THE MESSRS. REDMOND IN DUNEDIN. "THE IRISH LAND QUESTION."

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 26, 26 October 1883, Page 17

THE MESSRS. REDMOND IN DUNEDIN. "THE IRISH LAND QUESTION."

(Dunedin Morning Herald, October 25.) Thbkb was a large and enthusiastic audience at the Queen's Theatre last evening, when Mr. J. B. Redmond delivered a lecture on the " liish Land Question." Councillor J. Carroll presided. In introducing the lecturer the Chairman remarked that the subject of the address was a most important one, as the land question was agitating the public mind in every civilised country at the present time ; and in the Colonies it was our duty to prevent anything tending to monopoly of the land taking place and causing such disastrous results as in Ireland. Mb. Redmond (who was heartily received) said that land reform constituted the second portion of the programme of the Irish National League. Happily, owing to the action of the united manhood of Ireland during the last three or four years, this question had been pushed on very far indeed along the road to an ultimate settlement, consequently it would not be necessary for him to go far back into the origin of the land question in Ireland, oi to harrow the feelings of the audience by a recital of all the miseries and heartburnings which in' the far past resulted from the system. It would be sufficient to explain as clearly as he could what they were asking for to-day in regard to this question. In order to do that he would have to briefly explain what the League had succeeded in effecting during the last two or three years. Having shared in the struggle he was qualified to speak authoritatively. The land question in Ireland might be said to date from the first invasions of the English. From that period the land had been confiscated several times, and in Cromwell's time the land of Ireland was parcelled out amongst his successful soldiers. It was an absolute fact that a very large proportion of the present holders in Ireland owed their titles to their estates to ancestors who earned them simply as military marauders. The land system thus created was so vicious in principle and so brutal in practice that we looked in vain for its parallel in the history of the civilised world. As time went on things did not improve. If tenants were anywhere rash enough to reclaim or improve their lands they were forthwith obliged to pay over the full value of those improvements, in the shape of rack-rente, to their landlords. The latter, hating and hated by the people, began to live in large numbers abroad simply sending to Ireland to collect to the lasc fartning their exorbitant rack-rents. Poverty, misery, famine, discontent, crime, unsuccessful rebellion, followed in dismal sequence generation after generation. Then the process of the consolidation of estates began to creep in. and had gone on so steadily ever since that to-day we had the astounding fact that 740 men owned one-half of Ireland, and little over 10,000 men owned the whole of it. Every Apt of the Enelish Parliament was conceived in the interest of the landlord and" against the tenant until 1870, when a Land Act was passed professing, at any rate, to protect the improvements of the tenants. But it left the old power of eviction and arbitrarily raising rents in. the hands of the landlords, and proved a useless and hollow mockery. From that day to the establishment of the Land League, a period of ten years, no less than 31 Land Bills were introduced into the House of Commons to amend the Irish land system, and although everyone of them was supported by a clear majority of Irish members, they were all defeated by overwhelming majorities composed of Englishmen and Scotchmen. The most extreme of these measures was less revolutionary than the Land Act which, in 18S1, they forced Mr. Gladstone's Government to carry, and they were all conceived in a spirit of conciliation towards landlordism. The fact was that at any time for 50 years before the establishment of the Land League the people would have been willing to make terms with landlordism. All they wanted was permission to live— permission to remain so lone as they paid a fair rent in undisputed possession of their poor homes, dearer far to them than their palaces to the rich. Their summttm bonum was fixity of tenure and sufficient food, and for generation after generation they begged for justice and held out the hand of reconciliation. But no, the absolute power of landlordism would not be yielded, and the hand of friendship held out by the people was rudely repulsed. It was repulsed once too often. Weary of begging and petitioning, with their intelligence awakening to the power which after all rested in themselves, a new spirit sprang to life amongst the people, and not one moment too soon they took from the standard or their enemies the watchword "No surrender"— (applause). Henceforth they would demand their full right, and their right was the land. Fixity of tenure meant fixity of landlordism, and they would have none of it. Landlordism was stained with the blood of the people, and with one voice the cry went up to heaven that landlordism should go-" The Land for the People." The men who first raised that cry were few in number. At their head were Mr. Parnell and Mr. Michael Davitt (applause). They soon found that their words had awakened a responsive echo throughout the land ; that, in tact, they had at their back the manhood of Ireland. They speedily assembled the leading men together, and the Land Le^mswM formed. From the very commencement the principles of the League were plain and unmistakable. The people-the tillers of the soil--should become the owuers of it, but the titles of landlords to their estates were not to be inquired into; and with a of justicenar. even of generosity— which the impartial historian of the future would record with Eeelings of wonder and admiration, the very people who had been plundered and oppressed and degraded and done to death by landlordism only proposed to resume possession of the land upon payment of its full honest market value to the landlords They called upon the State to advance the money to enable this transaction to be carried out, as had been done in Prussia and other European countries, but meanwhile they called upon the neoDle to combine and resist for the future the imposition of rackrents The scheme was denounced as revolutionary and commums.

