MR. BRIGHT IN IRELAND.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 12, Issue 816, 8 January 1867, Page 3

MR. BRIGHT IN IRELAND.

The London newspapers of the Ist November .thus write of Mr. Bright's speech in Dublin, reported in our last : —

"Recognising the wide difference be-, tween the almost speculative . character of Mr. Bright's grievances in England and the actual , evils -which , he finds deeply rooted in Ireland, the Times declines, nevertheless, in finding a cause for the wrong, to dismiss the idea of some radical defect in the Irish character quite so easily as Mr. Bright. All races do not possess the same virtues, and no disrespect is shown towards Irish character in maintaining that its genius is not political. It would be foolish to shut our eyes to the difficulties, partly, indeed, resulting from soil and climate, but partly also from the national temperament, which the most' enlightened government might have failed to overcome. Refraining at present from discussing either the justice or the policy of the measures which he advises with regard to the church and the land, the Times will suggest only a few practical difficulties. As to the church, would Mr. Bright abolish all endowment in money as well as land ? To whom should the land, or the tithe rent-charge, or the consols revert ? What is to be done with the property or the money ? What constitutes an " absentee," and beyond what amount is the possession of Irish lauds to be forbidden to English landowners? What is to be done "with the purchase-money ? T^hen under ■what regulation is the land of the " absentees" to be divided, sold, held, and occupied ?' For example, may an Englishman purchase a lot, lay it down in grass, build a house upon it, and come and go as he does in this country ? May the purchaser of a lot sell it. again, and may the land sold under this measure be capable of accumulation, like other land ? May a man buy all the property of an absentee, turn out all human beings upon it, and substitute deer ? if a man elects (to , reside in Ireland, what quantity of English or Scotch land may he possess ? Until something like an answer can be given the Times must doubt whether Mr. Bright has advanced his reputation by his first essay in constructive statesmanship.

The different temperaments of the two nations usually preventing the orators of one from being perfectly congenial to an audience of the other, it would be interesting, the Daily News says, to ascertain what was the real impression made by perhaps our greatest living master of English eloquence, but from whose speeches the splendid vices of Irish rhetoric are absent. Aware, perhaps, of the .somewhat inflammable character of the material with which he had to deal, Mr. Bright tamed down his natural fire, and, with the exception of a single suggestion, which does not seem to possess the one recommendation which could justify it — necessity — appears to have spoken under reserve and a strong sense of responsibility. It is obvious that if the landlords are willing to sell, they can do so without the aid of a parliamentary commission, and then if the farms are to be sold in the open uaflt?leefc 7 wbei?e prices miglit be pushed up to an extravagant height, the present occupants may not get them : indeed, in many instances they would be little qualified to exercise the duties of proprietorship, and the process of eviction would go on as before. Artificially to favour or artificially to obstruct the acquisition of large estates seem to us courses equally adverse to sound political economy. The abstract right of the state, as the ultimate owner of the soil,- is one which, even if it be theoretically tenable, should be kept in the background for the gravest emergencies. To use it without absolute necessity ia to cause more inconvenience from the sense of precarious possession than the advantages to be hoped for from any specific charge, if it were a thousand times more promising than that which Mr. Bright recommends. The remainder of his speech was as just and generous in sentiment and as sagacious in statesmanship as it was eloquent in expression.

In the opinion of the Post the tendency of the speech was to aggravate the difficulties in the way of the progress of Ireland, and the disclosures which Mr. Bright made, if of a nature to elicit some Irish support, will at the same time serve to intensify the misgiving he has to overcome in England.

To the Herald Mr. Bright is still a mere demagogue — the Rochdale Quaker—the head-centre of the revolutionary agitation now being carried on within our island. The Roman clergy in Ireland, it says, regard him as the unofficial mouthpiece of the late government, as the man who can terrorise the whigs into granting anything he chooses to demand in their own behalf. But if they had been able to project their vision out o the narrow insular view which they take of the question 1 , they might have found something gravely sobering in the reflection that the man who was propounding the scheme for plundering the Irish establishment is the type of a school of politicians who are the deadliest enemies of Catholicism, and have plundered it of its revenue whenever and wherever they had the power to do so.

While fully agreeing with Mr. Bright in his denunciation of the protestant establishment, the Telegraph cannot so clearly see its way as to his proposition regarding the land. What he proposes would be a very slight and palliative measure unless you pass an absurd law prohibiting our countrymen from becoming owners of Irish estates.

The Star lavishes praise upon the speech in all its parts, and adds that the hon. gentleman's visit to Ireland has an immediate and direct political significance, the full force of which will probably before long be realised by all parties in this country.