Omaha daily bee., 1905-12-24
Figures Mads Public Do Not Show How
Much Has BEEN Done.
DISTRESS IN soms PARTS OF IRELAND
Priest Tells Of District Where Men ans
Beasts Live Together
OLD HOTEL USED BY ROBERT EM1sr
Application of Proprietor for ~
Writ Bring. Old Brasenv -
Hotel Into the LIZ y
light.

DUBLIN, Dec. 23.-(Spe al Cablegram to
The Bee)-There is rather sinister lack
or fullness in the Information given to the
public in connection with the working of
the land purchase act of 1908 The treasury
is deliberately withholding from the Irish
ratepayers, 1t is everywhere asserted, the
returns upon which the British Parliament
insists as long as the British exchequer
was the immediate guarantor. The returns
of the estates commissioners are in many
respects incomplete. Another example is
that OF the report of the Congested Dis
tricts board which has just been issued for
the last financial year. From these re-
ports IT is learned that under the act of
1893 eighty-four estates have been pur-
chased for more than IS, ,5OO,OOo. On these es-
tates there were 6S71 tenants occupying
l66,169 acres of land. In addition 60 24O acres
Of untenanted land were included. The
names of the estates and the area are
given, but no information is vouchsafed
about the rentals; nor the individual
cases the number OF tenants on each es-
tate. Parliament, as we'll as the public,
has been 'nft without the means to Judge
whether the prices being paid offer a fair
prospect of progress in the congested dis
tricts or whether they are such as may
render the outlay on the Improvement
wholly barren because of the burden i'm
posed upon the new proprietors.
Distress in Some Places.
At the meeting OF the Ballnrobe branch
Of the United Irish league, held in the town
hall there, Canon Stephen. NJ. p, the
president delivered a speech on the pres
ent state of Irish affairs which showed
sound judgment and common sense. Canon
Stephens references to the affairs of his
own district were Of special interest and
value. For us in Ballinrobe," he said,
the land question is one OF crying urgency.
In this parish there are considerably over
5000 acres, Irish plantation measure, un-
der the grass-fattening lands up to- the
very walls Of the town. Face to face with
this state of things we have hundreds of
families huddled In villages on the out
skirts in poverty and squalor unspeakabIe
And yet, notwithstanding the -boasteJ
advantages of recent legislation, not one
solitary patch of land has been bought or
sold under the Wyndham act, and to the
estates commissioners and the Congested
Districts board Balllnrobe is so far a place
unknown-a veritable terra incognta-and
the Wyndham act an utter failure. Feudal-
ism is dying hard. 1t rests with you that
its last kick shall not be in Ballinrobe. In
'hp Niiia6t VI Sit6suull-lOO poor lOr eNlC-
tion-there are over twenty families
grouped on less than twenty acres, not OF
land but of black rock. as its Irish name
indicates. In Cloonereen there are quite
as many families pitched i'm the black bog.
On Curragh human wretchedness can go
no further-man and beast occupy the same
apartment"
Memory of Emmett
The Brazen Head hotel on Lower Bridge
street. whose proprietress obtained an in
junction against neighbor restraining
him from trespassing on her premises in
an action before the master of the polls
is a house associated with thrilling memo
ries in Irish history. 1t is approached by
a passage which opens into a court not
unlike the courts of the old English hos
telries. The Brazen Head hotel was in
1903 the rendezvous of Robert Emmett and
his most trusted associates in the insur-
rectionary movement of which he was the
head. In one of the reception rooms of the
hotel which is traditionally believed to have
been the scene of the most secret councils
of Emmett and his companions is. or was.
small table on which II is said that
Emmet's call to arms and manifesto de-
claring the establishment OF provisional
government was written. The writing table
forms itself the lid OF a drawer. and on
the back of the lid are pasted some ac-
counts from contemporary newspapers Of
the day of the principal incidents I'm the
Emmet tragedy. Within stones throw
of the Brazen Head hotel on the opposite
side of the street is the house notable as
the warehouse OF Oliver Bond, who was A
wholesale draper of great wealth. Here
/ II was that Bond and fourteen of his
associates, delegates from various United
! Irish associations, the occasion being a
provisional meeting of the United Irish
Brotherhood, were arrested by Major Swan
and force Of constahulary to whom in
formation was given by the notorious
! Thomas Reynolds. who got himself sworn
: into the United Irish Brotherhood to betray
I its members for bribes by Dublin castle
nEnIAAlO In nE LLaLna.