THE PRESENT IRISH DISCONTENT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 352, 16 January 1880, Page 9

THE PRESENT IRISH DISCONTENT.

It is very unfortunate for Ireland that the English and Scotch journals, instead of joining in an effort to urge Parliament to pass such reasonable measures as -will lead to the amelioration of the condition of the Irish people, are only trying to misrepresent Irish grievances. It is true that a few Irish agitators, disheartened by the misery which now prevails among the peasantry, have gone the wrong way to make their grievances known. But before condemning the Irish malcontents we must consider their wrongs, and if we can find no sufficient reason why they should respect the claims of landlords, it is absurd to suppose for a moment that they will do so. Lord Beaconsfield's three profits— one for the landlord, one for the tenant, and one for the labourer — are not to be found in the large districts of Ireland, where the peasantry can discover nothing for themselves but abject poverty in good years and starvation in bad ones. Misery and want force them to revolutionary ideas. Ireland has very few of the mitigating circumstances that have prevented landlordism from converting England and Scotland into a pauper warren. She has no mining, few manufactures, scarcely any gain from tourists, and few towns able to offer any profitable employment to the surplus village population. Were the English and Scotch people under similar conditions they would be discontented and •ngry paupers. Ireland can never be changed fiom a miserable to a thriving country without her landed system undergoing a thorough alteration. She requires a law which would enable the peasants, by industry, prudence, and economy, to acquire land ; which would dissipate that hopelessness and despair which now drives the fine peasantry of that noble land into disaffection and rebellion. This can only be effected by freeing the land from feudal shackles in the same way as it was effected throughout Germany. Ireland is not worse off than large parts of Germany were when Stein, though a nobleman himself, fiercely denounced the nobles on account of the misery of the peasantry. By the legislation he promoted extensive districts were reclaimed from barbarism and have since been the abodes of hard-working and comfortable populations. A peasantry condemned to eternal poverty and deprived of all hope, must sooner or later become degraded both mentally and physically. The large majority of the landlords of Ireland are noblemen who have immense landed estates, which they seldom visit. Some of them derive incomes of something like 300,000 dols. per annum, and yet are absolutely unknown to their tenants. But though their faces are not familiar to those who supply them with a princely income, they are perfectly well known at English clubt, gambling tables, and behind the scenes of some London theatres. What wonder that, when high-spirited Irishmen, see how the money they earn by toil and labour is squandered in other lands, and upon unworthy objects, th«ir anger is aroused and they take the law into their own hands. Shooting at a landlord is a very unpleasant thing, but it is a natural result of the ferocity that is engendered of despair. Neither the Irish soil, the Irish character, nor the Irish climate impose any necessity that the chief crop of the Green Isle should be perennial discontent. It is & place of wretchedness because British aristocracy feeds upon its big estates, and no Minister has attempted to do for it what' Stein did fox Germany. — Nem York Star.