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"THEY HAVE RIGHTS WHO DARE MAINTAIN THEM."

VOL. IV.-No. 101.

The Crisis.

APRIL, 1887.

PRICE TWOPENCE.

One for the Bullies.

The bullies at Portree are not going to have it all their own way. John Macpherson, the Glendale martyr, has raised an action for £500 damages against the Procurator-Fiscal of Portree for wrongful imprisonment. If law were justice he would get the money. They treated a Christian man as if he were a hog or a dog. Such injuries cannot be paid for in money, but still, as far as money can mend the injustice, those who injure should be forced to give it to the injured.

Parlour Politicians.

Lord Salisbury relentlessly pursues his policy of exaction. He will have rent whether the land produces it or not. To obtain rent he demands coercion, and in the demand Bright and Chamberlain support him. This is a marvellous action on their part, and the reason given there for is more marvellous than the action itself. Coercion is to be granted because it is to be accompanied with land purchase! Thus cruelty is justified, because fraud is added. To devote public money, whether British or Irish, to the purchase of land increases the amount which the industrious worker has to pay to the idle exactor. No There is one pressing danger of the moment. argument can alter this. Land is a monopoly, While honest and thorough politicians are and money devoted to its purchase will increase its price; and the price, whatever it batting their own doubts, a class of men are carefully studying the Irish Question and commay be, if paid to a useless landlord, represents rushing in, eager to proclaim that all Mr. the amount of which the community is robbed. Gladstone, Mr. Chamberlain, or Lord Salisbury Let coercion and fraud be again applied to believe they believe. They simply say ditto Ireland, and the time is not far distant when to dot to any great man, and, in the hurry, the collection of rent will cease. Payment of often get accepted. Yet they are as much rent will be unanimously refused by an out-politicians as a log of wood is the river, down raged people, and in that refusal they will be which it drifts. Let all constituencies beware supported by the force of public opinion of such men. They are as numerous as they throughout the world.

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are nauseous.

Coal and Ground Rents.

The Attorney-General received ocular demonstration at the Birkbeck Institute that the coal duties are unpopular. After making an able speech in their support, and replying to speeches on the other side, a resolution in support of the duties was defeated by a large majority. At several meetings resolutions in favour of substituting a tax on ground rents for the coal duties have been enthusiastically

received. It is clear that improvements must be continued, and it is equally clear that the owners of ground rents who directly benefit by the expenditure on improvements should provide the cost.

Civilisation and Bayonets.

It seems the fate of the Tory party is to disgrace us in the eyes of the world. No sooner did Lord Salisbury make his brutal and bitter speech against the laws and liberties of Ireland than the Corporation of Dublin issued an appeal to the whole world for sympathy. Here is Ireland appealing to civilisation against a nation that calls herself the most civilised nation upon earth; and civilisation is trying to talk of Britain and Russia in one breath, and Ireland and Poland in another. This is worse disgrace than the loss of a dozen battles.

Free Law.

men that they did not understand their own country, that Sunday closing had been a failure. and that, in short, it was not what Scotland liked, but what they liked, that must be Scotland's law. The Bill was lost by 112 to 100. The loss will be a gain in getting converts for Home Rule.

Land Purchase.

Mr. Gladstone apologises for his recent abortive scheme by stating that it would not have involved the British tax-payer in any loss. The question is, however, not so much whether the British tax-payer would lose as whether the Irish people would suffer wrong. The effect of devoting British credit to the purchase of Irish land must be to raise or maintain the price beyond the natural level, and thus impose upon Irish tenants a greater burden for the use of land than would otherwise fall upon them. Land being limited in extent, the application of capital to its purchase does not stimulate and promote industry as would be the case if land were a manufactured article, but it simply enables idle monopolists to exact

Barristers are agitating for the right to practice as solicitors, and solicitors desire to be advocates. By all means. We want free trade in law; let any man act as an advocate and plead for his friend, neighbour, or pay-a greater number of sovereigns from an indusmaster. When they are accorded the privilege trious, impoverished, and, in many cases, a of standing in court, advocates, like cabmen, starving people. who have the privilege of standing in the streets, should be limited in their charges. Cabmen, who must be men of nerve and intelligence, are allowed to charge 2s. 6d. an hour for their own services and that of a horse and cab. A barrister or advocate might be allowed to charge 2s. per hour for merely his own labour, being paid, of course, only for the time he is actually employed.

