liament afterwards for an indemnity, meanwhile maturing their legislative proposals. Or they might summon Parliament at once, and submit a combined scheme of coercion and remedy to its consideration. Or they might defer the meeting of Parliament till its ordinary time, or near its ordinary time, meanwhile trusting to the administration of the existing law for the maintenance of order. A fourth course, in the judgment of exasperated critics, was open to the Government--tame acquiescence in the open defiance of the existing law, till the time should come, in ordinary course, for the application of their remedial panaceas. This was the course which the journals of the Opposition accused the Government of adopting; and weakness, imbecility, pusillanimity, secret sympathy with revolutionary doctrines, were charges freely hurled at them for so doing.

For some time, while the furious fight was raging between their critics and their apologists, the Government remained outwardly passive, though frequent Cabinet Councils bore witness to their anxious activity and deliberation. The first outcome of their consultations was the despatch of additional troops to Ireland, and the declaration of their intention to prosecute certain leaders of the Land League. Early in October it was rumoured that a prosecution of the Land Leaguers was intended, and that the law officers of the Crown in Ireland were busily engaged in preparing an indictment. These rumours became more and more definite, till it was announced that on October 23 a conference had been held at Dublin Castle, at which Mr. Forster was present, where the prosecution had been finally determined upon. The names of the men against whom it had been resolved to proceed were then given with approximate accuracy, but the criminal information against them was not actually filed till November 2. Fourteen persons in all were accused: Charles Stewart Parnell, John Dillon, Joseph Gillis Biggar, Timothy Daniel Sullivan, Thomas Sexton, Patrick Egan, Thomas Brennan, Malachi M. O'Sullivan, Michael P. Boyton, Patrick Joseph Sheridan, Joseph Gordon, Matthew Harris, John W. Walsh, and John W. Nally. These "traversers" were charged, in a long indictment consisting of nineteen counts, with conspiring to prevent payment of rents, to defeat the legal process for the enforcement of rent, to prevent the letting of evicted farms, and to create ill-will between different classes of Her Majesty's subjects. The day ultimately fixed on for the commencement of the trial was December 28.

Very different opinions were, of course, expressed as to the wisdom of these prosecutions. The incriminated persons laughed them to scorn; attended Land League meetings with all the greater frequency, and did not in the least modify their language. A few Irish politicians who had hitherto held aloof from the Land League announced that they must take their places side by side with the accused, and requested to be enrolled as members of the offending body. Indignation meetings were held and violent speeches delivered in all the principal towns throughout England

and Scotland where there was a large Irish population. Irishmen in America were invited to subscribe to the fund for the defence, and it was declared that the opportunity would be seized for laying bare in all its details the exact condition of the Irish peasantry in their relations with the landlords. With this view subpoenas were served upon landowners and estate agents in every part of Ireland.

The Opposition journals denounced the prosecution as a pusillanimous expedient which could only end in mockery, seeing that no Irish jury could be found to convict. By-and-by, the friends of the Land Leaguers endeavoured to make this hypothesis a certainty, by threatening all possible jurymen in Dublin with commercial ruin if they should dare to decide against the leaders of the Irish people. In the Liberal ranks also considerable doubt was expressed as to the policy and the principle of the prosecution. It was censured as an attempt to revive the decaying law of constructive conspiracy, a law admitting of applications dangerous to individual freedom. The Daily News objecting generally to State prosecutions in Ireland as weapons of proved inadequacy, hinted at the application of coercion to limited districts. On the other hand, the Government found an able though critical defender in the Pall Mall Gazette. "It may be true or not," this journal wrote, "that the language of Mr. Parnell and his allies has acted as a direct incitement to agrarian outrages. But, however this may be, their language is either legal or it is illegal. If it is legal, and if it is indispensable to stop them, then the law must be altered. If it is illegal, then you have no need of exceptional legislation. To settle this question, Mr. Forster naturally consults the law officers of the Irish Government. The law officers appear to have come to the conclusion that the action of the agitators of the Land League is against the law. That being the case, no other course was open to the Government than to prosecute the agitators, though the Government are at least as likely as any of their advisers outside to know all the difficulties and objections to a prosecution. Suppose that Mr. Forster had determined to abstain from prosecution, in spite of the fact that he was officially advised that Mr. Parnell and his friends were breaking the law. Suppose, moreover, that instead of doing his best to punish these offenders he had come to Parliament to ask for a suspension of Habeas Corpus. What would be the effect of the suspension of Habeas Corpus ? Its effect would be to deprive every peasant in Ireland of the constitutional guarantee for his lawful rights and liberties, and to let the leaders of the agitation go scot-free. The end of it, therefore, would be that the peasants of Mayo and Galway would be punished by the loss of security for their personal freedom, though as a body they have done no wrong, while Mr. Parnell, who is believed to have broken the law, defies the Government to put him on his trial." The Times also urged that the prosecution was inevitable if the Government were advised by their law officers that the acts of the agitators brought them within the criminal law. At the

