Kentucky Irish American. (Louisville, Ky.) 1898-1968, 1898-12-24

but Mr.. Gladstone's land act of 1881 ex-
pressly recognizes the farmers as partners,
and even the predominant partners, in
the ownership of their own holdings.
The landlords had been endeavoring to
repeal the land act and to destroy the
tenants property by importing into the
partnership a third party, the grabber,
an outsider unknown to the law of 81, a
man who had not made his money out of
the land, and who never spent an hour
of labor on the holding he grabs.
The whole Irish land question at the
present moment was question whether
by means of these grabbers, these black
legs, the landlords would succeed in con-
fscating the tenants property and throw
ing the country back again in a state of
agrarian revolution. There was great
agrarian issue here as to which every
consideration of craftsmanship ought to
counsel the public authorities to preserve
the most scrupulous neutrality between
landlord and tenant. But just mark the
impartiality of Dublin Castle. They first
appoint the Fry Commission to declare
that the rental of Ireland must be not
what will enable the tenants to live and
thrive, but what grabbers like Egan were
prepared to offer as competition rent
out of the money earned from other
sources.
But not content with that, they author
ize the Royal Irish constabulary to turn
grabbers themselves, and accordingly this
poor woman, who only owed two years
rent, and who had actually been accepted
by the Land Commissioners as the pur-
chaser of her holding, was ousted from
her little farm, and she and her little
family, SO far as the grabber is concerned,
are doomed to the work-house.
They should remember that the County
Councils of England had the control of
their own police, and should man their
own County Councils next March with
men of the stamp of John Fitzgibbon,
who would make the first business of the
County Councils to insist, if the boosted
equality between the two countries is not
sham, that they should have the same
control over the police in Ireland as in
England. In claiming every liberty and
right they had in England they were on
impregnable ground. In conclusion, Mr..
O'Brien said: Before finish let me say
a word about the extraordinary success
of this movement.
If the people are rallying to this United
Irish League in way that even the most
sanguine of us could not have anticipat-
ed, il is because they feel and know that
this is no faetious Judgement. i is no
mans movement; it is no manenyer to
make party capital it is simply an at
tempt to break down as far as possible
those fatal barriers between Irishmen and
freshmen by arraying us all together
again side by side in open field against
the common enemy, and letting the
future settle itself hereafter by the help
of the old associations and the new forces
and the new men that the progress of
this fight is bringing to the front.
l don't know and / don't care what
proportion of this meeting may be Par
nellite or non-Parnellite, but this l do
know, that on this platform Parnellite
and -Parnellite stand on footing of
absolute equality. Neither of them is
asked to recant anything or apologize for
anything.
But both are asked as far as possible to
turn their thoughts away from the heart
burnings of the past and to act like men
in the living present so as to give back
to our people and to our cause the price
less weapon of genuine national com
bination, the only weapon by which We
possibly can gain back our freedom.
don't at all complain if in the begin
ming people were suspicious when it was
whispered into their ears that this was
sectional movement in disguise. In
the morbid state of feeling that has pre-
vailed for years we have all to exercise
deal OF patience one toward another, anC
to put up with little misunderstanding
and injustice. III such state of thing
| none OF US SdH pIClCilu W NC uOS uldtlC "
infallible. The most that any of us car
hope 10 do is to do our little best in the
way of peace and good will among Irisl
Nationalist, and let us be judged accord
ing to our works.
/ believe more in practicing unit,
among the people than in looking for i
TO members of Parliament. But it is be
cause we know that there is no under
hand plot, no crooked purpose, no per
sonai ambition of any sort or kind
underlying this movement, except /
formidable fighting power-even il al
the existing sections and existing leader
had to disappear to bring it about--it il
because we know that, and because tn,
people with that wonderful instinct o.
theirs know it, that the cream of thu
men of all sections are gradually finding
their way into this movement with
sense of relief and hope that they have no
felt for many day. We go for trusting
the people in the fullest possible manne
to shape the programme and the futnr.
of this movement and to give it any di
! rection that their own good sense anC
honest patriotism may suggest. The frs
lesson / ever learned in the school o
Parnell was that the first condition o
the freedom of Ireland was a combination
of all the moral forces and the physica
forces, of all the Parliamentary force
: and all the un-Parliamentary forces, an(
. Ia the D,rsuit Of that HIGH and ho1v oh