Kentucky Irish American. (Louisville, Ky.) 1898-1968, 1898-10-15

it or not, if they are to keep their heads
at all above water. the time is come when
you will again have to reduce this land
question to such condition of resistance,
and of turbulence if you like, that the
landlords will jump at any great measure
of compulsory purchase TINT will make
every farmer of Ireland the master within
the bounds ditch of his own holding,
and that will at the same time sweep
away the last barrier from the landlords
resistance to home rule.
But even if we could make the farmers
the owners of their own holdings it would
be of no avail i'll cases where the farmers
holdings are so small and so poor that it
would be impossible to earn decent liv-
ing out of them. There are fully 80, 900
tenants in the province whose holdings
would have to be doubled and trebled in
size before they could hope to earn de-
cent subsistence on the land of their
fathers. Every four or five years the po-
tatoes fail, and these 90, 600 peasant fami-
lies are depending for bread on the hui
initiating and degrading charity of the
stranger. This poverty is not Gods
work. 1t is the devils work. There are
still living, dare say, in this very crowd,
persons who can remember when the
plains of Boyle were peopled by a great
and industrious tenantry, who were after
ward banished to the Curlew mountains.
Wall he A,,,a Ia
we are 10 stop the hand OF famine in the
West, the people will have to come
down again from the Curlew mountains.
The glorious plain that expands for TWEEN
ty or thirty miles through Roscommon
will have to be split up into farms of
twenty or thirty acres. That will save
the people from the shame of going
about the world as mendicants for stran-
is not day-dream to me. On the con-
trary, it will be a reality the moment that
the whole people of Connaught initiate
the people of Mayo, and say that they
will stand no more pottering with this
question of famine in the West The
Congested Districts Board, by a resolution
which can never be expunged, have con-
fessed that ours is the only remedy for
the congested districts Let us bring
things to such a pass that the landlords
will be just as eager for compulsory pur-
chase as we are. Let us prove that in
the County Councils the people will not
only be able to do the business better
than ever the grand juries did it, but that
by and by they will be federated into a
national Parliament of the people, whose
business it will be to demand the right to
compulsory purchase and the control of
the police just as the law gives to the
County Councils of England at present
Above all, let us chose up our ranks as
Irish Nationalist. Let nothing tempt us
to renew old sores or to refuse the help
ing hand of any Irishman, and let us
demand of all sides some patience under
provocation. If this league that you are
establishing here today should do nothing
else except to help in any degree to heal
up that most calamitous wound, one of
the most calamitous that ever was in
flicted upon the Irish cause, say to you
that result alone will be something that
will be worth having labored for, and
that will have glories enough most ample
to reward every man who has hand, act
or part in the good work.