same time, the Times laid stress upon the risk involved in this course. The Government were no doubt aware of them, and faced them deliberately on their own responsibility, but the Times hinted that to empower the Irish Executive to suspend the Habeas Corpus by an Act similar to that which Lord Hartington carried in 1871, might be a more efficacious way of bringing agitators as well as their followers within reach of the law.

But while the discussion of the prosecution went on, the quession continued to be asked, What else did the Government mean to do, and when did they mean to do it? Was Parliament not to be called together before the usual time? One side attributed the reticence of the Government to cowardice; the other commended their deliberation and caution as the highest proof of statesmanlike courage. All sorts of rumours were authoritatively alleged and authoritatively denied as to discussions within the Cabinet. The speech of the Premier at the Lord Mayor's banquet was awaited with no ordinary curiosity as being likely to furnish an index to the Government policy. One passage in particular attracted attention. After speaking of the improvement of the Land Laws, and the "development" of the Land Act of 1870, as objects entertained by others besides agitators, Mr. Gladstone went on to speak amidst loud cheers of "one thought anterior to the reform and improvement of the law," namely, "the maintenance of public order." "Anxious," he said, "as we are for the practical improvement of the land laws, I assure your lordship, and all who hear me, as well as those who may become acquainted with the proceedings of this meeting, that we recognise also the priority of the duty above every other of enforcing the law for the purposes of order. And let me say one word more. We hold it our first duty to look to the law as it stands, to ascertain what its fair and just administration means. But the obligation incumbent upon us to protect every citizen in the enjoyment of his life and his property might, under certain circumstances, compel us to ask for an increase of power; and, although we will never anticipate such a contingency, nor imagine it to exist until it is proved by the clearest demonstration, yet if that contingency were realised, if the demonstration were afforded, you may rely on it we should not shrink from acting on the obligation it would entail."

Mr. Gladstone's speech effectually dissipated the notion that the Government would in no circumstances have recourse to exceptional means of maintaining order; but rumours were speedily revived to the effect that the members of the Cabinet were not at one in their views of what ought to be done, and what should be the time and manner of doing it. A series of Cabinet Councils were held in the week following the Guildhall banquet, and though there was nothing unusual in this, the meetings of Ministers were accompanied by a running fire of exceedingly circumstantial rumours of dissension. The Cabinet, it was alleged, was on the point of breaking up. Only the constant exercise of Mr. Glad

stone's personal influence kept the jarring elements together. Mr. Forster had come back from Ireland convinced of the necessity of the immediate assumption by the Government of extraordinary powers. Two of his colleagues, Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain, were irreconcilably opposed to this. Mr. Forster would no longer be responsible for the maintenance of order by the ordinary means at his disposal; and Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain would not remain in the Cabinet if his wishes were complied with. This was the rumour; and the further prorogation of Parliament, announced in the Gazette, on the 20th, from November 29 to December 2, was hailed as a sign that the Cabinet had failed to patch up their differences, and had agreed to this temporary prorogation to gain time. A week passed of keen speculation and controversy, during which no secession from the Cabinet was announced, and then, on the 27th, it was announced that the meeting of Parliament had been definitely fixed for January 6. It was authoritatively reported that the Government had resolved to ask for no extraordinary powers till then. What their precise intentions were remained a secret; the only visible outcome was the despatch of additional troops to Ireland, and the issue of a Memorandum by Mr. Forster to the Irish magistracy, reminding them of the powers they possessed for maintaining order under the existing law, and requesting them to apply for additional force where necessary to make the law respected.

