Morning journal and courier., 1889-05-25
AFOOT IN IRELAND.

AFOOT IN IRELAND.
 A Fair Land Turned Into an Eternal
 Prison House of Meanings and Tears
 -Jhe Heartrending Scenes of Evfc-
 tIon-DrIv1ng the Irish From Their
 Country-A DepOPuIatton Scheme of
 the Landlords.
 CORK. Ireland, May 13. Tothe Editor ofthe JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 To one much among the lowly in Ireland there is an ever present series of scenes which touch the contemplative heart SO deeply that at times, if only within it's own hearing, it cannot but cry out in agonized protest against the governmental conditions which make of so fair land an eternal pris- on house of meanings and tears. From Ma- lin Head to Cork, from Belfast to Donegal, from Dublin to Galway, from Wexford to one of over two hundred consecutive days, at some time between the hour of rising from, or lying down upon, castle bed or peasant hovel wisp of sea weed or straw, I have perforce, and not of my own seeking, looked upon scenes and been cognizant of incidents so doloIous and desperate in their forlernness, and with such directness of ap- peal to the least generous and most grudging justice of humanity, that have stood ap- palled and involuntarily exclaimed, "How can Christianity truly exist and Christian world idly permit such barbarities to con- tinue?''
 The most frequent and heartrending of these scenes is of course the eviction. I have already witnessed one hundred and thirty three of these home murders by Eng fish law. It is easy enough for any glib wri- ter to give the outlines of one of these daily horrors, act by act. Enough of that sort of dramatic literature has already been read. But no huAan being has yet been found with sufficient genius, could almost say heaven given power, to put his soul tingling hands beneath the descriptive verbiage of actual fact, and lift from the inner perdition of Irish evictions one little scroll for the world to see truly painted the faintest out lines of the helpiessness, the dismay, the horror and the despair, that come to every miserable wretch cast starving upon the roadside in Ireland That one were truly a vicar of God. Let one thoussndth part of the awful reality of these revelting and bar- barrie acts be once comprehended by even the masses of the English people themselves, and home rule and homo safety in Ireland would take the place of centuries of English terrorism and infamy with almost the swift ness of sound and light. Read and argue up and down, through and through, around and over, this whole matter, and just what have compassion; and human governments permitted and sustained by human beings are eventually compelled to rule CT be ruled by human justice. Therefore governmental liberty and justice will surely come to the people of this land. But on the soul sick ening way to that time there will still be, as there is and has go long been, every day and hour in almost every square mile of Erin, the shudder of fear, the despair of utter hopelessness, the moan of the starving, dy- | ing, such partings as thrill the on lockers l heart to see, and in and through and over all, such pitiful minor chords of nameless | woe as should still every sound of joy in ev- l cry Christian land.
 The infamy of English landlordism in Ireland annually drives eighty thousand Irish men, women and children from Ire- | lands shores to foreign lands. That is one reason why the population of Ireland to-day | is not more than double what 1t was fifteen | hundred years ago. Eighty thousand souls l flying from the land of their birth to escape l actual starvation and life long governmental | injustice worse than death, means about if | teen hundred and forty heart breaking part | ings for every week, or two hundred and I twenty for every working day of the year. | It Is in this
 There's heart-soD I'm hearin',
 | O deS0late Erin.
 That rises above the hoarse songs of the sea Aud that sobbing will never
 | Joy calm till, forever,
 Thy people triumphant OCT tyranny bel | sometimes think that the woe of these people would be too great for human endu- | rance were 1t not for their hope and help in | and from America. The noble work of the National League has reduced the rentals oi Ireland twenty-five million dollars annually. | More than three -hfths of the money neces- | sary to effect this was contributed by Ameri | cans and Irish Americans. And still so pitt 1 able is the condition of the peasantry that | in my judgment, twice the number of eyic l tions, and therefore twice that amount oi | indescribable misery of this sort would oc- cur, were it not for the additional millions ol American money annually coming here; the aggregate of countless driblets sent individ l uals to prevent eviction or to keep soul ano l body together. I believe that fully one hali l of all money transactions at every small city ! village and post station in Ireland are of this character. Stand at the money order win.
  one hour, and thep number of issuances yor
 will see of orders on Ireland postofices, fol
 sums of from ten shillings to ten pounds will tell the whole story-at least an endless l answer to an endless cry.
 It is simply. impossible to convey the
 faintest idea to a stranger to these things O. the measure of suocor in the aggregate tt
 Irish people, or to make comprehensive tht
 awful need and agony, in individual cases thus relieved. On one of the richest estate of county Antrim, not twenty miles iron
 Belfast, two maiden sisters, all that were lief
 of an Irish family which had original. built the first tenants cabin ever erected il ! the townland. and who had reclaimed, mad ! valuable and occupied @ small holding of tel
 acres for nearly two hundred years, havin, in that time paid to landlords nearly tel
 thousand dollars in rents, were found las
 November, by people I know, physicall
 helpless and starving to death. There wa
 not one ounce of food, @ crumb Of peat no
 scarcely rag to cover them, in the half root less home from whence they had been a fe1 1 weeks previously evicted, but had been giv ] en the miserable privilege of occupying a
 "care takers" I say, for personally kno, } this, that these two women of respectabilit and good intelligence were literally starvin to death within rife-shot of the titled pro ! prietor's palace, 8 moro gorgeous and aff1u
 ent establishment than can be found on tn banks of our Hudson; and would have 1T deed been murdered by British landlordisl
 had it not been for few pounds which cam , | luckily on it's mission of salvation from th hands of some hard working Irish-Americal II It is statement of fact that there is not single holding in Ireland to-day, even sint the bene6cent reduction of rents effecte
 through the agitation of that grand an great striver for human liberty, Oharl