IRISH LAND BILL

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 139, 11 December 1908, Page 7

IRISH LAND BILL

WITHDRAWN FOR THIS YEAR. By Telegraph.— Press Association.— Copyright. LONDON, 10th December. In the House of Commons, the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, announced tne withdrawal for this year of Mr. Birrell's Irish Land Bill. It was, he said,' hoped that the Bill would be passed in 1909. The Bill passed its second reading onTuesday. When he introduced the measure on the 23rd November, Mr. Birrell assured the Nationalists that if any measure had to be carried over to another session he would resign unless this one was included. Theiefore we may expect to see the Bill gone on with at an early period of next session. Mr. Birrell, ia his speech, said they must decide between occupation by cattle or people. Apropos, a writer in the New ¥ork Post, who recently*visited Ireland, stated:— l rode through more than seventy miles of Limerick, Clare, and Galwuy, along the most fertile spots, and everywhere the fields were tilled with cattle, ,but scarcely a farmer's cottage was to be seen. At intervals were temporary buildings, put up for the use of constables, who were watching lest the cattle should be lifted or driven out. On tho same iine, too, and not far from the police huts, was an agricultural school, provided by the government. It is too soon to criticise this venture, which has started recently; but, looking fiom its bulk in the landscape to the cattle fields, and the police houses, it impressed me as a rather grim irony. I asked a farmer what the people thought of the school. "They think well of it," he said, "so far as they know about it yet. Nobody in his senses would gainsay but ' the people ought to be more knowledgeable than they are about the newe&t kind of fanning , but what farms have they to till, and where are the people to fill the scientific schools? Sure, you can see for yourself that the country is nearly emptied of people. What eke can you expect where the cattle is put above them?" At a little inn on the Galway line I sounded the proprietor as to conditions. He was a bit of a diplomat, and betrayed no opinion regarding things governmental. "We've had many a crusher put upon us in the name of the law," he observed, "but the last, and, to the best of my belief, the most deadly, is the grazier, for it has turned the people against farming at all, and whaD else is tßere for them in a land without coal or iron, or anything to make quick .work for them?"

Puny boys and girls 'need careful attention. Nothing quite so good for them as Steam' Wine, which makes new blood, sharpens their appetite, and rept.nves childhood's happyj vigour.— Advt..