logic!" roared one enthusiast. "Now you are talkin'!" vociferated another, and it was evident that the Land Act was as nothing compared to the national desire for a fight in some quarter of the globe.

CHAPTER XI.

AMERICAN OPINION ON IRISH AFFAIRS.

Ir may be asked, What do the native Americans think of the present crisis in Ireland? I was myself in the United States when the No-Rent manifesto was published and Mr. Parnell was arrested, and took some pains to discover, from the public press and other sources, the general opinion of the average coolheaded and sensible Americans upon the most recent developments of Irish affairs.

When Mr. Parnell visited America in 1880, to collect funds for charitable and political purposes, the attitude of Americans was widely different to what it is now. American opinion then, as represented by the press, was unmistakably in favour of a considerable portion of the Land League programme. Free land is the rule in the United States, and the Americans wished to see the best possible terms made for the Irish tenant. All classes opened their purses to aid the distressed Irish peasant, and a widespread sym

pathy with the physical misery of the people was strikingly evinced.

So far as the political agitation struck at the unjust treatment of the tenant, so far American public opinion favoured Mr. Parnell's movement and no further. At the time of Mr. Parnell's arrest and now, it may be said, the fount of American sympathy for Irish grievances is altogether dried up. The press, throughout the Republic, susceptible as it is, as a whole, of more or less manipulation by the Irish interest for political purposes, has taken up an attitude of disapproval or cold neutrality, where formerly cordiality or sympathetic criticism was the rule.

The title of land in America is not so old that landowners care to talk of land-robbers and land-sharks. The war of rebellion and its scars are not so easily forgotten that a secessional movement in Ireland, with all its accompanying horrors, can be either approved or assisted by voice or pen. It is easy to read between the lines. There are certain journals in America which endeavour to gauge public as opposed to party opinion. Such are the New York Herald, the Chicago Times, and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. In all these cities there are very large Irish populations, and in all Mr. Parnell was received, on his visit to America, with the greatest enthusiasm.

Immediately on the news of the arrest of Mr. Parnell, all these organs of public opinion wrote very strongly.

The New York Herald said in its issue of October 18th, 1881, "Ireland, wrought up to a wild and desperate humour by the acts of agitation, is in a condition of social revolt, and it may well trouble wiser heads than those now governing England to know what may soothe and satisfy her.

"Public opinion in that country has even lost all the ordinary sense of proportion in judging of men's acts. If in a collision in the streets one man goes down with the police buckshot in him, there is a wild cry against this official barbarity; but if, out of eleven labourers who have worked on a forbidden farm, five are shot on their way home, it seems to be regarded with tranquil complacency, for in Ireland now, as in all countries in all times of revolutionary ferment, no act is evil that satisfies in any degree the passions of a fierce social resentment.

66 We may call the act by what names we like. Epithets will not change the case. It will always be regarded by every people as a patriotic act to kill one of the common enemy; and there is no disguising the fact that throughout Ireland to-day the most energetic element of the population is acting under the assumption that the landowner and the authorities who defend and sustain him, and all who

by their assistance enable him in any degree whatever to enjoy or profit by his possessions, are the enemies of the Irish people and their cause, and should be summarily dealt with as such.

"It would not be easy to say to what limits an excited nation may in such circumstances push its demands; but it is clear that the least of Ireland's requirements now is a general confiscation of the estates of great landowners and an assignment of farms to actual occupants-the obliteration of the legal title where this represents merely the right of a titular owner of that large proportion of the produce which is handed over as rent. To be absolutely relieved from this burden is the demand of Ireland so far as she is influenced by the Land League operations."

A very few days before the arrest of Mr. Parnell the Pioneer Press made the following curious prophecy :"The issue was not doubtful, and its arrival but a question of time. Sooner or later England must be wearied into a consent to separation, or must confront violence with violence, and put down insubordination with armed force. There can be no more question of the necessity of the latter than of the necessity of fighting the southern confederacy. The arrest of Parnell and the others must happen to-day, or next month, or next year. When Mr. Gladstone realized this, he decided to meet the movement for