THE COMING STRUGGLE IN IRELAND.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 107, 26 February 1870, Page 7

THE COMING STRUGGLE IN IRELAND.

"We quote the following from the Melbourne " Leader " :—": — " As an indication of the tone of public opinion in Ireland on this question " [tenure of land in Ireland] " at the present moment, the speech of Sir John Gray (brother of Mr. "Wilson Gray) at a banquet at Skibbereen is full of meaning. It was idle, he said, to talk now of compensation for improvements, or thirty-one years' leases. ' Compensation for improvements,' he continued, ' why should we ask for it ? "We want not property, not compensation. "We want a wrong to be put an end to, not to be paid a trifle in charity by the man who commits it. We want that the man who is born on the land, we want that the Irishman who gets possession as a tenant-farmer should be allowed to work the land, the sweat of whose brow alone makes it valuable to his landlord, and that no power on earth shall be able to remove him as long as he pays the rent. "We ask no thirty-one years' tenure. "We ask fixity of tenure.' Having instanced the case of the Shirley and Bath estates, where the value in little more than a century had been raised by the labour and capital of the tenants from £200 a-year to £54,000 a-year without the landlord having expended a farthing upon it, Sir John proceeded: — ' That is what we wanted to put a stop to. We want to put an end to Sbirleyism in all counties, and to prevent its going on in Monaghan j too. We want that when the tenant puts his labour in the soil, when the tenant puts hi 3 capital in the soil, he will put it there for himself. We want the man who has laid out labour in the land rooted to that land so that nothing but the hand of G-od may be ever able to remove him.' These sentiments were received with unbounded enthusiasm,"