d hour of night to
prison, till the jails were choked.' In order to further expedite
the removal of the nobility and gentry, a court-martial sat in St.
Patrick's Cathedral, and ordered the lingering delinquents, who shrunk
from going to Connaught, to be hanged, with a placard on the breast
and back of each victim--'_For not transplanting.'_

Scully's conduct at Ballycohy, was universally execrated. But what did
he attempt to do? Just what the Cromwellian officers did at the end
of a horrid civil war 200 years ago, with this difference in favour of
Cromwell, that Scully did not purpose to 'transplant,' He would simply
uproot, leaving the uprooted to perish on the highway. His conduct was
as barbarous as that of the Cromwellian officers. But what of Scully?
He is nothing. The all-important fact is, that, in playing a part
worse than Cromwellian, he, _acting according to English law, was
supported by all the power of the state_; and if the men who defended
their homes against his attack had been arrested and convicted, Irish
judges would have consigned them to the gallows; and they might, as
in the Cromwellian case, have ordered a placard to be put on their
persons:--

'FOR NOT TRANSPLANTING!'

In fact the Cromwellian commissioners did nothing more than carry out
fully the _principles_ of our present land code. Nine-tenths of the
soil of Ireland are held by tenants at will. It is constantly argued
in the leading organs of English opinion, that the power of the
landlords to resume possession of their estates, and turn them into
pastures, evicting all the tenants, is _essential_ to the rights of
property. This has been said in connection with the great absentee
proprietors. According to this theory of proprietorship, the only one
recognised by law, Lord Lansdowne may legally spread desolation over a
large part of Kerry; Lord Fitzwilliam may send the ploughshare of ruin
through the hearths of half the county Wicklow; Lord Digby, in the
King's County, may restore to the bog of Allen vast tracts reclaimed
during many generations by the labour of his tenants; and Lord
Hertfort may convert into a wilderness the district which the
descendants of the English settlers have converted into the garden
of Ulster. If any or all of those noblemen took a fancy, like Colonel
Bernard of Kinnitty or Mr. Allen Pollok, to become graziers and
cattle-jobbers on a gigantic scale, the Government would be compelled
to place the military powe