The managers of the National League have made their first
grand blunder. They recommend, through Mr. Parnell's paper, United Ireland, that all tenants who think themselves over- rented should offer to the landlords the rent they think fair, demanding in return a total quittance. If that is refused, they are to hand over to a secret committee the amount of the rent, and this is to be expended in maintaining those who are evicted, effecting entries into the closed farmhouses, and resisting the transfer of the farms to new tenants. All cattle which might be seized for rent are to be sold before the rent is offered, and, of course, the League will guarantee the honest employment of all the trust moneys. Out of them it will also pay main- tenance—D3 a week is suggested—to the evicted tenants. This advice, which was foreshadowed in a speech of Mr. Dillon to some tenants at Woodford, is very clever indeed, if the tenants hate the landlord more than they love themselves ; but they do not. They will trust the League implicitly with everything but their money ; but if they are to fight the land- lords, they will fight them with the rent in their own pockets.. If they are to part with their rent-money, why fight P They will see quite well that if they win, they have got nothing except a reduction for one year, the substance of the year's rent having been paid to the committee; while if they lose, they will have to pay the rent twice over. That plan will fail, even if it does not greatly encourage evictions, by enabling the landlords to plead that evictions are no longer cruel, the evicted tenants being guaranteed curates' salaries by the League.
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