As the branches multiply, and the organisation is perfected, the Club is installed, not only as a state within the state, but as a sovereign state within a vassal state." [The Jacobins are] the constant and systematic apologists of insubordination and revolt. . . . All property is shaken; every wealthy man suspected. . . . In short, it is an open conspiracy against society in the name of society itself, and the sacred image of Liberty is used to seal the impunity of a knot of tyrants.18 The ramifications of the Club are spread throughout the kingdom, and even to foreign countries. It has its treasure, its committees, and its code, which governs the Government and judges the law.19 [It is] a confederation of twelve hundred oligarchies, manoeuvring their following of prolétaires by orders sent from Paris. It is a state, complete, organised, active; with a central government, an armed force, an official paper, a regular correspondence, an avowed policy, and an established authority. It has its local representatives and agents,20 who alone de facto govern. Never was there a machine better contrived to fabricate an artificial and violent opinion, and make it appear the spontaneous wish of the nation to give a noisy minority the rights of the silent majority and force the hand of the government.21 We have all the common sophistries and shameless falsehoods, so lavishly used by the party in Ireland. The dead are slandered to excuse their murderers, and assassination becomes a recognised form of patriotism.' Henceforth there are two moral codes in France. What would be crime against a patriotic neighbour is allowable against the reputed aristocrat.22 It is they' (the Land League) 'who maintain law and order; and it is the Government and the landlords who are the real disturbers of the peace of the country.' 23 C'est la noblesse et le clergé,' says Perron, 'qui allument les incendies.' Of course; and Mr. Gray believed, 'deliberately' and 'honestly' and in his soul,' that the executive provoked a collision with the people, 'to give to the Government an opportunity of shedding blood.' 24 The Leaguers, like the Jacobins, are ardently devoted to liberty, and the measure of that liberty is given by Mr. Sexton when he warns 'any man who may differ from him, . . . to be prudent, rather than stand too much upon his own individuality.' 25 They are almost the very words of the Jacobin menace to Mallet-Dupan: 'il vous est défendu d'aller contre l'opinion dominante.' 26 And such threats are not empty. The Jacobins too, had their executioners 23 Speech of Mr. Justin McCarthy at Longford; speech of the Rev. Mr. Humphreys at Thurles. 24 Mr. Gray has since altered his belief, and retracted his statement. 25 Speech at the meeting to promote an Industrial Exhibition in Ireland. 26 Article by Mallet-Dupan; quoted ii. 52. and their police; men who erected gibbets for all who pay fines or quit-rents,' who 'threaten death to the landlords who demand their rents' and the tenants who pay them, men who work at night masked,' who break into houses, and rob, and murder, and burn.27 Such were the famous 'tape-dur'; the Jacobin' Rorys'; men who could act promptly on a hint, and understand the playful humour of such speeches as Mr. Parnell's description of the Arms Bill, as a bill to deprive every honest farmer from shooting the birds that are eating up his crops.' And the murders are not provoked by any great or violent resist ance. Never did an aristocracy suffer deprivation with such patience, or employ less force to defend its prerogatives, or even its estates. . . . The nobles struggle to escape murder and robbery, nothing more. . . . It is not against the new order of things that they band themselves, but against brutal disorder. . . . If they were treated like the townsman or the peasant, their neighbours; if their persons and properties were respected, they would support the new régime without bitterness.2 28 They are as eager for liberty as the Jacobins themselves; but 'liberty without crimes, liberty which is maintained without ruptures, without inquisitors, incendiaries, and brigands, without enforced oaths, lawless coalitions, and lynch-law.' 29 How comes it, it may well be asked, that this tyranny, intolerable to the vast body of the middle classes, is endured? It is,' answers M. Taine, because a nation cannot defend itself against internal usurpation as against foreign conquest, save through its government' (ii. 64). It is because the classes attacked are the civilised classes; because they are accustomed for generations to the procedures of an organised society, interested from father to son in the observance of the law, troubled by the thought of consequences, affected by manifold ideas, incapable of understanding that in the state of nature to which France has fallen there is but one idea worth a thought-the idea of the citizen who accepts the war declared against him, meets force with force, and with loaded rifle goes into the street to encounter the savage destroyers of human society.30 6 The middle classes cannot bring themselves to this. They appeal to Roland, the patriotic minister, the determined foe of anarchy.' And Roland calls on the oppressors to stay their hand, and exposes himself to the terrible reply Have you forgotten after the tempest, what you yourself said when the storm was at its height-that the nation must save itself? Well, this is what we have done. . . . Remember that the citizen minister has but to execute the will of the sovereign people.31 It was this helplessness of the upper classes, and a judicious exercise of lynch-law by the village tyrants,' which enabled the 27 i. 373, 381; ii. 322. 28 i. 388-9, 392. 30 ii. 212. 29 Mercure de France, Sept. 3, 1791: quoted i. 393. 