Mr. W. O'Brien proclaimed on Wednesday, with a great flourish
of trumpets, a new Irish Tenants' Defence League, which is to command "the assent of the most honoured and illustrious names in Ireland, and the united strength of the whole Irish Party." Mr. Parnell is to announce this "new departure" in a few days, and the new League is, it is stated, to be armoured in a legality in which there will be no blot. But as yet not a word has crept out to betray the new maw operandi, and it seems probable that it will be in the main a mere attempt to raise a fund for legal resistance to evictions for non-payment of rent. But the question is, where the money is to come from, and what it can do that the tenants are not already weary of attempting to do. Probably the new threat is a new move in the game of brag. A new " No-Rent " manifesto would be anything but legal, and we very much doubt the willingness even of the American Irish to pour another stream of subscriptions into Ireland for purposes which have already so often failed. Certainly the Irish tenants themselves, though they may talk very loud, will be very unwilling to produce the equivalent in hard cash for their big words.
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