UNKNOWN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 48, 29 November 1900, Page 10

UNKNOWN.

mainly because of three things. First, the leaders of the Irish landlord party by perwHtunt agitation and by bitter attacks in the House of Loids. and in the Press, upon the Land Acts, will not permit the isMie to be closed ; second, because a handful of land agents, maintaining the evil tradition of a class which has been responsible for much of our troubles, appear to spend their lives harrying the tenantry of the country, forcing expensive law suits upon men who are utterly unable to afford these costly luxuries ; and thirdly, because the administration of the Acts which forced, in 1804, a Parliamentary inquiry, adparently goes irom bad to worse, and, according to every second man one meets, ia no longer even tolerable, 1 take this step most unwillingly. It might have been avoided if the leaders of the landlord party had beea v\ ise ; if they bad controlled some of their representatives in Ireland ; and, above all, bad the LandComnnhsion pursued us work in a broad and tolerant spirit, with the great policy of the Land Acts constantly before its mind. But although knowledge comes, wisdom lingers, and whom the gods wish to destroy they tiret drive mad. I propose

therefore to-day, and with the fullest sense of responsibility, to prove that it is perfectly hopele H » to continue aa a permanent plan the present system of fixing route, and to show that it in not impossible to revert to that sy-tem of single ownen-hip which has always been the ultimate goal of all real statesmen, and by which alone peace and contentment can be secured. Now, lam going to prove, prove, first of all,