ABSENTEEISM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 185, 13 October 1876, Page 13

ABSENTEEISM.

<_(. The 'Philadelphia Press 1 gives its readers an idea of that monstrous Irish cvil — the greatest with which it is now afflicted — Absenteeism. It says : — "Let us imagine a landlord deriving a clear ten thousand pounds a year from estates in Ireland. If his residence were in that country among the tenantry who pay rent to him in exchange for the privilege of cultivating the soil, the rent would be spent by him and his family where it was produced. He would have to pay wages, to make purchases from the shopkeepers on or near his estate, to employ the productive industry of the place in a variety of ways, and thus to restore to his tenantry the money which he receives fvom them, so that the locality would benefit by the ten thousand pounds a year which went into his pocket. But let that landlord fix his residence far from his national home, let him and his family spend that ten thousand pounds a year in France or Italy, and who benefits by it ? Certainly the French or Italians among whom that sum is expended, and not the unfortunate tenantry far away in Ireland, who are perpetually giving their money to him and never gettiug a sixpence of it back. The parchment Union of Ireland with Great Britain, which was consummated on the Ist January, 1801, abolished the Irish Parliament. While that existed all of the Irish nobility (abont one hundred and seventy lay and spiritual lords) and the three hundred members of Parliament had to live in Dublin during the winter and autumn, and resided on their estates the rest of the year. The Union drew most of these to London, as the political and fashionable metropolis, and this partial soon became general absenteeism. At present, as we learn from the Dublin correspondent of the ' New York Tablet/ ' The Irish nobility do not as a rule, spend much of their time or their money in Ireland, where their property is situated, and from whence some of them draw large annual incomes, which they spend in London or somewhere on the Continent. Very many of what are called the ' Irish nobility' — that is to say, those distinguished persons who have Irish titles, which, generally, is the only thing Irish, about them — do not maintain any establishments -whatever in connection with their Irish estates. The agent over the property is absolute monarch of all he surveys, and his great care is to get in the rents for my lord, and to pocket his five per cent, fees for collecting the same. 1 "