The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1900-04-11
The Ireland of To-day,

All we'll governed countries natural
ly increase in population, in manufac-
lures, and in all the other evidences of |
progress. Natural causes may some-
times intervene to abridge progress or
TO hold it in equilibrium, bat the gener-
al course of civilized and we'll governed |
countries is forward.
When Queen Victoria came to the
throne in 1887, Ireland had popula-
ton of some 100000, and few years
later, just before the calamitous famine
of 1916, it had risen to nearly 100000.
In the natural course of progressive de-
velopment, under wise laws and the
wise administration of laws, Ireland's
population should have doubled in the
last two-thirds of century. On the
contrary, however, that population, at
the time of the Queens present visit,
is only about one-half what it was fifty
years ago, or less than 100000, being
some 100000 less than 1t was at the
time Victoria began to reign. The aw-
full depletion by the great famine of
1916 accounts, only in some small de-
gree, for this shrinkage in population.
1t continued long after the ravages of
famine had ceased, when the recovery
should have begun, and this continued
drain was the result of evils in govern
ment, to remedy which Gladstone made
the first serious effort in 1881 in his
proposed reform of the land laws of Ire
land, and in his subsequent measures
for the disestablshment of church
usages which were burdening the Irish
people and contributing to their i'm
poverishment.
1t did not appear at the time that
Queen Victoria was in sympathy with
her plebeian prime minister in his be-
nevolent schemes for the betterment of
the condition of her Irish subjects. On
the contrary Gladstone was never a
/ royal favorite. The Queens sympa-
thies and her influence were with
Gladstone's patrician opponents, of
whom Salisbury, the present prime
minister of England, was chief. Politi-
cal, economic and ecclesiastical reforms
never had the royal approval, and what
progress was made in ameliorating the
condition of Ireland was wrung from
the unwilling hands of the nobility of
England. Manufactures have not been
planted in Ireland. She has been
farmed by landlords who have dwelt
abroad and who have spent the income
of their estates in splendid living in
England, or on the continent OF Eu-
rope. Ireland has been an orange
mercilessly squeezed for its juice by
the foreign owners of its soil. Her
fate, during the period of Victoria's
sixty-three years of sovereignty, has
been the most calamitous in all her
history.
The parliamentary union of Ireland
with Great Britain was brought about
by bribery and perfdy. The pledges
England gave Ireland were disre-
garded, or we're not fulfilled for gen.
erations. Reforms promised were not
accomplished, or only partially or tard-
lily undertaken. Gladstone was the
only prominent English statesman with
a conscience who undertook to deal
fairly and honestly with Ireland, and
he was stoutly opposed by the Queen
and the English nobility, and held by
them in ill-disguised ill-favor or con-
tempt. The sources of Irish discon-
tent are deep. Centuries of time have
not served in any appreciable degree to
eradicate hostility to England. There
is irony in the circumstance that the
first serious effort of royalty 10 propi-
tiate the good will of Irishmen has for
its inspiration desire and purpose of
the Queen to express the royal appre-
citation of the valor of Irish soldiers in
England's Ubiquitous war for the ex-
tinction of the little South African
republics, just as Britons of former
generation had destroyed the indie
pendence of Ireland.
Will the figs of Cancellation ripen, or
the grapes of good will grow sweet, on
such unnatural stocks, in the rays of |
such light as illumines the royal prog
ress in Ireland?