The Irish Land League.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 2, Issue 177, 27 October 1880, Page 2

The Irish Land League.

Our cablegrams of last night, taken in conjunction with those fuller ones that reach us via Australia, point to trouble of a severe kind looming in the near distance for Ireland. Argarian outrages have been more frequent, bolder, and more atrocious than ever, while the feeling of discontent more or less chronic in many parts of Ireland, has become more widespread than ever. The Land League is perhaps the strongest organisation of a political character that has ever been formed m the country, and one that, as it increases, will possess a larger and more powerful influence than even Fenianism possessed in its most flourishing time. In the ranks of the Leaguers are found men of high standing, members of the House of Commons, and possessed of great influence in the cotunry. So great is the power the League is exercising, and the agitation it is raising, that Government have deemed it necessary to step in and prosecute the leaders of the movement for conspiracy. These leaders include the famous Mr. Parnell, and others in the House of Commons, and from a cablegram giving the substance of a letter written by Mr. Foster, Chief Secretary of State, in which he refers to the state of the country, we gather that the condition of Ireland is more alarming than is generally supposed. It is painfully evident that a crisis is approaching, and that though the very severest repressive measures may not, let us hope, be necessary, there is every evidence that England is on the brink of trouble with her sisterland of a kind that has not visited her for many many years.