The President.-For convenience of reference, is not that in Mr. Cashman's book?

Mr. Davitt.-Yes, it is included in Cashman's book, and can be found there by Sir Henry James.

The Attorney-General.-It is page 213 of Cashman.

Mr. Davitt.-'I went into the west of Ireland on my return, when I found that my plan was denounced by the leaders and the organs of the Nationalists. I saw the priests, the farmers, and the local leaders of the Nationalists. I inquired, and found that the seasons of 1877 and 1878 had been poor, and that a famine was expected in 1879. All the farmers and cotters were in debt to the landlords and shopkeepers. One day in Claremorris, county Mayo-it was in March 1879-I was in company with John W. Walsh, of Balla, a cousin of mine, who was a commercial traveller. He is now in Australia in the interests of the Land League. He knew the circumstances of every shopkeeper in the west of Ireland, their poverty and debt, and the poverty of the people. He gave me a great deal of valuable information. I met some farmers from Irishtown, a village outside of Claremorris, and talked to them about the crops and rent. Everywhere I heard the same story, and I at last made a proposition that a meeting be called in Irishtown to give expression to the grievances of the tenant-farmers, and to demand a reduction of the rent. We were also to urge the abolition of landlordism. I promised to have the speakers there, and they promised to get the audience. I wrote to Thomas Brennan, of Dublin, John Ferguson, of Glasgow, and other Irishmen known for their adherence to Ireland's cause, and I drew up the resolutions. The meeting was held, and was a great success, there being between 10,000 and 12,000 men present.'

Then I go on to give some further reference which is not material, but which can be read by-and-by if it in any way contradicts what I have just stated.

This is the account which I gave, in the manner explained, of the origin of the agitation which finally led to the organisation of the Land League. The story was told, as I have said, seven years ago when there was no expectation of an investigation into the history and work of the League by your Lordships. And, making allowance for what I fear I must in justice call the egotism revealed in the narrative, you will find no evidence of ulterior purpose or

criminal design in the story so told. It is necessary to point out, also, that the interview took place in America, where it would have been to my interests, personal and political, to have given a purely American origin to the League movement, if I could have truthfully done so. I may also remark that the expressions which follow the quotation just read—‘I saw that for Irishmen to succeed they must be united, and that they must have a practical issue to put before Englishmen and the world at large. When changes of great political importance involving an alteration in the policy of a country like England, conservative and somewhat slow to move, are to be brought about, there must be something practical in the issue put forward '—these expressions do not, I contend, reveal the purpose and design which the Times' attributes to the men who organised the Mayo agitation. These words prove, as the whole interview likewise does, that the movement was meant to be constitutional, as I affirm it was, and as the evidence of the defence has shown. Extensive reference has been made by the AttorneyGeneral to the speeches which Scrab Nally, P. J. Gordon, and a few others are reported to have delivered in connection with the meetings in Mayo and Galway in 1879 and 1880. Quotations by the yard have been read from these oratorical performances, with the object, presumably, of convincing your Lordships that the sentiments thus spoken were the expression of the spirit of the agitation which began at Irishtown. To refute this allegation I will quote as briefly as I can from the speeches which were made by the representative men who attended these meetings, and whose words were reported fully in the public press. Messrs. Nally and Gordon were at the Irishtown meeting, but I find no record of either of them having taken part in the speaking. And may I be allowed to say here of these two men, that I knew them personally, and believe neither of them would knowingly harm anybody? Scrab Nally was hail-fellow well-met with everybody in the country-people, police, agents, landlords-a rollicking good-natured poor devil, who knew as much about political economy as of Greek, and whose utterances, when allowed to speak at all, simply occasioned laughter among the audience that would remain to hear him. I am certain there was not even a police officer or magistrate in Mayo who ever took poor Scrab seriously; and the jury which tried the case of Parnell and others, in the

State prosecution of 1880, followed the example in this respect; they laughed at the man in his insane and ridiculous utterances. Gordon had more oratorical ambition than his immortalised friend; but his speeches were seldom or ever recorded anywhere but in the police note-takers' report. He was an uneducated man, and spoke the language of his hearers, generally after the meetings had dispersed; as has been proved by the witnesses for the defence, and admitted, I think, by one or two of the police reporters for the 'Times.' It has been charged by the Attorney-General that Scrab Nally and Gordon were organisers of the Land League. There is no truth whatever in the charge, and evidence has been given by Mr. Louden and others who live in Mayo, that neither of these two men were organisers of the Land League or held any position whatever in that body.

