The State of Ireland.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 16, 17 April 1902, Page 3

The State of Ireland.

An ounce of fact is worth a ton of fiction, especially the fiction regarding the state of Ireland which is cabled out to the colonies from London. The statement made some time ago by Mr. J. Redmond that there was less crime in Ireland than in any other part of the United Kingdom, as proved by Government statistics, received confirmation from Mr. T. W. Rusaell, in a speech delivered in the House of Commons in the early part of March. Mr. Russell, it must be remembered, ia neither a Nationalist nor an Irishman ; he is a strong Unionist, a staunch Presbyterian, and a cool-headed Scotchman, co that his remarks cannot be discounted on the score of political or religious bias : For the fourth time in 40 years (said Mr. Russell) we find the old familiar facts, the horse going round and round in the barn mill, and never getting one step further forward. Trouble sprang from the land. That was the first thing. Then a League was formed. Men addressed public meetinga ; they were sent to gaol ; public feeling was embittered. He regretted the absence of the Chief Secretary and also its cause, but he asked the question, was that method of governing Ireland to go on for ever ? Was there no way out 1 Was that the best that English Government could do for that unhappy land ? That was his question ? In his opinion there was a way out — a perfectly straight and safe way out — and it was because he believed that from the bottom of his heart that he ventured to occupy the time of the House. The figures had been read out that night as to the agrarian crime. There had not been such

A Clean Calendar for Fifty Years with regard to agrarian crime. Had the Executive Government to deal with ordinary crime 1 There was more crime in one English county in a week than there was in the whole of Ireland in a year. The Executive Government had to deal with an absolutely crimeless country. That was the first fact. His own attitude was that of a man who had seen during' 40 years in Ireland four serious upheavals of Irish Society. The trouble and every bit of disorder by which the Executive Government of Ireland was confronted sprang truly and literally from the ground, from the bogs out of which those hundreds and thousands of people were vainly endeavoring, day in and day out, to extract what was called a living. That was the source of all the trouble, and there was no

other cause whatever ; and whilst he should support the Government in maintaining the supremacy of the law over everbody and everything-, he asked the Attorney-General for Irelind, who was also the member for North Derry, was there not a more excellent way of dealing with Ireland than the one which he and his Government were pursuing at the prese it time. He asked whether it would not be truer statesmanship for the Goverument of the country, rich and strong as it was, to face

The Terrible and Horrible Facts of Life n the AVest of Ireland, and so to make life at least a little tolerable for the people who had to live there. They were sending men to gaol almost every day for speejhes delivered in those regions, for alleged intimidation, and for incitement to boycotting He most deeply deplored it, but he admitted that no one m the place of the Attorney-General or the Chief Secretary could do anything else. The King's authority must be maintained, but his chief complaint was not of the Goverment's action so much as of their inaction. Let them take the ca=e of the De Freyno estate, out of which all the difficulty arose. How many members of that Hoveu >c had gone to gaol for language usel in regard to that property ? He had heard it said that they said what he (Mr Rus3ell) had said in the North. He did not think it was so. At any rate, he should continue to say it. How many members of that House had any sort of idea what the De Freyne estate was like? It was simply one of those tracts or bogs, on which the people were driven, and which they had reclaimed by spade work. Out of that bog land all this trouble sprang. There was not a penny of economic rent to be had The rent was paid by the devotion of children in the slums of Xew York and Chicago, and laboring men in this country and Scotland. All this disorder did not arise from falling prices in agricultural produce nor on account of the weather, but from one thing alone, the action of the State Department over which the Cliief Secretary presided. As the representative of that Department, he spent £300,000 of public money in the purchase of the Dillon estate. Under ordinary circumstances he (Mr. Russell) would have regarded that as a beneficent ace, for the result was the tenants of that estate had discovered a new heaven and a new earth. But the fact was that the two classes of tenants were living under totally different conditions, and men were going to prison. Naturally the De Freyns tenants had struck against it, and hjyi caused all this disturbance. But there was a way out. Why should not the Government of this country, rich and strong as it wa?, face the real facts? Why should they Btand shivering on the brink / Did anybody imagine that the House could not see that the Chief Secretary did not like what was done ? His predecessor (Mr. Gerald Balfour) was in the House, and he fought and re-isteJ the pressure in his time. The Government were being pushed from behind. There were four or five

Great Irish Landlords in the Cabinet and mPD in that House who ought to repre ent the tenants and not the landlords were busy oa public platforms in Ulst r hounding on the Government to this stupid c itd'-tiophe. One gi\at. generous, statesman-like aut for the ben<fic of th^e poor pcop c and the police might be di-banded, the resi.lent magi trat s dwuK-ie I, and the Government would earn the giatitude uf tho-e not ungraU tul by nature. As regarded boyc tting, he knew wh.it il meant m Ireland. The great joke of it was he had fflt it fiom both Fides. Boycotting ought to be punished, but the (ergons who confuted and brought it about culd not b«- trot at The l.s-o,i had bieu learnt that when the whole opinion of a lo ality was umri-il uu.unst a family or an individual the c w r as no ne d lor i oi^p r <-y '! tiev had to ask the executive where it st jod m Ireland. '1 h, j mti»t not blame the Irish League for what might tulKiw the denial ot j i-tic.'. He condemned the rnisiepiesenta'ion of Iri-h .ft'.urs which appeared in the London Press. The Entrli-h Government had io v yot into a tight place. Up to 18(58 the policy of cuiiquer-t was ii fo> u<j, but m that year the Church wa3 disestablished, ..nd since th"n there h d been Land Act after Land Act, and the peop'e were able to uk through three-fourths of the r reprosentnt yes. Js.it no remedy as yet had come for the people of the West of Ireland, who, if they had been foreigners, would have b..eou> AnaichNts. It wus different in Ulster where theie were no ruined houses, as in the We -it of Ireland. General Gordon when he \i-,iU-d Ireland did not talk of party, he only spoke of the attempt that hid b -en male t) promote the welfare of the people. But alter all tin r m-t . i c>s of Irish landlords and their friends their fo ly had found tln-m uir,, The heartless laughter and ironic.il rshudrs he hal bei'ii received with by some hon. members wa-i a disgrace to them and the English Parliament, which had stood so lung m the way of pn^r^s m helaud. It was not a question of the Leslie's authority ; they stood far in the background. When the people lost taith m legislation the secret societies forming at this moment shot their landlords' and the blame was put upon the League. The thing was buffered by a callous and indifferent Executive. It was. the laud mj stein of Ireland that still kept the Irish people in angi-r and npirr, and the duty of the Government was to get at the n.ot oi the tiouble written deeply, and. re-move it iruin the brain of the lush people.