On Ireland, Lord Salisbury declared that, in his opinion, the
landlords ought to be most forbearing in enforcing their rights, and to take into consideration in the fullest way the fall in the price of produce which had diminished the tenants' power to pay. But even if they were not thus forbearing, they were not to be plundered at the will of the tenants. "If my neighbour gives money to an applicant by the wayside and I refuse to do so, that is no reason for the applicant by the wayside to empty my pockets." He regarded the new campaign of the National League in Ireland as a campaign on behalf of a policy of fraud. As the device of Home-rulers, such a policy was especially dis- heartening. "Can you imagine that this great work of making a nation,which they tell you they are undertaking, can be founded on a basis of organised embezzlement P" The use of the word "embezzlement," which has a technical legal meaning not applicable to the withholding of a just debt, was not very happy ; but it was a happy thought to contrast that making of
a nation which can only prosper by the growth and increase of mutual trust, with that great stimulus to mutual distrust and suspicion which the policy of the National League is now so energetically engaged in applying.
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