BY 
 
 A J. KETTLE. 
 
 DUBLIN: 
 
 PRINTED BY W. J. ALLEY & C0. f » 
 9 RYDER’S ROW, CAPEL STREET. " 
 
 1885 , 
 
I 
 
 3 3 3 
 
 C&P-. *f“ ' 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The idea of writing the following letters was conceived 
 when it was publicly announced that Michael Davitt 
 was about to leave Ireland for two years. 
 
 The object of the letters is to prove that all classes of 
 the Irish people are at present in such an embarrassed 
 condition that a prompt and combined effort is absolutely 
 necessary if our agricultural population is to be 
 saved from again drifting under the legal power of 
 “ Landlordism,” if the efforts to revive or advance Irish 
 manufacturing industries are to be saved from collapse, 
 and if those engaged in trade and business are to be 
 saved from absolute bankruptcy. 
 
 An organization or enrolment of the whole Irish people — 
 men, women, and children — around the National League 
 centre, for mutual counsel, action and support, seems to 
 be the only way to meet the difficulty. Instead ox 
 allowing the depression to carry away the substance of 
 the people, and the flower of the people themselves, it 
 can be turned to good practical National account by 
 securing such a rally of all classes as could not be had 
 in a time of general prosperity. 
 
 The only condition necessary to carry forward this 
 movement would be that Mr. Parnell and Mr. Davitt 
 would take the matter in hand. 
 
IV. 
 
 The letters are now re-published from the Freeman's 
 Journal (at the request of some leading men) for 
 extended circulation and criticism. If the Irish people 
 believe that the crisis is as acute as the letters paint it, 
 they should intimate to their leaders their actual con- 
 dition, and not allow the opportunity to be tost. 
 
 A. J. KETTLE. 
 
THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE FREEMAN, 
 
 Mill View, Malahide, Dec., 1884. 
 
 Sir,— Being pretty extensively engaged in practical 
 agriculture, and having given more than ordinary atten- 
 tion to business for the last two years, I have asked my- 
 self the following question very often during the past 
 few months — Can the Irish people manage to drag on 
 and make ends meet, or will they be forced by the 
 instincts of self-preservation to make another stand for 
 a foothold or a fair start in their own country ? From 
 numerous inquiries and my own experience I find the 
 tide running so steady and threateningly against them 
 that a sense of duty compels me to ask for space in the 
 Freeman to call attention to the necessity there exists 
 for some kind of practical action to meet the acute 
 depression that is fast settling down upon every indus- 
 trial interest in Ireland. The glowing summer and 
 autumn newspaper reports led the public to believe that 
 our agricultural prospects were everything that could be 
 desired ; and, strange to say, there were very few con- 
 tradictions from practical agriculturists, although none 
 of these could have had any doubt about their pros- 
 pects. 
 
 Perhaps this can be explained on the ground that 
 farming being a slow business, those engaged in it are 
 prone to adopt a system of slow conclusions, and in addi- 
 tion to this people in debt, as most of our farmers and 
 
2 
 
 graziers are, never care to weaken confidence in their 
 solvency until compelled by absolute necessity. Indica- 
 tions of the real state of the country have been leaking 
 through the Press during the past few weeks, and the 
 Freeman as usual has led the van in directing attention 
 to the subject, but somehow, so far, nothing has been 
 done to meet the crisis. The seeming apathy that ha$ 
 taken possession of the public business mind may arise 
 from the fact that depression being the order of the day 
 in other countries, it is held that Ireland cannot expect 
 to escape the decline. The Irish are a sanguine race 
 who like to look on the bright side as long as may be ; 
 but yet they have strong reasons to remember that 
 depression in other countries means that the inhabitants 
 of those countries are restricted for the time being in the 
 use of the luxuries of life ; but in unfortunate Ireland, 
 and I believe in English-governed India, depression 
 generally means ruin, famine, and death. 
 
 Under the influence of the last Land Act, I suppose 
 public attention has, as if by general consent, drifted 
 away from the Irish Land Question, and the Irish farmers 
 are expected not only to acknowledge and enjoy their 
 great gains, which everybody else won for them, but are 
 also called upon to provide for and settle the labourers 
 question. 
 
 Judging from the way the landlords are fighting their 
 appeals against the trifling rent reductions, it seems as 
 if they look upon the rent question as settled. The only 
 point that receives a little attention now and then is how 
 best to arrange some scheme of purchase by which what 
 is called landed property can be sold to State-aided 
 buyers on the present rental. This purchase business 
 might be a desirable arrangement at another time, on 
 other terms, and under different circumstances ; but at 
 present the fates appear to be averse to such a comfort- 
 able exit for by far the most shameless system of public 
 and private plunder that ever existed on the face of the 
 earth, I expect that a good many well-meaning people 
 
8 
 
 will deem it to be rank heresy for any one to proclaim 
 that the Irish Eent Question has to be fought over again, 
 and that not even the adjustment of all the other burn- 
 ing questions at present before the public will avail the 
 Irish people much until the land question is honestly 
 settled. 
 
 Mr. Parnell, with his usual sagacity and foresight, 
 stated a short time ago that he looked forward to the 
 possible necessity of another agrarian agitation. Fortu- 
 nately, or unfortunately, the crisis is upon us, and the 
 money question must be again pushed to the front if our 
 farmers and labourers are to remain in Ireland and to 
 carry on the business of the country even on its present 
 miserable lines. 
 
 It is an old story, but true as old, that England’s greed 
 and power have forced the great majority of the inhabi- 
 tants of Ireland to seek a living directly from the land, 
 and England’s landlord legislature and landlord Irish 
 garrison have succeeded to the present hour in keeping 
 the State taxes and land rent tax at such a standard that 
 at the most prosperous, times the cash and credit of the 
 Irish are very easily exhausted. As almost every interest 
 in Ireland hinges upon the one industry of agriculture, 
 everything connected with it becomes a matter of vital 
 national concern. 
 
 The money value of the produce of land in Ireland has 
 been steadily declining from one cause or another for 
 some years past, until this year it has reached a point 
 about which there can be no mistake, notwithstanding 
 the fine weather and the landlord jubilee at thq prospect 
 of better rent-making times. One gale of rent is as much 
 as the best lands ever yielded, while a large breadth 
 yielded none, and very many occupiers report heavy 
 losses without rent ; how business engagements are to 
 be met, the lands cropped or stocked, and the labourers 
 employed or supported is at present a mystery to many. 
 
 Our English taxing masters wouid like to make the 
 world believe that our chronic poverty arises from our 
 
4 
 
 want of industry and enterprise, and English philanthro- 
 pists in every crisis like the present are wont to direct 
 our attention to the necessity of developing the industrial 
 resources of Ireland in order to employ the people and to 
 relieve the pressure on the land. But all the time 
 England employs armies of soldiers and police to collect 
 her taxes and rents, ruthlessly indifferent as to the state 
 of the country and fate of its inhabitants. Despite the 
 villanous system of slanderous misrepresentation of which 
 the Irish toilers have been for long years the victims, it 
 will not be difficult to prove that they have not been 
 indolent or improvident. 
 
