The Sun. — 1869-01-11 (London, England)

THE IRISH PAPERS ON THE MURDER  OF MR. _BAKER.  4 _ The posttion taken by the " patriotic " papers of Ireland nn the murder of Mr. Baker is rather peculiar. This time they disagree very materially-. The Weekly Yews expresses unaffected horror at it, as utterly destitute of extenuating circumstances. The Irishman regards it with characteristic complacency. The spirit in which the tregedy is noticed appears in the following extract : " The advent of our new Viceroy has been ominously heralded by one of those occurrences which a cant phraseology d,s.gnat,.s as agrarian crimes.' A landlord has been shot. He has been put to death because there were men who believed that in his dealings with his tenants he hail violated the great laws of justice and humanity in such a manner as to demand retribution. They believed, further, that there was no human law to enforce retribution or to give redress, They took the law into their own hands, or, rather, they inflicted punishment without law. This is the whole and the naked truth. It is so as to the killing of Mr. Baker— it is so as to all the killings in which vengeance has been executed upon landlords. It were very easy to involve and obscure the plain truth by unmeaning phrases upon one side or the other. Nothing is easier than to declaim against assassination, to write fine sentences about `the mysterious behests of a secret Legislature.' Words like this may obscure, but they cannot alter facts. Landlords in Ireland are shot because the people believe that they do acts which ought not to go unpunished. The law is on the side of the landlords who perpetrate these acts. The popular conscience is against them. More than thii—not only the popular conscience but the popular instinct of self-preservation calls for a penalty that may deter men from acts which aim at the very life of the people. This is the whole philosophy of `agrarian crime.' Agrarian crime is the necessary, the inevitable result of a system which places the very lives of the people at the disposal of a few men. Mr. Baker is the most recent victim of this system. If that system be not speedily changed, he will not be the last." The following is the moral which the Irishman draws :—" It is the wicked and tyrannical system of our land laws which is responsible for every event like that of the killing of Mr. Baker. The law that vests in the landlord the power of capricious eviction drives the tenantry into those leagues of self-defence which visit acts of extermination with a retribution that is in reality protective. If we desire to put an end to such retributions, there is but one way of doing it, and that is by putting an end  to the power which provokes them. . - . . This is the Irish question with which Lord Spencer has to deal lf he attempts to govern Ireland while he leaves the land question' unsettled, he may rest assured 'hat the deed of blood which has so unfortunately marked the commencement of his government is but the prelude and the warning of many more. The real ques-I.ion between the Irish people and the English Government is the right to the Irish soil. Until this is adjusted the attempt to pacify Ireland by the settlement' of nuy other question is but a mockery, a delusion; and a snare.' No matter what is done upon other questions, behind them all stands the great question which must one day be decided—the great question which is one of the existence of the Irish nation. Is the land of Ireland to he held for the purposes of the interest, the tyranny, or the caprice of a few individuals, or are proprietary rights in that soil to be so modified and controlled as still to leave the land of Ireland a property to which the mass of the Irish people may assert some claim—at least the claim of having a right to live in their native land?"