THE STRUGGLE FOR BARE LIFE IN DONEGAL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVI, Issue 46, 8 March 1889, Page 13

THE STRUGGLE FOR BARE LIFE IN DONEGAL.

(United Ireland, January 12.) LITBBALLT for bare life those poor peasants are fighting with such heroic courage in Donegal. A bare, hard life is their* at best, a aever*ceasing battle with cold and hunger — no change, no comfort, no bope of comfort on this side of death. Leave to live by his own toil is all the poor Irish peasant claims— leave to live and labour for those he loves. lie wrings a scant substance from the barren soil, and asks no more. He cheerfully pays heavy toll on the fruits of bis labour fo long as he can but keep one foot on this side of utter starvation. Tet is hiß life not all unhappy. Domestic affection makes its BUDBbine. Love lightens his heavy load. His "good woman's" helping band und cheerful voice, the prattle of his little ones, are all the pleasure or comfort his life holds. The but that covers them, though the food be scanty on its table and the fire small on the hearth, ia still to him a home to which his whole heart clings. From such a borne the peasant of Falcarragb, away iv bleak Donegal, ia turned out br force, with his wife and children wailing at his heelß, to go, he knows not where, and the landlord cares not, because the seaßon has come bad, the potato crop has failed, and he cannot pay Mr. Olphert a five pound note. The bad season pressed hard enough on him as it was. Hunger and cold were hard to bear. Harder still to tee his wife and childien hungry and cold, to watch her patient face grow pale and haggard, to ccc the life and brightness of youth dying out of the pinched features and shrunken limbs of his little ones. But the landlord is harder than hunger, colder than cold. There comes an army to chastise the tenant for the sin of a bad Beason. For this crime bis house must be thrown down, his hearth quenched, and wife and children turned adrift in the bitter winter weather— all to vindicate the law. What slaves we are to shallow pnrasee. What ihould be thought of the rich man who, from sheer malignity and ai enormous cost, pulls down a poor man's roof, and drives his wife and children out homeless upon the world ? Is the outrage less because it is legal ? Shylock would cut the flesh from bis bankrupt debtor, according to the most precious formalities of the law. He claimed his legal rights, no more. Yet have hundreds of thousands wept over the fancied sufferings of the defaulting merchant, and the law-abiding Jew will be the type of the unrelenting cruelty for a'l time. The great master, who looked " quite through the deeds of men," saw plainly that cruelty was cruelty, under whatsoever pretence it was wrought. Look with your own eyes at the naked facts in the Donegal evictions. Poor men, and women, and children are being driven out like trespassing cattle ; Bay, rather like noxious vermin, from their own humble homes, became they cannot pay three pounds here or five pounds there to Mr. Olphert. Aa army in battle array — close on three hundred men in all, are engaged in the work of wanton cruelty. One day's coat of an eviction campaign would defray the rent ten times over. The British ratepayer is called on to pay a thousand pounds to take vengeance on these p >or peasants, because they cannot pay a hundred to Mr. Olphert. These thiagß cannot be answered by hard, trite rules of political economy. What is Mr. Olphert f — what is his special claim on the State that the public money should be lavished in buyiug bim vengeance on his wretched tenants ? —The evictions will cot bring him rent. The land he captures, the homes he devastates, are worthless to him. But grant their misery waa marketable ; grant that the groans and tears of the homeless tenants could be coined into gjld. Ihere are simp'e folk who faucy that all that vast mass of human misery is deaiiy bought. It were better Mr. Olphert lacked a hundred pounds of his rental than a hundred human families, with human flesh and blood to suffer cold and hunger, and human hearts to break with utter misery, should be turned adiiU in tfap bleak winter. Mm, think of your own loved wivee ; women, think of your own tender babies as you lead of these outrages. For God's sake, make the case your own. and let your own hearts speak. Let co dull platitudes about law an i order blind your eye* or chill your honest indignation. No law ia heaven or on earth, or under the earth, no keen device of. political expedience, no smug maxim of political economy — nothiug can justify thie reckless inhumanity. Where is the mercy that is the first boast of our Christian civilisation ! The Red Indiana torture their captives according to their law. Yet Christian white men who come on the scene scatter the legal and sacnficial (ires and send the savages howling. Shall this worse savagery be tolerated by Cbmtiain men in the heart of a Christian land ! We wll noi be answered by the parrot cry, " The law ! the law ! the law mint ba respected ! " The law must be accursed if it lendb itself 10 euch inhumanity. I* there an honebt or brave man whose heart does not throb witu admiration for the heroic law-breakers, O'Donnell and Neil Doogan, aud iheir gallant comrade*. If ever t'.ere was a cause that ennobled valour it is the defence of a man's home, and wife, and children. If such a c«uee does not kindle a man's heart to flame it is because a coward's blood ia in his veins. A great Englishman caught the spirit of the old Komaua when tie baag — " Oh t bow can man die better than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers and the temples of big gods, And for tbe tender mother who dangled him to rest, And for the wife who nurst s his infant at her breast? This was true heroism thrtc thousand years ago on the Tiber's bank : it ia true heroism tc-day on the bleak hills of Donegal, lhe f-w bumble peasants who faced with dauntless bieast the fierce bajoaet thrusts and the deadly ro*r of levelled rifles, and with the rude weapons thtir wiath supplied theuo beat back again and agai.i tbe overwhelming forces that attacked them, may cl^iaa companion with tbe bravest that have fought for healths and homes, Nor ha 6 thtir struggle been in vain. There have been cvi -tioua ere now aa wanton and savage ia the lonely wi.ds of GweeJore when resistance was unoreamt of. Tbe \ic ims wnt to their fate as dumb as sheep and aa tame. Only a vague wlisperof the lr mi6cr> reai hid the outer world. To-day there are no e}CM ho dim that they may not see. no ears: sj dull that they may not hear of the gallant struggle. To-day the

people of the Three Kingdoms centre their gaze on the merry New Year's revel which coercion has proviied for the starving Irish peasants amongst the bleak hi'ls of Donegal. The indignation which is iv tbe people's heart will find a voice. The thrice-accursed system it doomed.