The total want of honesty, of desire for the right thing in this no-rent agitation, is exemplified by the following fact:--When Colonel Vandeleur's tenants--owing several years' rent, refused to pay anything, and joined the Plan of Campaign, arbitration was suggested, and Sir Charles Russell was accepted by the landlord as arbitrator. As every one knows, Sir Charles is an Irishman, a Catholic, and the "tenants' friend." His award was, as might have been expected, most liberal towards them. Here is the result:--"We learn that the non-fulfilment by a number of the tenants of the terms of the award made by Sir C. Russell is likely to lead to serious difficulties. They refuse to carry out the undertaking which was given on their behalf, having so much bettered the instruction given to them that they insist upon holding a grip of the rent, and not yielding to even the advice of their friends. About thirty of them have not paid the year's rent, which all the Plan of Campaign tenants were to have paid when the award was made known to them. This is the most conspicuous instance in which arbitration has been tried, and the result is not encouraging, although landlords have been denounced for not at once accepting it instead of seeking to enforce their legal rights by the tribunal appointed by the Legislature."
With a legal machinery of relief so comprehensive and so favourable to the tenant, it would seem that the Plan of Campaign, with its cruel and murderous accompaniments, was scarcely needed. If anyone was aggrieved, the courts were open to him; and we have only to read the list of reduced rents to see how those courts protected the tenant and bore heavily on the landlord. Also, it would seem to persons of ordinary morality that it would have been more manly and more honest to pay the rents due to the proprietor than to cast the money into the chest of the Plan of Campaign--that _boite à Pierrette_ which, like the sieve of the Danaïdes, can never be filled. The Home Rule agitators have known how to make it appear that they, and they alone, stand between the people and oppression. They have ignored all this orderly legal machinery; and their English sympathisers have not remembered it. Nor have those English sympathisers considered the significant fact that this agitation is literally the bread of life to those who have created and still maintain it. Many of the Home Rule Irish Members of Parliament have risen from the lowest ranks of society--from the barefooted peasantry, where their nearest relations are still to be found--into the outward condition of gentlemen living in comparative affluence. It is not being uncharitable, nor going behind motives, to ask, _Cui bono?_ For whose advantage is a certain movement carried on?--especially for whose advantage is this anti-rent movement in Ireland? For the good of the tenants who, under the pressure put on them by those whom they have agreed to follow, refuse to pay even a fraction of rent hitherto paid to the full, and who are, in consequence, evicted from their farms and deprived of their means of subsistence?--or is it for the good of a handful of men who live by and on the agitation they created and still keep up? Do the leaders of any movement whatsoever give a thought to the individual lives sacrificed to the success of the cause? As little as the general regrets the individuals of the rank and file in the battalions he hurls against the enemy. The ruined homes and blighted lives of the thousands who have listened, believed, been coerced to their own despair, have been no more than the numbers of the rank and file to the general who hoped to gain the day by his battalions.[B] The good in this no-rent movement is reaped by the agitators alone; and for them alone have the chestnuts been pulled out of the fire. Furthermore, whose hands among the prominent leaders are free from the reflected stain of blood-money? These leaders have counselled a course of action which has been marked all along the line by outrage and murder; and they have lived well and amassed wealth by the course they have counselled.