 Irishmen, as a matter of course, are never looking for- 
 ward to the time when our industrial resources can be 
 developed and our labour power properly utilised. That 
 this work can be done under present circumstances is 
 extremely doubtful, but to imagine or expect that it 
 shall ever be accomplished by English capital or assist- 
 ance would be the very mockery of Irish national lunacy. 
 
 In the hey-days of England’s manufacturing supre- 
 . macy, when it would have been easy for her to have 
 helped Ireland forward on the road to prosperity, she 
 sent her Carlisle here, not to develop our resources or to 
 improve our agriculture by turning our waste lands into 
 gardens, but to instruct and cheer on her landlord garri- 
 son to drive our people from the country, and to turn 
 their fields into a cattle desert, to raise meat for her well- 
 employed artisans. Then came the shoddy refuse of her 
 spindles and workshops, under cover of a dishonest, 
 withering credit system, to clothe the remnant of our 
 people on such false terms of cheapness as to paralyse our 
 few remaining industries until at length the handlooms, 
 the spinning-wheels, and even the needles of our peasants 
 were laid aside, to the industrial ruin of their children. 
 A few years ago England found us with an active agri- 
 cultural population, with a labour power that, if utilised, 
 would have turned our streams and rivers and surround- 
 ing oceans into sources of wealth ; but she elected rather 
 
5 
 
 to crush our agriculture, to expel our workers, to 
 pauperize those who remained, and now she is reaping 
 the fruits of her inhuman industry in the shape of foreign 
 manufactures, increased by Irish hands and foreign food, 
 which could be raised at home. If poor and plainly clad, 
 the Irish were to a large extent 4 self-supporting people; 
 but to day our graziers know little about agriculture, our 
 workmen little about manufactures, and our women little 
 about home industries. Our merchants are in the finan- 
 cial toils of English manufacturers, our traders in the 
 grip of English merchants, our channels of commerce con- 
 trolled to suit, not the requirements of Irish but English 
 business ; the little real capital we possess exported for 
 employment abroad ; our fictitious capital or credit em- 
 ployed at home to back up the system of Carlisle ; our 
 farmers crushed by State taxes and rents fixed in the 
 time of England’s prosperity ; and the general public 
 impoverished by the ever-increasing burdens of local 
 taxation, the natural effects of our indigence and English 
 remedial legislation. Even our best lands are running to 
 waste' and rushes under the cattle system, our mill 
 streams are idle, our harbours deserted, our villages, 
 towns, and cities, with two or three exceptions, showing 
 daily greater evidence and decay. And yet English 
 philanthropists talk about helping us to develop our in- 
 dustrial resources — forsooth. 
 
 I am not an old man, but I am old enough to have 
 seen the blighting mist of English civilization sweep like 
 a withering curse — aye, like the very breath of hell 
 itself — across the face of my native land. 
 
 A good many laudable attempts have been made of 
 late years to establish or revive manufacturing industries, 
 but with trifling results. The odds against success 
 under ordinary circumstances are too heavy, and until 
 we have some real surplus capital in the possession of the 
 standard population of the country, it will not be reason- 
 able to expect that much headway can be made. So far 
 is the standard population of Ireland from possessing the 
 
6 
 
 necessary capital to properly develop our resources, that 
 at this moment I believe fully 80 per cent, of our people 
 are absolutely insolvent, and not more than 10 per cent, 
 of the entire, after providing for the modest requirements 
 of their business, have money to invest in anything. Nor 
 is this state of poverty and insolvency a matter for sur- 
 prise or inquiry when we remember that there are over 
 22 millions sterling in hard cash annually extracted from 
 the produce of the land, and the scanty earnings of the 
 people in the shape of State taxes and land rent, nearly 
 two-thirds of the taxes and two-thirds of the rent 
 being taken out of the country and spent elsewhere. 
 This is the eternal money drain that keeps Ireland poor. 
 Some Irish writers seem to think that much could be done 
 to improve our industrial position by reforming our bank- 
 ing and railway systems ; but it will be always difficult 
 to expect directorates to speculate in enterprises where 
 success depends upon a national prosperity which is ever 
 expected but never comes, simply because there is no 
 financial backbone in the country. Nor can there bo 
 such until some means are devised to stop to some extent 
 at least the outflow of our hard-won capital. 
 
 According to the best authorities— O’N. Daunt and 
 Sir J. N. M'Kenna — the English system of State taxation 
 in Ireland is as fraudulent as the means by which the 
 Act of Union, which gave an English Legislature control 
 of our finances, was carried, but even on the lines of such 
 a one-sided swindle an annual remission of more than 
 three millions sterling of taxes will have to be made 
 before the level of common honesty is reached. This 
 question of unjust taxation is very real and substantial, 
 and should not be lost sight of by the Irish people if only 
 to keep England from putting them under obligations 
 for the money crumbs which she occasionally throws to 
 Ireland in return for her millions. This unjust taxation 
 amounts to a large sum by this time. But the chief 
 cause of our poverty is the fifteen millions sterling of 
 land rent which is annually wrung directly from our 
 
standard population, and to my own personal knowledge 
 the greater portion of this impost is as unjust as the 
 system it goes to support is cruel, stupid, and intolerable. 
 
 It would not be fair to trespass further on your space 
 on this occasion, but with your kind permission I shall 
 return to the subject in a few days. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 A. J. Kettle. 
 
8 - 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE FREEMAN. 
 
 Mill View, Malahide, Dec. 28th, 1884. 
 
 Sir — In discussing the Irish land question I intend to 
 recognise in the best possible spirit the cardinal circum- 
 stances which evidently guide or control the present 
 current of Irish public life. 
 
 1st — The British Legislature under the pressure of the 
 Land League organisation passed a Land Act in ’81 * 
 which was, and, I suppose, is expected to settle the Irish 
 land question. 
 
 2nd — Mr. Parnell, the responsible leader of the Irish 
 people, refuses to go beyond the Act of ’81 with refer- 
 ence to the ownership of the land, stating that as the 
 Irish are not in a position to take the land by force they 
 must buy it. 
 
 3rd — The Catholic Hierarchy, who are the guardians 
 of the religion and morality of the great majority of the 
 Irish, have formed an alliance with Mr. Parnell chiefly 
 on the faith of that statement. 
 
 With reference to the Land Act of ’81 and the money 
 relief which has been obtained or legalised by its opera- 
 tions, amounting to perhaps one and a half million 
 sterling, I contend that the entire money relief is abso- 
 lutely lost under the present depression, and the Irish 
 people are to-day poorer and more generally embarrassed 
 than at any previous period. Not, indeed, on the ground 
 of right or justice do I join Mr. Parnell with reference 
 to buying off the landlords, but to facilitate the chances 
 of a settlement and to concede the most practical allegi- 
 ance to the central authority of Irish national power 
 believing, as I do, that Irish pressure to be effective 
 must be concentrated and delivered with the full force 
 of the national will. 
 
