The Blackpool Herald. — 1881-09-02 (Blackpool, Lancashire, England)

THE HERALD  BLACKPOOL, FRIDAY, SEPT. 2nd, 1881.  1 1 Mr. GLADSTONE'S "message of peace" hasbeen sent to Ireland. The Royal Assent has been given to the Irish Land Act. It is now one of the laws of the land, and it is interesting, and in some sense instructive, to note the i i way in which the measure has been received lin various quarters. John Dillon, just released from Kilmainham by the clemency of the Crown and Mr. Forster, sneers at the Act as in his opinion useless, and not deserving of a fair trial. Nearer home, Mr. W. B. Hulton, addressing a meeting of Conservatives at Farnworth, on characterised the Act as the greatest piece of class legislation that wasever passed. The" Act, besides being unjust to the landlords, would provoke an immense litigation, and consequent ill-will. They might say it was begotten with the inflammatory speeches and verbosity of Midlothian, conceived in the heated imagination of White Boys and whisky, and delivered with scenes of gore and in the throes of atrocities, mutilation, and murder, such as this country had never witnessed before in any part of the United Kingdom." Such "heated language" may in a sense be excusable when coming from Ireland ; but is in no wise excusable when uttered by a well-to-do Lancashire magistrate. In very pleasing contrast were the remarks made by the junior member for our own division of the county MajorGeneral Feilden—on the previous day, at Leyland. The Major-General was glad from the bottom of his heart that the Land Bill had passed, because he thought there was a great deal about it which would be beneficial to Ireland, and it would show at any rate that both the Government and the Opposition had been anxious to attempt to do what possibly could be done, and what it was in their power to do, with the object of benefitting that unfortunate country which had always given so much trouble. He believed that in what the House of Lords and the House of Commons, led by Mr. Gladstone, had done. they had been greatly helped by the Conservatives, the members of which party had played into their hands for the good of the country, and with a patriotic desire for the general good, the result being that what had been a painful and unfortunate session had ended successfully." There spoke the patriotic gentleman, and not the bigotted partizan. Sir Charles Gavin Duffy, in a long letter to the Rev. Canon Doyle on the Land Bill, says it recognises the claim of the long-excluded Irish race to the possession and control of their own soil, and if they had repealed the Union in 1843 a patriot Parliament would, he considers, have framed some such measure to keep peace in the country they were commissioned to rule. It amazes him that the people and their leaders have not a sort of maternal pride for this Act, for certainly they were active partners in the production of it. Sir Charles's letter puts the whole matter in so fair a light that we need scarcely ask permission to quote a portion of it. He says— As the bill left the House of Commons it seemed to me it was the completest, and indeed the only nearly complete, act of justice the Imperial Parliament ever proffered to Ireland. Catholic Emancipation was hampered by insulting restrictions, and was long a dead letter : the disestablishment of the Irish Church, though it was a courageous and triumphant achievement, was anything rather than a recognition of religious equality, for on one pretence or another the lands and buildings and the bulk of the funds were given back to the minority. Municipal reform, Parliamentary reform, the whole catalogue of what are called concessions to Ireland, were of the same character, (locked and disfigured to pass the jealous scrutiny of the English peers or the English people. But 1 the Land Bill was Be large and generous in its conception that, after the lopping it has undergone at the hands of a selfish oligarchy, an Act of l'arliament remains which, honestly and fearlessly administered, may do for Ireland what Stein and Hardenburg did for Prussia—build it up anew horn its ruins, may, indeed, without violence or wrong to anyone, undo and reverse the confiscations of Cromwell and the Williamite Parliaments. I would like to see a conference —a practical business