The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-11-26

wrought by these laws was overwhelming
in Ireland. O'CoNNELL in 1913 said of
them: Protection is the English for six
pence; and what is more it is the
English for an extorted sixpence
The real meaning of protection, therefore.
is robbery-robbery of the poor by the
richn
The price of bread became greater;
wages fell; industry was paralyzed; "for
the benefit" said O'CoNNELL, "of one par
ticular class'-the landowners - D
Thirty years of widespread misery fol-
lowed, endured by English and Irish alike
with more than Roman patience. In vain
the protected" landlords were impor
tuned. In vain the wretched workman
cried for bread. The protected capitalists
were as unbending then as now. Then the
potato crop failed and the last support of the
the people of Ireland was gone. Already
sinking under the inhuman drudgery to
which protection" had brought them In
their vain battle for bread, the people sue
cumbed now to starvation, as the famine
OF 1916, unprecedented in its horrors, swept
the country. That famine, in which 3OO.-
COO men, women and children died in the
torture Of slow star walton, was due to the
Corn Laws and was the death blow to
protection" in the United Kingdom.
The repeal of the Corn Laws lifted the
blight from Ireland, and under free trade
another such famine is simply impossible.
The ownership of the land by foreign land
lords is the other curse of the Emerald
Isle" and that, too, is species of ''protec
ton" that must ultimately be adjusted.
The land in Ireland is largely owned by
nonresident landlords; but most of the i'm
provements on the poorer lands have been
made by the tenants. AS JOHN BRIGHT
stated in 1881:
Il believe that nine-tenths of all that is
to be seen on the farm land of Ireland-the
houses, barns, fences, and whatever you
call cultivation, or freeing land from the
wilderness-have been placed there by the
labor of the tenantry Of Ireland and not at
the expense of the landlord"
The result Of this feeling of the Irish
peasant that his interest on the land is
greater than that of the landlor5,i is that the
tenant is loath to pay rent, loath 60 improve
the land, as improving it would simply in
crease his rent, and loath to leave, since he
has placed so much labor on the land
already. The tenant does not like to pay
rent for land he has reclaimed, from the
condition of bog, perhaps; but since the
landlord owns the land, he very naturally
claims his rent.
Fear that improvements will cause q
rise of rent keeps the tenant squalid
sqCalor makes the landlord hate to stay in
ireland, and he impoverishes the country
further by becoming an absentee. When
contracts have been made that the land
lords shall open roads and supply stone and
timber for buildings, while the tenants
should accept large increase IN rent, the
landlords have simply ignored their side
of the contract and held the tenants of mac
cessible, almost worthless, tracts to
their agreement. In such circum-
stances is it healthier for the land
lords TO dwell in London or Paris.
Many advantages are taken over poor and
ignorant men which nullify the apparent
liberality OF recent legislation. If tenant
with arrears of rent unpaid goes to the
land court to have his annual rent re-
duced, he is either intimidated or evicted
for arrears before his case can come up
Space is too small to give, from Tory evi-
ence alone, 1.-THE of the difficulties ar
Irish tenant labors under to obtain the
barest JUSTICE
Such are the conditions in unhappy Ire.
land that even freedom of trade, great a:
its blessings have been to that country, il
unable wholly to alliveate