The Irish standard., 1898-12-24

Ads peeu amply proven DefOre our eyes
by the men WHO have organized the
United Irish league west of the Shannon.
Strange 1t is, indeed, that the old
strong, virile fighting spirit of Irish ma
tionality has for many months past been
maniiesting itself only in the West,
whose people used generally be looked
upon as being too downtrodden to offer
serious opposition to oppression, and to
the capital of the North and some sur
rounding districts which were for long
identified in our minds with the rule of
orangeism. We do not draw very
cheerful picture. But things will be far
different twelve months hence if the
masses of our people, who are National
list to the core, only think over the situ-
alton during this Christmas time, and
resolve to use the remedies that lie with
in their grasp.
The present position and prospects of
the evicted tenants are not creditable to
the Irish people, least of all to the ten
ant farmers of Ireland The letter from
Cairns, North Queensland, Australia, en-
closing cheque for e 80 for the relief
OF the evicted tenants is proof how
widespread is the sympathy their pitia-
bic condition excites. Thomas Givens,
the honorable secretary of the Cairns '98
celebration committee, writes to Mr..
Dillon that the $50 forwarded as con-
tr1bution to the evicted tenants fund "is
the balance left of funds collected for a
'9S celebration in this town, and we are
of opinion that it could not be better
applied than to relieve the distress
caused to the unfortunate peasants, who
may be rendered homeless by the ram
pant tyrannical landlordism that pre-
walls in the unhappy country of our
birth, which, though now far from it,
we still love SO dearly" When, from
the farthest end of the world comes such
sympa t5y and aid for the evicted, shall
they be denied help at home, and denied
by those who have profited by their
sufferings and their sacrifices? If appeal
should be made only to the prudence of
the tenant farmers of ireland. there
could be- no folly more grievous than
the desertion of the evicted. The land
lords view them with relentless resent
ment. They are determined, to use the
words of their chief leader, to make
examples of them" Why? Because
they realize how gallant was the stand
made by those men in a critical hour of
the land war, and how large the conces-
slons their courage wrung, of not for
themselves, for their brethren, from
rack-renting and evicting landlordism.
But it is not vindictiveness alone that
inspires the Irish landlords in their per-
secution of the Irish tenants Preven-
tion as well as punishment is in their
view. They desire to strike terror to
prevent any future resistance to their
rig.ss by the wofd' fate of those who led
resistance in the past. Rack-rents, they
know, will go up, and eviction and land
grabbing be unimpeded If the spirit of
the people is broken. How well their
calculations have been realized every
tenant farmer in Ireland knows.
But surely the self-same reasons that
inspire the rack-repters and the eyictors
to pursue the tenant farmers of ireland
with relentless hostility, should inspire
tlieir happier brethren who have profited
by their sacrifices to succor them with
generous, unremitting devotion.