The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-10-05

a year without exhausting their soils at all,
but, on the contrary, improving them con-
stantly. With distant markets, however, they
were limited 10 few crops, which would not
paw for manuring, aud did exhaust the soil.
The potato especially is one of those crops
which, when planted without rotation on the
same SOIL extracts from the soil speedily
every particle of capacity it contains for
growing the potato. The weakness of the
plant caused by continuous cropping showed
itself in the potato rot, and this resulted in
the Great Famine. The famine of 1916, ~,
'4S, and 40 is thus clearly traceable to the
removal of the tariff barriers erected for the
defense of Irish industry against English
encroachment, which removal began in 1903,
was oonsummated in 1921, and made still
worse by the removal of all tariff on foreign
corn and food in 1916. In the decade in
which British free trade developed its full
results the people of Ireland perished of hun
ger by thousands, and the population, in
1850, was one million six hundred and fifty
nine thousand less than in 1910. In Galway
Union alone four thousand families, aud
twenty thousand human beings, were upon the
road, houseless and homeless within the two
years writer in the Irish Journal says -
"Some parts OF the country appeared like an enor.
nous graveyard; the numerous gables Of the un.
rooted dwellings seemed to be gigantic tOmbstones
more melancholy than the grave can show. Look
ing on them the DOUBT arose in my mind, Am in a
civilized country? Havewe really free constitu =
tion? Can such scenes be paralleled in Siberia or
CafIrara?"
For time the Irish were allowed to flow
into the cities, and over into England But
at length the wretchedness they everywhere
carried with them, and their tendency to re-
duce the wages of Englishmen below the
living point, caused cry to go up from the
cities, and from all parts of England, for a
Io,,, 20 thn Tx.c
maintain their own paupers. Such a law was
passed to thrust back the starving Irish on the
heartless agents of their absent landlords
For however the Ldisses fare school of
politicians may advocate letting industry
alone Gas if any such thing as letting
industry alone, and at the same time taxing
it, were possible), yet when the failure of a
government to protect its industry reduces
its people to paupers, they can then no longer
apply the 'let alone" doctrine. But if a
government is bound to prevent starvation,
is it not bound to do SO in the cheapest and
best way, by protecting industry before it
totters to it's fall, while the arm of the
worker is strong, his eye undimmed by hun
ger, and his natural force undated? ''A
stitch in time saves nine, and little effec-
tive wisdom, while industries are in opera
ton, is worth more to prevent the suffering
of the working classes than millions spent
after nations industries are destroyed. The
sole function of government is to protect
what Life, liberty, property. 'But," said
Napoleon, formerly they had a property
called land. Now we have new kind Of
property-industry. Shylock says: -"You
take my life when you do take the means
whereby 1 live." So government protects
life, liberty, and property, all in one, most
effectually when it protects industry.
Though the excessive rents of agricultural
| l.. l. III H. 4
turing population of Ireland over to agricul-
ture, yet as whole, it cannot be said that
the high price of land in Ireland was cause
of its depopulation. On the contrary, the
same causes which depopulatsd the island re-
duced the value of the land to level with
that in the counties which are newest and
most distant from markets.
Inapaperr read before the British Association
it was shown that the Irish estates owned by
English capital, embracing 4O3,O ,O65 acres,
had been purchased at an average value of
f2 15s., or $13'20 per acre, being about
the price paid for unbroken prairie in Illi-
nois, Iowa, and Minnesota. Captain Head,
in work on Ireland, tells us of an estate of
ten thousand acres, purchased at five cents
an acre.
Between 1S41 and 1851, the houses of the
fourth class decreased from 491, 27S to 30, $50,
showing that in ten years over $50, 600 hum
BILE houses had been razed to the ground, and
converted into deer parks, pastures, and
waste. Notwithstanding the flood of emf
grafton to America, the total number of pau
pers who came upon the government for sup
port was, in 1S4S, 2,043, sos; in 1919, 2, ,142, =
| 766; in 1850, LIZA, 267; in 1851, 755,347; ir
1852, $40, 775; in 1853, 400, ,66S; in 1854, 319
GIG; in 1855, 305, ,226 in 1857, 100, S51, ant
in 1858, 1S3,056 Again, we say this abomi
nation of desolation did not result from over
crowding the land, for in the Barony of Ennis
for instance, there were $50, 900 acres of lanC
to only 5000 paupers, or 230 acres to ever,
head of family. Why, then, could they
not live? Simply because free foreign i'm
portations had destroyed their manufactures
while furnishing them no market for the
crops. For this miserable policy of misgov
ernment the people lay on their backs by tn,
hundred thousand, without food or work
''for the hunger, because they had discovered
that starving man could live longer lyinl
down than standing up.
And yet nine-tenths of the very Irishmen
who escaped from these sufferings to becom,
free and sovereign voters of the United
States would march to the polls in soliC
phalanx and vote for free trade, with all it
tendencies to bring America into the sam,
condition as Ireland then was. Who talks O
the wisdom of the collective people? Nothing
is 80 densely ignorant as the ignorance tina
moves in masses, and sustains itself b.
numbers!
We talk frankly to the Irish people, be
cause we despise all demagogery, and because
they, in the past, have been specially sub
ject to it. When we see an Irishman talk
write, or vote for British free trade, we fee
an innate tendency to collar him, and show
him back under its influence, saying