 Our social and political forces stand pretty much in 
 
9 
 
 this way. On the Irish side about four millions of people 
 actively working or sympathising with every beat of the 
 nation’s heart, but at the same time a large number of 
 those dependent upon or mixed up with the everyday 
 movements of their oppressors. On the English side over 
 thirty millions of people of a much more material and 
 less scrupulous race, opposed to the aspirations, prejudiced 
 against the claims to fair play, and doggedly indifferent 
 to the wants of the lesser number. Under these circum- 
 stances, it must be patent to the dullest mind that the 
 Irish are always under the absolute necessity of calling 
 into action every atom of available force, and of standing 
 rigidly in line to defend a right, or of moving in concert 
 to attack a wrong. 
 
 With this clearing of the. ground, I shall proceed to 
 direct attention to what I believe to be the keystone of 
 the position, which lies well within the lines laid down by 
 Mr. Parnell and the British Legislature, and around 
 which the Irish forces can effectively rally to meet the 
 present crisis. 
 
 If the Irish people have not the necessary capital to 
 develop the industrial resources of Ireland, a point which 
 I endeavoured to show in your columns a few days ago ; 
 yet they have a large amount of actual property which 
 should be made available now. Nearly all the property 
 in and on the soil of Ireland belongs directly to the 
 people. The reclamations, the buildings, the roads, the 
 fences, the drains, and the added fertility of the soil 
 belongs to them. Not only is this the case, but they have 
 a manifold and almost sacred right to this property, 
 inasmuch as the great bulk of it was not created by 
 ordinary labour, but by overtime work. 
 
 The landlords took in the shape of rent the full returns 
 from the ordinary labour of the people, also the profits 
 arising from improvements, besides the wages, money 
 earned in England and America, and the property which 
 we see in Ireland was actually and absolutely created by 
 excessive labour, or by work done before and after the 
 
10 
 
 anXrrf Wer \ made the ^ced %z z 
 
 landlords swept away the whole profit. Much has Wn 
 aw auv/ ntten ° n the “ Land Questi“t I n^er 
 
 the reahtiefo^tlT 11 *^ 1011 /?* dee I ) enou S h to fathom 
 1 1 T . , op ^ 1IS phase of the subject. Not onlv did 
 
 drud/erv CcTt “ d Stam himseIf in ceaseless 
 infanfchildL ?i^! S P r0 P ert y> but le dwarfed his 
 Ye* the hi a an i^ 1S ^ eas ^ s burden in the struggle 
 
 time that ,°h’ M d ^ sweat ’ “* the T. aSe 
 ofTfeto tL h ?7 ha T g0ne in the ^dinary course 
 people went tT nta + an i- phyS1Cal sustenance of the Irish 
 houses’ and the f ^ prop ert ^ The stones in the 
 
 sprinkled with th^ 8 ° n / ie 1 b l °» and mountain sides are 
 p ued with the sweat and blood of the Irish peasants 
 
 popi^Ar the name of the agricultural 
 
 know it and l lvVu thlS P r0 P ert 7 is theirs, for I 
 ,• 1 * . ^ think the time has come when a full 
 
 ^.onal not.ce of claim shonld be served to re&eS 
 
 subjec?for^“lT ne ir lne ° f this WV is a 
 
 mates i Xll S T' * ? 0D1 amon S st a number of esti- 
 
 ‘"deuce before 
 
 years am Mr ^f™ 881 ™- lrt iioij sat to Dublin a few 
 uinn v, -tf. ’ ^ r ‘ P lomas Robertson, of Narraghmore a 
 
 eTm2tl'X7r‘. ee “ s; » tla “ d Ah 
 
 to the value of 1b! f ?® ™ pr0V . ements as being equal 
 fu j. f ^ le land. The paid rental of Ireland at 
 
 calculaXX er maiton n s m sfr “‘““T ?° that °“ Us 
 
 assessed on tb P i > 8 terlm S was being annually 
 value of land in T % Pl /n W T rty * Since that &ne the 
 while the vain/ f d haS de P reciated 35 per cent., 
 increased Tht aT ° f ““Pavements have rather 
 half of thp d ^ and ^ Ct redu °tions cover about one*- 
 * of the depreciation on the land, and the present 
 
11 
 
 yearly Irish rent account between the landlords and 
 bondholders on the one side, and the people on the other, 
 stands thus : — 
 
 Proper rent charged on land ... ... £5,000,000 
 
 Overcharged on land ... ... ... 1,500,000 
 
 Charged on people’s property about ... 8,000,000 
 
 £14,500,000 
 
 The landlords may be able to show something here and 
 there against this claim, but in the main those figures 
 will be found correct. I do not purpose going into the 
 question raised by the present learned Archbishop of 
 Sydney (Dr. Moran) as to the amount of restitution 
 which the landlords should make to the Irish toilers ; 
 but is it too much to ask, with those facts before us, 
 that this horrible system of cold-blooded robbery should 
 cease ? 
 
 There is little new or remarkable about this view of 
 the Irish land question. Every tenant-right leader for 
 the last half century claimed this property for the people. 
 Dr. M ‘Knight, Sir John Gray, Isaac. Butt, and, lastly, 
 Mr. Healy, M P., claimed it. The only new point in 
 connection with it is this — Some years ago this claim of 
 the people used to be met by the counter-claim of the land- 
 lords to the absolute ownership of the land, and to the 
 moral and divine right to coolly appropriate and confiscate 
 everyone’s property found in it and on it. Thanks to 
 Michael Davitt, Tom Brennan, and the Irish National 
 Land League, that blasphemous and dishonest doctrine 
 is exploded ; and even the British Landlord Legislature 
 has given up the claim to such ownership, and under the 
 inspiration of Mr. Healy has admitted that the people’s 
 property should be exempted from rent. 
 
 This claim is of a different order, and is not surrounded 
 by doubts and difficulty like the landlords’ first charge 
 upon the land. The land not being a human creation, 
 it would be equally open to any section of the human 
 family, from priority of occupation or other circumstances, 
 
12 
 
 to claim a first benefit from it. On the other hand, it is 
 clearly within the right of any honest man in the com- 
 munity to question the right of any section to a first or 
 any charge on it. But by what right or title, human or 
 divine, property created by one person must become, 
 without purchase or equivalent, the property of another, 
 I could never make out. I am anxious to put this caseas far 
 as possible beyond cavil or criticism. I believe the com- 
 mon law is pretty clear upon the point, but I would feel 
 obliged if some theologian would publish the ruling of the 
 Church on the following case. If I am lawfully possessed 
 of an article — say a coat — if a person steals or appro- 
 priates my coat, and sells it to a third party to whom 
 does the coat still belong ? I want this answer to meet 
 the most plausable objection that may be raised against 
 the people’s right to the full amount of their claim. I 
 allude to where people have bought landed property 
 with honestly earned money. My own opinion is that to 
 the value of the people’s improvements which may have 
 been on the land, they have simply been trafficking in 
 stolen goods, and must bear the consequences by the loss 
 of their money. 
 
