The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR P.M. Resurrexi. MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1881.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 4000, 24 October 1881, Page 2

The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR P.M. Resurrexi. MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1881.

"The strong measures adopted by the Executive are having a salutary effect upon the condition of Ireland,"-^-so we are informed by; a cablegram in another column ; and such a condition is absolutely necessary if the Land Bill is to get a fair trial. That the legislation of the late session will have a beneficial effect upon

the country is the opinion of all men who have given the subject fair consideration, and have not been influenced by prejudice and party spirit. Sir Charles Gavau Duffy, in a late letter on the subject, writes:— " How ought the Irish people to receive this new law, and how can they best use it in the interest of Ireland ? This is the most pressing and practical of all questions at this moment. What we have to do with, of course, is the law as it actually stands; As the Bill left the House of Commons, it seemed to me it was the completest, and indeed the only,^ nearly complete act of justice the Imperial Parliament ever proffered to Ireland. Catholic Emancipation was hampered by insulting restrictions, and was long a dead letter; the disestablishment of the Irish Church, though it was a courageous and triumphant achievement, was anything rather than a recognition of religious equality, for on one pretence or another the lands and buildingand the.bulk of the funds were given back to the minority. Municipal reform, Parliamentary reform, the whole catalogue of what are called concessions to Ireland, Wire of the same character, docked and disfigured to pass the jealous scrutiny of the English peers or the English people. But the Land Bill was so large and generous in its conception that after -the lopping it has undergone at the hands of a selfish oligarchy, an Act of Parliament remains , which, honestly and fearlessly administered,, may do for Iceland what Stein and ilardeuberg did for Prussia—built it up anew from its ruins, may indeed, without violence or wrong to any one, undo and reverse the confiscations of Cromwell and the WilliamiteParliaments. Theclaim of individuals to confiscated property is dead and gone:ages ago, but the claim of the long-excluded Irish race.to the possession and control of their own soil remains an inextinguishable right, and this right is recognised, it seems to me, ia the Land Act of '81, for the first time since Sarsfield sailed from the Shannon. If we had repealed the Union in 1848, a patriot Parliament sitting in Dublin .would, J think, have framed some such. taea*ure to make periaan&nt peace in the country

they were commissioned to rule." From Bach an authority as the writer,

the opinion is worth accepting, and when we remember the remarks upon this subject in late speeches of Mr Gladstone and the Marquis of Salisbury, we may infer that the question of land legislation is iikfily to occupy the minds of English statesmen for the next few years. The experience gained in the working of the new Act in Ireland will be of great service in directing such legislation, and in time it may be found that from the agitation in Ireland untold good has resulted to the entire people of Great Britain.