DOINGS IN THE SOUTH AND WEST OF IRELAND.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2411, 8 December 1880, Page 4

DOINGS IN THE SOUTH AND WEST OF IRELAND.

(By an Englishman.) With reference to the above I am not the least surprised, having been in the districts mentioned over fourteen years, and seen a little during that time. The land, as a rule, is let to yearly tenants, with bad fences, mud cabins, and the land requiring improvements. If an industrous tenant gets possession of the land, he dare not improve, or some other party will offer more money for the land, and out he goes. The result is, in a favorable season, he must only take off what will barely pay the rent, and give his own familj a miserable existence. Had he a long lease, he could easily provide for a few bad seasons. As it is, a bad season or two means a famine, brought about by r miserable near-sighted, lot of land-owners,who try to make serfs of the tenantry to gratify their vanit} r and for political purposes. The same rasca Is and their agents instil into the minds of the tenantry]that all the evils of Ireland are caused by the English Government. The tenants in the North of Ireland are somewhat different. There there is an old established tenant right that the landowners are afraid to upset. Hence the two parts of the same country are different. I have known a land-owner in the County Mayo, near Ballyhaunis, dispossess nearly 200 tenantry at the same time to make room for sheep. The greater part of these poor people had never been 1 o miles from home in their Jives. The constabulary arrived, the chattels thrown out on the highway, the mudeabin pulled down. Part of the police do this with the assistance of the the crow-bar brigade ; the other part of the police force watched with loaded rifles for any disturbance. All this is done under the English Hag. Watch these people. On arrival in America, half the females are ruined ; the other members of the family separated to all parts of the American Continent. Can it be wondered at that the Irish people arc bitter against England, and are the. easy prey of designing schemers, who make a living out of the bad passions of the Irish people? I trust the English Government will have any amount of annoyance until a fair land law is passed. Many of the English tenants are not in a much better condition.