The Hour of Test.

Ireland has reached the crisis. She needs to-day some Thomas Paine to rise up among her people, warning them that “these are the times that try men’s souls.” “Souls” in a more exclusive sense than in 1776. For Ireland’s warfare, to be successful, must be a moral one. The call for mere physical courage is less pressing within her shores that it was in these colonies one hundred years ago. What she needs is the moral courage and endurance to bear in silent protest injury, insult, indignity, following fast upon one another, until necessity shall drive, and the aroused moral sense of the civilized world shall shame, the authors of her outrages into lifting from her shoulders the iron hand of power.

Mr. Parnell’s arrest and the suppression of the Land League were not unexpected happenings, but the logical results of this moral warfare that Ireland, for three years, has steadfastly and bravely waged. These events are Ireland’s victory, if she knows how to make them such. The aim of the British government has been to drive the people into open revolution, and then, on the pretext that the people first resorted to force, shoot them down without mercy and mutilate them into submission.

But the policy has failed, Not only that,— it has retroacted, and possibly fatally, on its inventors. The government itself has been driven, in order to maintain its rule in Ireland, into a most shameless exhibition of force and tyranny, involving an entire abrogation of all the rights hitherto most sacred in the eyes of British subjects. It is not surprising. Only right knows law. Necessity, on which governments are based, knows none. But in reality, despite these despotic measures, the government is down. Ireland has the knee of moral pressure upon its chest, the grip of moral right upon its throat, and Gladstone and his gang are gasping spasmodically for breath. Will Ireland hold her advantage? Not unless she remembers principles, restrains her passions, acts upon conviction, obeys the advice of her true and tried leaders now in prison, and refuses to strike while refusing to submit.

The first duty to-day of every Irish tenant is to heed the manifesto of the League, and pay no rent whatever. Be that manifesto issued as a war measure, as some say, or, as other and profounder persons think it should be, in pursuance of deep-rooted conviction that “rent is an immoral tax upon industry,” it is equally binding on every true Irish heart. “Not one cent for tribute, but millions for” passive resistance!

Irishmen, remember the words of Parnell and his colleagues: “Against the passive resistance of the entire population military power has no weapon.” Disregard the cowardly priests! Their aim is to relieve you of one despotism only to fasten their own more permanently upon you. The heaviest blow yet struck you comes from their ranks in your hour of sorest trial,— from that one among them all in whom perhaps you placed your trust most confidently, His Dis-Grace of Cashel. Remember him hereafter. Remember now only your duty to yourselves, to your imprisoned martyrs, to your beloved land, to the world at large, and, above all, to the cause of justice, and stand firm!