IRISH AGITATION AND PUBLIC MEETLNGS.
[TO TOR EDITOR OF TRH " SPECTATOR:1
S1R,—Thoro is much to be said about the Irish land question, but in writing to a newspaper it is best to say only one thing at a time ; and the first and most obvious comment to be made is, that the style of Mr. Parnell's agitation confirms the opinion I have long held as to the unwisdom of applying the same legislation to open-air meetings in Ireland which is, found per- fectly safe in England. In-door meetings are, as a rule, safe in both countries. The right of holding such meetings is, in fact, the right of addressing men publicly by speech, and it is as important as the right of addressing men publicly through the Press. But open-air meetings are quite different. Their pur- pose is not discussion or deliberation, but (to use a word which has no equivalent in classical English) "demonstration ;" and whether this can safely be permitted, is a question which ought not to be .prejudged. As a rule, open-air meetings are safe in England, but not iu Ireland ; and the Irish Government ought to have power to prohibit any such meeting beforehand, or to disperse it after it has met, without being required to show cause. I was first led, or rather forced, to think so, by seeing the disastrous effects of tolerating party processions and open- air demonstrations in Belfast; and the argument for ceasing to tolerate them is immensely strengthened by the wickedness and dangerousness of the present agitation, in which, if the published reports are trustworthy, cries for the assassination of landlords have been raised, and not emphatically rebuked, by the leaders.
It may be said, in reply to this, that whatever is said at an open-air meeting might be said at an in-cloor one, and printed in the newspapers. This is true, but it does not at all follow that the effect would be equally bad. The very fact that open- air meetings are so characteristic of Irish agitations appears to prove that they are specially exciting, and therefore specially dangerous. Although I think the present agitation utterly bad, I am not hostile to the tenant-farmers.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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