in being too eager to reduce rents, yet cannot help making the most extraordinary reductions. The difference between what it declares in hundreds of cases to be a fair rent and the rent that has hitherto been demanded and paid should stagger any man whose sense of honour and honesty has not been altogether and hopelessly corrupted. A few days ago Mr. Commissioner O'Keefe, Mr. Commissioner Reeves, and Mr. Commissioner Rice gave judgment upon what was a fair rent on an estate belong ing to Lord Castletown, and lying in Queen's County. Here is the result, and worth study it certainly is:

M. Hennessy D. Keeffe

Old Rent. £ s. d. 10 0 0 28 0 0 478 0 0 101 5 0

41 18 0 17 0 36 0 0 74 0 0

4 1 0

New Rent. £ s. d. 500 13 10 0

330 0 0 81 0 0

17 0 5 14 0 0 19 0 0

0

0

10 10 12 0 0 29 0 10 0 0 24 160

47 0 0 2 10 0

Thomas Morrin What must be the feelings of Maria Quinn for a country which has supported Lord Castletown in taking £5 a year out of her pocket as dishonestly as if he had crept through the window at night and taken it out of her old stocking while she was asleep? What ideas can L. Duggan have of a state of things which has simply been robbing him of £28 a year when £13 10s. was the value of his holding? Yet Maria Quinn and L. Duggan are comparatively fortunate. They have partly beaten off the thief. But there are hundreds and thousands of Maria Quinns to-day in Ireland who are not so fortunate, that have still to bleed themselves to death to feed the extravagance of Irish landlords, who are at this very moment disgusting London with their profligacy.

The Cowper Commission throws a flood of official light upon these matters. It was sent out to waste time. It was appointed to prove that the value of products had not fallen. Those who appointed it knew better than any one else that values had fallen. But while the Commission was sitting, months would glide by, reform would be postponed, and who knows what might happen, what disastrous event might turn public attention from the question of land robbery? Therefore the Cowper Commission was appointed. It did its work; it produced a report, and that report is nothing more or less than a yea and amen to Mr.

Parnell's Bill. The work done might be summed up and described in one phrase "The arguments and statements of Mr. Parnell are right in every particular."

The chief value of the report lies chiefly in a dissent which it has evoked. The Commission appointed to deal with tenant farmers had, as is the sublimely ridiculous habit of British officialdom, only one tenant farmer upon it. That gentleman, Mr. Knipe, has spoken out his views in a plain and distinct manner. He dwells with emphasis upon the fact that in 31 years rents have fallen £32,000,000, and that in five years the value of all land stock in Ireland has fallen from £50,000,000 to £41,000,000.

rent."

The

To this the Government have practically replied, "Then don't live." That is what the policy of Mr. Balfour amounts to. peasants may take their choice, and die by starvation or bullets, but a crowd of needy, greedy impostors, whom he facetiously calls Law and Order, must be maintained.

The result is certain and inevitable. Rents cannot be paid, farmers will not attempt to pay them. Then the British Government will recede as it has done before. Let us hope that its advance and its recession will not be marked by the red stain of blood. But let the Irish Democracy be sure of this-the British Democracy is with them.

But one thing is needed. The Irish must keep cool. We know that we are asking a hard thing. It is almost as hard to keep cool amidst the persecution that may be coming as it is to keep cool amidst the fever-stricken swamps of India. But it may be, and can be, done. And in doing it the Irish know how successful hitherto has been their passive resistance. The Irish cannot resist steel to steel and bullet to bullet, but by their union, their order, their passive resistance, they can make coercion a failure. And they will not have to endure long. Before a dozen priests and patriots are in prison the British people will rise in their wrath and sweep the Government from its place.

LETTER FROM THE CHILDREN'S

DEMOCRAT.

MY DEAR CHILDREN,-The meaning of Democracy is that your father and grown-up brotherssome say mothers and sisters also-are to rule their country, and that you are to learn to rule it.

One of the principal duties of rulers is to prevent waste. Anything that makes the world poorer is waste. You cannot gather a blackberry from a hedge without making the world either richer or poorer. If you gather it ripe, and it does you good, or you give it to some other person to whom it does good, then there is one person in the world who is fitter for work than he was before. But if you gather and eat it under-ripe, or when you have had quite enough already, then you are in a worse condition than you were before, and the blackberry is prevented from being of use to anyone, the world is so much the poorer.

