2-889-345 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Great Tenant-Right Meeting at Kilkenny, [Ireland], 1850. 'It is peculiarly the curse of Ireland, though it is also the curse of other countries, that the sufferings and wrongs of the people are always made the stalking-horses to the designs of schemers...we look on the Tenant-Right League as got up by professional agitators...it seems to have been begun by the Presbyterian clergy, and with them are now associated the Catholic priesthood. Both seem to regard the landowners as their common enemy; and they are using the tenants now, as formerly, to attain some ends of their own...Competition, according to Mr. Serjeant Shea, speaking the language of the Communists, is to be done away with, and for that is to be substituted the principle of Protectionists which they called "live and let live", but which meant "enable me to live in splendour, and you may starve".' From "Illustrated London News", 1850.