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mode of reconquest is to refuse payment of rent and resist process of ejectment." "Moral agitation, military force, moral insurrection are impotent against the English Government, which is beyond their reach, but resistless against the English garrison, who stand here scattered and isolated, girdled round by a mighty people." "The land question contains, and the legislative question does not contain, the materials from which victory is manufactured." "You can never count again on the support of the country peasantry m any shape or degree, or on the question of Repeal, their interest in it was never ardent, nor was it native or spontaneous, but forced and factitious." "There is but one way only, link Repeal to some other question, like a railway carriage to an engine; some question possessing the intrinsic strength which Repeal wants, and strong enough to carry both itself and Repeal together; and such a question there is in the land." "Repeal had always to be dragged." "There is a wolf-dog in every cabin in the land nearly fit to be untied, and he will be savager by and by, for Repeal he will never bite but only bay; but there is another matter to settle between us and England." "The absolute ownership of the lands of Ireland Is vested of right in the people of Ireland."[1]
This has been the evangel of the "Home Rule" Movement. This its inspiration and power. How absolutely true the statement is that "the interest of the peasantry in Repeal was never ardent, native, or spon-
- ↑ See P. Bagenal, American Irish, pp. 153-197; Brougham Leech, The Continuity of the Irish Revolutionary Movement; Report of the Special Commission, passim; Lecky, History of Ireland, vol. v., p. 484.
