The State of Ireland.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 264, 13 May 1896, Page 2

The State of Ireland.

According to a London correspondent, there has been a marked and substantial improvement of things in Ireland ; farms are becoming more productive every year, and in the very districts where famine was grievous, the people are enjoying unprecedented prosperity. Their houses are better, . they are better fed and clothed than they have ever been. A friend, an Irish gentlewoman, and a descendant of the old Protestant aristocracy, told me every time she went home she could notice how the people had improved and advanced. This is due, no doubt, to three things. First, that the people are giving less of their money and time to self seeking agitators ; second, they are not cultivating the soil precisely as they did, and, third, the old industries of weaving;, dyeing, and lacemaking, in cottages have been revived. The farmers, besides cultivating the potato, hare gone into dairying and poultry raising, and from the sale of cream, milk, butter, eggs, and fowls, are deriving a comfortable income, where formerly they were harassed by sore poverty. The revival of the cottage industries in the Protestant and Catholic districts respectively is largely due to the efforts ot the Countess of Aberdeen and Mrs Ernest Hart. Mrs Ernest I fart has ware rooms on Winpole street that are well worth visiting. The collection of lace, frieze, cloth dyed from vegetable dyes, is very extensive and fine ; the inevitable duties being the only restraint upon American purchasers. I was told that the beautiful old Irish point, the cloth, and other fabrics, had been made in the cottages of the people, spun, dyed, and woven, and sent to London by parcel post. The establishment of a market for their labor has lifted whole counties out of hopelessness and despair. One needs but to hear a few of their touching letters — queerly written, and so queerly addressed, some of them, that only the London postal authorities could decipher them — to realise what a vital change has been already effected."