XIII. THE IRISHTOWN MEETING

The chair at the Irishtown meeting was taken by Mr. James Daly, of Castlebar. The first resolution was proposed by Mr. Thomas Brennan, of Dublin, afterwards for a time secretary of the Land League. The resolution was written by me, and is as follows:

'Whereas the social condition of the Irish people having been reduced, through their subjection to England and its coercive legislation, to a state below that of any civilised country in the world; and whereas the mouthpiece of English public opinion, when speaking of continental misgovernment in late years, having declared that government should be for the good of the governed, and that wherever rulers persistently postpone the good of their subjects, either in the interests of foreign states, or to assist theories of religion or politics, such rulers have thereby forfeited all claim to allegiance; be it therefore resolved: That we Irishmen assembled to-day in our thousands do hereby endorse the foregoing declarations as embodying the position and wrongs of our misgoverned and impoverished country, and as likewise affording us a justification for recording our unceasing determination to resort to every lawful means, compatible with an outraged civilised people, whereby our inalienable rights, political and social, can be regained from our enemies.'

I will now read extracts from the speeches delivered on the occasion; and I ought to say that a report of this meeting did not appear in the Dublin 'Freeman's Journal,' or in any Dublin or Irish daily paper. It appeared in the Connaught Telegraph,' a local paper published in Castlebar by the man who presided at that meeting, and this report was quoted from at the State trials in Dublin in 1881. It is from a brief prepared for the defence in those trials that I have copied these speeches and resolutions of the Irishtown meeting. Mr. Brennan spoke, and I will quote this part of his speech. I will give the whole of the speech to Sir Henry James if he has not got a copy of it :

'I will not tell you what my opinions are as to the best means by which this state of things can be changed. I am but a student of this great question, and there are some distinguished authorities on it to follow me; but I will tell you that I have read some history, and I find that several countries have from time to time been afflicted with the same land disease as that under which Ireland is now labouring, and although the political doctors applied many remedies, the one that proved effectual was the tearing out root and branch of the class that caused the disease. All right-thinking men would deplore the necessity of having recourse in this country to scenes such as have been enacted in other lands, although I for one will not hold up my hands in holy horror of a movement that gave liberty not only to France, but to Europe. If excesses were at that time committed, they must be measured by the depth of slavery and ignorance in which the people had been kept; and I trust Irish landlords will in time recognise the fact that it is better for them, at least, to have this land question settled after the manner of a Stein or a Hardenberg than wait for the excesses of a Marat or a Robespierre. The Irish people have often been charged with being very sentimental. They say all our grievances are sentimental. Well, I trust the day will never come when all sentiment will be crushed in the Irish heart. But this is no mere sentimental question, it is one on which your very existence depends, and any change in the government of Ireland that would not also change the present relations between landlord and tenant would be a mere mockery of freedom. You may get a federal Parliament, perhaps repeal of the Union, nay more, you may establish an Irish republic on Irish soil, but as long as the tillers of the soil are forced to support a useless and indolent aristocracy

your federal Parliament would be but a bauble and your Irish republic but a fraud. I am glad to see that Mr. Parnell, in addressing a meeting in Cavan last week, struck the right note, where he said the true solution of the Irish land question was the abolition of landlordism and the creation of a peasant proprietary. Now, while it would be good policy on your part to accept of any amelioration, anything that would stop rack-renting and eviction, you should also keep before your minds the fact that the Irish soil belongs to the Irish people, and rest satisfied with nothing short of a practical application of that truisın. There is an opportunity for every Irishman, no matter how moderate or how extreme may be his views, to work for Ireland, and in the combined energy and unceasing labour of all classes of Irishmen lies the hope of the national cause.'

The next speaker was Mr. Malachy O'Sullivan, from some of whose speeches quotations have been read by the AttorneyGeneral in his opening statement, or subsequently by Sir Henry James; and this Malachy O'Sullivan was head clerk in the Land League from the time it was established in Dublin in October 1879 until, I think, about the latter part of 1880. I quote one or two sentences from his speech.

'No man deplores more than I do the fate which, unhappily, some landlords have met with in this country within a quarter of a century. But in deploring the ends of these men I cannot forget the causes which gave rise to those unhappy fates. I heartily deplore the assassination of any landlord, however bad, but just as heartily deplore the fate of the innumerable victims of the exterminator. I would therefore, to-day, save both classes-the tenants from the evictor-the evictor from the consequences of the revenge which his acts will be sure to inspire. I would only raise my humble voice to this vast assemblage of 20,000 persons in support of a measure which would give happiness and prosperity to the Irish race.'

Then the following resolution was proposed. It was also written by me :

That as the land of Ireland, like that of every other country, was intended by a just and all-providing God for the use and sustenance of those of His people to whom He gave inclination and energies to cultivate and improve it, any