MR. FROUDE ON IRELAND.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 76, 30 March 1881, Page 4

MR. FROUDE ON IRELAND.

The following is extracted from the concluding part of the supplementary chapte* to the new edition, just publisher! by Messrs. Longmcns and Co., of Mr. J A. Froude's " English in Irelaud" :- England will never touch Ireland except under pressure of agitation : she then finds something 1 moat be done; she does the " something" in a hurry to get rid of the subject, and she finds she has created more harm than she Baa cured. S^ it was proving; with theEncumbered Estates Act. If English: statesmen had been left undisturbed they would have rested on their political economy. They would have been sorry for. the Trisb, but they would have consoled themselves by reflecting that certain things could not be helped. The manufacturer when bad times came turned off his workmen to find emplovinent or starve. He did not bold himself bound to pay their paßSßge to America. The Irish were freemen, not serfs, and it was the privilege of freemen to take care of themselves. Tho exiles and their friends who were left behind proceeded to taKe care of themselves in their own way. Evictions without compensation, after all, had been relatively few, but they were made to color the entire revolution which had been caused by the famine. Every Irishman who had gone to the tJnited States was taught to believe £hat he bad, been driven there by English tyranny. A new conspiracy sprang up, Fenian so-called, cross-bred out of the Irish at home and the Irish Americans, to make an end of the English connection. If the Alabama question had not been settled, something serious .might have come of it. The American Government was exasperated with us. and the Irish vote was .powerful. In default of - encouragement from across the Atlantic, Fenianiam was stamped out ; but it had developed new symptoms. It had shown that the animosity of the Irish Nationalist ncfainst England waa"as violent as ia 1798 : ai)d it had shown that ; Irish, disaffection might again find sympathy; abroad. If; was £rue that under the Land Act of 1860 the Irish tenant was now better protected than the English, and that the unfairness, where unfairness there had been, could never be repeated. . But the attempt on Chester Castle and the Clerkenwell explosion awoke a fresh bit of impatience, a demand for another " something," which Mr. Glad stone was brought into office to provide. The Irish people were assumed to have a real grievance. Agitators, it was said, took Bdvantage of it to stir the chronic discontent with English rule, let the grievances be removed, and they would be satisfied and loyal. Eor 100 years this had been the theory of the English Liberal party. The events so far had not corresponded to it, for the whole history of the century had been a history of concession, and the discontent was wide arid defiant as ever. The attempt, however, wes to be made once more. The English people do not see that to remove even just grounds of complaint is made useless by the inform in which the concession is made. They never legislate beforehand with a desire to be just ; they waitffor rebellion, or danger of it, and then they yield without dignity and without deliberation. What they give is accepted without gratitude, and iB regarded only as a victory won in the campaign which is being fought for the independence of Ireland.