About Ireland

ividual feeling, independent of facts and free from the restraint of positive knowledge. And on nothing in modern times has so much sentiment been lavished as on the Irish question; nowhere has s

t by a bloodthirsty soldiery for no greater offence than verbal protests against illegal evictions-of a handful of ardent patriots ready to undergo imprisonment and contumely in their struggle against one of the strongest nations in the world for only so much political freedom as is granted to-day by despots themselves-such a picture as this is calculated t

f that amendment is a little like the white sheet and lighted taper of a penitent. Things are, or they are not. If they are, as will be set down, the inference is plain to anyone not hopelessly blinded by preconceived prejudice. If they are not, let them be authoritat

de. What has been done cannot be undone, but it will not be repeated. We shall never send over another Cromwell nor yet another Castlereagh; and there is as little good to be got from chafing over past wrongs as there is in lamenting past glories. Malachi and his collar of gold-the ancient kings who led forth the Red Bran

luation of whose holding does not exceed ￡100 per annum, must be paid by his landlord not only full compensation for all improvements made by himself or his predecessors, such as unexhausted manures, permanent buildings, and reclamation of waste lands, but also as compensation for disturbance, a sum of money which may amount to seven years' rent." (Land Act of 1870, secs. 1, 2, and 3.) Under the Act of 1881 the landlord's power of disturbance was practically abolished-but I think I have read somewhere that even of late years, and with the ballot, certain landlords in England have threatened their tenants with "disturbance" without compensation if their votes were not given to the right colour-while in Ireland, even when evicted for non-payment of rent, a yearly tenant must be paid by his landlord "compensation for all improvements, such as unexhausted manures, permanent buildings, and reclamation of waste land." (Sec. 4.) And when his rent does

by which any yearly tenant may apply to the Land Commission Court (the judges of which were appointed under Mr. Gladstone's Administration) to fix the fair rent of his holding. The application is referred to three persons, one of whom is a lawyer, and the other two inspect and value the farm. This rent can never again be raised by the landlord. (Sec. 8.) (3) Free sale, by which every yearly tenant may, whether he has had a fair rent fixed or not, sell his tenancy to

can change his position from that of a perpetual rent-payer into that of the payer of an annuity, terminable at the end of forty-nine years-the Government supplying him with the entire purchase-money, to be repaid during those forty-nine years at 4 per cent. This annual payment of ￡4 for every ￡100 borrowed covers both principal and interest. Thus, if a tenant, already paying a statutory rent of ￡50, agrees to buy from his land

their contracts broken and a judicial rent fixed. No equivalent power is given to the landlords. (Land Act of 1887, secs, 1 and 2.) (2) The Act varies rent already judicially fixed for fifteen years by the Land Courts in the years 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, and 1885. (Sec. 29.) (3) It stays evictions, and allows rent to be paid by instalments.

ur hysterical journal par excellence is not ashamed to publish a wild letter from one of those ramping political women who screech like peacocks before rain, setting forth how Ireland could be redeemed by the manufacture of blackberry jam, were it not for the infamous landlords who would at once raise the rent on those tenants who, by industry, had improved their condition. And a Dublin paper asserts that anything will be fiction which demonstrates that "Ireland is not the home of rackrenters, brutal batonmen, and heartle

might have been expected, most liberal towards them. Here is the result:-"We learn that the non-fulfilment by a number of the tenants of the terms of the award made by Sir C. Russell is likely to lead to serious difficulties. They refuse to carry out the undertaking which was given on their behalf, having so much bettered the instruction given to them that they insist upon holding a grip of the rent, and not yielding to even the advic

considered the significant fact that this agitation is literally the bread of life to those who have created and still maintain it. Many of the Home Rule Irish Members of Parliament have risen from the lowest ranks of society-from the barefooted peasantry, where their nearest relations are still to be found-into the outward condition of gentlemen living in comparative affluence. It is not being uncharitable, nor going behind motives, to ask, Cui bono? For whose advantage is a certain movement carried on?-especially for whose advantage is this anti-rent movement in Ireland? For the good of the tenants who, under the pressure put on them by those whom they have agreed to follow, refuse to pay even a fraction of rent hitherto paid to the full, and who are, in consequence, evicted from their farms and deprived of their means of subsistence?-or is it for the good of a handful of men who live by and on the agitation they

are facts to which names and amounts can be given; and that question, Cui bono? answers itself. The infe

amilies who have owned theirs for centuries and lived on them, winter and summer-who have been neither absentees nor rack-renters, but have been friendly, hospitable, open-handed after their kind, always ready to give comforts and medicine to the sick and a good-natured measure of relief to the hard pressed-they have now been brought to the ground; and between our own fluid and unstable legislation and the reckless cruelty of the Plan of Campaign their destruction has been complete. Wherever one goes one finds great houses shut up or let for a few summer months to strangers who care nothing for the place and less than nothing for the peop

oard. For we cannot call it justice to make him alone suffer. His rents have been reduced from 25 to 30 per cent. and over, but all the rent charges, mortgages,

faith of those pledges, a landlord borrowed money from the Board of Works for the improvement of his estate, for stone cottages for his tenantry, for fences, drainage, and the like, suddenly his income is still further reduced; but the interest he has to pay for th