England and Scotland.

How Can it Be?

It is surprising that a humane and conscientious man like Sir G. O. Trevelyan can be a supporter of coercion in Ireland, for coercion means the tyrannous use of the power of Government for the purpose of exacting unjust rents from starving tenants. Lord Salisbury has declared that he will exact rents whether the land has or has not produced their value, and, after this brutal declaration, he receives English Toryism once more over-rides Scot- the support of Sir George, who is known to tish Liberalism. Dr. Cameron brought in a be a gallant and noble knight. His apparent Bill for the early closing of licensed premises indifference to the injustice and inhumanity of in Scotland. This Bill is needed all over Britain, landlordism calls to remembrance the action of but it so happens that Scotland is ripe for it the pious Newton, who sang hymns and while the rest of Britain is not. Had Scotland offered earnest prayers on the deck of the been allowed to vote for herself the Bill would slave ship, of which he was captain, while at once have passed. She was not allowed. underneath there writhed a seething mass of English Tory members calmly told the Scotch-human misery and wretchedness. So Sir

George talks glibly of law, order, and coercion with a meaning attached to these terms which involves the most callous injustice ever practised by the oppressor towards the oppressed.

Families Wanted.

We are informed in Holy Writ that the Earth is given to the children of man. Landlords and capitalists are constantly devising means to exclude manhood and develop inferior creatures; in these attempts they constantly fail.

The latest evidence of failure comes from the American cattle ranches, where the disproportion of cattle to manhood has led to ruin. Mr. Morton Frewen puts this matter very clearly. He tells us: "The 'cattle baron' belongs to the domain of history. The great herds must be broken up and dispersed; a hundred gangers must absorb the ten thousand cattle owned by the 'bullock baron.' The ganger and his family can hay-feed 100 cattle within a fenced field; not so the ranchemen. It is a mistake to suppose that those colossal companies, operated to pay dividends to foreign shareholders, could be permanently advantageous to the Western territories. Wyoming broken up into thousands of squatter homesteads, with little well-bred herds of cattle and horses, will be much more productive of national wealth and well-being."

Sir Michael Hicks Beach. Sincerely do we sympathise with Sir Michael Hicks-Beach in the dark affliction that has fallen upon him. He is a man who, while he was not popular, was not hated in Ireland. An amiable and good-hearted gentleman, he lost his head, and played the very game that his opponents wished him to play. In better times he would have done very well; he would have been rather popular; he would have given, and would have eaten, good dinners; and many a year hence good and jolly gentlemen would have spoken respectfully of the rule of Hicks Beach. But the Plan of Campaign was too much for him. He ran a tilt against it as Don Quixote ran a tilt against the windmills, and he met Don Quixote's fatc.

But just as, in spite of his hallucinations, we respect Don Quixote, so we respect Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. We hope that his retirement from public life may be of the shortest, and we sincerely hope that it will be free from pain. Not only his own party, but those to whom he is most strongly opposed, will unite in welcoming him back to that position in the House of Commons which he so eminently adorns.

Titles Count, Not Men.