 It will be a hard case in some few instances, but I see 
 no help for it. What about the myriads of toilers who 
 have sank bruised and bleeding in the struggle to create 
 this property, and how they were, and their successors 
 are, taxed and rented for their industry and enterprise. 
 No people have ever been so penalised in their endeavours 
 to improve their country as the Irish. North and south, 
 east and west, the landlord policy has ever been the same 
 — appropriation, confiscation, rack-rents, and eviction. 
 
 My reason for dwelling so much on the equity of this 
 claim is this. Experience tells me that it is practically 
 useless to urge or advise the Irish masses to embark in 
 any enterprise unless they are satisfied about the moral 
 and religious aspect of the question. 
 
 There are sins against humanity which religion tells 
 us — cry to heaven for vengence. To defraud the labourer 
 
13 
 
 of liis wages is found on the list. The property in the 
 improvements on end in the soil of Ireland is the wages 
 of generations of Irish men and women, who have slaved 
 and starved to create it, and I now, as one of the toilers, 
 stand forward to claim it in the name of religion, morality, 
 and common commercial honesty. 
 
 I shall have to trespass further on your space in a 
 short time, with a few remarks on the ways and means. 
 
 F.S. — The Eight Honourable William Lygon Buggins 
 Lord Longford may expect some hot sauce with his fish 
 before the toilers are done with the freebooters. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 A. J. Kettle. 
 
 A. J. K. 
 
 R 
 
14 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE FREEMAN. 
 
 Mill View, Ma/ahide, Jan. 6th, 1885. 
 
 Sir, — The object of ray first letter under this heading 
 was to prove that there is little chance of the Irish people 
 entering on a career of prosperity while burdened with so 
 much unjust taxes and rent. In my next letter of the 
 1st inst., I endeavoured to show that the claim of the 
 people to the property in their improvements is the point 
 to which they should turn their practical attention in 
 order to get rid of the unjust rent by which they are 
 handicapped. This letter on the ways and means is 
 mainly directed to the rank and file of the people, parti- 
 cularly to those who, like myself, have not been doing 
 much public work for some time past. 
 
 Even in the midst of the present political commotion, 
 and in fact every day of their lives, it may be useful for 
 the Irish people to remember that the heart and kernel 
 of the long international contention between Ireland and 
 England and between England’s garrison in Ireland and 
 the Irish industrial classes is “ money.” Also, no matter 
 what sovereign may reign or party govern, the claims to 
 tax and to rent at the highest possible standard will be 
 retained by England and her garrison to the latest pos- 
 sible moment. About four millions sterling of unjust 
 State taxes, and nine millions sterling of unjust rent is 
 the present blackmail which is annually extorted from 
 the earnings of tile Irish. Thirteen millions sterling 
 annually circulated through the different channels of Irish 
 business — what a change it should work in a very few 
 years. This money account between the English and Irish 
 lias been going wrong chiefly, since the Union. To get a 
 correct view of the present political, social, and financial 
 position I find it necessary just to glance at the way 
 England has misgoverned Ireland since 1801, and the 
 
15 
 
 way Ireland has now and again resented the wrong, with 
 the insults. 
 
 Ireland has been politically governed since the Union 
 by the very worst type of delegated monarchy of Castle 
 rule, and socially ground by the most irresponsible form 
 of aristocratic extortion and intolerance, and has been 
 financially robbed of several hundred millions of money. 
 Ireland has resented English misrule by a continuous 
 protest, and on a few memorable occasions the voice of 
 the people assumed National proportions, and even 
 ascended to the standard of action. The results were to 
 Ireland Catholic Emancipation, the Tithe Compromise, 
 National Education, Poor Laws, Church Disestablish- 
 ment, and the Land Acts of 1870 and 1881. At this 
 time, when the English democracy is about to govern 
 England, I suppose it may not be out of place to bring 
 under notice again Mr. Parnell’s famous statement in his 
 banquet speech — “ That if the Irish would not be per- 
 mitted to govern Ireland, they would still have the power 
 to determine how England should be governed ” 
 
 It seems a curious coincidence, if nothing more, that 
 all the great English democratic 'reforms of the century 
 have followed closely on the inspiriting action of Irish 
 movements. The Eeform of ’32 followed the Catholic 
 Emancipation movement. Free Trade, which was con- 
 sidered a great democratic gain, followed the Tithe and 
 Eepeal movements, Borough Franchise and Fenian move- 
 ment, and now Household Franchise follows the Land 
 League movement. The British workers owe the Irish 
 a good turn, but I have no faith in Englishmen of any 
 class, 
 
 Ireland has had a Parliamentary representation of one 
 kind or another in the British Legislature since the 
 Union, but at this moment I am not able to recollect any 
 beneficial results from its work. A terrible amount of 
 physical and mental labour must have been expended in 
 the House of Commons, and a large amount of money 
 carried from Ireland and spent in London, while the 
 
16 
 
 Irish members were making, mending, or opposing Acts 
 of Parliament of which there is now no trace. None of 
 the prominent Irish relief measures were gained by Parlia- 
 mentary pressure, and I think that no one can deny that 
 the Parliamentary way, unaided by the active co-opera- 
 tion of the people in Ireland, has been simply a waste of 
 time and energy on the part of many of the most gifted 
 of our race. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. The work done by our 
 present band of public men is simply beyond praise, and 
 no person glories more in the men and their Work than I. 
 But their work has not been Parliamentary work in the 
 ordinary sense of the term, nor have they been animated 
 by a Parliamentary spirit, but by a spirit of absolute 
 revolt against injustice, 
 
 It fills me with courage in the present and hope for 
 the future when I look back a few years to the day when 
 Issac Butt penned a short letter, and sent his son -Robert 
 to the glens of Wicklow to call to the Irish side from 
 admist alien and aristocratic surroundings a young man 
 who has since impressed his name and character on the 
 history of his country ' Since the time Mr. Parnell, in 
 conjunction with Messrs. Biggar and O’Donnell, raised 
 the standard of revolt in the British Legislature, his most 
 commonplace work seems to be animated by the same 
 spirit, and he stands now, as then, in his own peculiar 
 position not alone without a rival, but without a second. 
 
 We next see a man coming from the ranks of the 
 hard-handed toilers — no, but from an English prison cell 
 with a false stigma upon his name, but bearing in his 
 heart and brain the true characteristic of an apostle of 
 human freedom, and it is needless to add that Michael 
 Davitt’s whole life has been a continuous revolt against 
 wrong. When those two young men came together the 
 Irish Land League was founded and the people were 
 taught to claim their birthright. Egan and Brennan 
 made resistance to English tyranny the business of their 
 lives. Dillon’s revolt was so chivalrous and sincere that 
 
