The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1879-12-11
Tie State of Ireland.

Ireland presents spectacle which no
other people could possibly match. Men
who have been elected to Parliament,
and who call themselves leaders of the
Irish people, 60 about haranguing great
crowds, advising tenant farmers TO pay
no rent, and to band themselves together
to resist evictions for non-payment, and
asserting that the tenant has the best
right to the land. In these incendiary
speeches no allowance is made for those
farmers who are able and willing to
pay; but these are called traitors to the
rest, and are liable to savage maltreat-
ment and to the destruction Of their
property if they pay their just dues.
The ignorant masses of that inhamma-
BILE people are not slow to embrace all
that is implied by these harangues. The
laborers fancy that they also are to be
benefited by robbiug the landlords. And
SO these declamations of the demagogue
leaders are responded to by cries of
"Dowu with landlordisml No payment
of rent. No eviction" and so on. And
so reputation of the dues to landlords,
the holding of land without paying for it,
and the banding of the masses to resist
collection or rent by law process, and
the treating of farmers who pay as out.
laws, have come to be the principles of
the Irish cause, and the cause of a great
popular uprising.
The energies of the farmers and farm
laborers in the West of Ireland appear to
be all expended in holding monster
meetings and marching in great process.
sions to listen to inAammatory speeches.
Masses represented as suffering from
poverty have plenty of leisure to give to
the work of agitation. Farmers have
risked all their future on political revo-
luton and on resisting the law. They
who are really embarrassed are adding
to their troubles. The farmers who de-
sire quiet and are able and willing to pay
their dues find themselves degraded to
outlaws, and liable to destruction of
property and to murder by their own
neighobrs, merely because they have no
cause for robbing their landlords.
The sentiments declaimed at these
meetings go to the extent of suspending
all law, and placing the country in a
state of revolution and anarchy. Their
effect has actually done this in a large
district. They pronounce the overthrow
of law, and that landowners are outlaws,
and vet they talk of this as "constitu-
tional agitation" Mr.. Parrnell is COM
ing to America to get help in money
contributions to keep up this anarchy:
But it is multiplying the real troubles of
the Irish people, and it does not point to
any rational ar possible benefit.
A country in which such senseless ag.
itations are chronic; whose inhabitants
can at any time be inhamed into a state of
lawlessness by demagogues, can not invite
the investment of capital, nor have high
ly developed industry. The Irish masses
are increasing their poverty by this
disturbance. The excitement aims at
nothing practical. 1t can do nothing for
them. It will play out in time, and leave
tenants to settle with the landlords after
having stirred up hate against them, and
involved themselves deeper in debt,
while wasting their savings and time in
rioting. Cincinnati; Gazette.