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We want the people to have a holiday, and not one holiday but many. Why should not the people rest? why should not the people have enjoyment? There is much in old England to regret. The May Day and its May maidens dancing round the flower-crowned tree, the Harvest Home, with its glorious procession of laden wains, the welcoming of winter with joyous games, the yule-tide log and the yuletide feast, these are things that we would wish to see enjoyed by every man and woman.

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that Ireland will not help this country in the blasphemy of thanking God that a State official has for fifty years neglected all her duties and grasped all her income.

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Poor Old Smith ! We never expected to see such a person ruler of the House of Commons, but now that he is in that proud position we must enjoy his rich vein of unconscious humour. To use the famous Irish phrase, he never opens his mouth but he puts his foot in it. Thus, when asked whether bachelor members might bring ladies with them to the Jubilee circus, he electrified and convulsed the House by returning an answer, the real meaning of which, as far as words go, was that Her Majesty's Government would be happy to provide all bachelor members with wives. And there he stood blinking like an owl in the sun, and could not in the least understand what all the laughing was about.

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IS TORYISM DEAD?

MR. CHAMBERLAIN assures us that "the Dartford speech of Lord Randolph Churchill sounded the death knell of the old reactionary Toryism." But two days. after this assertion was made, old Toryism brayed both in the House of Lords and in the House of Commons with stentorian vigour and stolid brutality. On moving the adjournment of the House to consider the Bodyke evictions, Mr. Dillon made a statement which was fully confirmed by independent witnesses, and which convicts the Government of wanton cruelty, practised after repeated warnings from their own officers. With reference to the Bodyke cases General Buller had said that he was specially sent to the County of Clare to induce a landlord to come to reasonable terms with his tenants and that he had failed. Mr. Tuke and the parish priests were so horrified with the cruelty of the proposed evictions that they subscribed £900 to assist the tenants, but the landlord, Colonel O'Callaghan, refused to receive the amount. He had raised the rent between 1850 and 1880 from 15s. to 35s. and 40s. per acre and was especially exacting in cases where tenants had spent large sums from their own capital or their wives' dowry in buildings or reclaiming land.

Mr. Balfour admitted that he did not intend to say a single word in favour of the landowner, and then he coolly asked,

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Did any honourable member blame the Government for carrying out the law?" The cool effrontery of this question will become more apparent when we remember that the Government have repeatedly refused to amend the law.

What a conception must Mr. Balfour have of the duties of administrators when he intimates that it is their duty to apply the power which they wield, when they know that in doing so they will support the grossest injustice and inflict irreparable suffering and probable death on wholly innocent victims. At a cost to the country which cannot be less than several thousand pounds, Mr. Balfour not only "enforced the law," but made altogether exceptional arrangements for its execution. Knowing as he did the baselessness and brutality of the landlord's claims, yet he

provided for his support at our expense a whole army of soldiers and an overwhelming force of police. In these evictions the police were employed in a manner contrary to law in actually expelling the tenants, whereas it was merely their duty to protect the sheriffs' officers.

The Home Secretary supported Mr. Balfour with statements really appalling. He admitted that "the condition of things at Bodyke was simply unintelligible to the British mind, and it could only have arisen as a consequence of the singular economic state of affairs which had endured in Ireland for centuries," and "he protested against the doctrine that if a man had a clear legal right, for which he had got a judgment in a court of law, the executive Government were entitled to look into the conduct of the man and say, 'Shylock, you are not entitled to your bond.''

The use of the word "right" in this sentence is clearly out of place. Shylock may have a legal claim to the pound of flesh, but he has no right, and he would not in the Bodyke case have even the claim but for the refusal of the Government to adopt measures which were clearly shown to be necessary for the maintenance of justice. When asked to pass just and necessary laws, the Government make default and refuse to extend the necessary protection to a suffering people. But while they fail to act for the protection of industrious and honest tenants they exert the utmost energy in a very special and costly manner on behalf of unjust and cruel landlords.

Even Lord Randolph, who "sounded. the death knell of the old reactionary Toryism at Dartford," struck into the debate in defence of the Government, and thus showed that, in spite of his premature tolling, he is willing to assist in carrying out the policy of Toryism in its most brutal form.

Daniel Defoe defined Toryism as follows:-"The word Tory is Irish, and was first made use of in Ireland; it signifies a band of robbers who preyed in general upon the country without distinction of English or Irish." If Defoe had been writing in the present day he could

not have more correctly defined landlords and their Government supporters.

That the actions of these robbers have been terribly effective, was made apparent in the debate. Mr. A. E. Pease, who has visited the scenes of these evictions, says: "The country is studded with roofless houses, and the young men of the country were fleeing from the district," and, he added, "the tenants in the West of Ireland would be better as the slaves than as the tenants of the landlords." This is the condition of things under which the Government have delayed remedial legislation, and hastened the most barbarous evictions.

