September 19th, 1880, Ennis, County Clare. Extracts of Parnell’s speech from Words of The Dead Chief, published in 1892.
I have seen that the more independence the Irish Party showed, the more respect it gained for itself and for Ireland… Now what are you to do to a tenant who bids for a farm from which another tenant has been evicted?
(Several voices – “Shoot him.”)
I think I heard somebody say, ‘Shoot him.’ I wish to point out to you a very much better way, a more Christian and charitable way, which will give the lost man an opportunity of repenting. When a man takes a farm from which another man has been evicted you must shun him on the roadside when you meet him; you must shun him in the streets of the town; you must shun him in the shop; you must shun him in the fairgreen, and in the marketplace, and even in the place of worship by leaving him alone, by putting him into a moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his country as if he were the leper of old – you must show him your detestation of the crime he has committed. If you do this you may depend on it there will be no man so full of avarice, so lost to shame, as to dare the public opinion of all right-thinking men in the country and transgress your unwritten code of laws…
I would strongly recommend men not to waste their breath too much in discussing how the land question is to be settled, but rather to help and encourage the people in making it, as I just said, ripe for settlement. When it is ripe for settlement you will probably have your choice as to how it shall be settled, and I said a year ago that the land question would never be settled until the Irish landlords were just as anxious to have it settled as the Irish tenants…
But I stand here to-day to express my opinion that no settlement can be satisfactory or permanent which does not ensure the uprooting of that system of landlordism which has brought the country three times in a century to famine…
We have been accused of preaching Communistic doctrines when we told the people not to pay an unjust rent, and the following out of that advice in a few of the Irish counties had shown the English Government the necessity for a radical alteration in the land laws. But how would they like it if we told the people some day or other not to pay any rent until this question is settled…
If the 500,000 tenant farmers of Ireland struck against the 10,000 landlords, I should like to see where they would get police and soldiers enough to make them pay.