The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1881-01-27
Coercion in Ireland.
st. Louis Republican

Ccexc1on An &xelanos
st. Louis Republican. 8.
The ministry adhere to their Original
programme on the Irish question, and
introduce coercion bill in advance of the
land bill; MIR. Gladstone, in reply to the
inquiry of Mr.. Shaw. leader of the anti'
Parneli Irish party. declining even to state
the character Of the latter measure until
more convenient season. Mr.. Forster,
chief secretary for Ireland. in presenting
the coercion bill. made speech which, if
we may Judge from the Geographic
abstract, was fully Ms strong as his conser-
vative opponents could wish. and much
stronger than they could have reasonably
expected; not such speech as the repre-
sentatives of the Liberal party and admin
istration could make without the sacrifice
of very considerable amount of consisten-
ey. The closing paragraph, cheers includ-
cd, indicates unmistakably the drift of the
parliamentary current:
''The Land league strikes terror; We
must therefore strike terror into them; ;
we must arrest these criminals. lPro-
longsd cheers.
MIR. Forster does not So much as hint
the existence of a substantial grievance.
without which the Land league would
never have been heard of. He seems to
have adopted Palnerston's doctrine. that
tenants right is landlords wrong" and
because the tenants are endeavoring to
obtain O small shred of their right By the
only means at their disposal
short of open insurreetion, they
must have ''terror struck into them"
and be arrested as criminals. II Ire-
land were living under the government in
the world. instead of the worst in Christsn-
dom. the chief secretary could not have
displayed more violent and yirtuous
Indignation.
The details of the bill thus heralded are
not at hand, but the probabilities are that
it closely resembles in essential features
the Westmeath act of 1871, which en-
powered the vicsroy, bys and with the
advice of the Irish privy council. to
designate the districts in which ths act is
TO be enforced, to suspend the habeas
corpus, arrest any person whom the vice.
roy may regard as suspicious" who can
not be released, tried or bailed without an
order from the viceroy or privy council.
The bill, its introducer announcer will
apply to the whole of Ireland, though
enforced in the proclaimed districts only;
will remain in force until September 80.
1882, and will be supplemented by another
directed specially against those who are in
possession of arms. To all intents and
purposes. then, after the passage of these
bills Ireland will be in that state Of siege
in which, as Csvour said, anybody can
govern" Brute force is to be again ap-
piled for the remedy of evils which brute
force never has remedied and never will
Mr.. Gladstone resorts to precisely the
ssme methods which BeaconsfeId
would employ were he at The head of
fail-as they always have and always will.
OF course England may crush out the
Land league as it crushed ont revolt in
1898 and 184S. though we think the task
will be more difficult and possibly more
dangerous. Eleven years ago an Irish
land agent wrote letter form which we
take the following prophetic passage:
The tenants of Ireland have still one
tremendous move in their power. That is |
TO stay quietly ut home and pay no rent |
l believe that ii they unitedlv adopt a |
policy OF passive resistance-which do |
not see how it would be possible for the |
landlords to combat-it would lead to one |
OF the greatest revolutions ever known. L
do not say that this will come, but it
is certainly on the cards."
The leaders of the League have not goae
as far as this yet. but it is said by those
who ought to know that the first arrest
under the coercion law will be the signal
for total cessation of rent paying. In
that event there might be wholesale
eviction, but how would that help the
landlords? Ireland would be 10 a vastly
worse condition than she is now, but how
would that help England? Vacant lands
a starving population. a revival of mex
tinguisnabe hatred, and martial laws are
not the elements of imperial prosperity or
imperial safety. More than hundred
years ago Arthur Young, an Eoglishman
aud Fellow of the Royal Society, after
travelling extensively in Ireland wrote
thus:
"A better treatment of the poor in Ire
and is a very material point Of the welfare
Of the whole British empire. Events may
happen which may convince US fatally of
this truth: if not, oppression must have
broken all the spirit and resentment of
men. By what policy the government of
England can for so many years have per
mitted such an absurd system be TO
10 Ireland, is beyond the power
ot plain sense to discover
Some important reforms have been
introduced since Young's day, but the
reform without which .all others are of
little CONSCIOUSNESS is apparently no nearer
that it was in 1863. The ownership of
The soil is vested in few and not 10 the
many, Those who create the wealth of