17 
 
 no man dared to doubt him, and his very opponents were 
 forced to respect him. [Sexton's revolt culminated in his 
 defiance speech in the Souse of Commons in defence of 
 the Land League and his own principles, and was, beyond 
 doubt or question, one of the very finest efforts of oratory 
 and patriotism on record.] /Healy’s public life has been 
 a series of able, plain, down-right revolts against the 
 enemies of his country in every department, and he stands 
 to-day, perhaps, the iqost hated, feared, respected, petted, 
 and complimented Irishman living.^ When Lord Spencer 
 put certain Irishmen on trial for their lives, and the Irish 
 people on trial for their character, O’Brien revolted, 
 impeached the proceedings, turned the tables, put the 
 vindicative despot and his minions in the dock, and con- 
 victed them before the public opinion of the world. Gray 
 revolted against judicial tyranny, and strikes unceasingly 
 at administrative injustice. Dawson revolted against 
 Castle patronage and changed the character of the City 
 of the Pale. O’Kelly 's revolt carried him to other lands, 
 where his matchless diplomacy has worked trouble to 
 Clifford Lloyd and others. Harrington has been in con- 
 tinual revolt. It is needless to go further. The O’Connors 
 and the M'Carthys have revolted in literature, the 
 Sullivans in the press, the Bedmonds on the platform. 
 Leamy, Callan, and Lalor and the rest in one way or 
 another. Besides, let the people not forget that Gray, 
 Davitt, Healy, Quinn and Harrington have gone to prison 
 for revolting against the present Coercion Act. (^Father 
 Sheehy, as the highest type of an Irish priest, revolted 
 against the most malignant species of Castle miscreants, 
 and some worthy Soggarths are in revolt at this 
 moment./ 
 
 There is just one other name, and I mention it with 
 the greatest deference, a name that, should shame the 
 manhood of Ireland to duty and action, one that, in many 
 respects, not from courtesy, but right, deserves to stand 
 at the very head of this list. Miss Anna Parnell, with 
 her band of noble- Irish women around her, presented the 
 
18 
 
 purest and most genuine form of Irish revolt that I have 
 seen. 
 
 For some years past no people in the universe have 
 been better served or led than the Irish. Have the rank 
 and file done their duty ? Have they, each man in his 
 own sphere, made revolt against injustice the everyday 
 business of their lives ? As one of these I must say that 
 I think we have not. Let the people not delude them- 
 selves or seek to throw their work on the shoulders of 
 others. Although the Parliamentary position and every 
 other inch of vantage ground must be seized and utilised 
 to the utmost, yet unaided Parliamentary work never did 
 land never will gain them anything worth sixpence. Their 
 representatives, however gifted, will be always unable to 
 effect much more than to properly arrange the terms for 
 what England may feel necessary to concede to the 
 pressure of the people. 
 
 Doubtless under Democratic rule England may be 
 rather willing to amuse the Irish with the management 
 of their own pauperism and local business through the 
 agency of local taxation, the true meaning of which in 
 the case of Ireland is that after England and her garrison 
 takes the Hour out cf everything in taxes and rent those 
 amongst us who may have any residue can share it with 
 those who have none, and develop the resources of Ireland 
 in the meantime. The people will require to rally round 
 the Irish centre in a way they have not yet done on the 
 National League platform. True, a kind of stagnation 
 set in and small bickerings cropped up, and differences 
 of modes of procedure appeared among the leaders, which, 
 perhaps, had a paralysing effect upon the masses. I 
 write now as having no political connection with any man 
 or body of men, but solely in my individual capacity as 
 an Irish farmer, but as one who has watched the life- 
 current of his country not alone keenly but anxiously. I 
 say mistakes have been made all round, and those mistakes 
 have been magnified by thoughtless Irishmen and un- 
 scrupulous Englishmen. 
 
19 
 
 The two most prominent figures in Irish public life at 
 the present time are Mr. Parnell and Mr. Davitt. Mr. 
 Parnell, a consummate statesman and Parliamentarian, 
 says that the Irish people must buy the land in order to 
 get free from landlordism. Mr. Davitt, a dashing Demo- 
 cratic Economist and non-Parliamentarian, says that the 
 Irish people must abolish landlordism and nationalise the 
 land at the same time. 
 
 Now. as one of the agricultural toilers, I feel in duty 
 bound to stand forward at this juncture and respectfully 
 protest against Mr. Parnell promoting a purchase scheme, 
 or Mr. Davitt a nationalising scheme, until an honest 
 account is taken and my improvements are excluded from 
 either operation, or until an honest rent is fixed. 
 
 About nine millions sterling annually my fellows and 
 I are paying as excessive rent, and I think Mr. Parnell 
 or Mr. Davitt, or all the other leaders put together, will 
 find it difficult to take one practical step on the way to 
 Irish prosperity until the rent question is dealt with. If 
 ■ this view of the case is the correct one, let the people 
 speak out at their meetings and conventions. 
 
 England, with her immense n on-agricultural popula- 
 tion, should be the proper starting point for Henry 
 George, and Land Nationalisation is exactly what Michael 
 Davitt owes to the English governing classes- To rouse 
 up the English toilers amongst whom he spent his boy- 
 hood to a sense of the enormities of the land system by 
 which they are robbed is work worthy of his attention. 
 In fact, the English aristocracy deserve this at his hands, 
 for the opportunities they gave him of studying the 
 question in their loathsome prison hells. 
 
 However, excellent Land Nationalisation may be as an 
 economic arrangement, its application to Ireland seems 
 premature, and the same may be said of Mr. Parnell’s 
 purchase scheme, even to further promote the essential 
 work of migration. 
 
 Mr. Parnell is aware that Mr. Davitt and himself are 
 as much the authors of the National . League movement 
 
 
■ 'M. 
 
 
 & 
 
 as they were of the Land League. If Dr. Croke, who, for 
 some years past has stood as the guardian angel of Ire- 
 land’s faith and hope, would bring those two great Irish- 
 men together on the National League platform with 
 “The people’s property’’ or the “Healy clause” for 
 a cry, and call the people around them, I think they 
 might fairly expect a hearty response and such a rally of 
 the Irish as England has not yet seen. 
 
 A universal organisation embracing an enrolment of 
 the whole Irish forces in Ireland, would not require an 
 extreme policy t * attain its objects. It should also be 
 useful for Parliamentary, trade business, and every other 
 national purpose. By the people springing to their simul- 
 taneously and in earnest they would succeed in abolishing 
 Irish landlordism and English coercion at the same time. 
 Not alone would there be no need for crime or outrage, 
 and not alone should the people themselves abstain from 
 crime or outrage, but they should watch to prevent the 
 Government from manufacturing any. 
 
 CWhy should the young men of Ireland throw upon 
 their leaders and priests work that should be done by 
 themselves ? Why not commence this work of national 
 enrolment at once at every chapel and church door in 
 Ireland ? 'y 
 
 Mr. Parnell knows that with all the wonderful skill 
 and power of himself and his party he cannot strike a 
 line or a letter out of the present coercion Act if England 
 means to carry it in the House of Commons ; but all the 
 world knows that the manhood of Ireland, by open, 
 orderly, determined action, could knock the brains out of 
 it in six months. Are we to allow ourselves to be quietly 
 robbed, beggared, and emigrated without even a 
 protest ? If England finds her plank beds so potent to 
 rule us why should she ever put them aside ? 
 
 Are we Irish all such criminals that we have not even 
 the courage to denounce the present English Criminal 
 Ninteenth Century Legislative enactment ? 
 
