between Davitt and Parnell: I heartily endorse Davitt's actions and speeches since his release. It is necessary to base our fight on the true principles, and that is to nationalise the whole soil of Ireland - that of the town as well as that of the country - by taking what is now paid in rents for the common benefit of the people. When we win the social independence of the people, we shall also win the political independence of the nation. Brennan's address to the Irish National League of America at the Boston Music Hall, 9 June 1883, on the "Irish question": I ask the American people, if the science of good government is to be in accord with the wishes and opinions of the people over whom it governs, what they think of the Government that could only rule over a country of 5,000,000 subjects with the aid of a standing army larger than that which exists in the United States today, a standing army of 30,000 soldiers and police force of 14,000 men, a battalion of spies and detectives who are trained to work themselves into the confidence of the people in order to betray them, a Government, the chief servants of which are the informer and the hangman; a Government of which it has been truly said, its sceptre has been the sword, its diadem the black cap, and its throne the gallows for the last eighty years. References Obituary in The Cork Examiner, December 24 1912 Bibliography Dunbar Palmer, Norman The Irish Land League Crisis. Yale University Press, 1940 Janis, Ely M. A Greater Ireland: The Land League and Transatlantic Nationalism in Gilded Age America''. The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015 1853 births 1912 deaths Irish land reform activists Irish republicans People from County Meath Members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood