“Do you know why? I am going to tell you. (_Fiercely_) I am going because this country is rotten to the core! Because it has no spirit left, not even that of rebellion! I am going because I will no longer bear on my back the weight of dukes and peers, of Queen, Prince of Wales, Royal family, and the whole lot of them! I am going where you can work and be free; where a man is worth another when he has got in his pocket two dollars honestly earned. That is where I go, and why I go.” “In short, you make England responsible for your misfortunes?” “England be damned!” It is O’Connell’s word. He was travelling in France, towards St. Omer, and found himself inside the mail-coach with an old officer of the first Empire who began forthwith to talk against the English. The great Irish agitator kept silent. “Don’t you hear me?” the other said at last, insolently. “I beg your pardon, I hear you perfectly well.” “And you don’t mind my treating your country as I do?” “England is not my country; I hate it more than you will ever do.” CHAPTER XII. THE LEAGUE. ENNIS. The county Clare, and more especially Ennis, its chief town, have played an important part in the contemporary history of Ireland. It was here eight years ago (in 1879) that Mr. Parnell, at a great autumn meeting, gave his famous _mot d’ordre_ on social and political interdict. “If you refuse to pay unjust rents, if you refuse to take farms from which others have been evicted, the land question must be settled, and settled in a way that will be satisfactory to you. Now, what are you to do to a tenant who bids fora farm from which another has been evicted? You must shun him on the road-side where you meet him,—you must shun him in the shops,—you must shun him in the fair green, and in the market-place, and in the place of worship: by leaving him severely alone, by putting him in a moral Coventry; by isolating him from the rest of his countrymen, as if he were the leper of old, you must show him your detestation of the crime he has committed.” Those words contained a whole programme, faithfully carried out since, and which has already borne fruit. They took exceptional force from the fact that Mr. Parnell, at the time he pronounced them, was already the acknowledged leader of Irish opposition. They were in some sort the registration of birth of the League. * * * * *