Now the Tory Ministry has suppressed it once more _proclaimed_ it, as they say (_clameur de haro_), in virtue of the special power conferred on it. It appears improbable that the health of the association should suffer much for this; on the contrary, it will probably be all the better for it. In former days it would have been content to undergo a fourth avatar by taking the name of _Celtic League_, _Irish Babies’ League_, or any other name that would have done just as well to deride its adversaries. A special provision of the Coercion Act will prevent its having recourse to this expedient. By the 7th article of the Act, the Lord Lieutenant is empowered to suppress any _new_ association formed with a view to continuing the affairs of the old ones. But one never thinks of everything. Precisely because it is so explicit, the 7th article cannot apply to the _old_ Irish societies, different from the National League, and which can easily be substituted in its place. Those associations, _Home Rule Unions_, _Liberal Federations_, &c., are numerous through the country. One of them could easily accept the inheritance of the League, and it would be necessary to convoke Parliament to suppress it. If Parliament suppresses it, it will be easy to find something else. And so on for ever, through ages, to the crack of doom.... In the meanwhile there will be protestations, agitations, interpellations, and before the end, “the King, the ass” ... or the Ministry shall have died, as La Fontaine said. * * * * * Lord Salisbury may close two hundred offices of the League in the counties of Clare and Kerry. How shall he close the offices beyond the sea, which are the real ones? In fact, the League is indestructible, because it is impossible to get hold of it. One can arrest its chiefs, as has been done often enough, intercept its correspondence, oppose cavalry regiments to its public demonstrations, and retroactive measures to its secret acts; they cannot destroy the faith the Irish people have put in it; they cannot grapple with the essence of an association which rests on the most vital interests of the peasantry. Political persecution is fatally doomed to failure when exercised in a free country, if it does not begin by attacking the press and the right of meeting. And who shall dare to touch those two pillars of the British edifice? The English government is the government of opinion, or it is nothing: now, the opinion of the majority of Irishmen, of the majority of Scotchmen, and of an imposing minority of Englishmen, is in favour of the League.