tic, but we had lived to see it since adopted and recommended by a Committee of the House of Lords. In the winter of 18790ne of the now regularly recurrent famines fell upon Ireland, and Mr. Parnell sped across the Atlantic to beg bread for the people, and before he went he advised them to keep a firm grip of their holdings, to feed and educate their children before paying their rent, that where their rents were excessive they should demand reductions, and that all the power of England was not sufficient to carry out a policy of universal^ eviction, and that the only thing necessary to ensure success was union. His words rang throughout the land. It was the preacl ng of a new gospel — a gospel of life and hope — and the people hearkened to it and combined as never in their long and chequered history had they combined before (applause). Before three months the landlords had practically yielded, and substantial reductions of rent were everywhere the order of the day,. The Government, between two fires, hesitated, and the Government that hesitated was lost. They yielded to the landlords on the one side, and they introduced agalling but useless Coercion Act ; they yielded to the Land League on the other hand, and they introduced a weak and halting Land Act. In both of these policies they failed. There was no sane politician at Home who did not acknowledge to-day the disastrous failure of Forster's Coercion Act, and before sitting down he hoped to prove the failure of Gladstone's Land Act. This Land Act was regarded by the Land League as a stage on the road upon which they were travelling. It contained principles for which generations of Irishmen had contended in vain. But it was based upon wrong lines, and it was unmistakably an attempt to bolster up a rotten system. First it afforded protection to some at any rate of the tenant farmers, and consequently the Land League did not reject it ; on the other hand the League would have been false to its principles if it had accepted the Land Act as an ultimate settlement of the question. It determined to test this Act by test cases taken from the different localities in Ireland. No one knew how the newly-constituted Land Courts would construe the provisions of the Act, but everybody knew that if four or five thousand tenant farmers applied to these Courts, a hopeless block would be the result. If the Act were a valuable one, the most that could be hoped was that when a few cases in a district had been tested, the landlords would then agree with their tenants upon the same basis out of Court, and thus save time and endless legal expenses. In a moment of blind folly, the Government listened to the counsels of Mr. Forster, and a reign of terror commenced. The Land League was suppressed, first by the arrest of its leaders and then by the arrest of its clerks, and men of moderate political views, good social standing, and stainless characters, were seized upon suspicion, and, untried and unaceused, were cast into the common prisons of the country. Martial law in all its horror \yas proclaimed throughout the land, and abso- \ lute power over the lives and properties of the people was vested in i the hands of six military magistrates, all of them men like Mr. Clfford Loyd,*who had gained their experience of government in Ireland by riding roughshod over the Coolies of British India j (hisses). Public mpeting was declared to be illegal, and the national Press of the country was gagged and suppressed. The land was flooded with spies and informers, and day by day people were maddened by the accounts they read of the cruelties practised by the constabulary and othcragents of the Government. In October, 1881, there commenced a winter of unutterable horror. Innocent blood was Bpilledin Ireland, and the friends and enemies of Ireland alike stood i aghast at tbe daily record of outrage and crime. This was a ' painful subject for an Irishman to speak upon, but it was his duty to vindicate his country from the responsibility of such crime. One of I the parrot cries against the Land League movement was, forsooth, \ that it was the origin and source of agrarian crime and outrage. It was not created by tbe League.. It was as old as the land system, i It was at its height during the time of famine. In the winter of 1879, however, for tbe first time in the whole history of Ireland, there was a famine of terrible severity absolutely unaccompanied by any increase of crime whatever — a winter when generous Australians and New Zealanders contributed freely to keep life in the famished bodies of the Irish people. Why was this ? In the winter of 1879 the Land League bad just sprung into existence, and set about collecting money for the starving people and stemming the tide of eviction. From the establishment of the League up to the time of its suppression there were only five agrarian murders in all Ireland, and only eight murders of all kinds in Ireland. "\\ here was the country in the whole civilised ■woild vhich in tbTee years could present such a light record of capital offences ? When the League was suppress' d, its restraiuing influence was destroyed. Evictions, which before had been effectually checked, rapidly multiplied all over the country, and the very ladies who, like angels of mercy, came to the side ©f the evicted families were seized as malefactors and flung untried into prison. He read an extract from a pastoral letter of the Most Rev. Dr. Nulty, giving an account of an eviction of which he had been an eye-witness. He expressed his belief that the outrages committed in the winter of 18S1 by a maddened people were, in many cases, not one whit greater in their enormity in the sight of a just God than were some of the outrages committed in the desecrated names of law and order and justice by the agents of the Government. He also related tbe incidents connected with the murder by soldiers of Ellen M'Donough during an eviction. He deplored and detested Irish crime, he went on to say, but that crime was due to English mis-government. England had sown the wind and had reaped the whirlwind, and upon her head rested the primary responsibility of much of the innocent blood that had been shed in Ireland. With the releaseof the leaders of the people however, agrarian crime and outrage steadily diminished Mr. Gladstone's Land Act had two main objects in view — first, to bring redress within reach of every tenant who could prove that he was suffering injustice, and secondly, to conciliate the good will of the Irish people, and spread peace and prosperity throughout the land. In neither of these had it been successful. It had now been in operation two years, and of the 600,000 farmers about 80,000 had applied to the Land Courts for redress, and only 40,000 cases have been decided by the Courts of fiist instances, §9 per gent, of which had been appealed against, and were stiU