You can make the world poorer without destroying anything, and you can make it richer without making anything.

If you took a loaf of bread and crumbled it, and threw it down and trampled it into the earth, certainly that would be waste. But what if an enormous giant with an immensely long arm should put the loaf on the top of a distant crag, to which no one could climb ? That, too, would be waste. He would have put the loaf out of the way of doing service.

A good giant who should reach down the loaf from the top of the high crag and put it within reach of the hungry, would add to the world's wealth as really as if he made a loaf.

Now, there are certain laws and certain exactions, that is, certain greedinesses, in this country, which put many things out of the reach of many persons who need them, just as surely as if a great giant put them on the top of a high perpendicular crag. A great deal of land is put out of the reach of those who need it, and would make a good use of it, by the enormous rents which are demanded for it, or by its being made into sporting ground.

A great deal of fuel is put out of the reach of a great many persons, through the large payments demanded by the owners (as they are said to be) of the lands out of which the coal is dug. These large payments make the coal so much the dearer.

Goods of various sorts are put out of the reach of large numbers of persons, by high prices charged for conveyance by railway companies.

Large quantities of goods are separated from those who need them, by the heavy taxes which are levied in this country, and which are partly used to support men in idleness.

Some of these things are worse than putting a loaf on the top of a high crag. They are like putting children on the top of a crag, to starve and shiver, and leaving the children's bread, for other persons to eat, down below. But some may say, Does this make the world the poorer, when what is taken from some is given to others? It

does make the world poorer when goods are taken from those who need them and have earned them, and are given to those who have not earned them, and who have enough already. Would it not make the world poorer to take food out of your horses' mangers and your cows stalls and give it to hounds, which had just had a good meal, and who would very likely scratch it into the earth?

Would it not be waste if your parents gave one of their children three times as much as he needed, and to the others not half as much as they needed? This waste is the main thing that Democrats have to rectify. In our next letter we will consider what it is that children can do towards rectifying it. Meanwhile I remain

It is not safe to meddle with the Irish people. The same power that gave the bee a sting gave the Irishman a tongue, and the one is as effective as the other. Thus, Mr. John Bright is not allowed to libel the Irish people unanswered and unreproved. We have just received a pamphlet from the pen of one of the ablest and most eloquent of the Irish representatives in the House of Commons. It is in the form of a letter addressed to Mr. Bright, and its author is Mr. T. D. Sullivan, the Lord Mayor of Dublin. We hesitate to express our opinion on the logical effects of this little book. It simply makes mincemeat of Mr. Bright's political principles. While written in a calm and dignified tone, there runs through and through it a vein of bitter, almost cruel sarcasm. Indeed, the case makes satire easy. One has only to contrast Mr. Bright's past with Mr. Bright's present to be satirical. It is a sight for the gods, or rather for the demons, to see John Bright speaking Times' editorials, and the Sullivan points out, neither of them can equal the Times writing John Bright speeches. But, as Mr. splendid vituperation which was poured out upon O Connel. The Times wrote:

"Scum condensed of Irish bog! Ruffian-coward-demagogueNurse of murders-treason's factorBoundless liar-base detractorSpout thy filth, diffuse thy slime, Slander is in thee no crime!" The Times-Bright party would equal that if they could. But they can't. The sharp storm of coercion and reviling is past. We have now only the dreary drizzling of the rain.

In the Contemporary Review for this month is an article on "Temperance in America," by Alex Gustofsan, which we would recommend to the attention of our readers. It is marked by Mr. Gustofsan's chief characteristics-great ability and wide knowledge of the subject upon which he writes.

The Greenock Telegraph has lately published more than one article upon the land question-signed by Pioneer. The latest of these deals with ground rents in Greenock and the ruthless manner in which the ground landlord taxes all those who hold

ground from him, even to a charitable institution founded and maintained for the relief of friendless girls. That article has created a profound sensation in Greenock. Numberless letters have been written to the papers, and we understand that during the week which followed its publication very little else was talked of in the town. It is strange that in Greenock the two local papers both support a moderate measure of land taxation. We hope that many other towns will soon follow the example of Greenock.

