MR. BRIGHT, M.P., ON IRISH AFFAIRS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 407, 28 January 1881, Page 5

MR. BRIGHT, M.P., ON IRISH AFFAIRS.

Speaking at the Birmingham Junior Liberal Club on Tuesday evening, November 16th, Mr. Bright said : We behold now one portion, and not an insignificant portion — one of the three kingdoms which should form the United Kingdom— we find Ireland suffering, not from anything that the existing Legislature has done, but puffering from things that have been done any time within the last two centuries. If our forefathers had understood these questions even as well as we now understand them these evils could never have been inflicted upon the Irish people (cheers). The monarch and the statesman, within the last two centuries or three, have done a great deal to confiscate the B©il of Ireland. They have planted in that country great proprietors, who went over from England and from Scotland — mainly from England — and who were settled there as an English garrison in a conquered country. The Irish people were in those days treated with a barbarity of which we feel ashamed, when we know that our fathers were in some way connected with it. I trust that every man in England — I hope the most obtuse and conservative — will now regret that there ever existed in Ireland a code which we call the penal laws, by which a system of unmitigated and cruel persecution was practised upon the Catholic native population of the island (cheers). But now what are the results ? We find that as a consequence of a policy which we all now regret and condemn, Irish patriotism, as apart from what is called patriotism in this country, has consisted to a large extent in hatred of Protestantism, hatred of landlords, and hatred of England. If the English people had been informed, if they had been capable within the last two centuries of judging fairly of these matters, and if, in addition to this, the Government had been merciful and just to Ireland, there cannot be a doubt that Ireland would be as closely welded at this moment to England as Scotland is (applause). What is the condition ot that unfortunate island ? At this moment it is exhibiting in a portion of the country a social revolt of a very strange and extraordinary character. It is not apparently so much a rising against the Government as against the owners of tte soil. There is through some counties in some districts a general, at least a considerable, repudiation of contracts. There is practically a seizing of the land from which they believe that their

