Tie State of Ireland.

Hastings Standard, Issue 16, 14 May 1896, Page 4

Tie State of Ireland.

According to a London correspondent, there ha- been a marked and substantial improvement of things in Ireland : farms there arc becoming every year more productive, and in the very districts where the famine was grievous the people are enjoying unprecedented prosperity. Their houses are better; they are better fed, and better clothed than they have ever been. A friend, an Irish gentlewoman and a descendant of the old Protestant aristocracy, told me yesterday that 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-selling agitators : second, that they are not cultivating the soil precisely as they did, and. thin!, the old industries of weaving, dyeing, and lace-making in cottages have been successfully revived. The fanners, besides cultivating tiltpotato, have gone into dairying and poultry-raising and from the «ale of cream, milk, butter, eggs, and fowls are deriving a comfortable income, where formerly they wi re harassed by sore poperty. The rivival of the cottage industries in the Protestant and Catholic districts respectively is largely due to the efforts of the C'ountess of Aberdeen and Mrs Ernest Hart. Mrs Ernest I fart has war- rooms Oil Winpole-stn 11 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. 1 was told that the beautiful old Irish point, the clothes, and others fabrics had been made in the cottages of the people, spun, dyed, and woven, and sent up to London by parcel post. The establishment of a market for their labor has lifted whole countries onfc 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.