32 Jacobins to secure what proved their chief stronghold in the war waged against the liberties of France. They were suffered to seize the exclusive control of the local government of the country. It is in this quarter, too, that the danger is now greatest in Ireland. The Leaguers see, with their wonted acuteness, the importance of having their sentinel at every post,' and that a factious local government would be the best of all supports for the fighting line in Parliament. This, says one of the ablest of Mr. Parnell's lieutenants, is the true principle to work on.' The Poor Law Boards have already given trouble in Ireland, and they may give more. Mr. Sexton tells us they are ready to make liberal grants out of the poor-rates for the maintenance of evicted families;' that half of these grants will fall upon the gentlemen, and that arrangements can be made by which the ratepayers will be protected from the full portion of their own moiety of the poor-rates.' Yet but a third of the guardians are elected; the other two-thirds are composed of county magistrates. Unfortunately, recent ministerial utterances are not of a nature to discourage these tactics. Mr. Gladstone has stated that there are senses 'perfectly acceptable, and even desirable,' in which what is popularly known as Home Rule may be understood,' and that he would hail with delight any measure of local government for Ireland' that would not break down or impair the supremacy of Parliament. The Lord Privy Seal, fresh from the revelations of the Irish Juries Committee, talks complacently of the cravings of 'honest and loyal men' for some form of what is called Home Rule.' 33 Finally, we have Lord Hartington's private secretary suggesting that the Premier does not believe the Land Act to be the one thing necessary for the salvation of Ireland. 'If Mr. Gladstone has doubts,' 34 Mr. Brett is reported to have said, 'if he thinks that the whole question of the government of Ireland requires thorough examination and reform, every one again will appeal to him to make use of the powers which he possesses.' With reformed municipalities and representative County Boards, the 'form of Home Rule' which appears to be hinted at, every Corporation, every Poor Law Board, every Grand Jury, and all the minor patronage of the country, would be in the absolute control of the Dublin manipulators. Can any grave man think without dismay of such a prospect? Have the honest and loyal men' shown such intrepidity as jurors,35 or even as magistrates, that they should be entrusted with yet ampler powers over the properties of their fellow-subjects? 6 6 6 The Liberals are indeed pledged to these measures, and to a 32 Speech of Mr. O'Connor at Cork. 33 Speech at Radstock: Times, October 18. 34 Liverpool Mercury, October 25. 33 Irish Juries Committee, 3204-6. measure yet more ominous-to the extension of the electoral franchise.36 The question now is, whether the great statesmen who head the Liberal party will have the courage to postpone the fulfilment of these pledges, and steadily to enforce the law? True, 'force is no remedy,' but there are moments in history, fateful moments, when force is the condition precedent of all remedies. In Ireland such a moment is upon us. None but the merest doctrinaires-the veriest Sangrados of politics, can seriously propose to strengthen the hands of the Irish populace, because in other circumstances, and in quieter times, such a course would be in harmony with their constitutional theories. Consistency, in itself, is no doubt an excellent thing, and one which conduces much to the fame and profit of the practitioner. But when the realisation of the cherished theory is invariably followed by the death of the patient, mere men of the world and empirics like Gil Blas may be pardoned for suggesting that it were well to try some common-sense cure. The recent action of the Government shows that they possess the rarest form of political courage, the courage to acknowledge past mistakes. But if that action is to be effectual, it must be systematic and continuous. The heavy blows of the executive have struck down the League, but such organisations live long. Whether the great conspiracy is indeed dead, or stunned, time only must show. Meanwhile, all practical men are agreed that it will take years of strenuous rule to eradicate the evil germs of eighteen months' successful anarchy. 36 The qualification under the Constitution of 1789-90 was low, and there were about 250 Jacobins returned. That qualification was abolished in 1792, and the new constituencies elected the purely Jacobin Convention. J. WOULFE FLANAGAN. THE SCOTCH LAND QUESTION AberdeenshiRE AGITATION. SIX years ago the traveller in Scotland who took an interest in political and economical questions affecting the landed interest, would have found it difficult to discover any part of the country where there was less apparent cause for external interference between the owner and the occupier of the land, than existed in Aberdeenshire. In most parts of the county ages had passed since the old tribal communism of the earlier and less civilised races of people had practically disappeared. The great landed proprietors, possessed in practice, as well as by law, rights of ownership as complete as could be found in any civilised country in modern days. Those rights were defined and guarded by an elaborate and scientific system of Land Laws, which imposed few limits to the right of ownership, save those which were supposed to be necessary to preserve estates unimpaired and undiminished, from generation to generation, by perpetual descent in the same family. The occupiers and actual cultivators of the land were, for the most part, tenant-farmers holding under leases from the landowner. In the case of all tenancies for more than a few acres, these leases were usually for nineteen years—a term which had been settled by custom as affording to both parties what they agreed on, as a fair return for their respective interests in the land and its cultivation; and allowing them to reconsider the terms of their bargain, whenever, by lapse of time, or change of circumstances, the value of the land or of its produce might be altered. Such reconsideration was regarded as a matter of course when the lease expired. It was equally a matter of course to raise or lower the rent as the parties interested thought proper; and for the tenant to quit the farm, if he could not agree with his landlord as to the terms on which his lease should be renewed. The tenant-farmers were as a body among the best educated agriculturists in the kingdom. They prided themselves on being always among the first to consider, and decide on, the merits of any proposed improvements or alterations of law, or practice, affecting their |