The Sentinel. [volume] (Trenton, N.J.) 1880-1882, 1881-02-26

-J, eS6oA, AOA Lie OCIQ-
mittee on Organization for the Third
ward, reported further contributions.
as follows Mrs. John Shandlev and
Mrs. William Whalen, 81 each. and
Messrs. John Coakley, James Stat
terry, Andrew Sheehan, Bernard Kelly,
John Finston and Patrick Galvan
each 81.
The Treasurer reported a balance
on hand of $208.64. The Constitu-
ton was amended SO as to permit of
the election of an Assistant Secre-
tary, and Mr.. j. Donnelly was elected
as such officer.
Votes OF thanks were rendered to
the House of Assembly for resolution
OF sympathy with Ireland, to the
publisher of The SENTINEL for full
and accurate reports of Land League
meetings, and to the Catholic clergy
for the interest which they have mani
tested in the cause.
The President then introduced Mr..
Thomas Stapleton, who delivered the
following eloquent address on the
ENDS, AIMS, OBJECTS AND PURPOSES OF THE
LAND LEAGUE.
MIR. Chairman and Brothers of the League:
There is no need, no necessity, for me to
seek inspiration in the chequered and event
ful past history OF our common motherland
for the few words | have to say to YOU.
Addressing you, am confronted with the
tact that here, three thousand miles from
the Green Isle of sorrow, your original.
your God-intended home, | speak to an
audience of Irishmen. Why is this so !?
Why is this race of ours scattered all over
the world? Why is it that, go where you
wlll-in the great marts of civilization or
on the lonely western prairies, in Canadian
backwoods or in Californian valleys, by Mis-
souri's rushing river or where the Southern
Cross lights up Australia's golden shores
you will find the Exiles of Erin. The rea-
son is evident to any one who has read his
tory or investigated the wrongs of nation.
They have fed from famine and misery
and an unwilling slavery, from land where
honest labor meets with no reward, where
brains and energy have no future. TO sum
up all and the cause of all, they have fed
from English misgovernment and from Irish
landlordism. Whilst the last trace of feudal-
ism has been swept from the face of CONT
mental Enrope, whilst France has its peasant
proprietary, whilst the serf owns the soil he
tills even in despotic Russia, whilst Ger
many, Spain and Italy have completely
reformed their methods of land -holding,
England alone clings to the traditions and
brutal methods of the past In few words,
those are absolute ownership of the soil
by the landlord and absolute protection
through the laws to the landlords, in their
assertion of this right. To understand this
land question, you must remember that the
great majority of the people of Ireland
belong TO the agricultural class--live on the
land and by the land. "The land" says
Michelet, the historian, /" is the French
peasants wife," 1t is the Irishman's life.
With her vast natural resources, with her
magnificent harbors and her great mineral
wealth, she has neither trade nor manufac-
lures. Both have been at all times dis
couraged, and when possible, destroyed by
England. would also have you remember
that great principle of political economy
first established by John Stuart Mill, that
the landlord, like every other class in the
community, holds even his dearest rights
subject 10 the condition that his assertion of
them will not be detrimental to the common
good. Now, the landlord interests essentially
a class interest-the welfare of the few to the
ruin of the many. 1t is paradox, but
nevertheless true, that the lord Of the soil
owns all the property, yet pays none of the
taxes; creates poverty, but does not support
it; incites crime, but does not help suppress
it. know of no synonym for that word
landlord, or that other, which it implies,
tenant at wiu. The nearest approach can
find is the word Shareholder and SLAVE. But
the STAKEHOLDER, bad as he undoubtedly was,
treated his slaves better than the landlord
does his tenants. He resided amongst them
and looked after their personal welfare,
while the landlord is generally an absentee,
living in the gay capitals of Europe, on the
money wrung from the sweat of his starving
tenantry. He leaves behind him, however,
an agent or middleman, who transacts his
business and collects his rents, and whose
only aim is to ELL his own and his masters
purse. No considerations of what is right
or just ever enter his head, or interfere
between him and those ends. The great
principle he follows is, that tenant right
must necessarily be landlord wrong. The
strong arm of the government protected
him in reducing this rule TO practice. AS a
consequence, whenever an old lease expired
or a new heir acceded to a property, rents
were raised double and treble the original
valuation. A premium was put on idleness
and industry was discouraged, by allowing
the tenant no share in the Improvements
he had wrought with his own hands.
Evictions followed, then came the poor
house, the emigrant ship, or the famine
filled grave. Let me give you few illus
trations: In the northern part of Tipperary
lie some thirty thousand acres Of the best
land in Ireland, all owned by one man,
Lord Dunalley. Thirty years ago, the then
owner had rental of $4,000 from two
hundred tenants; to-day, the present lord
receives rents aggregating 100000, from
seventy-five tenants. Rents have increased
four-foId, whilst the price of farm produce
has decreased in the same ratio On the
roads through this property, you can still
see the blackened roof-trees and bare gables
of what were once happy homes. The ivy
green still cIings to the ruins, but gone are
those who chung with more tender love to
the place they were born in, and whence
their fathers had been carried to their last
resting place flushed is the mellow laugh,
the pleasant jest, and the merry, old-tlme