Miscellany.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 502, 6 May 1881, Page 2

Miscellany.

PACTS ABOUT IRELAND

It is a fact that John Stuart Mill wrote in his " Principles of Political Economy" in regard to Ireland—" The demand for land depends upon the number of the competitors, and the competitors are the whole rural popula'ion. As the land is a fixed quantity, while population has an unlimited power of increase, unless something checks that increase, the competition for land soon forces up rents to the highest point consistent with keeping the population alive." Jt is a fact that (Jibbon Wakefield, a great authority, in hia v Account of Ireland," vol, ii., page 795, said—" The Irish landlords as a class are needy, exacting, unremitting, harsh, and without sympathy for their tenantry." It is a fact that the compiler of the " Digest of Evidence taken by Lord Devon's Commission " said—" The present tenant-right of Ulster is an embryo copyhold. Even there, if the tenantright be disrega dcd, and a tenant be ejected without having received the price of Ills good-will, outrages are generally the consequence. The disorganised stal of Tipperary, and the agrarian combinations throughout Ireland, are but a methodised war to obtain the Ulster tenant-right " It is a fact that the Secretary to the Irish Poor Law Inquiry Commission declar. d that " every family which hns not sufficient land to yield its food has one or mure of its members supported by begging. It will therefore be easily conceived that every endeavor is made by the peasantry to obtain small holdings, and that they are not influenced in their biddings by the fertility of the land, or by their ability to pay the rent, but solely by the offer which is most likely to gain them possession. They give up, in the shape of rent, the whole produce of the soil, with the exception of a sufficiency of potatoes for a subsistence; but as this is rarely equal to the promised rent, they constantly have against them an increasing balance." It is a fact that Lord Clare, when Attorney-General, said—" The peasantry are ground to powder by enormous rents." It is a fact that Dean Swift spoke of the exactions of Irish landlords thus :— " Rents squeezed out of the blood and vitals and clothes and dwellings of the tenants, who live worse than English beggars." It is a fact that the naked abstract law of the occupation of land in Ireland as founded upon.coiitr.iol and not upon tenure may be the same as in England, but, as the present Prime. Minister has said, " it is only the :-;!toietons of the laws ot the two countries that bear any resemblance to <ach other. ■ The flesh and the blood with which the figures are invested are wholly different. All the circumstances, all the associations, and all the accretions that have grown around tin* native ideas arc different in the one j a country from what they arc in the other, j I We cannot name a point in which (ho ( h> relation of landlord and tenant iv Ire- i t<

land and in Great Britain are the same, except only in what may be called the abstract and general idea.". lfc is a fact that Mr Froude says :— -'The English deliberately determined to keep Ireland poor and miserable, _as the readiest means to prevent it being .troublesome. They destroyed Irish trade and shipping by Navigation Laws. They extinguished Irish trade by differential duties. They laid disabilities even on its wretched agriculture, for fear that Irish importations might injure the English farmer." It is a fact Lord Palmerston said: — " The tenantry of Ireland, when they receive encouragement, and have reason to believe that their exertions will reap a due reward, are as much inclined to industrious exertion as the tenantry of any part of the world." He also said—" The evils of Ireland are traceable to the history of Ireland." It is a fact that nearly every crime committed at the present time is attributed to Fenianism, although Penianism has probably as much to do with them as the man in the moon, or His Royal Highness the Prince ot Wales.