The Labor enquirer., 1886-04-03

eft of education could scarcely control
with unanimity the vast throngs of un.
educated and powerless beings, who
could not understand the fearful fate Of
their lives. 1t requires no reasoning, nc
argument. to convince the mind that
this condition Of the Irish people, en-
forced upon them by the English gov
ernment, was responsible for all their
woes. The masses of the people, not un'
derstanding, not knowing the magnitude
of the evils that surrounded them, mol
comprehending remedy, were merely
content to follow leadership. "Thesrs
not to reason why. theirs but to do an6
die" >it.. ...4. I'D
Whenever social reform WAS brought
into the field Of thought its tenets wers
defended and its opponents eombatted
by the few Intellectual martyrs whose
hallowed names dot here and there the
pages of history. Such men were Grat
tan, Plunkett, O'Connell, William
OBryan and Emmett. Those heroes JIG
voiceless in the bosom of the land they
loved, but from their sacred tombs the
air of liberty rises round the living form
of him whose name you bear-Parnell
the sagacious master of political science
and peer in the parliament of human
freedom. Around this man his coun
trymen have rallied the forces of Ire
lands intellectually, and the brute
force of British despotism has met at last
the metal of Irish thought. ihe phys
zeal power of England may crush tc
earth the bent forms of weary tollers
but when the current of Irish free
thought flashes upon the scene of con.
f1ict, either her hired constabulary, mol
her stall-fed statesmen can arrest the
genius of irish liberty. Ownership oi
the soil lies at the very foundation of all
governmental evils. 1t could not well
be said that light and air should be
taken from the common people and
monopolized by any click or clan. They
are no more necessary to the sustaining
of human life than is the soil the earth
from whose tender bosom is extracted
all that necessary for the use of man
Henry George, In his work upon the
land question, from an abstract p oint OF
view is thoroughly right in his conclu-
sion that there should be no proprietor
ship in land. But we have not at the
present time to deal with questions OF
abstract right, nor can we mitigate evils
incorporated into our very systems and
institutions bv simply striking them out
of existence. We are compelled to reach
the point where the evil exists in its
greatest magnitude, and endeavor by
such means as are at our command to
reduce that evil - to lessen it by degrees,
and if, in the fulfllment of our purpose,
it may be finally eradicsted from the
social fabric we will indeed have reached
the millennium of human happiness.
The relief that Ireland may expect to
obtain from the imposition of her pres
ent land tenure is not dissimilar to that
which we, in the United States, will be
compelled to seek if the present situation
of affairs is allowed to continue. Now,
in this country, when the evil is in its
incipiency, is the proper time for think
ing people to consider means by which
to avert impending calamity. From the
beginning of the American government,
almost from its earliest colonial history,
the land tenure has been remarkable for
the almost total absence of lease-hold
estates Under the principles of our
government the erection of such estates
was 80 little congo NAL with the feelings,
the wants, or interests of the people that
they gradually fell into disuse, and the
few remaining in our da7 are but shad-
ows of the past, relics ofa faded grandeur
and in the last steps cfdecaY. By lease
hold estates mean that character Of the
estates which, in England, Scotland and
Ireland have been perpetuated through
long train ofso-called scions of nobility
20 sustain oppressive burdens upon the
people. Those estates, the fruit of which
has supported idleness and debsucherv
and entailed upon the tillers of the soil
poverty and misery.
Even in fee America, however, the
ingenuity of wealth has not been at q
loss to devise means by which to carry
on its expressions, increase its own
riches and impoverish the people. So
wealth, with its tendency towards mo-
nopoly and aggregation Of power, has, in
this country, sought to acquire such
landed estates as will practically give
them control of agriculture, husbandry
and pasturage.
Even from the shores of England,
whose history is already darkly stained
with the woes and sufferings of mankind
.-possessors of unearned wealth have
come to this land of plenty, this home OF
freemen and of workingmen, to plant
the seeds of their monstrous atrocities
and to extend the power of their ill
gotten wealth. If it may be permitted
that men or syndicates can acquire un-
limited tracts of the surveyed or unsur-
yeyed public domain of the United
c.otos tho dav ia not far distant VIII en-