T. P. O'CONNOR ON IRELAND'S DECLINE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2263, 15 July 1897, Page 55

T. P. O'CONNOR ON IRELAND'S DECLINE.

The real fact is, every class in Ireland is rained — Ireland is a bankrupt country. The landlords are ruined, not by excessive reductions in tbe rentals, for the rentals are not reduced by land courts as much as they are by mutual agreement and the manly and candid acceptance of economical changes in England, but by the fool's oaradise in which

tbe Irish landlords as a class were kept by their friends in England and by the backing they received for generations in the abuse of their powers. Furthermore, the depopulation of the country — depopulation towards which they largely contributed— has made the country poorer; and, therefore, there is no outlet in industries or enterprises such as are open to the EDglish landlord whose land has ceased to pay him. In other words, the act of Union has been as muoh a curse to the Irish landlord as to tbe tenantry, whose numbers it has reduced from eight millions and a-half to four millions and a-half. How any Irishman can go through Ireland and not see the MARKS OF DESOLATION", DESPAIR, AND EVES DEATH written on the face of the country passes my imagination. To me it is tbe very clearest thing in the world. I -allude to a visit I recently paid to my native town. As a matter of fsch, Athlone, which looks so desolate to me, is by no means the worst town in Ireland ; on the* contrary, some woollen mills which have been erected there, and which I am glad to say are doing very well, have given a certain spur to the place. Have you ever Been Galway ? If you want to find a spectacle unparalleled in the history of the world since the disappearance of such great centres of empire as Babylon and Carthage, or the disappearance of mushroom mining camps in the United States, visit Galway. • My boyish eyes looked out from the windows of the houses in which I lived in ruins ; not only are the ruins there still, but others have been added to their number. Had I been born in Strasburg in the hours which followed the siege, in Florence in the first day that came after the great plague, or in Carthage in her last departing days of greatness, I could not have beheld a scene of desolation mere complete, of decadence more terrible, of despair more tragic, than what I saw as a child in the town of Gil way. Of course, I saw these things, but did not understand them, except vaguely, in those early days. Indeed, I never really understood the Irish question until after I had left Ireland, and could see IRELAND BY THE LIGHT OP CONTRAST WITH A WEALTHY AND A PROGRESSIVE NATION. What I then saw — what I gee still, but with very different feelings, is that these towns are^ gifted by nature with every charm. I have never approached for many years either Athlone or Galway without a strange shrinking of the heart that was almost a physical pain, and a chill that was positively bodily as well as mental. And, alas ! there i% little chance of that teeling passing away now that there is no longer at the end of tbe sad journey that gentle and saintly face which has been the inner light of all my life. And yet the railway train bore me over a beautiful bridge spanning the noblest stream in these islands ; broad, calm, fresb, rolling proudly through far more miles than the Thames or the Severn to the sea ; and broading out to beautiful lakes studded with fair islands. The railway bridge that I pass going to Galway brings you in Bight of ac beautiful a bay as there is in the world, .almost landlocked by mountains, with sweet recesses that look like sunny inland lakes. Why, I ask, should I be sad amid such beauties of nature? I did not know this sadness, except in youth; I have bad hours of lonely reverie on the banks of the Shannon near Athlone that might have made Rousseau envious ; and I have been by the sea in Galway at almost every hour of night and morning drinking in its divine and abiding inspiration. I will tell you : when I look down on the Shannon I look for the little jetty from which I ueed as a boy to see the small pleasure steamers taking my fellow j townsmen and townswomen on excursions up : | the river. Of that jetty the rotting stumps ! ! are all that remain. When I look from the railway train nearicg Galway I shiver at the ghostly and spectral and lonely ship that lies j on the roads in the bay — a ship that makes the desolation more desolate than i£ there were no vessel there at all. Why is it that the people of England cannot bend their eyes and their rnindff, their j sympathies and their consciences, on THIS GBKAT TJIAOEDY WIKOH fS BEING KNACtKD AT 'I'M Id llt DOOtt; this descent into ruin and despair of a nation whose destiniei are in their hands; whose people the sorrow of whose history has been mainly their making, whose population the Eoglish destroyed by war in one century, and are destroying by bad legislation and the denial of liberty in another 1 But why, indeed, should I make such an appeal to English men and English women when so many Irishmen seem even more deaf ? At this moment Ireland is bankrupt in hope as well as in purse, mainly because her own leaders cannot subordinate the meanest personal spites and tbe grotesque ambitions to the general good. Let me say a word of sympathy and encouragement to A MAN WHO 18 FIGHTING THE BATTLE FOR REUNION with such signal courage and integrity. Mr Harrington is right in thinking that no small personal question will ever be allowed to stand in the way of reunion by the section of Irish Nationalists of which I am a humble member. He is right in declaring that Mr Dillon over and over again has declared bis readiness to make way for any man who will unite the country; and if the man who' could do this work best should be what i« called a Parnellite — why, let him be a Parnellite. Ireland is sick of strife and by strife ; and a few honest and patriotic men have now only to agree that it shall end, and nobody can withstand them.