THE PAST CENTURY.

Waikato Argus, Volume X, Issue 914, 28 March 1901, Page 4

THE PAST CENTURY.

[Extracts from Loudon Times]. j 1847. Fjjt.ruary 22.—The State of IRELAND. The time ia now come when something must be done for the permanent settlement of Ireland. Neither patience, nor money, nor time, nor opportunity, admit of longer delay. Here you are, my lords and gentlemen, in the fifth week of the session, voting away money and dispensing laws for what you call a temporary emergency. Don't deceive yourselves. Unless you awake from your dream, the emergency will he a continual necessity. The Empire will be drained, exhausted, beggared, and yet the " emergency " will not be diminished. It is not the potato which alone is damaged ; the honesty, the industry, the self-reliance of the people have gone too ; they are rotting away fast. The blight has seired their consciences and deadened their faculties. Some pine in selfcomplacent atrophy ; some stagnate in malignant idleness. . . . Others—with Oriental cunnings—resolve to glut themselves with the ignominfous profits of a national contribution. Mr Labouchere has stated that already armed gangs are traversing the country, and forbidding the cultivation ot the soil. Such a prohibition is likely to be effective. It appeals to fear, to superstition, and to idleness. It appeals to the shortsighted love of unearned pelf, and the mean dependence on extraneous bounty. But it is a fearful sign. If universal, it would be fatal to th e peace and happiness of any land. But who is to blame for this? Who are to blame for all the worst symtoms of Irish misery and Irish degradation ? Who, indeed ! Their uame is legion. Walk into either house of legislation, and you meet the authors of this state of things at every step. Here yon see the absentee proprietor cumbered by a debt which he has hitherto eked out by patty sub - divivisions ot high-rented land, till he has rendered the state of proprietor synonymous with that of pauper. Tr.erc you see the hired patriot—the mob orator—the pet repealer of his district—the man who taught the people to meet, to combine, to shout for repeal and the liberator—the man who at o*ne moment tells you that there is no remedy for Ireland but a native Parliament, and in the next, that she is too needy and distressed to help herself. He it was who first taught the duty of resistance to Government and the power of popular combination. Him you wdl have to thank, if the soil remiiu unploughed and the seed unsown. But go a step further and higher, and there you will see men of wealth, station, and eloquence, who aid and abet these in their plot agiin.it the trauquillity of the Empire and the Government of Ireland, by repudiating that indispensable enactment which would make the peverty of Ireland dependent upon its property. You complain, my lords, that Ireland is pouring a tide of squalid indigence into our cities end villages, yet you refuse to bind her to the maintenance of her pauper brood ; you give easement and acquittance to a land wh'ch has a gross rendal of £13,000,000 a year—a rental whici) mauy of you allow might be easily doubled. You recognise the huge mischief of small holdings, yet you refuse to pass a law which would virtually annul them. You say, "Look to the Irish farm : r, he is more than half a pauper," yet you hesitate to drive him into bis proper statp, that of a daily labourer.

You compassionate the landowners; but have you no pity for the people ? You say they want relief .-.nd cannot gvie it. We ask you t'> burden Irish property of whatever kind it be, and in wtiose hands soever. But you hesitate : you doubt; you refuse ; meanwhile stubborn English industry breaks its bread with ravening Irish want:

" At ilia, '"Ut sanis, a corio nunquarn absterre-

bitur uncto.'' Another famine may come on Irish indigence, watching at its cabin door, speculating on English gold, and clamorous for Repeal ! Such is the anomalous drama played by a people with Asiatic tempers, Saxon institutions, and ultra Fopish faith.

Julv 29 -Death of Mn Waltei

The mournful aspect assumed by our journal this morning will- wide'y communicate what has been for some time painfully expected—the death of John Walter, Esq., of Bearwood, in the county of Btrkf. Widely, indeed, will his death be known, when the notice of it has been read in that publication which he had made the chief record of passing events, as well as the most powerful organ of .public opinion, not only in these islands, not only in the vast populations that own the same rule, or speak the same language as ourselves, but throughout the whole earth. The my raids who daily persue these columns have before the.m the monument of his merits; and his powers. It was his active and well-directed enterprise, his fertility of invention, and ' lavi-h generosity that first drew a coutinual scream of intelligence from the furthest realms of the civilised world, instructed and enlightened in return by his political genius and sagacity, us well as frequently charmed and won over to his convictions by the eloquence which he retained, directed, and approve!. Mr Walter was the prime author and chief upholder of that celebrity and influence which the Times journal possesses. Though always ready to show the kindest and most flittering confidence in those whom he had trained to the honourable service, he never withdrew, even after he ceased to be ostensible manager, the aid of those counsels which they could not too highly appreciate. He may rightly, therefore, be considered the sole architect of the mighty fabric which is without a rival in its dignity and proportions, and the foundations of which are to deeply laid in the affections aud esteem of the public as to defy all ordinary and probable vicissitudes and attacks.

It will often be inquired, and especially at this time, how it happened that, in an a»e of wonders, when all the requisites for success in every brand) of enterprise were widely diffused, one man was able to leave all his fellows so far in the rear, and accomplish a triumph so entire, and apparently so secure as to be actually called a monopoly by those who are forced to recognise what they do not willingly admire. The secret of thin success wa m-jy venture to commend as a lesson to the ago. It was not attained so much by brilliancy of talent though by no person or body in the world was talent sought out with more discernment and trouble, or rewarded with more delicacy and munificence, thin by the chief director of the Times—as by the more steady power of a strict integrity in that director, and, to the utmost of his influence, in those whom he employed. A coueniptuous rejection ot all corrupt proposals, and a thorough indifference to any boon a Minister could oiler, excepting only that political information which it is the duty of a Minister to promulgate through the best channels, a strict impartiality which courted no greatness and screened no offender, and a persevering industry which shrank from no effort and ncglectct no detail, i.ehieved this great work. To this mii9t be added that probably there never whs more enterprise combined with less risk, A nation so often obliged to witness the reverses inflicted by the elements of nature, and the .stdl wilder caprices of nun, is apt to think there is nothing Btratijjc or dishonourable m a speculation which haAirda the property, or what is woree, the political molality ui th mi :U'ils on the cast of a die

Such rashness was neither pruetised nor tolerate;! in this instance. The Time-' has prospered by prudence, not c!.-uuce. It has, indeed, been fortunate, but its fortune has been that, which generally attends on the brave, the good, and th- wise. . • .