Eathers were driven out. By combination, by terror, by outrage, jccasionally, but hitherto, in very few instances, by murder, they are demanding the overthrow of the system under which they assert there is no adequate reward for their industry and no security for the tiomes of their families. Now when a nation, or a considerable portion of a nation, or the population of several counties can, fairly or no, generally make a statement of this kind, it appears to me to be ane of those which demand the earnest consideration and attention of statesmen and of legislators — hear, hear — and not only of statesmen and of legislators, but of the whole people of the country who are allied with them ; for we have all a great interest in the welfare of Ireland, and the man who insults Ireland or injures it, who tramples up it, who denies them their just lights, is an enemy of England as much as an enemy of Ireland (cheor&). What is this system against which so many of the Irish people are just now contending, and are even in a certain senbe in open Tevolt ? It comes down from the system of great proprietors established by the monarchs and statesmen of two centuries ago — hear, bear — great proprietors with great estates, and with estates, many of tbrrn, mortgaged and embarrassed, transmitted from generation to generation, under the command only to a large extent of nominal and life owneis, often of men who were absentees, who probably had never walked or driven over the whole of their estates. The rights of property, so far as the collection of rent is concerned, have been strenuously maintained and insisted upon, and the duties of property in a vast number of cases have been for the most part greatly neglected (hear, hear). Now, how has all this been caused ? There was a system of law and of custom, and custom created by law and based upon it, by which these great estates were handed down from father to eldest son, and from eldest son when he became father to his eldest son. A man was only a life owner of the property. He was not able to sell it. He had not himself to improve it. He received the rent from it and the most that he could get out of it, but he had no general interest to exert himself on behalf of the property or of those who lived upon it, and he spent generally almost nothing of his income in the endeavour to improve the property of which he was the nominal owner and lord. The consequence has been that great estates have not been broken up as they would have been, and the population is found in our day almost entirely separated from and divorced from the soil on which they live, and which for their living they must cultivate. One-third of Ireland is possessed by 292 persons, one-half of Ireland is possessed by 744 persons, and two-thirds of the whole of Ireland are in the possession of 1942, perhaps a little more than half the persons present now in this building. Well, but on the other side there are more than 500,000 tenants. There is a great fact, 500,000 families, being at least from two-and-a-half to three millions of persons, dependent upon the soil, competing with each other for the possession of a farm, having no variety of occupation as in England, having, of course, only one way, and that only the way out of the country to escape from the difficulties in which they find themselves — these 500,000 tenants are living, as they allege, for the most part in a condition of continual insecurity. The rent may be raised half-a- crown an acre this year, and another half-a-crown next. The addition may not be so large as to shock the farmer and to drive him to cease from any attempt to enter upon the farm. By little and little the rent is added to, and the irritation of the tenant becomes greater and greater. He sees the end to which he is being driven. He cannot live upon the farm, and he must give it up, and he must find himself homeless in his own country, and thus there has grown up in Ireland — and, of course, for the most part in the pooiest districts— there has grown up an irritation and a discontent which is the notorious and the universal material on which social or political insurrections are generally based. Now, we must not forget that in Ireland men who hold the laud hold the homes and the lires of the people (applause). No matter disguising it or putting it in language less unpleasant, that is the fact. There has been a time within my recollection when sixty persons out of every hundred in Ireland were receiving relief in some shape or other, and the normal and common condition of great numbers of persons in the extreme West of Ireland, wnere the country is poorest, where the land is poorest and where the climate is the most precarious, is one of the most abject and hopeless poverty. Now, Ido not believe that the rent all over Ireland is an excessive rent if the land were farmed with a full security by an instructed tenantry, and with an adequate capital— (applause)— but one of the results of this system of insecurity is this, that tenants will not cultivate their land according to the best of their knowledge, or their capital; for to improve their cultivation is followed too often by an increase of rent (hear, hear). I met the other day a gentleman — one of the most extensive and intelligent farmers in this country who had been over the island. He told me Ireland is soaking with water, and cultivation is slovenly, and the farmers do not obtain more than half wbat ought to be obtained from it ; and he. eaid, as to insecurity, a man hardly dare put on a new coat for fear it should be discovered that it was a sign that he could pay a litt'e more rent (applause.) Well, there are. notwithstanding all this, agents in Ireland that are just and merciful and generous. Ido not doubt it at all ; but the general aspect of affairs then; is such as to compel us to believe that the condition of the agricultural population is one to a large extent most deplorable, and calli for the instant attention of the Legislature and Administration. You have on the other hand the land proprietors who are very anxious to gain your ear, and gain the ear of the Government, and of Parliament. Until now, for the last hundred years, aud for longer, the English Government and the English Parliament have always come to the rescue of the landed proprietors. England has done it in the past, and the question now is whether it will doit in the future (loud cries of " No.") Referring to the House of Lords, Mr. Bright said : I recollect some years ago making an observation, I believe on this very platform, about the House of Lords. I said in my opinion an hereditary house of legislation could not be a permanent institution in a free country (loud and prolonged cheers.) If I were particularly anxious that the House of Lords should endure as long as the tun and the moon — (a laugh) — I should say it would be much better to have some regard to

