ordism would be unknown. I say to the British power:--after seven
centuries we have beaten you; the land belongs now to the Irish; the
land is going back to the old race."

What is one to say of the manhood or honour of the men who spent their
days denouncing the policy of Conciliation in Ireland, but who, when
they went across the Atlantic, and wanted to coax the money out of the
exiles' pockets, spoke the sort of stuff that Mr O'Connor so
soothingly "slithered" out at New York?

I say it with full and perfect knowledge of the facts, that it was the
dishonest policy of Mr Dillon, Mr T.P. O'Connor and the men who,
blindly and weakly, and with an abominable lack of moral courage,
followed their leadership, which has kept one hundred thousand tenants
still under the heel of landlordism in Ireland. These men, in driving
a nail into the policy of Conciliation, drove a nail far more deeply
into their own coffin. In burying the Land Act of 1903 they were only
opening graves for themselves, but, in the words of Mr Redmond, they
were "so short-sighted and unwise" they could not see the inevitable
result of their malicious side-stepping.

I know of no greater glory that any man, or Party, or organisation
could aspire to than to be, in any way, however humble, associated
with the policy which made three hundred thousand of the farmers of
Ireland the owners of their own hearths and fields. Where the Land
Purchase Act operated it gave birth to a new race of peasant owners,
who were frugal, industrious, thrifty, and assiduous in the
cultivation and improvement of the soil. In a few years the face of
the country was transformed. A new life and energy were springing into
being. The old tumble-down farm-houses and out-offices began to be
replaced by substantial, comfortable, and commodious buildings.
Personal indebtedness became almost a thing of the past, and the
gombeen man--one of Ireland's national curses--was fast fading out of
sight. The tenant purchasers, against whose solvency the "determined
campaigners" issued every form of threat, took a pride in paying their
purchase instalments as they fell due. The banks began to swell out
into a plethoric affluence on their deposits. And who can estimate the
social sweetness that followed on land purchase--the sense of peace
and security that it gave to the tenant and his family, the falling
from him of the numbing shadows of unrest and discontent? Also with
the disappearance of agrar