Friday night and part of Tuesday night were again devoted
by the House of Commons to the condition of Donegal, where Mr. Parnell declared the Government to be acting brutally in using the " battering-ram " in evicting people so poor that if they quitted their houses no one else would take them. He drew a pathetic picture of the condition of these people, and asked that Government should see that they were relieved. Mr. Balfour, in reply, fully admitted their poverty, but asked how it could arise from rents which were under a shilling a week, and whether Mr. Pan:tell held poverty to be sufficient excuse for defiance of the law. As to the battering-ram, it is the most humane method of overcoming the fortifications which the people, misled by Mr. Parnell's friends, raise against the agents of the law, although their rights when they pay their rent are protected by laws unknown in the most democratic countries of Europe or America. It is rapidly coming to this, that the Ten Commandments were only intended to bind the wicked people who pay Income-tax.
Previous page
