The Tumeka Leader TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1889. HIGHLAND LAND LEAGUE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1988, 31 December 1889, Page 2

The Tumeka Leader TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1889. HIGHLAND LAND LEAGUE.

Ths land war is still going on in the Highlands of Scotland. We do not hear a great deal about it somehow, but if some of the speeches made there not long ago had been delivered in Ireland the speakers would have been sent to gaol. There is in existence in the Highland a Land League, and delegates from its various branches met recently at Stornoway. The chairman, Dr Macdonald, M.P., made a great speech, in the course of which he showed the good the league bad already done. Following in the footsteps of Ireland they had, he said, wrenched from the British Parliament an Act to enable the commissioners to revalue the land. The Act was not all they could desire, and the commissioners were not the best they could have got, yet in spite of all a great deal of good had been done, The commissioners had already dealt with 5600 holdings, and had reduced the rents of these by £IO,OOO. The former rents amounted to £30,500, the ren'B payable now was about £21,000, so that £IO,OOO a year had thus been put straight into the pockets of the crofters. Besides this, the arrears of rent on these holdings were £64,000, and these had been cancelled to the extent of £45,000. Taking the £IO,OOO by which the rents were reduced at 15 years’ purchase the result would be £150,000, and adding to this the £45,000 of cancelled arrears it brought the gross sum by which the people had benefited up to £200,000. At present the commissioners had only dealt with one-fifth of the land they had to deal with, and if the same results were produced in the remaining four-fifths the total sum of £1,000,000 would be gained to the people by the land agitation. All this had been taken from the landlords and given to the people, yet it was quite plain that full justice had not been done to the people by the commissioners. They had assessed land near Portree at a rental of £2 per acre, and if the same land was near London such a rent would be considered excessive for it. The land would have to be valued over again, as had been done in Ireland. One would think that the results produced above would have been satisfactory, but evidently they are not. This must lead to the reflection: What must the rents have been before the commissioners reduced them by one-third ? It simply means that the landlords were robbing the poor people of at least every third pound they took from them, and yet they complain of the arrears of rent being cancelled. In Ireland the arrears of rent were not cancelled at all, and, as Mr Gladstone recently pointed out, this makes a great dif erpnce between the way the crofters and the Irish tenants have been treated. But nothing will satisfy the Scotch crofters except to g#t the land back into their own possession free of all landlords. Violent speeches were ■ made denouncing landlordism, Lady Matheson’s castle being called “th o| wolf’s dnn,” and a resolution was 1 carried demanding the restoration of their hereditary rights to the land, the

sea, the lochs, the rivers, and the foreshores of the Highlands, One of the speakers was Mr Conway, an Irish member of Parliament, who said he was present at the command of Mr Parnell, who was unable to attend himself. He urgod them to follow Mr Gladstone, and not be misled by Mr Chamberlain. The resolution was carried unanimously, It was also decided to go on vigorously with the work of organising leagues throughout the country, and Mr Donald Macrae was appointed organiser, and instructed to devote his whole time to it. Money was subscribed for this purpose, £65 10s being subscribed at the meeting, and thus it is that the work progresses in the Highlands. From this it will be seen that the troubles of the landlords are hourly increasing, and it will take all the ingenuity the Conservatives can muster to prop them up much longer. There can be no doubt that landlordism is doomed—it is on its last legs, and is bound to fall. One of the Scotch members has advocated the adoption (if the Plan ef Campaign, and the probabilities are that it will be resorted to before long. Landlordism has bad its day; it used it cruelly and senselessly, and it is bound to have its reward before long. —j «,— ANOTHER PLOT.

Mr Parnell is evidently not out of the wood yet, No sooner has he vanquished one , conspirator than another arises. Hercules’ labors in killing the Lernsean serpent with the 100 heads was nothing compared with what Mr Parnell has to contend with. He vanquished Pigott and Captain O’Shea jumps up in his place, According to yesterday’s telegrams Captain O’Shea is sueing for a devorce from his wife on the grounds of adultery with Mr Parnell, but whether the charge is true or not very few of Mr Parnell’s friends will believe it. The general public will believe that it is another attempt to crush the Irish cause. The antecedents of Captain O’Shea are not at all in his favor. He went to Parliament on Mr Parnell’s shoulders, but soon proved refractory and refused to brook the discipline of the [lrish party. He voted on several occasions against Mr Parnell, and consequently when the election came round he was kicked out. He has not forgiven Mr Parnell for this, and when the TimesParnell Commission sat last year he was one of the first witnesses called, and gave evidence which was characterised as utterly false. The evidence proved useless, as he contradicted himself frequently under the crossexamination of Sir Charles Russell, and he immediately fled to Spain, it was said to escape prosecution for perjury. We have not the slightest doubt that this last move is a part of ,the conspiracy to ruin Mr Parnell. Sir Charles Dilke has been ruined in a similar way, and thousands still .believe him innocent.