In the first years of
the Land League, Michael Davitt was able to secure the enthusiastic
support of purely Orange meetings in Armagh. Still later, Mr T. W.
Russell, at the head of a democratic coalition, smashed the old
Ascendancy on the question of compulsory purchase, and Mr Lindsay
Crawford founded his Independent Order, a portent if not yet a power. So
much has been done in the country. But it is in the cities, those
workshops of the society of the future, that the change is most marked.
The new movement finds an apt epitome in the political career of Mr
Joseph Devlin. The workers of Belfast had been accustomed to see labour
problems treated by the old type of Unionist member of parliament either
with cowardice or with contempt. _Enfin Malesherbes vint_. At last a
man rose up out of their own class, although a Catholic and a
Nationalist. He spoke with an awakening eloquence, and he made good his
words. In every industrial struggle in that sweated city he interposed
his strong word to demand justice for the wage-earner. This was a new
sort of politics.
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