·

ELEMENTARY POLITICS, BY THOMAS RALEIGH (Henry Froude, Oxford).-Mr. Raleigh has added another volume to the number of those publications which "darken counsel by words without knowledge." The confusion of his ideas will be evident from the following quotation, he says:"If, on the plea of necessity, a man may claim to have land or food or a loan of capital on easier terms than free contract would permit, such claims would soon multiply so as to cat up all the wealth of owners." The question naturally arises why are landlords allowed to have land "on easier terms than free contract would permit ?" Why are they made dispensers of land for their own advantage? The State alone can give a title to land, and can just do so only for the benefit of the community, which they govern, should govern, without govern, and favouritism.

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RECEIVED.

Labour Tribune, Highland News, Kent Times, Southport Visitor, Weekly Bulletin, Yorkshire Free Press, Southport Guardian, Women's Suffrage Journal, Rank and Degree in Church, Pioneer, Jus, Christian Socialist, Scottish Highlander, Irish Trade, Jersey Advertiser, Free and Open Church Advocate, Daily Nebraska State Journal, Monthly Notes (Y.M.C.A., Sydney), Evansville Courier (Evansville, Ind.), John Swinon's Paper, Crédit Foncier of Sinoa, Canadian Labour Reformer, True Witness (Montreal), Workmen's Advocate (New Haven), Vincennes News, Irish World, Our Common Wealth, Kapunda Herald (Kapunda).

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DRINK AND DEATH.

If you take the annual returns of the RegistrarGeneral you may analyse the causes of about one million deaths in each year in this country. You may learn what mortality attends the clergy, the lawyers, the doctors, the brewers, the publicans, the working men of every class throughout the country. The causes of sickness and premature death are in the main want of food, want of clothes, want of comfortable houses, liability to accident and injury in the trade to which a man belongs. If you take the deaths of the working men between twenty-five and sixty-five years of age throughout the country, you will find that in each 1,000 living there are about fifteen deaths in each year, and that over the average of the whole country this percentage comes out with wonderful constancy. Now, what is the mortality which we might expect among, say, the publicans? The elements of longevity among people are first, abundance of food.

Who then are best fed, the publicans or the average working man? I reply the publicans. Then who are the best clothed? I answer, the publicans, and especially the publican's wife. Then who are the best housed? I answer again, the publicans. And again, who are most free from the risk of accident in their occupation? I think that the publican, in drawing beer or doling out gin or wine, runs a very small risk of breaking his neck, while builders' men, miners, sailors, horse-drivers, are much more exposed to risk of personal injury from accident. Then, what mortality ought we to calculate upon among a class of men so much more advantageously placed than the average working-man? The working men have, as we have learned, an average deathrate of fifteen per 1,000. Perhaps we might expect the publican, therefore, to die at the rate of twelve per 1,000 per annum. Curiously, we find that, where fifteen working men die, instead of twelve publicans dying we have thirty die! The RegistrarGeneral, last year, broke out in a new place on this matter, and he writes: "The mortality of men who are directly concerned in the liquor trade is appalling." During the three years, 1880, 1881, 1882, his actual figures for twenty-five to sixty-five years of age are that:-where 967 men of all occupations died, 1,521 publicans died, and 2,205 publicans' servants died, whereas only 830 maltsters died, the maltsters handling only the original food material, and not necessarily the fermented liquor into which it is turned. Again, where these 1,521 publicans and 2,205 publicans' servants died, only 701 agricultural labourers, 631 farmers, 599 gardeners, and 556 clergymen died. In fact, if you look through the various occupations, you will find that the death rate depends more upon the extent to which people are brought into contact with drink than upon anything else whatever.-Dr. Edmunds.

OFFICIAL CHANGES IN ASSYUT,
SUTHERLANDSHIRE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE Democrat. INEXPLICABLE INCOMPREHENSIBLES. SIR,-Great changes have of late transpired in this gloomy and congested part of the country. The local ground officer to his Grace the Duke of Sutherland, Mr. Robert Ross, a native of Rogart, has got notice to quit his house and farm at Whitsunday next. Mr. Ross had been applying for some years back for several of the vacant farms, but had been refused them,presumably because he was such a valuable servant. This naturally made him most zealous for his Grace's interest. His conduct for some time back has been strongly condemned by the people, as they were of opinion that he was attempting to defeat the objects of the Crofters Bill by taking down notes of all the stock, &c., in the district, and trying to baulk the cause of Land Law Reform by telling those of the people who have adopted the "No-rent policy" that they were to be summoned; but, lo and behold, he proved to be the fox, who, pursued by the hounds, was