While Irish policy formed a subject of such absorbing interest, and the air was thick with complaints, denunciations, nostrums of all kinds, and bitter party recriminations, the Land League went on rapidly extending its organisation and developing the efficiency of the weapon which the Government found it so difficult to parry. It had long been a common feature at these land meetings to exact a pledge from all assembled that they would not take land from which a tenant had been evicted, or which had been surrendered in consequence of excessive rent; and further that "they would not purchase cattle or crops seized for such rent." A case which occurred in the county Mayo first revealed what an enormous power might be exercised by a united neighbourhood, resolved to neither buy nor sell nor work with a particular individual. Captain Boycott's experience was one of the most dramatically interesting episodes in the Land Agitation, and also one of the most powerful forces in the movement, as showing the Land Leaguers how to perfect their organisation. Mayo, as they after professed, taught them a lesson. Captain Boycott rented a large farm near Lough Mask, and was also the agent of Lord Erne in that neighbourhood. One of the advices most persistently tendered by the Land League was that tenants should make up their minds what rent they considered fair, and go in a body to offer that to the rent-collector. If their offer were refused, they should go away and pay nothing till the landlord came to a more reasonable frame of mind. This advice was acted on by Lord Erne's tenantry, and Captain Boycott

took out ejectment processes against them. The consequences were described by him in a letter to the Times, dated October 14. On September 22, the process-server had retreated on his house, followed by a howling and hooting mob. Next day a band of men came to his farm, and warned all his servants to leave, which they did. Captain Boycott was left without farm-labourer or stableman, while all his crops lay ungathered in the fields. And this was not all. The local shopkeepers were warned not to deal with him; his blacksmith, and even his laundress were forbidden to work for him; the post-boy who carried his letters was threatened; and the bearer of a telegram stopped and cautioned.

The completeness of Captain Boycott's isolation was the first great practical illustration of what Mr. Parnell meant when he deprecated the shooting of obnoxious persons, and recommended the much more Christian plan of "shunning them as if they were lepers." The results were most instructive to the Land League, although they might have remained in local obscurity but for a plan proposed by certain men of Ulster to rescue the beleaguered gentleman from his state of siege. The "expedition" of the Ulstermen for the relief of Captain Boycott made his hard case known throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom; and served the purpose of a gigantic advertisement to the system henceforward known as "Boycotting." The expedition was conceived and carried out in this way. When it became known, through the newspapers, how sorely Captain Boycott was beset, and how much he was likely to suffer through this social quarantine, an Ulster gentleman wrote to say that, if 500l. were subscribed, he would undertake to march with a sufficient number of volunteers to Captain Boycott's relief, and save his crops for him. Nearly 8001. was subscribed in a few days, and offers of hundreds of men came from various parts of the North. The projectors of the expedition resolved to limit the number to 100, and the Government were informed by the promoters of their intention. The Government, however, held that the number was unnecessary for the object proposed, and forbade their departure. Fearing, moreover, the results which might ensue from the arrival of a body of Orangemen in Mayo, the Government gave orders, on Monday night, for the immediate despatch of troops to Claremorris and Ballinrobe, in the immediate neighbourhood of Captain Boycott's farm. Five hundred men were sent from Dublin and 400 from the Curragh camp. Mr. Forster summoned representatives of the press in Dublin, on Monday evening, and said that while the despatch of any large body of armed Orangemen would not be allowed, the Government would undertake to give to any number of men which Captain Boycott might need for the sole purpose of saving his crops, the fullest protection to the farm, at the farm, and back from the farm. Eventually Captain Boycott stated that fifty men would suffice for his purpose, and the Government made careful preparations for the preservation of the peace; about 900 soldiers