TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3206, 7 October 1881, Page 2

TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1881.

When the Crown, the Church, and the Nobles divide between them the industry of a nation, an agitation against such division of spoil" would be declared " einful" by the Church, and " rebellion against the natural order of things" by the Crowu. But, in spite of Church and Crown, by agitation alone has liberty been obtained by common people. Every step of the road to Freedom has been gained by agitation — inflammatory harangues, bloodehed, and civil war. The history of every European nation proves this to have been the case, and in no country do thp people owe so much to agitation as in England. It can be no matter for surprise then that the concessions made to the Irish should have failed to have made the people happy and contented. Mr Gladstone's Land Act has not been immediately followed by a cessation of the agitation that has been raging throughout Ireland. The Act undoubtedly goes a long way towards satisfying the wants of many, but it can* not satisfy those—and they form the great majority—who have been evicted from their holdings under the old state of the law. There must be many thousands, of martyrs to the cruel wrongs inflicted under tbe old laws, and it can be little satisfaction to them to know that those who come after them cannot be treated as they were. There muet be an enormous proportion of the Irish population to whom tbe Land Act can afford no compensation, for it is notorious that, on the prospect of the Land Bill becoming law, numerous land owners swept their estates of their tenants. Tbe thousands of families who were thus rendered homeless have been permanently reduced to a lower stage of poverty than that which was their former miserable position as tenants on sufferance. Hard

as their lot was they at least supported themselves, and had a roof to cover them. The official reports would now describe them as homeless vagabonds. Is it likely that these people should be satisfied ; is it ungrateful in them not to exhibit eirery sign of happiness and contentment? To those who have been permitted to oacupy their farms, the new Act, perhaps, comes as a boon and a blessing ; but to those who have been turned out to wander ac beet they can to the sea ports and the workhouses, the Act gives no comfort and no consolation. A French paper considers that the Act can be of little benefit to the country because it " supposes tenants capable of living by their labor, and a soil capable of feeding them. It supposes that their misery proceeds solely from their not being proprietors of the earth they cultivate, and it does not take into account the poverty of the soil, the increase of families, the lazy habits of the peasant, his ignorance, bis indfference to the improvement of his lot—in a word, the extraordinarily low degree the Irishman occupies in the scale of races and of civilisation." We would ask, however, who is responsible for the " extraordinarily low degree " of the Irishman P When a family is driven out of its home, and the members have to wander over the face of the earth to find the means for obtaining a livelihood, is it possible for them to rise in the scale of civilisation ? When the rule of laudlords has been for generations to grind the tenant down by ruck rents, so'that every improvement he makes is but a temptation to increase the rent, is it likely that the tenant will care to get more out of the soil than what affords to him a bare living? This work has been going on from generation to generation, till the coil is scarcely capable of feeding the people; till actual misery has taken the place of that which was at one time only feigned to mislead the grasping landlord; till laziness bae been found as equally remunerative as industry; till indifference to the improvement of hie lot has been the natural result of a knowledge of the impossibility of Improving his condition. In the middle ages the treatment which was meted out to the Jews had a very similar effect upon them, and it was only by the cohesion and indomitable industry of the race that saved them from falling into the lowest depths of degradation. They were robbed and plundered whenever they possessed anything to take, and the natural result was that they could not because they were not allowed to improve their condition. And so it has been with the Irish peasant tenantry. If they have not been actually robbed of the fruits of their industry they have at least been deprived of their enjoyment, till at length industry merely signified an increase of rent, and the improvement of a farm as an offer to be ousted from the holding. Ireland is not satisfied, and agitation continues. And no wonder. From 1870 to 1880 there were introduced into the House of Commons twenty-eight public measures for the reform and amendment of the Land Act of 1870. Those measures were met by the taunt that they were not needed, because there wasco demand for them in Ireland, because there was no pnblic agitation. The demands for reforms were spurned from the doors of the Legislature because Ireland was calm, while a Coercion Act is enforced when the country ceases to he tranquil! Where would English liberty have been had prim propriety of act and language been the characteristic of the KDglish Barons that secured our Magna Cbarta, or of Hampden, or of those who obtained the Reform Act to 1831 P