caught, but the cat escaped. So with Mr. Ross, he is the first man who was summoned for his ability and the great service he rendered for the landlord. Let us hope that all such men, who for the sake of "self-interest" and the love to serve their master in robbing the poor of their right to the soil, would even condescend to harrow under their heel the oppressed descendants of the soil, and even their own friends of the same kith and kin. The thing is preposterous; their policy is cowardly, and the system together proved ruinous to the Highlands. They were not defeated in battle, they were not by the force of arms deprived of their birthright, but they were robbed by their supposed friends, but who in reality were their mortal enemies. Let us form a grand phalanx, and let our motto be "Death or Victory" for the cause which made us hewers of wood and drawers of water on the land of our ancestors, and let every man, woman, and child in every Highland hamlet agitate constitutionally for Land Restoration, and they will be assisted and get the co-operation of their friends throughout the world.

I. Are you editing or circulating this paper for profit?

II. What religion are you of, or are you an agnostic, or are you an atheist, or do you simply say I don't care a damn?

I don't ask these questions for any other motive than curiosity, to try and understand why some seem to see things so very differently to what I do. Yours truly, ROB. M. IRATT. Cottenham, near Cambridge, March 18, 1887.

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Magna Charta ruled that a sub-tenant should pay landlordism no more than landlordism paid the State. The landlord thus became simply a tax collector on the land he did not cultivate.

Landlordism was purely a political, not a com

Your first article dealing with the Dauntsey Charity asserts that if a certain scheme is adopted, the money arising from this Charity will be spent in three guinea dinners. This I take to be a misrepresentation of facts, or rather a lie. Then you infer further on that the Charity Commissioners devote their energies to robbing the poor for the benefit of the rich. You know (for I presume you are an educated man) that both these assertions are untrue. I am well aware that there are many abuses which want rectifying, but this, in my opinion, is not the way, and I would rather have abuses than lies.

Re FOUR BROTHERS-IN-LAW.

I fail to see that you make a point when you assert that the country would be better off if the gentlemen referred to emigrated, &c. It may pass muster with a hard-working labourer whose mind has not been educated; but how much better it would have been to have held up for admiration men who, whilst receiving as much money as the Craufords, had striven to elevate their fellow men. I do not know whom the Craufords may be, but till they are proved to the contrary, I should conclude they are honest men. The presumption in the mind of an Englishman would be that they were so. I guess I am wasting my time in writing this, but at the same time I would ask you one or two questions. You may or may not think well to answer them.

the State's care-taker, subject, like any other caretaker, to peremptory dismissal after compensation for money actually expended. In a rough and ready way, Parliament can arbitrarily abolish landlordism, independently of the reason that landlordism has broken its contract.

Landholders held public property as public servants, receiving public pay, in the use of the land, for varied services, as soldiers, sailors, policemen, relieving officers, road-makers, lamplighters; but, worst of all, with these occupations went that of legislator, and, prompted by the infirmity of human nature, they abused their trust by twisting the laws to enable them to shirk service and legally pocket our rent (ie., taxes) by aid of the very soldiers, sailors, and policemen we pay for.

From landlordism will come landlord law, and the Democracy is now to blame for sending landlords to Parliament.

Anyone reading between the lines understands that Lord Salisbury's coercion for Ireland means bolstering up the appropriation of land rent (ie, taxes) in England, and marks his terror of the fact that people are discovering that landlordism subsists on public plunder. JOHN WHEELWRIGHT.

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TO THE EDITOR OF THE DEMOCRAT. SIR,-I have often thought of writing to you of the doings of landlords in the South-West of Scotland, but it has always seemed to me that you had already enough such matter before you, and so I have till now restrained myself. A paragraph in your February number with reference to the

