of
Ireland, as we endeavoured twenty years ago in the days of the
Land League, to rouse them, are doing so, not merely to obtain
the removal of their particular grievances, but because we
believe by rousing them we will be strengthening the National
movement and helping us to obtain our end, which is, after
all, National independence of Ireland."

And to make the exact meaning of the phrase "National Independence of
Ireland" quite clear, he soon afterwards stated that their object was
the same as that aimed at by Emmett and Wolfe Tone--in other words, to
place Ireland in the scale of nations with a constitution resembling
that of the United States.

By March 1908 (that is, about two years after the present Government
came into power), to quote the words of Mr. Justice Wright, "the only
law feared and obeyed was the law not of the land but of the United
Irish League"; and before the end of that year Mr. Redmond was able to
report to his friends in America:--

"We have in Ireland an organization which is practically
a government of the country. There is in O'Connell Street,
Dublin, a great office managed by the real Chief Secretary for
Ireland, J. Devlin, the Member for Belfast."

The organization of the League is admirable. The country is covered
with a network of branches, to which people in the district are
obliged to contribute under penalty of being boycotted; these branches
are united under provincial executives, whilst the Directory in
Dublin controls the whole. The union between the League and the Roman
Catholic Church is as complete as the union between that Church and
some societies started on a non-sectarian basis became during the
rebellion of 1798; as we have seen, a bishop is one of the trustees,
and other bishops are amongst the subscribers; the Sunday meetings of
the various branches, at which boycotting and other measures of the
kind are arranged, are usually presided over by the parish priests. On
the other hand, few laymen, whatever their religion may be, who have
any stake in the country, can be got to join the League;