Yet how have the National League treated this typically "
good landlord ?" Mr. Hamilton states that the tenants had not even asked for a reduction, when one of the priests informed Mr. Hamilton that the rents due would not be paid to him unless 30 per cent. abatement were allowed on the rents (mainly judicial rents), but they would be paid to a stranger in Dublin ; and the League accordingly ordered the tenants to pay their rents to Mr. Mayne, M.P., in Dublin, a perfect stranger. And on Sunday, January 2nd, Mr. Dillon (who had in the meantime given bail for good behaviour) made a violent speech in Arklow to Mr. Brooke's tenants, in which, according to the Freeman's Journal of the following day, he declared that " the soil of Ireland is the property of the children of Ireland, and not the property of the contemptible, rack-renting, intolerant, ascendency landlords whose fathers had robbed it from their fathers, and from whom they now would take it." Such is an instance of the often-asserted equity of this National Leagne,--aa tyrant as evil as Ireland has ever groaned under.
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