NOTICE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 45, 28 February 1890, Page 22

NOTICE.

All communications connected with the Commercial Department oj the N.Z. Tablet Newspaper are to be addressed to John Murray, Secretary, to whom also Post Office Orders and Cheques are in all instances to be made payable. To insure publication in any particular issue of the paper communications must reach this office not later than Tueidav morning. *

inclined to withdraw from court ; bat Mr. Frend, the agent, offered to leave the settlement of the rents to arbitration, if the mortgagees of the estate, the Irish Church Representative body, should give

tttent to this course. Mr. M. Healy, solicitor, who acted for the , tenants, met this reasonable offer in a similar spirit ; hence we ymay assume that the danger of another conflict on this famous eatate is happily avoided. Invaluable — literally invaluable — are the letters which the Fresnum continues to publish from its special commissioner " On ■ome of the'battlefields." The first, to which no answer was attempted, because none was possible, made mince-meat of Mr. Smith-Barry's pretensions to be considered a kind or considerate landlord. The

Commissioner tested his rack-rents by comparison with adjoining proprietors, and exposed the numerous acts of meanness and extortion which Tipperary bad patiently suffered at his hands before his isvage attack on the defenceless tenants on the Ponsonby estate roused a spirit of heroic resistance in the breasts of gallant Tipperary men whichjtheir own wrongs had failed to inspire. The second letter of the Freeman Commissioner, by lucid statement and catting sarcasm, drew the over-impetuous Captain Hamilton, of Coolgreany, into the investigation which proved bo disastrous to the rack-renters' conspiracy, and dissipated the last vestige of tne " Protestant Plantation " bogie amid the laughter of the Three Kingdoms. The latest letter, which we have now before us, is the most startling and the most important of all. It proves by incontestable documentary evidence what to any observer of events scarcely needed proof, that the Government are up to their necks in the Eviction Syndicate — the very existence of which it has now become the fashion to deny. It has over and over again been confessed that Coercion was passed to crush the Plan of Campaign. By this test its success most be tried. Hence we can understand the eagerness of the archCoercionist to have one triumph, though only one, over the Plan to point to. The Plan of Campaign had almost settled the land question when the Government interposed. The majority of landlords had yielded to its irresistible logic and granted the reasonable reductions required. On comparatively few estates the struggle still endured. On these few estates the whole strength of Coercion was in vain concentrated to crash the tenants. Even the Most Vile the Marquis of Olanricarde was, after a brief struggle with shame and conscience, furnished with all the forces of the Crown to carry out his heartless' evictions, and the most pliant brace of Removables the Castle could supply were placed at his disposal for conviction purposes. Two hundred prisoners — and more than three times that number of unfortunate peasants driven from their homes, were the trophies of the allied forces of the Castle and the Most Vile on the Clanncarde estate, but the Plan of Campaign still stands as unconquerable as ever. So it has been with the other estates. The Government and rack-renters exhausted themselves in a vain effort to conquer the Plan. On the Ponsonby estate was the final and most desperate effort. For that estate mainly the syndicate was formed, with a member of the Coercion party at its head, to break through the peacefnl negotiations between landlord and tenant when they had touched the very point of amicable settlement. The connection of the Castle with the landlords' criminal conspiracy was as plain as circumstantial evidence could make it. But it no longer rests on circumstantial evidence alone. It is no longer " strong circumstances " that lead directly to the door of truth that are offered, but absolute proof.