A recent report by a Royal Commission. shows that while prisoners convicted of the grossest and rankest offences are treated with kindest and tenderest attention, persons who have been arrested and are awaiting their trial may have to suffer the most grievous detention in foul and narrow cells, unfit for the worst criminal that was ever hanged. The facts of the case are as startling as they are striking. Here are people who may be innocent, and often are innocent, condemned sometimes for days to inhabit places, the sight, smell, and touch of which are pollution. The Standard says that it would not have believed that such a state of things could exist were it not for the high authority of such men as Mr. Justice Wills, Sir Robert Fowler, and Sir Edward Du Cane. Just so. In this country we will believe nothing out of the lips of two or three witnesses unless these two or three witnesses have titles and are famous. Poor creatures have always been suffering; men have always been telling of sufferings, but until a justice and a baronet say it is true nothing can be done. Titles seem to count, not men.

Ryde on Ground Rents.

Mr. Edward Ryde is the favourite witness. for the landlords who gave evidence before the Town Holdings Commission to which the taxation of ground rents was referred, and his evidence is, therefore, of peculiar value on the subject. In reply to Mr. Gibson he said: "No freeholder would undertake a building operation, which is the most risky onération.

you can undertake." It would be difficult to get stronger evidence as to the uselessness of freeholders. If, however, they were merely useless they might be forgiven, but Mr. Ryde's evidence goes on to show that landowners not only leave all the labour and risk of building operations to other people, but that they exact from the industrious classes the utmost value of the land, and often, in addition, the value of buildings erected upon it and the goodwill of businesses established by the exercise of skill and industry. He narrated, with evident satisfaction, how an idle landlord compelled the London and County Bank to pay him £70,000 for a piece of land "about as big as this room," which was in the middle of the bankers' property, and of which the original lease had transpired. He thought this transaction was quite right because the bankers knew that the day would come when they would have to do it. He admitted that these landlords who never do anything often get £30 or £40 per square foot for land in the City of London.

Irish Members.

A provincial Conservative print says: "Mr. Parnell has 85 followers, and who are they? There is a retired pork butcher, a half-educated young baronet, two or three small grocers, a couple of retired civil servants, half a dozen newspaper reporters unknown to fame until they enlisted with the Land League, handful of publicans, two dancing saloon keepers, a few retired commercial clerks, five or six small drapers, an ex-convict, a pawnbroker, a watchmaker in a small provincial town, a cattle dealer, a fruiterer, a tailor, and last, but not least, a slater." We will not seek to quarrel with this critic's knowledge. But this we will say, that no eighty-five members of the House of Commons work so zealously and with such ability as these despised eighty-five. Among them is more wit and eloquence than in any other quarter of the House. And above all they do what they are sent to do. If Britain were as well served by her members as Ireland is by

hers, the House of Commons would become what at present it is not—an instrument for doing good. Constituents cannot do better than elect members from the classes which our Conservative friend enumerates.

Shall Ireland Govern?

There has been no more remarkable spectacle in our generation than that presented by the Irish Parliamentary party at this moment. While English Liberals and Tories are alike divided, distracted, and irresolute, the Irish know what they want, and understand how to get it. Instead of the traditional Irishmen of novels and plays-a lighthearted, lazy, thriftless people, destitute of political instincts, incapable of self-government, too ready to quarrel amongst themselves to be able to combine against a common foe-we see a body of men drilled and disciplined like soldiers, cach ready to obey orders, to risk his individual claims and wishes, to become a mere machine for the sake of the country which sent him to his post. Amongst their leaders, there is Parnell, calm, impassive, inscrutable, and, like Cavour, a wily diplomatist as well as a patriot; while we must go back to the English Commonwealth to find a man like the austere and single-minded John Dillon. Irishman and devout Catholic as he is, he is cast in the Puritan mould-the mould of Andrew Marvell and Sir Harry Vane. Behind these men there is a nation, disciplined, organised, sternly If England does not determined to be free. let Ireland govern herself, Ireland will virtually govern England.

£40,000 per annum is wasted in collecting the revenue of the Duchy of Cornwall, the whole revenue of which is a little over £100,000. Here is jobbery with a vengeance.

An Irish landlord does not hesitate to exact rents which can only be paid by poor servant girls sending portions of their hard-earned wages to parents poorer than themselves.

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