An Irish land-meeting was held at Thurles on Sunday, which
was addressed by Mr. Dillon, M.P., in an even more than usually inflammatory tone. He declared that the Land Act of 1870 never had put the smallest check on rack-renting, nor stopped a single eviction,—a most ludicrous statement,—and that all that was wanted in relation to that Land Act was not to develope its principle, but to clear it right out of the way, and " with it the whole system it was passed to protect." After this, and a good deal of hectoring talk about Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Dillon went on :—" If the Government enter on a policy of coercion, if they put us in prison even without awaiting the issue of prose- cution, if they suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and imprison the Land-League leaders, then will come the time of trial for the
people If we are struck at and imprisoned, whom ought we to hold responsible ? We ought to hold responsible the landlords of Ireland, who urged this insane course of coer- cion. Onr plain duty will be to visit the punishment on the landlords of Ireland The executive of the Land League will issue orders to the people to strike some counterblow at the landlords, and I trust and hope the people will be prepared to do so." A plainer hypothetical exhortation to civil war cannot be imagined. We can hardly conceive a speech more unjust, in its calm assumption that all Irish rents are rack-rents, more heady, and more frothily mis- chievous, than Mr. Dillon's. When froth is poisonous at all,. there is no poison more malignant.
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