THE IRISH QUESTION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 21, 14 September 1883, Page 14

THE IRISH QUESTION.

AST week we published a correspondence between the Hon. Dr. Grace and some Irishmen in Wellington, in reference to the reception of the Messrs. Redmond. We entirely approve of Dr. Grace's suggestions, and hope his programme will be generally adopted. All the Messrs. Redmond ask is a tair, dispassionate hearing. Their cause is a just one, and only requires to be' understood to secure sympathy and aid from all justice loving men. As to the Messrs. Redmond themselves, we need say nothing. By this time they are universally known for what

they are — gentlemen in every sense of the word, and able and eloquent Irish Nationalists; and we entertain not the least doubt that all who favour them with a hearing will come away convinced that very much still remains to be done before Ireland can be expected to be peaceful and prosperous. We ourselves have ever had but one conviction as to the case of Ireland ; and that is that it is vain to hope for peace and prosperity in the country until her Parliament, wrung from her by fraud and force com&ined in 1800, shall be restored to her. Alien government has been, as it is in the present, the one cause of her ruin, and if the cause continue, the same effect must, of course, also continue. It is not to be expected by reasonable, dispassionate men that it can be otherwise. No nation subjected to a perpetual drain of rents and surplus revenue can be either contented or prosperous. This is a self-evident proposition ; and as a matter of fact notorious to the whole world, Ireland has for a long time been the victim of these two terrible scourges. Let us make a supposition. Suppose that England and France were united under one crown, that they were legislated for by one Parliament, that the sovereign dwelt permanently in Paris as the Queen does in London, that Paris was the seat of the Parliament, and the chief dwelling place of the aristocracy and gentry of England, that in addition to the abstraction of an enormous amount of absentee rents, the entire surplus revenue of England was spent in France, could England be contented and prosperous ? And this is the case «f Ireland. The Queen of England absolutely ignores Ireland. Her influence for good is never felt there ; she seems to avoid the country as she would a plague. -The majority of the great lardholders of Ireland reside in England, and the millions they annually extract from the industry and thrift of Ireland are taken away to be spent in England, without any return whatever. The surplus revenues of Ireland, too, even the quit-rents of the country, are all taken to be spent in England, and a shilling of them never returns to be spent among the people who earned them. Nor is this all. Ireland being a country without manufactures, millions of money are annually taken to England and spent there for manufactured goods. It is no exaggeration to say that absentee rents, surplus revenue, quit-rents, arid the money spent on goods manufactured in England, ampunt to £10,000,000 sterling annually. In the last twenty years, then, two hundred millions sterling of the earnings of Ireland have gone to England never to return. Is it any wonder, therefore, that Ireland should be poor, without capital, discontented, that her population should be diminishing, her towns falling to ruins, her stock vanishing, her agriculture declining ? No ; it is not any wonder. No nation could stand such a drain as this and prosper, and the more the population is reduced the poorer still will be the remainder. If the population of Ireland were reduced to half a million, and the present system of governing that country to continue, that half million would necessarily be the most wretched people on the face of the earth. It will be said, we know, that in England, Ireland has a good market for produce. What produce ? The food of the people, is it ; the food that ought to be kept at home to feed a starving population ? A curious argument certainly in the mouth of a political economist 1 Then let us see what this great argument amounts to ! The ten millions sterling taken from Ireland to England go, let us suppose, to buy Irish meat, corn, butter, etc. And is this, we>seriously ask, gain to Ireland ? The Irish first make the money ; then it is taken to England ; thirdly, it comes back to buy the food the Irish people ought to eat ; and, fourthly, this same money goes back to England, in the shape of r.'nt and surplus revenue and so on ad infinitum ; so that the poor Irish people lose both their money and their produce. Absentee landlords and surplus revenue eat all up. It is absolutely impossible, then, that Ireland can be either contented or prosperous so long as the earnings of the nation, to the amount of ten millions sterling, are annually spent in England. As well might England be expected to be contented and prosperous if her earnings to a proportionate airount were spent in France, and her legislation and government carried on in Paris. This is the question the Messrs. Redmond have come to these shores to explain, in the hope of exciting sympathy and gaining support in the agitation in which they are engaged. We hope they shall not be disappointed. But we are not without fear. An effort has been made to raise a false issue. No later than this morning we saw with sorrow, and some

disgust, an extract in one of our contemporaries — an extract taken from the New York Irish World, which we fear was intended to prejudice the mission of the Messrs. Redmond. We are bound to* say we are thoroughly convinced the Messrs. Redmond, so far from sympathising with the sentiments of this extract, would reprobate them. And speaking for ourselves, we say that to call the unhappy men who assassinated Mr. Burke and Lord Cavendish, and other victims in Ireland, martyrs, is to desecrate that sacred word, to disgrace the men who misuse it, and to bring a blush to the face of every true Irish patriot. We do hope that Irishmen in this Colony will not be afraid to denounce violence, and the abettors of violence, and openly declare that they will not countenance any species of agitation that is not lawful and constitutional. None denounce injustice more emphatically than we do. But we denounce all injustice alike, whether it comes from the Government or the oppressed people. That which is wrong should never, on any account, be done.