 Liberal England, Radical England, Democratic England 
 
21 
 
 are all the same. Taxes, rent, and coercion are the*, 
 unnatural New Year’s gifts which England ever has for, 
 Ireland, and yet there are drivellers amongst us who ex-j 
 pect us to be grateful to Englishmen — for what ? 
 
 If the Irish people are not prepared to make a supreme r 
 effort in their own behalf, they will be only losing th$ir 
 time, waiting for the river of injustice to flow past, standing 
 like children on the banks looking across the channel, ex- 
 pecting freedom from the efforts of a handful of brilliant, 
 brave men, who at best may he always outnumbered, 
 seven to one on vital questions. 
 
 When our cause is just and our means legitimate 
 believe me it is not by knuckling down but by standing 
 up that we shall compel our hypocritical rulers to take 
 their hands out of our pockets and off the throat of our 
 country. 
 
 The forces against us are so great and the circumstances 
 so adverse that every man, woman and child on the Irish 
 side will need to join hands all round, and make revolt 
 against injustice and tyranny by showing a positive dis- 
 inclination to work with or for their oppressors the open 
 every day business of their lives, to win even social free- 
 dom and prosperity. 
 
 The State taxation and National questions must be 
 considered together ; and in my humble judgment the 
 intelligent pressure of the whole sixteen millions of the 
 Irish race scattered over the globe will be required to 
 secure any measure of national autonomy worth money 
 or that will, even in connection with England, give Ireland 
 a fair start as a nation. 
 
 As a part of the social question, I may trouble you 
 again with a few remarks on the Labourers’ question — 
 the public as well as the agricultural. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 A. J. Kettle. 
 
22 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE FREEMAN. 
 
 Mill View , Malahide. 
 
 Sir — No matter what part of the Irish social question 
 we consider, we find ourselves confronted with the 
 rent difficulty ; but the full crushing effects of burden 
 are not realised until we come to deal with the 
 labourers’ section of the subject. Fair rent makes 
 constant employment and fair wages possible. Work 
 and wages secures the certainty of fair trade and 
 business. Unjust rent, if spent in the country where 
 it is raised, may, for a time at least, improve some 
 sections of the population at the expense of others ; 
 but unjust rent, spent out of the country where it is 
 raised — as in the case of Ireland — paralyses everything 
 and injures everyone. 
 
 The chief forces at work in our Irish social system, 
 particularly since the Union, are Landlordism, 
 Lawyerism, and Moneyism on the one side ; and on 
 the other, Enterprise, Management, and Labour. 
 
 In times of prosperity, that is when some external 
 circumstances stimulate a demand for the products of 
 the country, with its population in full work, enterprise, 
 management, and labour throw themselves forward 
 with a will, and everything generally, and the con- 
 dition of everyone, improves. During this period of 
 prosperity, Landlordism, Lawyerism, and Moneyism 
 are not idle, They have a monopoly of the land, the 
 great ground-work of the whole social edifice, and 
 they keep pushing up the rent by every kind of 
 pressure and by every tempting and villanous device 
 
 known only to those whom the d 1 finds idle. 
 
 Now, the turn comes, sometimes on short notice. 
 Foreign wars are settled, and the foreigners who were 
 buyers becomes sellers; or the earth takes a lurch to 
 
the shady side of the sun, and the land takes a rest, 
 and declines to yield the quantity or quality of former 
 times ; then the whole social system feels the shock, 
 and, after some hesitation, every business and every- 
 thing f begins to recede — no, not everything. There 
 is one thing in Ireland which no pressure of Nature, 
 nor even the inspiration of “ Nature’s God” has been 
 able to reduce to the level of honesty and humanity, 
 and that one thing is rent. 
 
 When the farmers, who are simply the managers 
 of the land, the birthright of the people, find that 
 the gross money returns from their business will 
 only — or, as in the present year, will not pay 
 the rent — they first proceed to exhaust their current 
 savings, then their invested savings, if they have 
 any ; next their borrowing powers and credit, then 
 they draw upon their farms by under-manuring 
 or ill-seeding, and under-feeding their stock ; then 
 the rolling stock is allowed to go out of repair, 
 thus at every step lessening the prospect of full returns 
 from the land. If the depression is prolonged, the 
 fate of a large percentage of our farmers has been 
 insolvency, ruin, and eviction. 
 
 All this time, since the commencement of the decline, 
 the labourers are fast going to the wall, as the farmers, 
 in self-defence, are giving less work or less wages. 
 When employment becomes uncertain, a large portion 
 of our labour-power sinks by degrees into a state of 
 want, misery, and pauperism. Want of employment 
 and proper food and clothing renders many of our 
 labourers unable to work, and has a decided tendency 
 to induce them to take the longest possible time out 
 of every start they get, thus, like the farmers in their 
 department, aggravating the evil by lessening the 
 hope or prospects of employment. 
 
 I next turn to the dwellers in cities and towns and 
 people engaged in other industrial pursuits, some of 
 whom may imagine that this rent is a farmers’ question 
 
24 
 
 solely, and that there has been noise enough about the 
 farmers’ wrongs, and that other people have no direct, 
 or even indirect, interest in the subject. Let us see. 
 
 When nearly all the money value of the produce of 
 the land is taken every six months from the farmers 
 by the lawyers, in the name of the landlords, and 
 handed to the money-lenders in the shape of rent, the 
 farmers and their labourers have little to carry to the 
 shopkeepers, and they in turn to the merchants, and 
 those again to the manufacturers. By this simple, 
 silent process, the rent being fixed at an impossible 
 and inexorable standard, the artisan must go half idle, 
 the shopkeeper must do with less hands and underpay 
 his workers, the merchant must throw his staff and 
 sailors idle, the manufacturer must pay less wages or 
 work less time, or close his works and let his hands 
 clear out of the country or into the workhouse. 
 
 When the days and years of depression are dragging 
 along, the employers and employed generally become 
 dissatisfied with each other, the one expecting more 
 work for the wages, and the other more wages for the 
 intermittent work. Both parties look only at those 
 with whom they are in daily contact, and actually 
 come to believe that all the pinching want and wrong 
 comes from each to the other, forgetting that it is 
 simply a scramble for status and existence all round, 
 owing to the pressure caused by the extraction in the 
 shape of rent of the money and the means upon which 
 every class of workers could live in comfort. 
 
 T hus we see that the whole social system on the 
 industrial side must go without the necessaries of life, 
 without proper food, clothing, 'education, or recreation ; 
 aye, must bend to the dust ; and, even if hungry and 
 naked, must scrape from the earth the annual fifteen 
 million pounds sterling for rent, when five millions 
 sterling would be a full demand, leaving the balance 
 to support the earners and to create other wealth. 
 
 Why all this ever-recurring industrial misery ? 
 
25 
 
 And for what ? Why, because this unjust impost — 
 which in the case of Ireland is a double injustice, as 
 it is chiefly assessed upon feloniously acquired pro- 
 perty — is enforced by the brutal edicts of English 
 civilization, and collected in the desecrated names of 
 law and order. And the good and holy purpose for 
 which all this human wrong is perpetrated is, that the 
 demoralised and demoralising idlers and cads of society 
 may hunt, and race, and roam about the world, and 
 riot upon rent. 
 
