The Express.
London, England, 1862-05-23 00:00:00

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TO COI RESPOZWENTS..dverlisementa intended for rah Express" London Evening
Paper, mid I.e at the mice, 10, bouverlektreet, by Two
o clock on the day of publication.

HAYNAREZT.
TEM ET/Yrsd, THE WOLF AND THE LAM& —OUR
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LONDON, FRIDAY, MAY 23.

AGRARIANISM in Ireland once more raises its
red hand. After an interval of some years its

ghastly form reappears upon the scene, and the
wail of suffering mingles with the cry of terror.
As of old, the alarm is confined to certain districts,
and it cannot escape observation that they are
some of those which were formerly visited most
frequently by the same spirit of evil. Tipperary.
and Limerick are once more stained with bloodshed

in open day, under circumstances the most pain-
fully revolting to every sense of security and
peace. How is this, or why ? Measured by sta-
tistical tests, the condition of things is greatly
changed since the last outbreak of murderous mis-
chief in these regions. Population was then
denser by a third or a fourth, at least ;
encumbered properties, nominally possessed
by absentees, were certainly more nume-
rous; and fee farms, purchased and tilled
by their resident owners, were fewer ; poor rates
were enormously more burdensome than they are
now ; and finally, emigration, from its compara-
tive rarity, was looked upon as a last resource by
the young and hopeful, rather than as one of the
best openings in life, which it has since come to
be regarded by those who are restless and enter-
prising. If human passion, and its social and
political results, were referable to merely physical
causes, Agrarianism, which seemed to have so
many provocatives in 1848, ought to be set down
as having none in 1862. Landlords in general
are more resident ; farms in general are better
tilled ; the pressure for means of livelihood among
the peasant class is in general much less severe ;
and the country in general is in far better plight
than it was fourteen years ago. But these
changes do not really touch the core of
the terrible gangrene that shows itself again
after having been so long almost healed. It was
cauterised by the measures taken at that period,
not cured. How is it possible, indeed, that such
a malady could be eradicated from the system by
the mere severity of such a process ? As we have
always contended when dealing with the subject,
we now repeat—Agrarianism is not, and never
was, primarily referable to depth of poverty Cl
density of population, to politics or to religion, to
large estates or to small. Its earliest records are
of a period now more than a century gone by,
utterly dissimilar from that in which we live.
The aggravating causes—perhaps we should rather
Day, the favourite pretexts for outrage and
violence, of the " Hearts of Oak" and " Peep
o' Day Boys," were the Tithe of Agiatment and
the extension of pasture. At various intervening
periods other sources of casual irritation arose, and
were each in their turn regarded for the time
as paramount. But each and all of them gave
place to new cries and watchwords, while the
fearful results remained the same. For • long
time people could not be persuaded that this ter-
rible form of predial warfare was not a phase of
the hereditary feud between the rival creeds, to
which so much of Ireland's unhappiness was no
doubt referable. But that error is, we trust,
well nigh exploded ; and were it not so, the cir-
cumstances of the late terrible tragedy at Krimal-
lock might suffice for its dispersion. Mr. Fres-
OKEALD was a member of a Catholic family long
resident in the neighbourhood, and in the touch-
ing discourse delivered from the altar by the
parish priest on the Sunday following his cruel
death, the congregation were reminded of his
more than ordinary habits of devotion and charity.
But it was his misfortune to have come into
collision with one or two of his tenants respect.
ing the occupancy of land, and in the exercise
of his undoubted legal rights he sought to break
down the alleged custom or usage on which
many relied for the possession of their holdings.
All other incidents of the dreadful story are com-
paratively unimportant ; it is this which at once
accounts for all, and without which all is inex-
plicable. Those who ask whether there were any
circumstances of unusual hardship in the case do
not understand what they are inquiring about.
Agrarianism is no more the fruit of individual
resentment than it is of prevalent poverty. It is
not the poorest districts that have been most
prominent in crime, for daring violence demands
physical nerve, and the starveling takes unsteady
aim, or shrinks, iv infects, from big deadly
errand. So like wise it is not Cie hardest
landlord or the singularly ill-treated tenant
whose name is associated with deeds of
midday vengeance. There is a merciless
but irresistible logic in agrarianism, which teaches
that its ends are answered more effectually when a
sanguinary example is made of one whose death
no one will ascribe to any doubtful cause, and
when its lawless retribution is dealt out on behalf
of an every-day infringement of its unwritten code
respecting laud. This is at once the greatest aggra-
vation of the evil, and its most certain explana-
tion. Without the passive sympathy of the com-
munity, its blows dare not be struck audaciously
at noon-day, in the midst of • public thoroughfare,
without any attempt at disguise on the part of the
ainaisins, and without precipitancy in the effort to
escape pursuit. The deliberation and publicity
with which the sanguinary sentences of the secret
tribunal are executed have at all times formed a
remarkable feature of the system; and it is un-
deniable that they contribute vastly to the
unacknowledged though not less real terror these
sentences inspire. But they could not
have these characteristics without the
sympathy in question, and they certainly would
not have that sympathy if the alleged grievances
committed by the proprietary were special or
exceptional. As for remedies, we have little faith

; 7 x,
`C-5-2-11.' -