Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1882-04-19
BLACK ON IRELAND.
THE YOKE OF POLITICAL BoNDAGE.

DAAOA V4N 14S1j1114NOs
THE YOKE OF POLITICAL BONDAGE.
rhs Effort Of England to Reduce the People
to Illlterate Barbarism-CharE1Dg the
Government with Atrocious Ty-
rsnny-what Can be Done:
The celebration of the centenary of the
Grattan declaration of Irish independence
1t the Concordia opera house, Baltimore,
last evening, was largely attended. Numer-
Gus prominent gentlemen were present.
Among them were Judge Jere 8. Black,
of the evening William Pink
ney Whyte, who presided William E.
Robinson, of New York, who also made
an address, and numerous prominent local
and state officials. Mayor Whyte made q
brief speech and introduced Judge Black,
who was greeted with the widest enthu-
siasm. The various Irish uniformed So
cieties Of the city were present in the au-
Letters Of regret were read from
s. S. Cox, r. McLane, J. G. Blaine and
others, who expressed sympathy with the
Irish cause and the State Land League,
under the auspices of which the meeting
was held.
Judge Black said that for seven centur-
les Ireland has worn the yoke of political
bondage. During all that time, except
one short interval, she has not been per-
mitted to make any laws for the protec-
ton of her own people in their persons or
property. What they call home rule,
or the privilege of local self-government,
is wholly denied them. Their affairs are
entirely directed by another power,
whose orders arc executed by agents and
overseers sent upon them for that pur-
pose. Such government is sure to be
administered without the smallest regard
for the rights, interests, feelings or wishes
of the people who arc subject to it. The
want of home rule in Ireland is the want
of everything else. As a consequence Of
that privation she is oppressed, degraded,
ipsulted, stepped in poverty to the very
lips and overwhelmed with Affections which
make her peculiarly what Senator Bayard
has called her, tho Island of Sorrows -
The general notion is that England and
Ireland are united kingdoms. But there
is no real union, There is connection
made by force they are 'spinned together
with bayonets." Ireland is not governed
according either to the common or statute
law of England, but by special legislation
made for her alone. In effect, the British
government, which is a limited monarchy
at home, becomes an unrestrained and alb
solute despotism when it crosses the chan.
mel and the exercise of this unbounded
power through all the centuries of its ex'
istence has been marked with the coarsest
cruelty and the most heartless oppression
that this world has ever witnessed. Ifthe
Irish had been inferior to the race which
trampled them down, their fate would
seem less hard. But intellectually and
morally they were greatly superior !; their
civilization, science, art, and general in.
telligence were much farther advanced.
The deliberate and long continued effort
of England to darken the mind of Ireland
and reduce her people as much as possible
to ignorance and illiterate barbarism is a
most shocking part of the story.
Tho Land Question.
Judge Black next took up the land ques-
tion and said that much of the present
trouble was due to the unnatural relations
between the millions whose labor cult
Yates the soil and the landlords, small in
number but great in power, who stand
ready to snatch away the fruits of it as
soon as they are gathered. Judge Black
spoke of this land, formerly owned by the
Irish, as having been taken from them.
He believed IN the sacred right of prop
erty, but the existence of that gigantic
monopoly, clothed with the privilege of
desolating a country and starving the in
dustry of a people, was the saddest fact in
the history of the human race. Except in
Ireland, all nations of the earth had been
making some progress. During the last
forty years the population of other coun-
tries had doubled or trebled, but in Ireland
the number had been reduced from nine
millions to five, and of those who survive
the great majority were suffering the last
extremes of want and necessity. When the
ground, the British tyrant cannot answer
like Cain, "Am my brothers keeper ~
The rulers of nation are its keepers, re-.
sponsible for its fate, and these men have
an awful account to render. But each
defeated effort to right themselves was
made an excuse for the intlicsion of new
outrages. Whole districts were depopu-
lated by the process which they called a
clearance-that is, the destruction of all
habitatiOns and the expulsion of all oc-
cupants, accompanied by circumstances of
the direst cruelty. Political opinions ad-
verse to the government were sure to call
down its warth and malice. Even the
fidelity of the people to their religious con-
victions-the highest virtue that can adorn
any human character-was imputed to
them as a crime and punished SO barbar-
ously that it cannot be thought of with
out detestation and horror. deny that
this was in any true sense conflict of
religious opinion. Let no Protestant SIAN
der his church by asserting that its doc
trines contain any warrant for prosecuting
those who dissent from it. No Christian
man, with q conscience of his own, ever
thought himself authorized to force tho
conscience of another. English bigotry
was merely simulated to cover English
what Can BE Done.
But what can We do for them? How can
we help them in this fearful strait? We
have no right to come between England
and her subjects by any kind of force or
for that is prohibited by the law
of both countries and by treaty stipula-
tions. But you have ways well under
stood of giving moral comfort and mate
rial aid which break no law. The most
devoted adherents of the British ministry
that the success of their
Irish policy is more endangered by your
opposition to it than by all other causes
put together. A Land League merely
Irish they can easily repress, but league
with its roots on this sido of the Atlantic
will grow to be power not merely formid-
able but fatal to the ascendancy of the
landlords.
Judge Black went on to tell how the
present attitude of the Land League was
new era in tho history of the contest.
Agricultural labors resolved that they
would not work for their enemies, and