Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1881-11-09
ireland.

Under the vigorous blows of Mr.. Glad
stone the land league seems TO be stunned
IL 1t lis not utterly crushed. Archbishop
Croke, replying to an address Of branch of
the league, advised tenants to tender fair
rent. The land court is in full operation
and over sixteen thousand applications for
reduction of rent have already been made.
The subcommission of the land court sitting
in Belfast has rendered several decisions in
each Of which it has reduced the rent about
twenty-eight per cent. In the cases of ten
ants on the estate Of Archdeacon Craw-
ford, rent of f122 was reduced to $50, an
other Of f7l to 949, and another Of 500 to
s52. An application was made to the Dub
lin land court to fix the rent of. a holding
in Cork, where the valuation is f27 and the
present rent f113. The decisions of the
court are reported to give great satisfaction,
and it is anticipated that the effect will be
to induce private arrangements between
landlords and tenants and thus withdraw
from the court large number Of the appli-
cations which have been precipitated upon
it with the purpose, it is alleged, of swamp
ing the tribunal.
The world believes that, however grossly
England may have misruled Ireland in
the past, the land act is measure grow
ing out of an honest and genuine de-
sire to afford Irishmen relief from acknowl-
edged abuses, and that it is the duty of
Irishmen to accept this measure in good
ance is no bar to the presentation of de-
mands for redress of any other grievances,
while an unreasonable refusal to give the
act fair trial would justify the charge that
Ireland does not desire to be psci6ed, but is
aiming to secure, by malignant agitation,
some Interior design like local self-govern-
ment or entire independence Of England.
Her Incorporate and disloyal course must
prejudice all her chances, If any ever ex-
listed, for obtaining legislative control of her
local matters, as Canada has of her internal |
affairs, while it should be evident to the |
ddllest Irish subject that Irish independence
would be no more tolerable on the part of |
England than was the southern confederacy |
on the part of the United States government. |
Irelands course toward England in its later
phases is as unwarrantable and as outra- |
geous as the acts charged by Ireland against
England, and which are alleged as the res-
sons for Ireland's old irreconcilable hostility
to everything English. But while all this
may be true, it is fact which England
must ultimately recognize in practical
and which Gladstone, in his later
speeches, has indicated an inclination to
that the policy of placing Irish
men of conceded ability, integrity and 10y
Atty in the charge of Irish local affairs, and
in the administration of the laws in Ireland
would be step toward ameliorating purely
sentimental hardships which are more keenly
elt and harder to endure than physical suf-
,erings. No Englishman, it is said, has ever
,een placed upon the Scottish bench, and
Scottish feeling in respect to the manage
nent of local affairs by Scottish officers has
always been regarded. National interest
md pride were as studiously respected in
he union of Scotland with England as they
lave been ignored in the case of Ireland. A
more sympathetic course on the part of
John Bull added to the disposition to give
Ireland good laws may, in the course of
mother century, WOO back the peace and
prosperity which long ago fled from the
Emerald Isle.