Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1879-12-19

the people of Ireland in their present distressed
condition, and to encourage them in their
efforts to establish peasant proprietary in that
country.
We feel deeply the gross injustice and wrongs
to which tho people of Ireland have been so
long subjected, and will cordially cooperate in
any measures for their relief but the frail
state of our health admonishes each of US that
the time is past when we can safely encounter
the exposure incident to public assemblages,
FORE to make our excuses for not being present
on the interesting occasion. Wehope the meet
ing will be success. Respectfully yours,
HENRY H. SHELLEY.
Besides these, letters were read from Father
Navoux and ex-Gov. Marshall expressing their
inability to attend, but full of sympathy and
| concurrence in the objects of the meeting
| Coz. Davis Address.
Gov. Davis was the next speaker introduced.
He said:
This meeting is held to solicit the sympathy
of this community with the Irish people in the
efforts they are making by lawt III and consti-
tutional means to so change the land tenure of
that country that they can at the same time
till the soil and live upon the product of their
labors. The appeal ia made to the American
people, irrespective of race or creed and I
shall, therefore, but serve the purpose of my
invitation by briefly placing before those per-
sons who are alien to the blood and untaught in
the sufferings of the Irish people few Of the
reasons why that sympathy is due. Had half
the commiseration been given to Ireland which
England, censuring us, extended to the Amer
lean slave whose ancestors abe plant
ed here, or which has been wasted
on the savage American Indian the record of
Irish suffering would have closed eighty years
ago. Had any political party during or after
our civil war, attempted to inflict upon single
county in the South the murders, confscations,
penal laws populations, selling white people
as slaves, that the English government has in
ficted upon both Catholic and Protestant
Irish time after time, since the reign of Eliza
beth begun, the whole civilized world would
have aided people in instruction and made
| this government the most shapcless wreck
upon the shore of time. (Applause.)
THERE IS A CAUSE
for the present discomfort. 1t begins far
back, and lives to-day in its evil conse-
quences. The stern justice of history
before whom rent abates but proceeds gen.
Grafton after generation to final Judgment, pre-
sides over this controversy soon. we trust about
to end.
The facts which shall state are not gathered
from the vauntings of national vainglory.
They come from the researches of skeptical
historian whose books lie under the interdict
of both churches and who d1sbelieves imparti-
atioEs or excuses of bigoted sectary.
1t is very certain that when the rest of Eu-
rope lay in the night of the dark ages, and was
haunted by events which read like sanguinary
dreams, civilization and religion-exiled
brother and sister-took refuge in Ireland
Before Augustus evangelical the English peo-
pie the Irish missionary had crossed the chan
ssl and commenced the work. In the words
or Saint Bernard. "From Ireland as from an
| overlooking stream crowds of holy men de-
scended upon foreign countries" They were
the pioneer apostles from Iceland to the Dan
ube. (Applause.)
The feudal system which now survives in
Ireland in its last ferocious type of an all
powerful landlord and remideless tenant up
rooted then very different system. Under
the Breton laws the chief was elective; he did
not own the fee of the elemental lands. In
them the clansman was joint proprietor with
him. The former had the fullest rights Of in
heritance, and his property descended with
out burden to all of his children,
equally. 1t was code made by and for free
people.
This system was overturned by conquest and
chicane, and was succeeded by
FOUR CONVERSATIONS
which took away nine-tenths of the land of
Ireland from native lord and occupant with
ont compensation and gave it to aliens
In the reign of Elizabeth nearly 600, 900 acres
were confscated In Munster alone, and re-
granted to Englishmen upon condition that
they should admit to tenancy no Irishman.
This anu oenef forc1ble separations Of the
people from the soil beggared them, and
were tho beginning of those agrarian out
RACES which, though merely an effect of oppres-
sion, arc persistently misrepresented as its
cause and excuse.
In the reign of James I. two great noblemen
we're accused Of plots-not of acts, but simply
of bad Intentions, for there was rebellion.
<pSa al
proved against them. They were driven from
their country and, under pretext of their Of
fences, six counties were confiscated and plant
ed with Scotch and English. The very scum
and lees of those nations were placed in the
homes from which thousands of happy and I'M
offending people had just been driven into the
jaws of starvation.
In this reign the Infamous vocation of the
Quorum was first piled. Under the fiction
that all titles IRE derived from the king these
persons undermined possessions which had
been undisturbed for centuries, by flaws in
grants, by defects of enrolment BY records
cxhumcd from the town of London, by dor
mant grants made by Henry II. three hundred
years before. The judges were more terrible
than an army with banners. They were merely
the instruments by which the compendious
ruin of n race was wrought.
The proprietors of Connaught. who held by
recent royal grant raised l20, 500 pounds and
paid that sum to Charles l. upon agreement
that undisturbed possession for sixty years
should secure their titles from attack by the
crown, and that their grants should
be valid. Strafford afterwards Withdrew
these conditions, and let slip upon Connausht
pack of discoveries, bribed judges and plant
jurors. The juries were instructed to find for
the king, and no wonder, for the chief Justice
received four shillings on the pound on the
first years rental of the estates which he ad-
Judged forfeit. Upon this the Irish rebelled,
and the war with the parliament followed. 1t
was a war tor religious liberty and for food.
Famine and fanaticsm did bloody work The
result was conquest. All the land in three
provinces was confscated and given to English
soldlers, or to usurers who had lent money to
the parllamentary government.
Thls Is hardly an outline of the process
by which nine-tenths of Ireland was taken
from its people and given to aliens. 1t is to be
filed in by penal laws which executed the priest
for consoling the dying; which made famine
bid against the mother for her child to place it
in charter school, she never to see it again;
which forbade Catholic to acquire real estate
| or to lend money upon it; which scattered es-
| tates by distribution among all the children
| unless the eldest son became an aposta by
| such appalling want no civilized people has
fields and by the roadsides.
Auxiliary to this general system of ruin
| other
INDUSTRIAL EXPRESSIONS
were imposed. Ireland was RICH in
focka and herds, and their expor-
tation to England was q chief source of
wealth. This was prohibited upon the ground
that the competition was detrimental to English
grazers and tended to reduce rents in Eng
| land.
Forbidden to export cattle, the people turned
! to producing wool As soon as the rising in.
dustry became competitorY with the Eaglish
manufacturer and producer the export of both
raw and manufactured wool were prohibited.
The only industries fostered were linen and
| hemp.
All the while rack-rents were exacted. Stat
utes might blast the soil with sterility and
make famine the immediate result of their
enactment but the rent must be produced.
The result was that the Irish began to export
| themselves, and there is not civilized state in
the world which has not been, in q marked de.
gree, under the influence of Irish genius ex-
p'atriated yet influential even in exile Zap.
| plause)
The distress which has time and again aflict-
ed that country is almost incredible. 1t is the
only Christian land into which for centuries
famine has entered. It has repeatedly been
such scene as lured death from hell into the