n his back on the fight now that Coercion has passed, I pledge myself in the face of this meeting, that I will denounce him from public platform by name, and I pledge myself to the Government that, let that man be whom he may, his life will not be a happy one, either in Ireland or across the seas." With such a formidable organisation as this, what individual would have the courage to stand out for abstract justice to a landlord? It would have been, and it has been, standing out for his own destruction. Hence, for no fault, no rack-renting, have proprietors-and especially ladies-been treated as mortal enemies by those whom they had always befriended-for no reason whatever but that it was an easy victory for the Campaigners to obtain. Women, with never a man to defend them, co

ire-and the lady proprietor knows penury and hunger; not to speak of the agonies of personal terror endured for months at a stretch. Let us, who live in a well-ordered country, realize for a moment the mental condition of those who dwell in the shadow of assassination-women to whom every unusual noise is as the sentence of death, and whose days are days of trembling, and t

little bit on which we

, "I have nothing to complain of."' This man was a tenant of Lord Clanricarde; one of those people who decline to pay a farthing in the way of rent to the lawful owner of the soil. The case we have cited may be an extreme one, but it is generally admitted by those who are acquainted with the facts, and who speak the truth that the rents on the Clanricarde property, speaking generally, are low ren

nted men in front, two behind, and three upon his car. He, too, as well as the driver, is armed, so the would-be assassins must reckon with nine armed men. In the opinion of those who know the neighbourhood his escort is barely strong enough. He was fired at a few weeks ago, and

of their rights. These proprietors may fairly claim that the leading men of their order should stand by them in the time of trial. Unfortunately, this assistance has not been invariably, or even as a rule, rendered by the great Irish landowners. It is, indeed, largely because they have failed in their duty that the present troubles have come upon Irish landlords as a body. If only in the past the great landowners had lived in Ireland and spent at least a portion of the incomes they derived from Ireland u

France; and clever Pat knows well enough that there is not a fly in the whole region of fable which is too large for the brutal Saxon to swallow. Abject poverty without shoes to its feet, with only a few rags to cover its unwashed nakedness, and an unfurnished mud cabin shared with the pigs and poultry for its sole dwelling-place-abject poverty begs a copper from "his honour" for the love of God and the glory of the Blessed Virgin, telling meantime a heartrending story of privation and oppression. Abject poverty points to all the outward signs and circumstances of its woe; but it forgets the good stone house in which live the son and the son's wife-the dozen or more of cattle grazing free on the mountain side-that bit of fertile land where the very weeds grow into beauty by their luxuriance-and those quiet hundreds hidden away for the

widow's sufferings. When he found out his mistake he laughed and said: "Begorra, I thought your honour was an English tourist!" And at a certain trial which took place in Cork, the judge put by some absurd statement by saying, half-indignant, half amused:

n article on the Olphert estate, among other things. Those who have read it know its sensational character. At Cork th

me short time ago four hundred head of cattle over and above the full rent paid honestly down; but the former holders are living on charity doled out to them by the Campaigners, and in huts built for them by the Campaigners on the edge of the rich and kindly land which once gave them home and sus

a gross misrepresentation of the facts. Andrew Kelly was not a tenant of Mr. Sampey's, nor had he been for the last five years. His son, it is true, is one of the tenants against whom a decree was obtained, but this did not apparently trouble the father much, as he had been living away from his son for a long time, although he had come to see him a few days before he was drowned. There was no suspicion either of foul play or suicide, and the coroner's jury returned no such verdict as that given in the Freeman. The veracious correspondent of that journal stated tha

ously sentenced by resident magistrates to a month's imprisonment for throwing a stone at a policeman. Some hard-headed or hard-hearted Yorkshireman, however, would not believe Mr. Waddy offhand, and challenged him to declare names, place, and date. On the 15th of November, Mr. Waddy gave the foll

s grievous that cool and calculating investigation

of using intimidation towards William Nutley, in consequence of his having done an act which he had a legal right to do-viz., to

earers with a trumped-up tale of woe, but I wonder whether anything will teach the British politica

bedient

ISH LI

ay, so invariably made to excuse defaulting tenant

the case. The full particulars were as follow:-The estate bailiffs visited the house of Molloy, a tenant who owed ￡30 rent and arrears. They seized his cows, and then called at his home to ask him if he would redeem them by paying the debt. Molloy stated that he was willing to pay, but that he had only ￡7 altogether. He handed seven notes to the bailiff, who found that one of them was a ￡5 note, so that the amount was ￡11 instead of ￡7. On being pressed to pay the balance he admitted that he had a small deposit of ￡20 in the bank, and produced a document which he s

nor yet from the police. If these paid political agitators were silenced, and if the laws already passed were suffered to work by themselves according to their intent, things would speedily settle. But then the agitators would lose their means of subsistence, their social status, and their political importance. As things are these men are ruining the country they affect to defend; while the worst enemies of the peasant are those who call themselves his friends, and the blind-eyed sympathisers who bewai

d save to "send to Hell for Oliver Cromwell"; also that of the facetious Dove who winked as he offered his olive branch:-"Shure the best way to pacify Oireland is for the Queen to marry Parnell." A more practicable method than either is silently making headway against the elements