Mr. Parnell made a most Parnellite speech to a land
meeting at Ennis on Saturday. He had felt, he said, the necessity of modifying the policy of his party, in presence of a -Liberal Government; but as yet, though that Government had made many promises, " it had given Irishmen no one single performance." The Chief Secretary had asked for one year's time, and Irishmen had been willing to give him that time ; but it was his own con- viction that it might be necessary to punish the Liberal Ad- ministration as they had punished the Tory. He was sure that the Land Commission was appointed to "whittle down" the demand of the Irish tenantry, to find out the very smallest measure of reform which would pacify Ireland, and to divert tenant-farmers from the work of agitating to the comparatively useless labour of giving evidence. The " Report of the Commis- sion must be against the interests of the people of Ireland." There is to be a Land Bill next Session, and " its measure will be the measure of your activity and energy this winter." Tenants must not pay unjust rents, or give up their firm grip of their homesteads, or bid for farms from which others are evicted. Any one who did so should be,—not shot, as the audience sug- gested, but strictly " sent to Coventry." The land question would never be settled till landlords were as anxious to settle it as tenants, and it might become necessary, if justice were refused, to organise a national strike against the payment of rent until the question had been settled. In Prussia, the Government had given the land to the tenants, and paid the landlord in paper. "Let the British Government produce its paper." We have remarked elsewhere on the threat of a strike against rent. It is a proposal, to fine all Irish landlords until a Parliament which they do not elect does something their tenantry approve.
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