anon

“ The modern Labour movement is based on self-reliance, on the power and cohesion of large numbers, on the slowly built-up economic strength of great unions. Sinn Fein is merely the transfer of this faith from Labour to Nationality. That is what we are aiming at in Ireland: the formation of One Big Union, which will ask nothing from England until it is ready to strike. That is the task which lies before us: the organisation of the Irish People into a National Union.- We must put ourselves into the position of taking over the whole national business of Ireland. ”

“ Poverty vanished, rags vanished, dirt vanished, discontent vanished, the people learned to respect themselves, and they also learned to respect those who were placed over them; love reigned supreme, and that attachment between chief and retainer for which the island had been famed in times of old revived with twofold intensity. ”

“ Thus far then, Sir, we are agreed, that the only method of reducing the present high price of Provisions, is by reducing the national debt, and the only method of reducing the national debt, is by reducing the expences of government, or (as you emphatically express it) by narrowing those channels, through which the riches of the public have flowed in such torrents into the pockets of private men. ”

“ None of us, whether we be in America or in Ireland, or wherever we may be, will be satisfied until we have destroyed the last link which keeps Ireland bound to England."
Were he alive to-day, when the last link is snapping, on what side would Parnell be? Would he forswear an Irish Republic or would he proclaim once more, as he said in Cork (21st Jan., 1885) : "No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a Nation. No man has a right to say: Thus far shalt thou go and no farther. ”

“ If the good landlord's efforts to advance his tenants to their proper place in the march of progress are often unavailing, what can you expect of the bad landlord, even if he is put under legal pressure? You must go still further, and you must compel not only the bad landlord, but also the bad tenant, by law, to do that which the good tenant would do voluntarily and as a matter of course! ”

“ And there I will leave her in tears for a while,
And turn to the Factor who was left on the Isle.
PART IV
In this desert Island the Factor he lay,
In floods of tears weeping two nights and a day!
At length on the ocean appear’d to his view,
A little old man paddling in a canoe.
The Factor call’d to him, which caus’d him to stay,
And drawing near to him, the old man he did say,
Friend how cam’st thou hither? with eyes that did flow,
He told him the secret and where he would go.
The old man said to him, If there thou dost lie,
With grief and great hunger in short thou wilt die. ”

“ A bad tenant slips through a lease. For a good tenant it is, we maintain, an insufficient reward; if at the present usually prevailing rental (about £1 per acre) the bulk of future improvements, supposing that they are to be really improvements, devolves upon him. And we have lively recollections, which make us inimical to leases, of an aged relative of our own having been obliged a short time before her death to quit a house in which she had spent most of her life, because her lease had expired, and the house was sold over her head. ”

“ Your country calls—her call obey.
Chorus.—Hear! O hear, the battle’s call.
Oh! What are thousands, when the brace,
Defend their land and freedom dear:
When, God, your country calls to save,
Be none so base as death to fear. ”

“ Mears, a slim, fragile women, believed in the genius of her husband, and encouraged him to persevere. Thus stimulated, he painted a picture which expressed the whole spirit of the war—of war as it is, as the solider sees it, and not as seen by the conventional artist. ”

“ So now brother Britons, It’s cheerfully sing,
Long life to John Bull, and his Keeper the King,
Nor forget the good lady, Old England, their mother,
For sure the whole world can’t produce such another. ”

“ We affirm that a lease is too mach for a bad farmer and too little for a good one in this country, And why? To answer this question aright we must define a bad Irish farmer and a good Irish farmer.
The bad farmer in Ireland is a man whose misfortune it is to be a bad farmer rather than his fault. He lacks skill and the habit of order more than he lacks security. It is really passing strange, as one goes from house to house on some Irish estates, to see how the people are marked off, as it were, into two distinct classes. ”

“ We do not agree with those who say that legal security is not needed, for that landlords are really to be trusted, whatever agitators may say. If we were to lend a hundred pounds to our dearest friend we should like to have his " handwriting" for it; "in case of accident." We must be business-like even with those whom we trust; and it is very unbusiness-like for one man to lay out, or to be expected to lay out, time and labour in the improvement of another man's land without even "the stroke of a pen" to secure to him or his heirs the value of what he has done. ”

“ Earnestly anxious though we are to see every reasonable security given to the Irish tenant-farmer, so that he may have every possible inducement to improve his farm and improve his own position we are as earnestly convinced that in many an individual case, and in many a wide-spread district, such security will be but the mere A B C of national progress. Other means are needed to reform the whole habits of a people. ”

“ The Babe’s tender Parents with tears in their eyes,
With joy they embrac’d their darling young Son,
Saying, Child, hadst thou left us, we had been undone.
Now I’ll leave the court full of joy and great mirth,
To love one another while God gives them breath:
And now by the Factor we may see indeed,
No mortal can prevent what Fate has decreed. ”

“ The pig is always in the kitchen, and a noxious pool in front of the door occupies the spot which amongst the English cottagers a trim flower bed would adorn. They stick perversely to antiquated modes of cropping; and exhaust your land thereby to the uttermost; and then turn round good-humouredly—for they are always good-humoured—and tell you that 'it's no odds, so long as it makes them enough to live on after they have paid the rent.' To such men, Ulster Tenant Right is the Right to carry on a half civilized existence, no man hindering them. ”

“ Is it the sole mission of Irish men and women to send beef and butter to John Bull?
Look at the other nations and ask yourself, Why not? Why is not Ireland free? Are we too small in area? We are double Switzerland or Denmark, nearly three times Holland or Belgium. Is our population too small—though it was once double? We are as numerous as Serbia, our population is as large as that of Switzerland and nearly double that of Denmark or Norway. Does the difficulty lie in our poverty? Are we too poor to exist as a free people? ”

“ I will, however, take upon me to affirm, that, if you mean, as by the whole strain of your reasoning you seem to mean, that the increase of our national debt increases the wealth of the nation in general, you mean a most glaring absurdity; as the transferring of property from one person to another, and still more the transferring it from the laborious and the poor to the idle and the rich, can never increase the general wealth of the kingdom. ”