Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1879-11-08
Agrarian rroubles in ireland.

We give our readers an articl
from the London Times on tn
present disturbance in Ireland treat
ed from an English point of view
This is not the point of view from
which Irish affairs are general,
contemplated in this country, but
is well sometimes to get both side
of question. What the Irish agi
tators really want is the fee sinpl,
of the lands they have been renting
at their own price, or rather with
out any price at all. Since the wa
the land owners in the South havt
learned what it is to have tenants
and discontented ones at that, anc
will be able to enter into the feel
ings of the Irish landlords:
Mr.. Parnell has issued a manifes
to addressed to the Irish race al
over the world, but especially Il
those of Irish birth or origin settled
within the United States. 1t is an
interesting document, and deserves
study for many reasons. In the
first place, it tells us with tolerable
eXactitude what is the main object
Mr.. Parnell has set before himself
The manifesto, or appeal, is call tC
Il iShnen everywhere to sustain by
their material and moral assistance
the efforts of Irishmen at home tO
bring about a complete change in the
ownership of land in Ireland. The
existing landowners are TO be bought
out at 'a fair compensation" and
the existing -Occupiers are to be sub
stituted for them as owners. In the
manifesto itself the project is de-
scribed as "Vast," and no one will
dispute the epithet thus employed.
But it is we'll that we should have
it before us, if only in outline. Mr..
Parnell has been sometimes suspect
ed of varying his language accord :
ing to the audience he addresses.
What he is reported to have spoken
in the provinces has been different
in kind as well as degree from what
he has spoken in the House of Com
mons. IT may be that country re-
ports are untrustworthy it may be
that the tongue moves more freely
on Home-rule platforms than at
Westminster it may be that the in
fiuence of an excited audience eX-
cites a speaker until he is not per-
fectly master of himself; but, what
ever the cause, the apparent divers
ity of which we speak has been
and it has produced a
doubt as to how far Mr.. Parnell
would admit his responsibility for
ali the utterances that have been at
tributed to him at recent agrariaD
in Ireland. The present
is thus valuable because
it fixes him with definite pro-
gramme. The landlords are to be
bought out. The 100000 landless
farmers of Ireland are to become the
owners ofthe acres they now till us
tenants. We are not told by what
the money-value of the
lands to be made the subject of this
wholesale appropriation is to be de-
termined, but, as the ''cOmpensa-
ton" is to be made s'faiF," we may
presume that it is not to be settled
by the tenants alone. From Mr..
Parnell's recent advice to farmers
to paw no rents if landlords would
not make reasonable reductions, it
was inferred that the farmers them
selves were to judge what reduc-
tiOns are reasonable but neutral
is apparently cOntemplat-
ed to settle the terms of eXprOpria
ton. There is another point left
about which some may
be curious. Who is to furnish the
money for this gigantic stroke, sub
stituting one proprietary for anOth-
err? The tenants have not the
money at hand 10 pay down even
on the most moderate calculations
of the consideration to be awarded
and although the Chancellor of the
processes to have learnt
much during his short visit to Ire
land, he will scarcely come back to
propose that the purchase-money of
all the land in the country shall be
advanced by the Treasury upon the
of mortgages or rent
charges to be granted by the ten
ants.
Mr.. Parnell's appeal to Irishmen
is for funds to sustain
the agitation by means of which he
hopes to bring the Parliament of
the United Kingdom 10 adopt his
great scheme Of making the Irish
farmers the owners of their hold
ings. We have solid conviction
that the appeal will be iudicrOusly
There are some Irish
men in America who seem to have
cherished and developed a hatred of
the social organization of the land
hey have left, but they are mi
nority, and they are not among
hose who have found eXpatriation
The road TO fortune. Their contri-
buttons would be small even iftheir
zeal was great. Those who have
Orospered, and, indeed, the majOri-
Nv of Irishmen across the Atlantic,
come to regard the difficulties of
Ireland in very different manner
rom the way they looked at them
when in the country. Bit by bit
hey have come to see that the radi.
,al difficulty of Ireland does not lie
N laws of uDfriendly inflexibility,
nor in an alien proprietary, nor in
he divergence between English
and Irish creeds and ideas, but in
he still existing disproportion be-
tween the population of the island
ana its natural capabilities of sus-
-aining existence. Ireland is still
over er-pOpulated, and those
who have betaken themselves to
what Mr.. Parnell rhetorically calls
'the Great Shelter Land of Peoples"
have the evidence of its truth al
ways before them. How is the
standard of well-being kept so high
in the United States ? 1t is through
the perpetual movement of popula-
ton from the older States west
wards, thus keeping down the pro-
portion of farmers TO acres. l as
the letter we publish this mo u
ing on Pennsylvania farming
shows, the sons of the Down-East
farmers stuck to the places where
they were born, they would be poor
but they migrate west
wards. The population in Maine,
New Hampshire, and Vermont is
stationary or retrOgrading; so is the
agricultural population in Massa-
Connecticut, and Western
New York. The comparison be-
tween the States and Ireland is very
simple. The average size of farm
in the United States is lowest in
Connecticut, where ii is SO acres in
New York and
it is slightly over 100