THE SITUATION IN IRELAND
A NEW DAY HAS DAWNED FOR IRELAND
The changing of rack-rented farmers into peasant proprietors
After years of struggle and sacrifice and increasing strife, the Irish cause has emerged at length triumphantly from the contest, and Ireland is on the highroad to nationhood and independence. Stupendous obstacles had to surmounted, centuries of prejudice had to dissipated, the power of a tyrannical and domineering oligarchy, accustomed to an unquestioned ascendancy, had to be shattered ere the Irish people were in a position to assert their will and to bring the English government to recognize the justice of their claims.
Landlordism is dead in Ireland ! With what meaning that sentence is pregnant ! What memories does it not conjure up? Landlordism is dead in Ireland–that fell system which is responsible for centuries of ruin, rapine, bloodshed, famine and miseries unfathomable in their callous inhumanity and their awful infamy–landlordism, which defaced and depopulated the country and which has left scars on the breast of the nation which will not be healed in generations, is dead. This is news that will send a thrill to the hearts of Irishmen wherever their lot be cast; this is news which the brave efforts of a united people and a devoted Parliamentary party have made it possible to tell. And many a weary exile in the vast continent beyond the seas, his day’s toil being done, will think with pride and satisfaction of the fact that the tyranny which forced him from his native shores is crushed and trampled on forever.
The League made the Government and landlords knuckle under
Never in the history of the past hundred years was nobler work done for Ireland than that accomplished by the Irish party during the past session of Parliament. After five years of almost superhuman effort, after five years of mighty wrestling with the British Government, an organized and disciplined people brought things to such a pass that they made a satisfactory land bill a necessity – a thing to be desired both by the landlords and by the ruling powers. Last year the Irish Chief Secretary introduced a land bill of a sort. The Irish party would have none of it. It was a party measure, they said, in effect, and they wanted no further peddling with the agrarian difficulty. In face of this attitude of outspoken hostility it was useless for the government to proceed. During the winter the United Irish League waged a war of such unrelenting vigour that the landlords and the Government both saw they must knuckle down. They bethought them it was better to make a show of graceful surrender rather than fight the matter out and be beaten, and so they suggested a compromise. Why not a conference of representatives from both camps? The Irish leaders saw no reason why a conference should not be held. It could do no harm and might result in much good. It did result in much good. The history of those famous negotiations is well known to your readers. I do not propose to dwell on them other than to say that the recommendations which emanated from the conference formed the groundwork upon which the superstructure of the land bill was raised. And now the bill is an act and a good one. That is a fact universally acclaimed by all sections in Ireland. It comes into operation in changing track-rented farmers into peasant proprietors.
The grievances of the Irish Labourers will have to be settled
One class, however, is sorely discontented and with good reason – the Irish labourer. They had hoped that their claims would have received generous recognition in the land bill. To say that they were grievously disappointed would be to state it mildly. In its subtitle the land bill professed to amend the labourers’ acts. It did not make the faintest attempt to do so.