 The born, or generated, snob may object to this as 
 ugly writing, and may assert that we must have 
 people with leisure and education to uphold the fine 
 arts and to adorn polite society. Education and 
 leisure are both excellent things in their way, and I 
 would like to see them shared with every child of 
 Adam. But might I ask of what use has the leisure 
 and education of our landlords been to Ireland ? 
 There may be exceptions, but at best they only prove 
 the rule. 
 
 Three times during the present century has the 
 process of mirage prosperity and rent-raising drained 
 Ireland of every chance and hope of national prosperity. 
 The annual rent-bill has been increased from three 
 millions sterling to sixteen millions sterling. What 
 a vast sum of money lies between those two numbers ! 
 How much of this increase was earned by the present 
 receivers, and how much of the total has been spent 
 in Ireland ! Let the landlords answer — Lord Long- 
 ford, if he will. 
 
 This rent is not a farmer’s question ; it is rather 
 the great industrial question of the hour. It concerns 
 Old Ireland and Young Ireland, and every toiler in 
 Ireland. If money is paid in rent it will not be spent 
 in wages in Ireland. 
 
 This rough sketch of our social system is no mere 
 word-painting. Ireland has been going down in every 
 department since 1877, and at the present moment, to 
 
26 
 
 adopt the terms of the weather prophet, there is a deep 
 storm centre hovering over us, with steep gradients 
 leading in almost every direction. 
 
 I trust that the Irish people in town and country 
 will soon recognise the necessity of falling into line 
 under the banner of the National League to press this 
 question forward, and that Mr. Parnell and Mr. Davitt 
 will find the time opportune, taking into account the 
 wretched condition of the country, for calling the 
 great labour and democratic forces around them in 
 Ireland, as Mr. Chamberlain and Sir C. Dilke are in 
 England. 
 
 I have been told that newspaper readers generally 
 do not read long letters on any subject ; so, with your 
 permission, I shall accommodate the short letter 
 section who may honour me with a reading, and hold 
 over the agricultural labourers’ part of the letter until 
 next week. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 A. J. Kettle. 
 
TO THE EDITOR OE THE FREEMAN. 
 
 Mill View, Malahide, Feb. 1st. 
 
 Sir — To review, even briefly, the destruction of 
 the agricultural labour power of Ireland during the 
 last forty years is as sad and solemn a task as a man 
 could undertake. But why be always looking back, 
 especially in those days of science, advancement, and 
 civilisation ? For the plain reason that, while all the 
 world is going forward, Ireland is still on the decline 
 in every department, and it is not alone natural, but 
 inevitable, that Irishmen should now and again turn 
 to gaze on the points from which the country has 
 fallen, leaving out of view altogether the high level 
 she might and would have reached under other cir- 
 cumstances. Still Ireland’s seven centuries of revolt 
 against wrong, and the intensity of her hope and 
 purpose to-day, even in her present prostrate condition, 
 and the fidelity of her exiled children to Faith and 
 Home, may not be without their mission in the history 
 of mankind. 
 
 If England can proudly point to the part her 
 children have played in conquering and enslaving so 
 many millions of the human race, and to the wonder- 
 ful gathering of the spoils of the robbed and fallen in 
 her small island stronghold, it may be consoling to 
 Ireland in her poverty to feel that her children — 
 those who remained faithful — have borne a part, how 
 great the world may never know, in the inspirations 
 and struggles of the oppressed for freedom. 
 
 When the issue of the war for American Inde 
 pendence, upon which so much of the good of the 
 modern world hung, was in the balance, when the 
 soldiers of the people were worn out, crushed, and 
 bleeding, one dark day Hope was about to take wing 
 from the National Council, when George Washington 
 
28 
 
 asked to be placed in the midst of a certain Irish 
 settlement, where he, in desperation, declared he 
 would still find men enough to support the revolution. 
 What a testimony to the chivalrous qualities of the 
 enduring Celt. I expect that the young Irishmen of 
 the present day have at their finger ends the reasons 
 why Irishmen generally are so much attached to a 
 union with Britain. The British connection has been 
 so invaluable to Ireland since 1840, that while Britain 
 herself has become burdened with an increase of 
 population, which some fools consider a source of 
 wealth and strength, to the extent of thirteen million 
 souls, she has actually lightened Ireland to the extent 
 of three and a quarter million souls. In the pure 
 interest of civilization during the same period, although 
 she had more money than she well knew what to do 
 with, yet Britain considerately took out of Ireland’s 
 way 200 millio.us sterling of Irish money by what is 
 elegantly called amalgamated taxation, or, in other 
 terms, the greater the poverty the higher the taxes. 
 
 In the matter of land, too, a thing which some 
 people thought could not be moved at all, Britain 
 kindly, like the good neighbour that she is, took over 
 10 million acres of the best land in Ireland for the use 
 of her beef-eaters, and left us burdened only with the 
 management of five million acres to suit our genteel 
 circumstances. Every schoolboy used to know the 
 size Ireland was and the number of people in it. The 
 size of Ireland now is five million acres — including 
 those acres still sacred to landlordism, demesnes and 
 home farms — having on them about five million of 
 inhabitants. So many people on so small a space 
 without money and manufactures insures that there 
 shall be keen competition for those few acres and for 
 every day’s work to be done upon them ; this beautiful 
 arrangement insures that there shall be high rents 
 and low wages or no wages ; these again make certain 
 that there shall be bad farming and short crops, and 
 
29- 
 
 those that there’shall be Aplenty of poverty, discontent, 
 and local taxation. Britain is, of course, the sun and 
 centre of our little skeleton trade and business, inas- 
 much as the decent people in Dublin could not find 
 their way from one street to another without invoking 
 some British scoundrel’s name. 
 
 In no department of Irish social life has the ravages 
 of misrule been so marked and miserable as in thp past 
 fate and fortunes and present wretched condition of 
 Ireland’s labour power. 
 
 Our agricultural labour power I shall define in 
 three sections. First, the hired labourers who depend 
 altogether on wages, who are always at the mercy of 
 circumstances, and who have neither houses nor homes 
 to call their own. Second, the very small farmers who 
 have to migrate to England and Scotland or to the 
 richer parts of Ireland to earn the rack-rents which 
 their patches of reclaimed bog and mountain land will 
 not yield. Third, the small farmers who by the 
 labour of their families can just manage to live, but 
 who can never expect to start their children as any- 
 thing but agricultural labourers. 
 
 In 1845, although the splendid labour forces of 
 Ireland were in a bad condition, owing chiefly to the 
 rent robbery, yet their most prominent features were 
 health and heart and hope ; to-day the characteristics 
 are delicacy, melancholy, and despair. I would wish 
 to sketch the contrast in detail, but I must defer it to 
 another time and hurry on to the main object of this 
 letter. As I intend towards the close to make an 
 advanced demand upon the Legislature to give our 
 labourers a fair start in the future, I find it necessary 
 to refer to the way the Legislature treated them in 
 the past. 
 
 For cool, conscienceless, audacious duplicity no race 
 or nation can match the British. Even British 
 remedial legislation for Ireland is always charged with 
 the germs of wrong. 
 
