IMPORTANT QUESTIONS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 210, 13 April 1877, Page 7

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS.

Wk take the following extract from a *peech lately delivered in Dublin by Mr. Butt, and r ported in the Ulster Lxaminer : -"Then there ia the land question and the education question. (Cheers.) We may have different opinions on the means by which the condition of the Irish occupier of tho soil is to be rooted to that soil ; but no man who honestly looks at the state of land tenure in Ireland can avoid the conviction that something must bo done to give security 10 the cultivator of the soil. (Cheers.) I have framed a measure, and our members are perfectly at liberty to canvass its merits or dis-ent from its details ; I may 1101 have framed a perfect measure ; but Ido believe that it is essential to the peace and prosperity of Ireland that further security should be given to the occupier of the soil. (Cheers.) And times are coming when, perhaps, it may liecome of more importance still. There are indications of an importation of foreign provi sions from America, and that a revolution is close at hand that may transfer the pasture lands of the country again into tillage. (Hear.) I am not sure that it will not be a most happy change for the country, but in the change, believe me, the social question between landlord and tenant must arise — (cheers) — and if the Legislature do«s not in time pr< pare for that great change in the relation between landlords and tenants you may see again the heartless evictions of 1847 repeated to adjust that change in the interests of the landlords — (hear, hear) unless the Legislature interfere meanwhile to protect the tenant ; and I ouly hope you will not see again the terrible retribution which the crimes of the landlords, I do not hesitate to say, have provoked in other times. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) This question is assuming, for the peace of the country, an enormous importance. (Cheers.) That question we will press upon the attention of the Legislature ; we will, at all events, do our duty. (Cheers.) For the education question, every day and hour deepens my conviction of the importance of that question — I was going to say to the Catholic community, but I will cay to tho whole Irish community, because the Catholic community cannot suffer without suffering to the nation. fCheers.) I don't think the importance of this question ia realised. (Hear.) A monopoly of educational institutions for Protestants (for it is practically this) is Protestant ascendancy in its worst and most destructive shape. (Cheers ) Every day the Catholic young mau is placed at a disadvantage, because he has not the educational institutions in which he can compete on perfectly equal terms with bis Protestant countryman. I don't go into any question of what control the clergy should have over eduvatign, Tllab is for the Catholic

people themselves. (Applause.) But what I, aa an Irishman, aay it that every Irishman — whether he congregates with his own countrymen, with Englishmen, Scotchmen, Frenchmen, or Germans — ought to have an opportunity in his own land of acquiring the education that would fit him for that competition on equal terms without being c >lled on to cacrifiee one conscientious conviction of the heart. (Loud cheering.) And if I make this demand on behalf of the nation am I to be told that I am handing over the education of the country to the Roman Catholic clergy • Ihese are two of the questions we will have to press upon Parliament this session. Mr. Butt the* referred to the Grand Jury system, which he said was the most anomalous and absurd in the whole machinery of legislation. Then ore a great many other questions which I will not take up your tim« by enumerating, but which it will be our duty to press on the English Parliament— not, I repeat, as substitutes for Home Role. Never ia the Eng'ish Parliament in pressing those measures did I utter, or will I utter, a word that would imply that we were waiving o* abandoning or modifying the great demand of the Irish people for self-government. (Great cheering.) The first attribute of legislation that would be successful is to impress upon the people the idea that it springs from themselves — (hear, hear) — and not from any other 6ource. (Applause ) Any other form of government might make wise laws — a tyrant might make wise laws — but as long as you crush down every feeling of independence, of national energy, every instinct of national self-respect, be your laws (ever so wise, they are but the gilded chains upon a people. (Cheers.) These are the principlet upon which I intend to take my stand.