At one time the tone and temper of leading agitators were all that could be desired. "Abstain," said Mr. Davitt, "from all acts of violence, repel every incentive to outrage. Glorious indeed will be our victory, and high in the estimation of mankind will our grand old fatherland stand, if we can so curb our passions and control our actions in this struggle for free land, as to march to success through privation and danger without resorting to the wild justice of revenge, or being guilty of anything which could sully the character of a brave and Christian people." Later on Mr. Davitt's feelings were less calm and his language less measured, mild and sober; as when, for instance, he pictured to his excited auditors "the wolf-dog of Irish vengeance leaping across the Atlantic to redress and avenge the wrongs of Ireland." Mr. John Dillon went further still, and ventured to intimate in a speech delivered at Kildare the advisability of military drill and general preparation for a resort to arms should the necessity arise.
Among the various means, legitimate and otherwise, adopted by the League for the accomplishment of its ends, was that form of social ostracism now familiarly known as "boycotting." Captain Boycott was an Englishman, employed as agent of Lord Earne, and occupied a farm at Ballinrobe, near Lough Mask. Emboldened by the powerful protection of the League, Lord Earne's tenants had refused to pay the stipulated rents, and Boycott served notices of eviction upon them. Whereupon not only the tenants on the estate but the population for miles on every side of him resolved not to have anything to do with him in any shape, whether of barter, business, or intercourse, nor was any one else permitted to relieve his isolation, or do him or his family any service, or supply him with any necessity of life. The Orangemen of Ulster organized and went armed to his relief, and under the protection of a small band of soldiers and police, his harvests were gathered in, and his produce conveyed to the nearest available market. Boycott went to England for a short time, and on his return to Lough Mask at once extricated himself from his painful and perilous position by giving up his agency. His unexpected surrender, strange to tell, brought about a complete revulsion of feeling among the dwellers of that wild and lovely district. He now became as popular as he had before been obnoxious. In the course of a speech delivered at a mass meeting of from fifteen to twenty thousand men at Waterford, in September, 1883, Michael Davitt said, "It was better for all concerned that the truth should be plainly and bluntly told, in order that English quack statesmen might be saved the trouble of proposing half measures to satisfy the Irish people.... Let the landlords of Ireland resign their unpopular positions, follow the example of Captain Boycott, and nobody would molest them, but if they did not, they would be grievously surprised by and by, for they would make the discovery which Captain Boycott had made, that the English government would find that it did not pay from an Imperial point of view to support a worse than useless class against the Irish nation. The 'lifeboat for the landlords,' as Lord Derby had once called the Land Act (1881), rescued them from the rocks upon which they were hurled by the waves of the Land League, but they had not reached the shores of safety yet. There were other breakers ahead that would do more damage to their rotten system than the storm of the Land League. When the laborers and the artisans of Ireland or of England and Scotland were enfranchised, was it to be supposed that the educated millions of industry would allow the national patrimony--the land--to be any longer the property of a useless class? In the language of scripture, the landlords would be asked to give an account of their stewardship, for they could be no longer stewards."