Not a word here as to the morality of the proceeding thus recommended; but almost in the same breath in which he bade his ignorant hearers regard his plan as “legal,” Mr. Dillon said to them, “this must be done privately, and you must not inform the public where the money is placed!”

Why not, if the plan was “legal”?  Mr. Dillon, I believe, is not a lawyer, but he can hardly have deluded himself into thinking his plan of campaign “legal” in the face of the particular pains taken by his leader, Mr. Parnell, to disclaim all participation in any such plans.  A year before Mr. Dillon made this curious speech, Mr. Parnell, I remember, on the 11th of October 1885, speaking at Kildare, declared that he had “in no case during the last few years advised any combination among tenants against even rack-rents,” and insisted that any combination of the sort which might exist should be regarded as an “isolated” combination, “confined to the tenants of individual estates, who, of their own accord, without any incitement from us, on the contrary, kept back by us, without any urging on our part, without any advice on our part, but stung by necessity, and the terrible realities of their position, may have formed such a combination among themselves to secure such a reduction of rent as will enable them to live in their own homes.”  From this language of Mr. Parnell in October 1885 to Mr. Dillon’s speech in October 1886, urging and advising the tenants to organise, exact contributions from every member of the organisation, and put these contributions under the control of third parties determined to confiscate the money subscribed by any member who might not find the organisation working to his advantage, is a rather long step!  It covers all the distance between a cunning defensive evasion of the law, and an open aggressive violation of the law—­not of the land only, but of common honesty.  One of two things is clear:  either these combinations are voluntary and “isolated,” and intended, as Mr. Parnell asserts, to secure such a reduction of rents as will enable the tenants, and each of them, to live peacefully and comfortably at home, and in that case any member of the combination who finds that he can attain his object better by leaving it has an absolute right to do this, and to demand the return of his money; or they are part of a system imposed upon the tenants by a moral coercion inconsistent with the most elementary ideas of private right and personal freedom.  This makes the importance of Mr. Dillon’s speech, that by his denunciation of any member who wishes to withdraw from this “voluntary” combination as a “traitor,” and by his order to “close upon the money” of any such member, “and use it for the organisation,” he brands the “organisation” as a subterranean despotism of a very cheap and nasty kind.  The Government which tolerates the creation of such a Houndsditch tyranny as this within its dominions richly deserves to be overthrown.  As for the people who