action of Sir Massey Lopes, in connection with the water supply of Plymouth, has again suggested the idea of a letter to you to show how common such doings are over the whole country. The people of the town of Ayr, like those of Plymouth, had also lately occasion to reconsider their water supply. The waterworks they already possess were recently acquired by the Corporation, and are valued at £56,000; but the high cultivation, which the farmers within the drainage area have had to have recourse to, was vitiating the source of supply and endangering the health of the inhabitants, and the community had no remedy against their poisoners. So they began to lift their eyes to the hills, and there they found embosomed a pure mountain tarn at such a height that it could never, by any possible means, pay landlords or their victims-the farmers -to cart chemicals to pollute it, except maybe with the intent of levying blackmail on those who wished to use the water. But the people of Ayr have found, to their cost, that landlords can extort blackmail without having recourse to any such expedient, for when they came to negotiate for the use of the water they were met by a demand of an annual rent of £2 10s. per acre. The landlord, who is the Marquis of Ailsa, has now agreed to a rent of £2 per acre; but the average rental of the farm on which the loch is situated is only 3s. 6d. per acre, while the actual land which will be submerged is hardly worth 3d. per acre; in fact, two acres would hardly support a sheep. But the need of water was pressing, and the people had to succumb to the exorbitant demand. Land was also necessary on which to construct filters, and for this land, which is worth 12s. 6d. per acre, £6 per annum will be paid; while for way-leave for the pipes, 2s. 2d. per lineal yard of annual rent is charged, and for similar way-leave another landlord gets £100 a year, in addition to payment for actual damage done in laying the pipes. Thus landlords take advantage of necessitous persons and corporations and levy blackmail; for what else is this rent for way-leave?-because once the pipes are under ground they do less harm than even an overhead telegraph wire would do. The injustice of the whole transaction is, however, not at first quite apparent, for it may be thought that the landlord gives something; but no, he retains all the advantages which he ever derived from the loch-viz., the fishing. Nay, more, the town has been forced to build an expensive embankment and enlarge the loch (and thus the feeding ground of the fish), not so much for the sake of increased storage of water for their own use, but in order that a certain mininum number of gallons per day may be sent down the burn that issues from the loch, so that his lordship's trout may no longer suffer from drought in the summer, as they used to do. The story does not end here, for this burn runs into Loch Doon, whence springs the river Doon, in which are also fish, which are somehow the private property of the noble lord and others of his compeers. So the good people of Ayr havo to dam back Loch Doon, raising its level seven or eight feet, that the flow of the Doon may also be regulated for the good of the riparian lords, and, moreover, a beautiful fish ladder costing a paltry hundred pounds or two will also be provided at the public expense for the

delectation of these fish, none of which can a member of the public touch. In fact, the poor public can't even get a look at the fish, for whose comfort they are so amply providing. The landlords not only claim the grass of the field, the minerals in the bowels of the earth, the fowls of the air, and, as in the case above, the fish of the rivers and the rain from heaven, but they also monopolise the beauties of Nature. Burns, if he had been so unfortunate as not to be born till now, would never have been able to write his song, "Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon," for he would never have seen them. "Trespassers will be prosecuted would have met him at every turn instead of the rose and woodbine," and the gamekeeper's gruff voice instead of the wood bird's note. But this landlord I write of goes farther still, for he not only claims the land and the water and all that are therein, but he even claims the air of heaven. In a case recently before the Court of Session, it was decided that the public had a right to angle for fish (not of the salmon kind) within the tidal waters of the Doon. It, however, happens that between the public road and the river at this point there is a narrow strip of ground, three feet broad, claimed by the same noble marquis, and no one is allowed to cast so much as a rod over this strip, because forsooth it would be trespassing in the air, which it seems is the private property of the marquis. You may think that I have chosen the worst case among the landlords in my part of the country, but the fact is that I respect the Marquis of Ailsa more than any other landlord I know. He only needs a little education and to be freed from toad hunters and factors to be a very decent fellow. All this is the outcome of the system.-I am, yours very truly, Sr. P. O'Doon.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. An esteemed correspondent, to whom we, some time since, wrote, asking him to assist us in the circulation of THE DEMOCRAT, sends us the following letter, which we print from a sincere sympathy with all honest doubt and honest doubters:-"Dear Sir, I have duly received your favour of yesterday. Will you kindly permit me to relieve myself from a very serious imputation which you have unconsciously cast upon me? I have not stated that I am an advanced Liberal. I regard the Liberal and Conservative parties as simply bands of rogues, leagued together for the purpose of plunder, and fighting each other from time to time to decide which of the two bands is to possess the plunder. I entirely repudiate any connection with either party. I am a Democrat in every sense of the word, and I help forward to the best of my small means and ability anything that is just and honest. My many years' experience of the working classes is that whilst bona fide workers do not desire to be themselves plundered, they equally do not desire to rob others. I have studied the land question most carefullyI am no bigot on any point-and after long thought and discussion with working men, have come to the deliberate conclusion that Mr. George's theories are neither more nor less than veiled robbery. I