THREATENED RENT STRIKE IN IRELAND.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 141, 13 February 1886, Page 4

THREATENED RENT STRIKE IN IRELAND.

Both parties agree tbat-the condition of Ireland was never more alarming than it is at present. Earl Cowper's warning that the country was on the eve of the most formidable strike against rent yet seen is already justified. The league has organised combinations among the tenants over a "large part of the country. It undertakes to fix an arbitrary per cent, reductions, and prohibits all payments to landlords who refuse to accept the league's scale. Judicial rents, held, according to Mr Parnell's dictum, to be no more binding than other attempts of landlords to enforce payment by legal means, are resisted by organised force. The landlords on their side are organising also. The Duke of Devonshire, Lord Hartington's father, owning 6,000 acres in Ireland, has accepted the presidency of the Irish Defence Union. The most urgent appeals have reached the Government ; menances, not the less urgent, come from the other side. " United Ireland," the chief Parnellite, declares with all solemnity that it regards the agrarian struggle as never during the century more serious than it is now ; that the population of several counties is ready to take up arms, and that the people will not submit either to eviction or punishment for resistance. It openly threatens reprisals if the Government attempts to enforce the law. The Archbishop of Dublin, in yesterday's speech, echoes these threats. The Irish will press for a measure to prevent evictions, The Tories and Liberal agree that Parliament must prevent the tenants from confiscating the property of landlords.