awaiting judgment in the final Court of appeal. Theae decisions resnlted^in .reductions amounting to £70,000. To bring about this miserable result it.had.cost the-tenant farmers £100,000 in legal expenses, the landlords another £ 100,000, and the conn try £150,000 for the working of the Courts. The Land League, without expense to the people, obtained a reduction in rent amounting to something like £3,000,000. Mr. Gladstone subsequently introduced the Arrears Act one of the provisions of which he had copied word for word from a Bill he (Mr. Redmond) had previously introduced in the House of Commons. A committee of the House of Lords had now adopted the principle advocated by the League for purchasing the land on a system of peasant proprietary, the Government to advance the purchase money for sixty-three years at 3iper cent., repayable by instalments. This committee was composed entirely of Irish landlords, and indeed the system would be found advantageous not only to the tenant, who would become the proprietor of the land after a limitel number of year?, but also to the landlords, who would thus be { fforded a means of escape from the heavy mortgages on their land?. He dealt with objections to the scheme. In conclusion, he said, they proposed not emigration, bnt migration ; they proposed to take the people from the over-populated districts, and to employ them on the works of reclamation of waste land, and then to settle them down as owners of the soil which they had won back from the mountain and the moor. It seemed to him that any man who had read aright the history of Ireland since the great famine could not advocate immigration as the great panacea for Irish, ills. Within the last thirty years 3,000,000 of Irish people had emigrated from Ireland ; 75 per cent, of these had been under 35 years of age. What did that mean ? It meant that the young and the strongflwho should be tbe wealth producers of the nation went, and the oicUßnd decrepit, those who were the least able to provide for themselves or to increase the general prosperity, remained behind. As emigration had gone on, so had increased the general poverty and the misery of the people ; as emigration had increased so had increased the number of cultivated acres which statistics would show them had annually gone back to the mountain and moor. To his fellow-countrymen his last words were of hope and encouragement. He was convinced as he was of his own existence that Ireland's long political night, was well-nigh over. However her plains and valleys still lay shroude cl in darkness ; but the watcher on the tower saw a break in the far east and a ruddy glow on the mountain top, and he knew that the God of Day had arisen, and that anon he would flood every nook and corner of tbe land with his broad light, and that darkness and the things of daikness should disappear. When that moment came, that moment for which their forefathers so long and vainly waited and prayed and struggled, there would go up to heaven a cry from an emancipated people that would be echoed o'er the ocean and wafted by the four winds to the corners of the worid — that would be chorused in America, and re-echoed here under the Southern Cross — and the sea-divided Gael, wherever they might be, would hear that cry, and would rejoice for they would know that the God of Justice who had decreed that those who sowed in tears should reap in joy had at last rewarded the tears and sufferings of a faithful people, and that Ireland — their Ireland — was free — (loud and long continued cheers.) Mr. Perrin moved — " That this meeting approves of the views on the Irish land question as propounded by Mr. Redmond, and i 3 of opinion that they should be carried into effect." Mr. J. B. Caiman seconded the motion. M.B Redmond, he said , was one of the representatives of the Land League, and therefore spoke with authority, and everyone here could now read that the objects he advocated were objects which commended themselves to every just mind. . Mr Callan paid a compliment to the Press in Dunedin for the reports of Mr. Redmond's lectures, stating that in many other colonial cities the newspapers had carefully abstained from reporting him. Some thanks were due to the Dunedin Press, which had refused to follow such a little spiteful policy. The motion was carried unanimously. Mb. J. B. Redmond, in moving a vote of thanks to Mr. Carroll for presiding, said that he felt very much obliged to the people of Dunedin, especially his own fellow-countrymen, for the reception they had. met with here. They had no reason to complain of the conduct of any portion of the public, and he might say they had reason to be thankful for the enthusiasm displayed by their countrymen. He drew the attention of the audience to the fact that copies of a pamphlet on " The Irish Land League and the Land Question "could be procured in tbe room. Me. W. E. Redmond seconded the motion, which was carried by acclamation. The Chairman, in acknowledging the vote, stated that of all the public complimeDts paid him in Dunedin he prized most highly that just accorded.