The action which the Government are taking is in conformity with the principles laid down by Lord Salisbury and Lord Randolph at the commencement of the present Parliament, when they declared that rents should be paid, even where the soil had not produced them, and that taxpayers should be called to make good any deficiency if the farmers could not pay. In support of this doctrine, Lord Salisbury elaborated the principle in his remarks on the Allotments for Cottagers Bill; he said, "If the labourer is to have an allotment at a reasonable distance from

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Here again we have the "robber without distinction of English or Irish." The agricultural labourer of England is not to have a garden until the parish or the district have provided that, in addition to what the labourer can pay, the landlord is to have interest on a prospective value which may never be obtained, and towards the realisation of which the landlord makes no effort or outlay, but stands ready to claim if the value be created by the outlay or industry of others; and this prospective value he will actually demand in advance if it is proposed to utilise land for the benefit of the half-starved labourer.

Had Mr. Chamberlain spoken three days later he would probably have omitted the passage about the death knell of old Toryism.

NEW CRUSADE.

last and greatest of all, she is the mother of such hardy and noble races as the world has not before beheld. She has colonised the world with goodness.

And yet in this favoured land, among this favoured people,ringing like the passing bell amidst the sweet airs of the young spring is a cry of woe unutterably sorrowful and pitiful. It is the voice of the poor crying to God for mercy against the tyranny of the rich. Strong men grow weak as children, and the ruddy faces of their race as wanas a winding-sheet. Women born to delicate thoughts and most holy desires, sell their original sweetness to whoever will buy, and grow such beings as hell is made of. Young children learn to think that vice is life.

THE CROSS OF THE WHAT a happy country should Britain be, and ever have been! The blue seas surround her like the arms of a lover to cherish and protect her. The chalk cliffs rise white and grand as if they were guardian angels, forbidding the advance of every foe. And the whole quiet country is green and fertile as a garden with fair pleasaunces on every side. Two races of men inhabit this garden land, the Saxons, who came from primeval forests with a sturdy Puritan goodness which has changed the destinies of the world; the Celts, chivalrous and fiery in war as in song. And from among these peoples, so happily mixed to supplement the qualities each of the other, have come poets and painters, soldiers and divines, statesmen and philosophers, men of all modes of thought and all methods of action so many and so great, that her records of intellect outshine those of Greece, and the story of what she has dared and done is a monument far greater than that which the historians have raised to Rome, And

And what is the cause of all this? Is there not enough in the world? Must some lack that others may have bread? The world never before produced so much. Only let the word go forth and ten times a hundred thousand farmers would harness their horses to the plough and break up

such fields as yield two harvests in the year. The world's granaries are bursting with plenty. Not enough for all? There is more than enough for all our needs, there is enough to give to every man, woman, and child such luxuries as were undreamt of by princes in an older world. Poverty, then, comes from a mismanagement, a blunder in the social system. Some waste, some want; some must want because others waste.

We see this better in a small than in a large case. In a besieged city, when food is beginning to fail, all are treated alike; the general in command munches his ration cut from an old horse, and the drummer-boy fares neither worse nor better. It would be thought shame to do otherwise. The man in that besieged city who feasted from his private store while his fellows starved would be shunned and hooted as if he had the plague. what is condemned in small is allowed in large. What would be a shame among thirty thousand is among thirty millions allowable, right and proper, approved by the wise and blessed by the good. It is no shame to spend a hundred pounds on a pair of slippers while men are starving for food that would cost twopence.

Yet

Poverty, the giant despair of poverty, that is the foe against which we must fight. We see it, huge and sombre, standing over society, crushing men and women under its iron feet. Its armies circle it about, the clergy of all churches bless it and call it God. It slays more than all the wars and causes more unhappiness than all the plagues.

Have we no champion to ride forth against it? has the worst enemy of the world no need to fear a Galahad and his shining sword? Yes, thank God, the fulness of time has come, the hour has struck, the man appeared. In New York, amidst the fresh thoughts and the vigorous life of a people whose great future awes the imagination of the boldest, a humble parish priest, a new Peter the Hermit, has spoken words that have thundered round the globe, that have echoed from America to Europe, that have sped on their electric wings from Europe to the uttermost parts of the earth. Men have listened to the sonorous music of the greatest message that has been uttered since John the Baptist cried in the wilderness that the

world's Creator was coming to relieve the world's misery.

