IRELAND AS SHE IS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 172, 14 July 1876, Page 7

IRELAND AS SHE IS.

•»-+ As evidence of the greatly improved condition of Ireland it is stated in Thomas' Almanac (a modest name for a most exhaustive annual report upon Irish trade, industry, agriculture and commerce), that last year the amount deposited in the Irish Savings Banks was an increase over the previous year of £980,000. In ten years the increase has amounted to £12,067,000, and the amount of savings on deposit in the various Saving Funds upon the Ist January, 1876, was £121,718,000, or about $600,000,000. In comparing ithis statement with that of January, 1846, we find the savings of the Irish working classes have increased five-fold in thirty years — this in the face of a decrease of three millions in population. The consumption of spirits in Ireland bears a curious ratio to the increase of savings. In the past ten years the decrease in the consumption of liquor has been twenty per cent., the amount of liquor not thus drunk turned into money, is almost the exact equivalent of the sum added to the Savings Bank account of the Irish workers. Pauperism has fallen far and away below that of England and Scotland, and now hardly exists in Ireland, save in the form of street begging, by cadger? and mendicants, who are professionals, and until the whole tribe is stamped out, will follow begging not through poverty, but as a profitable business. Education by means of the National and Christian Brothers' Schools, is now so general that within the past ten years, the educational status of Ireland has leaped up alongside that of Belgium and Holland — standing in the second rank after that of Prussia, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway—and in the same group as Belgium, Holland and Scotland — leading the latter nearly three per cent, in 1874, and far in advance of England, which strangely enough has retrograded, not only relatively, but actually, in her educational standard in the last decade. There are many cases operating to produce these beneficent results : social, economic, and political. The great decrease of drunkenness, the equally large growth of many branches of manufacture, must be credited with these consequences. Lace making has become an almost universal industry in the midland and southwestern parts of the Island, where the Celtic element, with its aesthetic talent, most predominates. The manufacture of machinery, the building of iron steamships, and the immense linen production of Ulster, radiate from Belfast, through the northeast. Cambrics, much of them Eold in this country as French, and hosiery, are made in yearly increasing quantities, in the vicinage of Dublin and the adjacent town of Balbriggan. It would be unwise and unfair to examine the political causes of the growth of Irish prosperity. The criminal neglect of England during the famine of 1846-7, by which 2,000,000 of human beings died of starvation and typhus, made her answerable to the public opinion of the world. One of the unanswerable counts in the world's indictment against England, were the shipß freighted with the magnificent contributions of the American people. Another was the collection made at Mecca, by a pious ' Mahomedan Pilgrim, for the starving Irish Giaour, as one of God's creatures. England, playing the role of informer in India, China, Italy, and our Catholic States, was so jeered, snubbed and laughed at as a hypocrite, that it became necessary for her to face the " Irish Question." As all great questions go back to an agrarian one, the l^Ja tenure was first looked to. It was found that in Ireland the law of entail must go, and " Tenant Bight " be admitted as legal, or face a civil war, which would extend to every demesne, by means of the tenantry, and to the country by the help of Fenian organizations. The " Encumbered Estates Act " passed, and under its operation up to 1874, five-eighths of the soil of Ireland has passed from the nominal ownership of the titled landlords to the native farmers who tilled the land again. The whole tithe system system has been abolished— or, in other words, the unaccountable injustice of compelling Dissenters to support an Established Church, has been declared illegal. A liberal and most munificent Corporation Act has been passed ; indeed, very much has been done to promote the advancement and growth of weU ordered freedom. The one dream of the Irishman has been unaccomplished — separate nationality. As political knowledge broadens, it will become a question for even the most extreme Irish Nationalist to debate, whether a Federal Union of the three nations of England, Ireland, Scotland, and their colonies and dependencies in Europe, would not, after all be better for Ireland. This would be a Saving of the distinct nationality of the Island, wherein she would treat, and be treated, as the peeress of her rivals, It is, however, a matter of congratulation

that the dear old land is fast winning the position she occupied in the ♦ early mediaeval time. To our people of this land we say, be of good heart $ in the " old house at home ' wonders are being done. If the progressive growth in sobriety, education, wealth, industry, and their concomitant virtuee and advantages continue, we can forget the past, and challenge to an honest race in the future, any nation of Western Europe. — * Wilminff* ton Herald.' *