-no decree of secret
council or pitiless Vehmgericht were ever more ruthlessly imposed,
more servilely obeyed! Can we say that the Irish are fit to be called
freemen, or able to exercise the real functions of Nationality, when
they can suffer themselves to be hounded like sheep and rated like
dogs for the exercise of their own judgment and the performance of
their duties as honest men and good citizens?
If the mere presence in Ireland of Lady Sandhurst and Mr. Stansfeld
dismayed Mr. Balfour and scattered his myrmidons as the forces of the
Evil One fly before the advent of the angels, could they not have used
their semi-divine power for these humiliated rent-payers? Instead of
complacently listening to bunkum--which, if they had had any sense of
humour would have made them laugh; any of modesty would have made them
blush--could they not have brought their inherited principles of
commercial honesty and manly fidelity to an engagement to bear on
these irate Campaigners, and have reminded them that the very core of
Liberalism is the right of each man to unrestricted action, provided
he does not hurt his neighbour? But Home Rulers are essentially
one-sided in their estimate of tyranny, and things change their names
according to the side on which they are ranged. To boycott a man, to
mutilate his cattle,[F] to commit outrages on his family, and finally
to murder him outright for paying his rent or taking an evicted farm,
are all justifiable proceedings of righteous severity. But for a
landlord to evict a tenant from the farm for which he will not pay the
covenanted rent--will not, but yet could, twice over--is a cowardly, a
brutal, a damnable act, for which those slugs from behind a stone-wall
are the well-deserved reward.
Here is an instance of the vengeance sought to be taken by wealthy
tenants evicted for non-payment of rent.
"Lord Clanricarde writes to the _Times_ to corroborate the statement
that an infernal explosive machine had been found in a cottage at
Woodford, in Ireland. His lordship quotes as follows from the account
of an eye-witness:--
'When possession was taken of the sub-tenant's house, No. 1, there was
the usual crowd crowding as close to our party as the police would
allow; but it was remarked that on our approach to houses Nos. 2 and
3, close together, and which concealed the infernal machine, the crowd
kept well away out of hearing, while the Woodford leaders were on a
car on the road, but out of
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