The Carbon advocate. [volume] (Lehighton, Pa.) 1872-1924, 1888-03-31

owners IN France at this time with popu-
lation of about &c, ,OOO 600; while we haYe
less than four and half millions of real
estate owners in this glorious land of liber-
ty of ours with its population of about co.
100000. Please note the difference and the
tendency. / have taken some care to veri-
fly these figures. But let me now further
Illustrate by calling your attention to poor,
suffering, unhappy Ireland, because you
can read about 1t in almost any newspaper.
What makes Ireland so poor to day9 asks a
distinguished orator. The answer is, the
poor Irishman, Lying in his cabin, does not
own it or the ground it stands on. You
make government vigorous when the
people have right to part of the soil,
however little, and the roofs that cover
their families. The whole of Ireland is
owned by few thousand men, and the
large landed estates of that unhappy coun-
try have taken the spirit from the people to
large extent The people are oppressed
by coercion laws to bring them into sub
lection on the one hand, and by absentee
landlords on the other, and the fruits of
their labor are gathered by those who live
in idleness and luxury; and l cannot re-
frain from saying that that gallant people.
with their orators, statesmen and poets, and
whose soldiers have won many a battle in
which the English have triumphed, and
whose blood has stained, l may safely say,
every American battlefield in the cause of
our liberties and independence, have been
scattered all over the globe. 1t IS an un-
disputed fact that during the great famine
in Ireland, about the year 1S46, about o.
100000 perished by starvation, and yet the
landlords who owned Ireland actually sold
and exported grain and other provisions
from that country at and during the time
of the famine. There was plenty to eat in
Ireland, but the potato crop had tailed and
the people were too poor to buy other food.
Some people hardly starve and die amidst
plenty, like the Irish did, without fighting,
and yet in the face of these facts some peo-
pie say the Irish are quarrelsome. Who
could be entirely quiet under such CALLING
injustice and oppression? But believe that
British tyranny is on the wane and that
Ireland will ere long again have her Parlia-
ment and her o wn Home Rule" with
peace and plenty.
If you will take the matter in hand and
carefully investigate, you will find that
there is very little, if any, public land left
in the United States-that is good land
Foreigners are buying up all our public
lands in large blocks-one syndicate not
long ago purchased 25,O0O,0 900 acres in one
tract, and American spectators are en-
gagged in the same scheme. l read an ar
tlcle the other day that a syndicate corpor-
alton in the West had 10, 600 acres of wheat
farming on large scale. This is the
tendency of late years in every business ay-
ocalion. Can you name more than two ma
tions-France and the United States-that
could have paid such war indemnity as
France had to pay at the end of the recent
war with Germany? My strongest faith
that France will remain Republic lies in
the fact that her lands and her wealth are
not in the hands of few, like it is in Eng
land. Why do the people of the United
States permit such a concentration of
wealth, and such combinations of capital,
and aggregations of cooperative power, that
history everywhere shows has been the
ruin and downfall of nations. The public
lands given to the several Pacific Railroad
Companies would make seven States in
area like Pennsylvania
The remedy to prevent all these evils, is
to enact law making it criminaloffense,
punishable by fine and Imprisonment, to
own CT hold more than a certain limited
quantity of land by any one corporation, 10
be fixed and regulated by law. We invoke
the aid of the criminal code in many other
matters and things, whenever the public
safety or welfare demands it. Besides in
the matter of land-like the air we breathe
there is a natural and inaerent right and
reason why every human being should have
a right to use and occupy portion of the
earth. 1t is as necessary to his existence as
the air he breathes. To illustrate: read
not long ago that wealthy English lady
was the owner of the entire Island of Lewis
near England or Scotland, containing sew
eral thousand acres. Her tenants to the
number of more than four hundred, hum
bly, presented a petition to her, declaring
that they could hardly exc out a bare sub,
sistence on the little plots of land assigned
them, much less pay rent, and asking that
their ancient and hereditary lands, COM
mons, &C., now lying waste be restored to
them. Lady Matheson, of course, refused
their request and suggested that her ten
ants should sell their cattle, or engage in
fishing to enable them to pay her rent on
their present holdings. If they could not
do that she limited to them that they had
better emigrate. The spokesman of the
poor tenants replied that so long as lands
on the island suitable for cultivation were
exclusively occupied by sheep and deer the
natives did not feel it TO be their duty to
emigrate. This irritated the lady and she
said: 'TheSe lands are my property and
yoH hare nothing to do NTH them" AT
present this is correct statement of the
legal right of landlords. Lady Matheson
having this absolute ownership in the IS
land of Lewis, she is the absolute monarch
of her domain; she has the right to COM
pei her tenants to emigrate from the place
where they and their fathers and mothers
were born, and should they refuse, she
may, if all other means fail, drive them all
off the island into the sea. If that be true
of the Island of Lewis, it must be equally
true of the larger islands of Great Britain,
Scotland and Ireland. If it be sound doc
trine and law as to them, then it applies to
each continent separately and to the earth
as whole, or wherever that system of law
is IN force. Is there not higher law than
any ever written on parchment that war
rants and justifes men in refusing to starve
In, . he ful,N nf Al