YOUNG IRELAND.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 2995, 31 January 1881, Page 4

YOUNG IRELAND.

A recent issue of the Erceman's Journal hns the following in reference to Sir Gavan Duffy's new book :—

One of the besfc lossons to be learned from Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's book, " Young Ireland," is the futility, if not the criminality, of Coercion in Ireland. The policy is as old as Henry 11., and as rotten. Griraldus Cambrensis libelled the people then to justify their subjugation, just as the " Times" slanders them now to compel their coercion. The laws of Edward 111. against using an Irish name, speaking the native tongue, wearing Irish appai'el, were repeated, though futile and cruel, in the fire and sword of Elizabeth, the Cromwellian smiting hip and thigh, and the penal laws of Anne. What accompaniments had the milder rule of the House of Hanover ? An Insurrection Act was in force, to take a comparatively late period, from 1796 to 1802 ; Martial Law was established from 3803 to 1805 ; the Insurrection Act was invoked again from 1807 to 1810, from 1814 to 1818, from 1822 to 1823; from 1823 to 1825. "When it stopped there were still Courtsmartial, and from 1834 to 1835 a mitigated Coercion Act. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended three times in the first 35 years succeeding the Union, half of which term was spont in Ireland under some great or partial suspension of the Constitution. The same stoiw is true of the latter half of the period elapsing since Lord Castlereagh's Act. When the Devon Commission was sitting, the Marquis of Londonderry's agent averred that if the Government had treated the North as they had treated the South, they would have a Tipperary in Down ; and Mr Hancock, Lord Lurgan'a agent, reversed the declaration, and said that if the Government adopted tho conciliatory measures to Tipperary "which Down had had the benefit of, they ■would have created a Down in Tipperary. It is a curious thing to find Lord Clements, a predecessor of the bearer of the title of the Earldom of Leitrim, forty years ago opposing a Coercion Bill on the very grounds which are familiar to-day as household words. His lordship declared that during the last two years agrarian crimes had greatly diminished. "And were there," he asked, "no outrages in England ? Look at what had happened in the manufacturing districts. Look at the repeated attempts on the Q.neen's life in London." And, he added, when murders arc committed in England they are attribxited to madmen, but in Ireland they are systernatilly attributed to tbe Catholics. For " Catholics " now read "agrarianism." He knew no people who are so easily governed as his fellow-countrymen. The tactics of the Tories now are exactly similar to the tactics 6t the Tories then. The Attorney-General (Smith) asked what was the use of arguing with a people who asked for such impossible measures as the abolition of tho Established Church and Vote by Ballot ? These " impossible " things are now facts, and even then Sir Eobert Peel recognised the power of a tinited and determined Irish party. The following passage from his speech more than 40 years ago might be addressed to the House of Commons when it meets next Session:—"The experience," he said, "they had about the Irish Arms Bill last year must have shown them that a compact body of opponents, though few in number, may, by debating every sentence and word of a Bill, and by dividing on every debate, so obstruct its progress through Parliament that a whole Session may bo scarcely long enough for carrying through one measure, and of course the Irish members on one side and all the English and Scotch Radicals would sit from morn till eve and from eve till dewy morn to prevent any moro stringent law being enacted." Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, addressing the English people in his preface to " Yonng Ireland," says that " they see with amazement and dismay a whole people who profess to have no confidence in their equity, who proclaim that they do not expect fair play from them, and who fall into ecstasies of triumph over some disaster abroad or embarrassment at home which endangers or humiliates the Empire." He tells them that they must seek for the cause of this in history, and in the body of his book he quotes Miebuhr, declaring thnt "should England not change her conduct, Ireland may still for a long period belong to her, but not always ; and the loss of that country is the deathday not only of her greatness, but her very existence."