ENGLISH OPINION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 399, 3 December 1880, Page 16

ENGLISH OPINION.

A Liberal Ministry will not have recourse to coercion unless they are persuaded that all other means must fail." "It does much to irritate those against whom it is directed— it does very little, so far as can be seen, to check crime." So says the Daily News. A day's deliberation has changed the tone not only of one side of Mie London mss commenting upon. Irish outrages, but upon the other. The Pali Mall Gazette, writing upon Irish absenteeism, at last see that much, more than £3,000,000 a year is paid out of Ireland to proprietors who never reside here, and it calculates that, counting interest on English capital and payments made over on the other side, not less than £7,000,000 is paid thus by Ireland to Endand. Have we any right," it asks, "to permit such a system to continue/ Have we any right to allow more than one-fourth of the valued rental of Ireland, where the tenants make the improvemeutp to be paid out of the country when we know the effect of this?" Ihese are the questions asked by the Pall Mall Gazette. It is only when it goes to find a remedy that it finds itself in fault. It admits the premises. It shirks the conclusions. It fumbles about for a remedy short of " confiscation and resolution," but it refuses to accept any remedy. It quotes Lord Salisbury, the fiercest Tory of them all declaring that tbe land of Ireland should be more in the hands of the people ot the country, and it declares from itself that " of course it should be, but it adds in half admission, half nonplussing. " there is a terrible iuss if an attempt is made in that direction." Why should absentees be regarded as holding " a semi-sacred " position? Why should not the position of the tillers of the soil be ten times more sacred/ let they are driven out still, as they always have been, Without commiseration at the beck of an absentee Sir UeoT°e Campbell is always sympathetic, if not always li-ht, in dealing with aa Jnsh question. He wrote a lett.-r to the Times, two days after -Lord Mountmorres s murder, from Killarney. Pie gives it as bis opinion that the improvement of tbe Irish population of the remote parts of the country is both a debt and n. duly. It i*, he says, the .British colonists who have driven those Celts from the better i.art of Ireland, til], hemmed in between the Saxons and the deep sea, they hare taken refuge amongst the bogs, mountains, and rocks, where they now are. On the whole, he concludes it is the best and wisest course to try to preserve and improve these Irish rather than to clear them oft and get rid of them. There is an air of superiority pervading bir George's letter. Indeed, he overtly ranks the Irishrie hx merely at par with, if not beueath, the ry.,ts of Bengal, but tbo appearance of such comments from such quarters as we have quoted ought to be at once a curb and a lesson to the uubridled aad thoughtt£i V?1? B m . ihc PrfM nearer home, who understand so little of the Voasktntionalwm whose colours they flaunt,— Frctfiian.