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I felt that the character of the charges I have tried to meet and to answer was such as merited the strongest possible language of condemnation. I came here to address this court contrary to the advice of Mr. Parnell, who was the central figure and chief object of the "Times's" malignant allegations.

I have therefore spoken only for myself. I felt that it was my duty to come here, no matter who should advise me to the contrary. I may be wrong in my opinion, but I thought and believed that if one with my record of suffering, physical and otherwise, at the hands of Irish landlordism and Castle rule; of the conflict of a lifetime with the law as it has been administered in Ireland, and of the punishment which that conflict has entailed: I felt and believed, if I came before this tribunal and pleaded, in my own way, the cause of the Celtic peasantry of Ireland, that perhaps the story which I have told and the case which I have submitted might possibly, in part or in whole, arrest the attention of the people of Great Britain when they come to study your lordships' labors and report.

And I thought and hoped that in the defence which I have made there might possibly be found some help in the task of finally solving this Anglo-Irish struggle. Should my hope be realized, should I have contributed but in the least possible degree to point to a just and feasible solution of a problem which would bring peace and some chance of prosperity to Ireland, I shall be happy in the recollection of the task which I am now bringing to a close.

I can only say that I represent the working classes of my country here as I did in the Land League movement, and I know they feel, as I do, that, no matter how bitter past memories have rankled in our hearts, no matter how much

we have suffered in the past in person or in our country's cause, no matter how fiercely some of us have fought against and denounced the injustice of alien misgovernment; I know that, before a feeling of kindness and of good will on the part of the people of England, Scotland, and Wales, and in a belief in their awakening sense of justice toward our country, all distrust and opposition and bitter recollections will die out of the Irish heart, and the Anglo-Irish strife will terminate forever when landlordism and Castle rule are dethroned by Great Britain's verdict for reason and for right.

My lords, I now bring my observations to a close. Whatever legal points are to occupy your lordships' study and care in this long and arduous investigation, it will appear to the public, who will study the report or the decision of this tribunal, that two institutions stood indicted before it.

One has had a life of centuries, the other an existence of but a few brief years. They are charged, respectively, by the accused and the accusers, with the responsibility for the agrarian crimes of the period covered by this inquiry.

One is Irish Landlordism, the other is the Irish Land League. The "Times" alleges that the younger institution is the culprit. The Land League, through me, its founder, repels the accusation, and counter-charges landlordism with being the instigation and the cause, not alone of the agrarian violence and crimes from 1879 to 1887, but of all which are on record, from the times spoken of by Spenser and Davis in the days of Elizabeth, down to the date of this Commission.

To prove this real and hoary-headed culprit guilty, I have not employed or purchased the venal talent of a forger, or offered the tempting price of liberty for incriminatory evidence to unhappy convicts in penal cells. Neither have

I brought convicted assassins or professional perjurers, like the Delaneys and Le Carons, before your lordships. I have not sought assistance such as this with which to sustain my case. Nor have I been aided by the Colemans, Buckleys, and Igos as confederates, or had to scour the purlieus of American cities for men who would sell evidence that might repair the case which Richard Pigott's confession destroyed, and which his self-inflicted death has sealed with tragic emphasis.

I did not go to such sources or resort to such means for testimony against Irish landlordism. I relied not upon the swearing of spies or informers, but upon disinterested facts, left as legacies to Truth by men who are held in reverence by England for services rendered to their country, to justice, to humanity.

I have reproduced the words which these men have placed on record against crime-begetting Irish landlordism. Among those quoted as authorities, but not of them, one with them in their verdicts, though not to be classed otherwise with honored names, I have placed the "Times" newspaper, which is the Land League's accuser: I have made it speak its own condemnation and compelled it historically to exculpate the League. The face of what the first editorial ever written in the "Times" likened to the pagan deity, Janus,—the face which circumstances have sometimes forced to look toward Truth by power akin to that which compels matter to look toward the sun,-I have made to confront and shame, by contrast, the other face of fraud and falsehood, which, like an evil genius, has led England to regard with hate and distrust every effort of the Irish people for right and justice.

I have made the "Times" of 1847 and of 1880 give the lie direct to the "Times" of this Commission, and have C-Orations. Vol. 25

caused it to become my strongest historic accuser of the evil system which it now condemns by its very advocacy.

To this testimony I have added the sworn evidence of the persons whom it charges with the deeds of its client; the evidence of the living actors in the Land League movement, and of others who represent every class into which Ireland's population is divided-bishops, priests, members of Parliament, municipal representatives, journalists, merchants, traders, farmers, laborers, mechanics, who one and all say with the "Times's" Red Book of 1880 that eviction and threats of eviction are the chief source of all agrarian crime in Ireland.

But there is another and a higher interest involved in the drama of this Commission now rapidly drawing to a close; an interest far surpassing in importance, and the possible consequences of your lordships' judgment, anything else comprised in this investigation. It stands between the "Times " and landlordism, on the one hand; the persons here charged and the Land League, on the other. In bygone ages, historians, with some prophetic instinct, called it "The Isle of Destiny."

And Destiny seems to have reserved it for a career of trial, of suffering, and of sorrow. That same Destiny has linked this country close to England. Politically it has remained there for seven hundred years or more. During that period few people ever placed upon this earth have experienced more injustice or more criminal neglect at the hands of their rulers than we have.

This even English history will not and dare not deny. This land so tried and treated has nevertheless struggled, generation after generation, now with one means, now with' another, to widen the sphere of its contracted religious,

social, and political liberties-liberties so contracted by the deliberate policy of its English governing power; and ever and always were these struggles made against the prejudice and might, and often the cruelties, of this same power, backed by the support or the indifference of the British nation.

But, despite all this, the cause so fought and upheld has ever and always succeeded, sooner or later, in vindicating its underlying principles of truth and justice, and in winning from the power which failed to crush them an after-justification of their righteous demands.

A people so persevering in its fight for the most priceless and most cherished of human and civil rights, so opposed, but so invariably vindicated, might surely, in these days of progress and of enlightenment excite in the breasts of Englishmen other feelings than those of jealously, hate, revenge, and fear. To many, thank God, it has appealed successfully, at last, to what is good and what is best in English nature. It has spoken to the spirit of Liberty, and has turned the love of justice in the popular mind toward Ireland, and has asked the British people, in the interests of peace, to put force and mistrust away with every other abandoned weapon of Ireland's past misrule, and to place in their stead the soothing and healing remedies of confidence and friendship, based upon reason and equality.

The verdict of this court, the story that will be told in the report of this Commission, may or may not carry the appeal which Ireland's struggles and misfortunes have addressed to the conscience and fairness of the English nation much farther than it has already travelled in the British mind.

But one thing, at least, the history of this Commission will have to tell to future generations. It will narrate how this

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