Page:The land league proposal.djvu/11

5 unjust as to bring home to the French Reformers of 1709 the atrocities of the Reign of Terror, and fasten upon the memory of Mirabeau the sanguinary appetite of a Marat. (Cheers.)

Knowing that if a fair hearing could be obtained in England for a reformer it would be granted in Manchester—(cheers)—the birthplace of English reform, I have come to plead the cause of the Land League upon ground that is hallowed by the blood of Englishmen—(cheers)—spilled in the cause of justice and progress. (cheers.) My object will be to show that to a tardy recognition of principles by English statesmanship, and an indifference towards, or hostility to, the just demands of the people of Ireland on the part of English popular feeling, are to be attributed the excesses that follow from justice long delayed, and crying evils allowed to pander to the dictates of unreasoning passion. Every one who is acquainted with the political career of John Bright—(some hisses)—and who has read the speeches of other English Liberal leaders, is familiar with the tone of scornful upbraiding with which, not they alone, but all the organs of the Liberal party, have assailed the Tories for their persistent opposition to all the great English reforms that have been carried from 1832 down to the Ballot Act of 1874. English Conservatism has been over and over again charged with initiating nothing for the national weal, and taunted with having obstructed all popular measures until success had placed them among the statutes of the realm. This hostility of the Tories towards the extension of popular privileges, as defined by their political rivals, is exactly similar to that of the people of England towards movements and measures in behalf of popular rights in Ireland. Neither English statesmen nor English public opinion ever trouble themselves to think of, propose, or initiate any legislative remedy for the wants and grievances that affect the wellbeing and contentment of the people of Ireland, but take up, as a general rule, towards such remedies as Irishmen propose and Irish public opinion endorses, the same antagonistic stand as that which is so loudly condemned when assumed by one English party towards the plans and proposals of the other. Thus every single Irish proposal for measures essential to our country's needs has to encounter two hostile Conservative forces ere it can hope for lodgement within the domain of practical politics—namely, the hereditary or aristocratic in Great Britain and Ireland, and the ignorant or prejudiced on the part of the popular mind of England. (Hear, hear.) Hence not a single remedial Act passed, or remnant of penal laws removed, from the passage of the Act