Historical voices

I cannot disguise from myself the conviction, that many of the evils of Ireland arise from the system of receiving rents by absentee landlords who spend them in other countries.

This was real statesmanship and touching the root of the evil.

Coercion Bills might be occasionally necessary; no doubt of it; Lord Grey had once a Coercion Bill, and Lord John Russell had voted for it; but then remedial measures ought to be introduced with coercive ones: the evil should be repressed…

It proved, by a mass of authentic evidence ranging over a long term of years, that Irish outrage was the consequence of physical misery, and that the social evils of that country could not be successfully encountered by political remedies.

It was a strange and touching spectacle to those who remembered the form of colossal energy and the clear and thrilling tones that had once startled, disturbed, and controlled senates.

The statement made a great impression upon the House and the country; but, unfortunately for the government, the more necessary they made the measure appear, the more unjustifiable was their conduct in not immediately and vehemently…

The mere division of the House between Free-traders and Protectionists had already ceased; there were breakers ahead, and it was not difficult from this night to perceive that the course of the government would not be so summary as they…

The support of an unconstitutional measure may be expedient, but it cannot be denied that it is the most indubitable evidence of confidence.

In less than a century there had been seventeen coercive acts for Ireland, a circumstance which might make some ponder whether such legislation were as efficacious as it was violent.

Men are apt to believe that crime and coercion are inevitably associated.

Liberal politicians, who some years ago were very loud for justice to Ireland, and would maintain at all hazards the identity of the interests of the two countries, have of late frequently found it convenient to omit that kingdom from…

All the economical palliatives and political pretences of long years seemed only to aggravate the suffering and confusion.

The land refused to hold those who would not hold the land on terms of justice and of science.

An abused and indignant soil repudiated the ungrateful race that had exhausted and degraded its once exuberant bosom.

There never was a man who did such rash things in so circumspect a manner.

They baffle the forethought of statesmen, and control even the apparently inflexible laws of national development and decay.

But there is nothing in which the power of circumstances is more evident than in politics.

Notwithstanding these great changes, the condition of the Irish peasantry remained the same; the tenure of land was unchanged, the modes of its occupation were unaltered, its possession was equally necessary and equally perilous.

These outrages were never insurrectionary: they were not directed against existing authorities; they were stimulated by no public cause or clamour; it was the private individual who was attacked, and for a private reason.

Thus, there is this remarkable characteristic of the agrarian anarchy of Ireland which marks it out from all similar conditions of other countries: it is a war of the poor against the poor.

Not sympathy, but terror, seals the lip and clouds the eye of the bystander.

But though a chief landlord, or a stipendiary magistrate, may occasionally be sacrificed, the great majority of victims are furnished by the humblest class.

A murder, perpetrated at noonday, in the sight of many persons, cannot be proved in a court of justice.

Those who have treated of the agrarian crimes of Ireland have remarked, that the facility with which these outrages have been committed has only been equalled by the difficulty of punishing them.