The Wairarapa Daily. THURSDAY, MAY 11, 1882. THE IRISH DIFFICULTY.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 4, Issue 1071, 11 May 1882, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. THURSDAY, MAY 11, 1882. THE IRISH DIFFICULTY.

Ireland, like ley Zeijiij.ntJ, is g, pastoral country, but while it is oijlp qnetliird tjj.e size pf this colony, it contains in proportion to its nf-ea thirty times as many inhabitants as wo bayp, Tjje real Irish difficulty is over-population! Country settlers in New Zealand have found out in innumerable instances that they cannot maintain their families in comfort on forty and fifty acre sections, yet in Ireland if every landlord were transported and his holding given to existing tenants the small proprietor could not, from the extent of the country and the accumulation of its population, hope to obtain more than from ten to twenty acres of land, and on so small an area lie could not prosper,. New Zealand could, 110 doubt, carry ten fips its present rural population—it inigjit svei} jnaintain comfortably twenty times' as 'many people—but we question if it came to thirty times the number, the Irish standard, whether it would be a desirable country to live ill, though in one very material point-tlst Qf it would still |i.av.e a greftt advantage over the Emerald Isle. Ireland is necessarily poor, chaining as it does a larger population thai) itfj soil will support. In good seasons its people can exist, in indifferent ones they are half starved, and. in bad ones the starvation process must, in many instances, be a complete one. A people so situated must be discontented, and the mere fact that the race is a highspirited and active one increases the outward manifestation of the dissatisfaction, Almost every English statesman has taken his turn to remedy the Irish difficulty, but after the lapse of generations the difficulty remains, and its solution now appears as far off as ever. No one has done moro for Ireland that Mr Gladstone. In 1869 he disestablished an alien Church, only to find that religion was not the key note to the difficulty, Iji the following year he altered the land tenure only fo find that the land laws were not tlje solution of the problem. Ten years later ho threw himself again heart and soul into the task of doing justice to Ireland without attaining his reward viz., a contented populace, The onjy material relief for Ireland is material prosperity, and to obtain this the country must be made very much larger or its _ population very much smaller. Agitation culminating in murders is possible in <1 half starved community and is impossible in a well-fed one, Fanning the agitation with hopes of remedial measures, which prove to be insufficient, simply perpetuates and intensifies it. The more Mr Gladstone does for Ireland the more assassinations will be recorded, unless crime is so severely dealt within that land that punishment will prove an effective deterrent, If natural difficulties of an unsurmountable character intervene, the efforts of Mr Gladstone and the Radical party must not only prove futile but mischievous, The wound.is irritated by the mistaken effort which is made tc heal it. The Irish party has had the best services of Mr Gladstone and he in return has been sup-

ported by the representatives of the nation, but the time has now arrived when- a Conservative ministry should take charge of affairs. The latter will put down firmly tho ' useless and cruel agitation which prevails, and this perhaps is the only benevolence that, can in tho present 'state of affairs be extended to Ireland. '