the interests and the sufferings of the population of Ireland than to rush up in a crowd ood to reject a measure (such as the Irish Disturbance Bill), which those entrusted with the administration of the country declared upon their authority and their conscience to be necessary for the peace of the nation (loud cheer*.) Now, then, what is the condition of these landed proprietors ? Their condition is now apparently, if we judge from the papers, but I must say I believe there is great exaggeration— (hear) — in some of the statements that are made— but if we judge from them we may conclude there is a great deal of the unpleasant feeling called panic among the proprietors of Ireland ; not a few of them are leaving the country ; tbeir rents are being forcibly reduced or wholly refused ; and their order and their class are being denounced in language of exceeding violence. I saw a statement the other day that about a hundred of them had assembled in Dublin and discussed the state of things, and they Tiad nothing but tbeir old remedy — force, armed police, increased military assistance and protection, and it might be further measures of restriction and coercion, which they were anxious to urge upon the Government. The question for us to ask ourselves is — Is there any remedy for this state of things? (hear, hear.) Force is not a remedy (loud cheers.) There are times when it may be necessary and when ita employment may be absolutely unavoidable, but for my part I should rather regard and lather discuss measures of relief as measures of remedy than measures of force, whose influence ia only temporary, and in the long run, I believe, ia disastrous — (cheers)— l don't now refer to some of the remedies that you have heard of, violent and impossible schemes where tenants are apparently to fix their own rents, under which the landlords as a body are to be got rid of and banished. The farmers are in the main industrious and honest. Theie has been no country in Europe, no part of the United Kingdom, in which rents have been more generally and con. stantly and fairly paid than in Ireland until the recent trouble (hear, hear.) The Irish farmer is an economist ; he saves even to penuriousness. The great object of his life is to enable him to give a small portion to his daughters on their marriage (hear.) The Irish people expatriated to the United States have sent millions and millions of money to Ireland to help their poor relations to make the voyage thither. Therefore, I believe it, as much as I believe anythine, that it is possible to frame a measure of legislation which will satisfy the great bulk of the Irish tenant farmers (cheers.) What they want is some mode that when a man has his house over his head —built it himself, probably, or some preceding member of his family — that he should not incessantly be taught that he may any day have notice to quit and be turned out of bis farm and home, and that the rent should not be constantly added to until even going out of his farm is a less evil than remaining in it. He wants security from the constant torture and menace which he feels hanging over him, and he wants also that there should be some broad and generous and complete system established by the Government by which landowners who are willing to sell of which there must be many now (laughter) — that landowners who are willing to sell, and there are many at all times, and where tenants are able and willing to buy, that, through the instrumentality of this Government Commission, you may gradually year by year rtrtd rapidly to the number of the proprietory farmers in Ireland (cheers). Another point as worth mentioning in the year 1847. In January of that year I recollect hearing Lord John Russell, in the House of Commons' explaining the objects and intentions of the Government with regard to some provision for the famine that was then overtaking the Irish people, and one of the proposals wa9 this : To take into the hands of the Government waste land* in Ireland which were capable of being profitably cultivated, and by some arrangements finding homes and farms and employment for a considerable number of people. Now, Ireland contains about twenty millions of acras. I will assume, for the sak* of my illustration, that there are one million of acres in Ireland that are capable of cultivation, and would repay the cultivation, and that it would be wise to cultivate as the average portion of the Irish land that is now cultivated. Well, what would a million acres do ? It would make not les3 than 40,000 farms of twenty-five acres each. It would be possible probably to bring over from those extreme western parts where the climate is precarious, and the land so stony and so poor, it might be possible to iuvite little farmers, peasants, occupiers fn»m those districts, and to place tbem upon waste lands thus divided and thus cultivated. What is a million — what is five millions — what ia tea millions to this country to pursue to a successful issue a great question like this ? (Cheers.) We hear that the Afghan war certainly has cost twenty, and good authorities say that before all the accounts are made up and everything is settled that it would cost thirty millions (hisses). I will assume twenty millions — that is a large sum— a sum that trips glibly off the tongue, but of which none of us has the slightest idea how much it is. If there be anything to be done in Afghanistan or in Zululand, if there be some very foolish ministry picking quaTrels in the East of Europe, they can bring you thousands of men from Bombay to Malta — (laughter)— spite of Acts of Parliament and spite of constitutional usages. Is it conceivable that an English Government and an English Parliament, omnipotent within *a great empire, cannot come forward and by a strong will and strong hand and a strong resolve do whatever is necessary to be done with regard to the condition of Ireland? (Loud cheers). lam speaking here to-nigbt as one of the representatives of this great constituency (applause). lam saying what I should say if I had never been a member of a Government, and what I should say next week if this week I ceased to be a member of the Government. lam Rpeaking my own opinion. I appeal to you and to all who read what I say. lam appealing to them on behalf of this great question. I do not believe that foree — the old manner of dealing with Ireland — can ever arrest the discontent which exists, or provide a remedy for the widespread disaffection which all of us deplore. The administration, of which we form a portion, that administration may find great difficulty, and cvi n danger to themselves, in dealing with this question. Do not imagine that it is a small matter like the Burials Bill or the Ground Game Bill, or one of my friend Mr. Chamberlain's Shipping Bills (loud applause.) This is a question of a difficult kind.

larger and broader, it seems ; it seems to touch interests that men would rather fight about almost than submit. For my share I believe that any measure on the basis that I have referred to, or anything like it, would have the effect of improving the value of all landed property in Ireland (hear, hear.) Let no man say that I who speak or you who listen and applaud, that we are enemies to the proprietory classes (hear, hear). I should think it a misfortune in this country and in Ireland if there were no proprietary class. There is a proprietary class in France, and in the countries of the Continent. But that there should be only a great proprietary class having everything in its hands — the honour and the lives of the people — is a condition of things that ought not to exist and cannot be permitted to continue (loud cheers). I commend this question 1 have spokeu of to the members of this club as deserving the study and the earnest attention of every man now in his youth, and who wishes, as he grows older, to be of any service in the public affairs of the great nation of which he has the honour to be a citizen, (loud cheers).