"NO RENT."

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 456, 6 January 1882, Page 21

"NO RENT."

Eveeyone who wants to misrepresent Ireland, from personal dislike or to please England, pretends to believe that the " No Bent" manifesto signed by the imprisoned leaders is a communistic expression and an ultimatum.

They say : "It denies the right of property ;" "it is a doctrine that the common sense of civilisation rejects." Archbishop MacCabe, of Dublin, goes farther, and in his last Sunday's pastoral says the manifesto " assailed the eternal law of good, and struck at the foun* dations on which society rests."

These charges against the manifesto are unjust and scandalous. The " No Rent" doctrine is not communistic, because it is not meant to be permanent. It is the temporary resource of a people lawlessly attacked, muzzled and manacled by a brutal Government. Here are the words of the manifesto :—: —

" The Executive of the National Land League, forced to abandon its policy of testing the Land Act, feels bound to advise the tenantfarmers of Ireland from this day forth to pay no rent under any circumstances to their landlords until the Government relinquishes the existing system of terrorism and restores the constitutional rights of the people." This is not communistic doctrine. The lawlessness is on the side of the Government. A peaceful people have been driven from their public rights by bludgeons and bayonets. Lawful agitation has been declared a crime. The " law of good "is clearly on the side of the outraged people ; and their leaders advised them to submit to but not to support the power that wronged them, till it returned to some sort of reason and justice. It was Gladstone and Forster and not the Land Leaguers who " struck at the foundation on which society rests." — Pilot,