The professional world. (Columbia, Mo.) 1901-192?, 1902-05-16
A CRISIS IN IRELAND.
THE OUTLOOK DOES NOT SEEM
TO BEING THREATENING.
Frequent Improvements in Condi-
ton of Tenant Farmers Has
Taken the String.

Dublin letter: We in Ireland have
gone back twenty years-that is what
the Crimes Act Proclamation has ac-
complished for us politically.
The land war of 1882 has r%eopened,
and is now under full Roadway. The
National League has come into direct
collision with the government, and we
have already had a couple of weeks of
keen competition in the endeavor to
prove which has the greater authority
in the land.
The South and the West are as usu-
al the war ground-it never is other
wise it these crises.
That is where the government has
had to suspend the operation of or6i-
nary law-the law of the constitution
has done it for the same old reason
as in 1SS1-2. The government had ceas-
ed to hold any real authority in Glare,
Cork, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon and
Sligo. In a few other sections South
and West, and in one southern county
of Northern Ulster, conditions were
steadily approaching the breaking
point. The lord lieutenant of Ireland
thereupon decided that he would begin
the attack, and thus score one on the
league.
Things would probably have been
much slower in reaching the crash. if
the English local government system
had not Leen extended to rural Ireland
by the radical Balfour reform act of
a few years since. That legislation maze
the people in rural Ireland supreme. it
put all TIE local authority in the coun-
ties into their hands. The nobleman
and gentleman took a secondary place
thenceforth. and the new county coun-
ellis, made up altogether of representa-
tiveS of the masses-farmers and shop
keepcrs-were given all the former
governing powers of the grand jury.
The elective county councils were at
once the most active allies of the Ma
tional league, and they have steadily
increased its power until the law
threatened to become a dead letter and
so the Dublin authorities have now in
terfereQ.
The county councils have so much
power. If local farmers whose relations
with their landlords were such that
they had no special eaSon for working
in with the league, and if they conse-
quently became apathetic, the council
had an easy way of getting even with
them. This way was to leave the farm
'l II Nv nv oupDbll Tic ltdSut Oul
of all contracts for road-making and
other local works. The county council
has the awarding of all such contracts
in it's W hands.
Even this sort of treatment-this
d%isciplining of the farmers whose rec
ord had fallen behind what the league
expected and demanded, did not prove
all powerful. and the same thing hap
pened that has always happened before
under similar conditions-a number of
farmers in the various districts that
have now been put under the crimes
act insisted on doing things to suit
themselves in the matter of rent-paying
and If they were satisfied with their
landlord and thought the amount of
rent charged them to be fair, ignored
the mandates of the league. Then they
began to have a more or less bad time
of it, and things happened in these
southern and western counties which
at last aroused governmental action.
The crimes act was put into opera
ton, making it possible for the govern
ment to do many things it could not
under constitutional law. If a prosecu-
ton was begun, and local sympathies
We're opposed to it, the authorities, I'M
der the special powers of the crimes
act, could have the trial changed
to make application to any court. Cases
prosecuted under the act ear be decid-
ed by special %juries, and power of sum-
mary jurisdiction is given the authori-
ties wherever prosecution is judged
necessary because Of league intimida-
ton.
There has always been a gradually
increasing unrest, invariably leading up
to and eliminating in a declaration of
war between the leagues and the crown
(between all the leagues of the past,
and each government forced to attack
them) when reasonable boun0s were
exceeded in agitation.
OF late the u%tterances of league
speakers at platform meetings have
certainly outrun what is commonly con-
sidered the bounds Of discretion. John
Dillon, especially, has in some recent
speeches gone beyond the land contro-
versy altogether.
1t was not, however. MI. Dillon's (and
others) war talk which brought on the
enforcement of the crimes act. 1t was