FAIR PLAY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 38, 10 January 1890, Page 31

FAIR PLAY.

(United Ireland, November 16.)

mission of the new, but already most powerful Tenants' Dafence is, in a word, to secure f*ir pity for evicted tenants. As convention follows convention with uad imioished eithusUsm and success— four since we wrote last week, atLnuh, WoxforJ, Kilkenny, and Roscomunon — tbe dismay of the exterminators aid their friendi is more an i more apparent. Tbe Coercion j >urnala no longer devote a column a day to pr >ye tbe new Association is of no account. Tderi in no longer wild talk of starving out the evicted tenants and replanting their holdings. Even in tbe distracted and distracting councils of the Coercion G>vernmnt, regarding their promised Land Purchase Bill, we caa detect symp ons of the fear whicn the rise and triumphant progress of the uew Association has inspired. The Castle has hit on a notable device for counteracting its evil influence — a device worthy of the Castle. It has deputed the police to scatter abroad handbills advertising in good, set terms the existing perfections of the Irish land laws. These handbills are, in truth, an advertisement for the new Association. Oar people are quick to remember that all tbe improvement in their condition therein set forth in exaggerated detail are the fruit of their own resolute organisation, and only by such orga isation can the fruit be ripened to their full perfection. As Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P., happily expressed it at tbe Wexford Convention, the story is interesting but not complete, and requires "to be continued io our next." There was a pUyf ul humour, worthy of Balfour himself, in selecting the constabulary as the missionaries to spread the glad <idings of tbe tenants' salvation. Tbe s<tme hands that scattered the blessed l bind bills abroad io prove to the tenant the impossibility of eviction might an hour later be swinging the batter-ing-ram to the soul-stirring cry of "Back; away with him I Back; away with him 1" and tumbling tbe name tenant's bouse about his ears. If we might venture to suggest, copies of the instructive handbills ought for the future be nailed up witb tbe bundles of evictions at the market-place, or posted over the Removables' neads in the Coercion Courts to prove the infinite benevolence of the Government. The Government, of a certainty, watches the progress of the new Association with malevolent eyes, " willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike." Its power and progress provokes attack, but it is secured by tbe "unassailable legality" of its position. Tbe Coercionists clamonred for full information as to the objects and methods of tbe new Association ; they have got it. Tbe while the Eviction Syndicate, to which in a speci tl manner it is opposed, works in tha dark, striving jea'ously to taiJe the identity of its members, the Tenants' D^ence Association steps out bold y into the open and proclaims i g members, its resources, and its objects to the world. The objects may be once agaiu summarised : To secure fair play for the evicted tenants, whom the rack-renters are etger to victimise as a punishment for the resolution and self-devotion wtiich has saved the teuantry of Ireland from destruction. Mr. Jobn Redmond, M.P., at Wexford, gave a forcible and eloquent reply to tbe somewhat silly question, if the new Association meant the repudiation or tie abandonment of tbe Plan of Campaign. It is »n abauionnunt in the sitne sense as the main army abandons the gallant vanguard when it moves out in irresistible array to protect them from a treacherous ambuscade. The Syndicate has sworn that the evicted campaign tenants must be crushed. Tbe Tenants' Defence Association swears they shall be saved. All Ireland joios in that mighty oath, which reverberates across both oceans and finds an echo in America and Australia. With tbe technical legality or illegality of the Plan of Campaign we are not here concerned at all. It is a thing ap >rt fron the preseut considerations. Mr. Gladstone regards it as a cecessary, though possibly ex ra, legal combination. For ourselves, if the point of its legality was nece sary to decide, we would prefer the deliberate opinion, given against interest, of the Attorn-y-General, now Mr. Justice Holnns, (o tbe multitudinous decisions of the Remov.bles, of the sufficiency of Wtiose legal knowledge the Lord Lieutenant is satisfied. Whatever controversy can arise as to its technicle legality, of its jus ice and necessity, theie can be no question at all. As Captain Donnelao of Balymona, Midleton, well said in bis letter to Mr. Lane, M.P., enclosing a subscription of £5 to tbe new Association : "It is easy f>r well-fed philosophers and legal luminaries to moralise on the iniquity of the flan of o'amp.ig i, but s.-If-preserva-tion is, and alway* will bj, the first law of nature." Even the Most R^v. Dr. O'Dwyer, B shop of Limerick, who certainly cinnot be suspected of any biaßia tbe tenants' favour, completely just fies the Plan of with the solitary pro v no that it has been joined b*fuie the pub ication of the Rt script. Bat it is not the legality of the Plan of Campaign tl at is now to be considered. Legal or illegal, it bas dove its woik and won its battle. Tbe exterminators, as they themselves coi.f^ss are fighting no longer for victory, but for vengeance. The new Association lakes the field, strong alike in its widespread organisation and its unassailable legality. If it be lawful to combine secretly to promote eviction, it is lawful to combine publicly to succour the evicted. Even the Removables, we fancy, would be scarcely rash enough to decide th tt the great objects of the new Association, to feed theuungry and shelter the shelterless, are criminal in the eye of the law.