Dr. McGlynn has had to fight a hard battle, and he has fought it well. He has been and is devoted to his church, and his church has suspended him from the exercise of his functions as a priest. He loved his flock as a father, and at present there is a division between that loving father and those loving children. All men who do great things must suffer, they must be outcast from old and dear associations. The suffering of Father McGlynn has been real and terrible. The result is the new crusade.

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We are thankful that the movement met with opposition so great. Had Father McGlynn been merely a Roman Catholic priest his movement would have been confined, perhaps, to the Roman Church, while now it is given to humanity. Yet we do not despair, nay, we hope for reconciliation of the movement Rome and we do not forget that the Roman Church is not that handful of Italian priests who hold so powerful and, we think, so pernicious an influence on their counsels. The church of so many noble Irish priests who give their lives for liberty is not likely to permanently oppose the greatest Liberal movement that has ever agitated the world. At any rate Rome will not crush humanity, and humanity is ever reforming Rome.

The movement is spreading constantly, rapidly, widely. Newspapers and private letters from the leaders of the Crusade tell us a tale to thrill the heart. Clergymen of all denominations, men of letters, the élite of the new world, cheer Father McGlynn and Henry George with their sympathy, while the mass of the people not only hear them gladly but make every town echo to the sounds of their approbation.

A Solemn League and Covenant-as the great old instrument of the people was called in Scotland-has been drawn up. We give it in its simple and earnest completeness:

"Believing that the time has come for an active warfare against the conditions that, in spite of the advance in the powers of production, condemn so many to degrading poverty, and foster vice, crime, and greed, the undersigned desires to become a member of the Anti-Poverty Society. The object of the Society is to spread, by such peaceable and lawful means as may be found most desirable and efficient, a knowledge of the truth that God has made ample provision for the needs of all men

during their residence upon earth, and that poverty is the result of the human laws that allow individuals to claim as private property that which the Creator has provided for the use of all."

These are the principles of the AntiPoverty Society. Will they spread into Britain? We hope so, and trust so. They meet the case which is daily presented to us, and they alone meet it. We

have many and good societies. Each meets a limited and particular evil. These meet all evils.

But we do more than hope, we must work. We must seek to prepare ourselves for the coming of such a league, as come it will, and when it does come, we must know who will be for us and how to convert those who are against us.

WORKMEN'S RIGHTS AND HOW TO GET THEM.

THE death-rate affords the best evidence of the relative condition of the working classes as compared with the privileged classes. If the same number of children are attacked by measles, ten die in the general service class, while one only dies in the independent class. Typhus fever is not only more prevalent amongst the working classes, but case for case it is five times as fatal. The mortality from convulsions is thirteen times greater amongst the children of those who work than amongst the classes who are worked for. In taking locality as a test we find that, while the death-rate in the most healthy suburbs of London is 10 per 1,000 per annum, in the crowded districts the death-rate is 50 to 70 instead of 10.

If these differences occurred amongst cattle or sheep, scientists and politicians would be exercised in discovering the cause, and all the powers of government would be employed in its removal, but human life has no commercial value since the abolition of slavery, and, therefore, it is of no consequence that the children of the poor perish ten times as fast as the children of the rich, or that seven hardworking people die to one of the well-to-do classes.

If this difference in the death-rate arose from natural causes it would be the duty of any government to investigate and, if possible, remove them. But, so far from being the result of natural causes, the excessive death-rate amongst the working classes is the direct result of unjust legislation. Mankind do not of their own accord herd together like pigs, one or two whole families in a single room, but they are compelled to do so by laws which make land dear and labour cheap. By laws which enable an idle landlord, who has never done anything and never means to do anything, to exact many

hundreds or many thousands per annum for the use of an acre of land, and compel honest working men and women to accept for their labour less than half of what would be paid to them if their field of labour was not artificially restricted by unjust legislation.

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The privileged classes, who control the government of the country and carry it on for their own benefit, have adopted the simple process of voting all the land of the country into their own deeds, afterwards exempting themselves from all the taxation and responsibilities formerly connected with the possession of land, and placing the burden of taxation upon industry. They have thus secured their own supremacy more easily than any despots of former times accomplished a similar purpose. Having secured land they next took measures for obtaining labour on merely nominal payment. Landlords universally adopted the system of charging working men, or small farmers, two or three times as much for the use of land as they charge to gentlemen farmers. It used to be freely acknowledged by landlords that this policy was adopted for the purpose of keeping down wages. They are more chary now of making such an admission, but the fact remains the

same.

Experience shows that where working men can get at the land on the same terms as large farmers, the most of them work for themselves, and in this way produce much larger results per acre, and live under conditions far more favourable to physical, moral, and social development than can be secured under the forced system of landlord, farmer, and labourer.

Instead of 800,000 labourers being employed on British soil, at least 2,000,000 might live and work thereon, producing for themselves and their families abun

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