 . c 
 
so 
 
 Pitt almost persuaded some of the Catholics to 
 favour the annihilation of Ireland’s nationhood on the 
 promise of obtaining Catholic Emancipation, yet it 
 took thirty years more of labour and waiting to 
 secure it. 
 
 In the Emancipation bargain of ’29 Britain 
 strengthened the hands of her Irish garrison and laid 
 the foundation of the policy that a few years later 
 destroyed the labour power of Ireland. 
 
 Catholic Emancipation was purchased by the aboli- 
 tion of the forty-shilling freeholders. The poor men’s 
 rights were bartered that the rich men might be able 
 to become Castle “ Cawtholics ” and sell themselves 
 at the Bar and on the Bench, at the Privy Council 
 and in the Star Chamber, to do the dirty work for 
 their oppressors. The effacement of the forties was 
 followed by the substitution of a rating franchise for 
 the freeholds and leaseholds of the people generally. 
 By those political moves, it became the interest of 
 the landlords to shake the people absolutely from their 
 hold upon the land, and enabled the lawyers and 
 middlemen to keep the rents pushed up to the utmost 
 and to keep the labourers stripped of everything save 
 what kept body and soul together (see Devon Com- 
 mission), while the gentlemen spent the rack-rents in 
 the London and Continental gambling hells. 
 
 As the magnificent Irish labour power of ’45 was 
 being daily driven from the lands it had reclaimed, 
 trenched, and made fertile into the bogs and up the 
 mountain sides to win more land and make more rent 
 for an accursed system, the failure of a single crop 
 came and found our poor persants so absolutely un- 
 provided that strong men died like dogs upon the 
 waysides, and were thrown into coffinless graves ; 
 others were driven from the land to find resting places 
 on the bed of the Atlantic, while very many staggered 
 from the foetid holds of the emigrant ships into free 
 friendly graves on the shores of America. 
 
31 
 
 The British Legislature and the Irish landlords 
 are directly responsible for the murders and crimes 
 of ’47 ? If the rents were fixed on the value of the 
 land, as they should have been at the commencement 
 of the century, will anyone have the hardihood to say 
 that the lailure of a crop in ’47 could have ended in 
 famine ? If the value of even twenty years’ improve- 
 ments was in possession of the standard population 
 of Ireland, the toilers would have tided over the loss 
 of the potato crop without much difficulty. 
 
 But why again be always looking back, and for 
 ever referring to this eternal ’47 ? Why not let the 
 dead rest ? Under present circumstances in Ireland 
 such a thing as forgetfulness is simply impossible. 
 The same old relentless war is waged to-day by 
 Britain and her landlords, against every Irish interest, 
 as at any time during our history, notwithstanding the 
 professions of their politicians. As well might we 
 expect to see the earth reverse its motion round the 
 sun as to suppose that this material British race will 
 ever even think of acting justly until it becomes their 
 interest to do so. Until we make the game not 
 worth the candle they will never cease to rob and 
 misrule us. 
 
 I pass over the good-will expressions of the Times , 
 the “ dark thief’s friend,” and the rest, on the merits 
 of an Irish famine to take a look at what the 
 Legislature and the landlords did with the dying 
 toilers. 
 
 The Legislature refused to give ships to carry food 
 to the hungry lest it might interfere with the economy 
 of trade. It struck a rate-in-aid on Leinster to sup- 
 port Connaught ; it passed an Act to enable the British 
 bondholders to realise their advances to the landlords, 
 and in so doing confiscated the property of the people 
 and handed the land over to the gombeen men and 
 sharks of society ; it supplied soldiers and police to 
 exterminate the famishing Celt. 
 
32 
 
 Ireland's labour power was scattered to every point 
 of the compass ; the remnant that remained in Ireland 
 was driven to the huts on the worst bog and mountain 
 land, and to the hovels in the back lanes and slums of 
 the towns and cities, where many of their children 
 are to-day dragging out a miserable existence on the 
 fitful and uncertain employment to be had from the 
 farmers who still hold by tillage, and now and then 
 from the dairymen and cattlemen. 
 
 The cattle trade that the Castle and the landlords 
 forced to the front after '47 became to Ireland a cattle 
 plague. In fact, down to the present a regular struggle 
 has been going on between the toilers and the cattle 
 for possession of the land ; and seeing that the number 
 of acres at present under permanent grass, it must be 
 admitted that the cattle goi the best oi it — but then 
 the bullocks had the Castle and our banks at their 
 backs. 
 
 For many years nothing in Ireland seemed respect- 
 able, and no investment safe, unless something con- 
 nected with this cruel short-horned madness. To 
 drive the workers from the largest number of acres, 
 and to raise money to stock them, was actually looked 
 upon by honest men as the proper and only use and 
 mission for Irish brains and money. But the turn has 
 come, and the decline of this, like every other English 
 institution in Ireland, will be hailed with joy by the 
 toilers. 
 
 There is ample room to indulge in cynicle bitterness 
 on this branch of the social question, but as the duty 
 of the hour is, for every man, woman, and child in 
 Ireland, to rally round the Irish centre for mutual 
 advantage, we may dismiss the tottering cattle trade 
 with the remark that it worked evil to every 
 Irish interest, that if there was money made at it, the 
 English garrison got the money in rent, and the 
 English people eat the bullocks. 
 
 The Irish labourers have been deeply, cruelly, and 
 
barbarously wronged by the British Legislature, the 
 Irish landlords, and the cattlemen, who are cattlemen 
 from choice. Let us give them an opportunity of 
 making reparation. 
 
 The wealth and strength and backbone of every 
 State must necessarily be its labour power. The 
 Prussian Landwehr exacted the enormous indemnity 
 from the wretchedly -led French people, and the small 
 lree French working farmers in ten days paid it. 
 
 Unless Ireland can place her labourers in a satis- 
 factory condition there is little chance of social 
 prosperity. The present Labourers Act, although 
 laid, as Mr. Parnell says, on the only available lines, 
 would be, even with the recent recommendations, 
 altogether inadequate to meet the requirements of the 
 labourers and the embarrassed condition of the country. 
 The Irish ratepayers are not in a position to risk or 
 guarantee anything, the farmers are not able to do 
 much properly for anybody, and the labourers, without 
 clothes, furniture, seed, or tools, are not in a position 
 to turn land to proper account if they are started with 
 much of a rent burdeD. I would be disposed to style 
 the present Act as a muddle and a mockery only I 
 know it was the very utmost Mr. Parnell and the 
 Irish Party could accomplish under the circumstances. 
 The labourers are fortunate in having a man at the 
 head of affairs who knows the lights and shades of 
 Irish peasant life like Mr. Parnell. He knows their 
 condition well, and their power. 
 
 To gave our labourers a fair start they must get the 
 land free of rent. Whether the money to purchase 
 the land is got from the Church Surplus, or out of the 
 unjust taxes taken from Ireland since the Union, it 
 must be a free gift like the Arrears Act grant to the 
 landlords. About four million sterling will be required 
 for the purpose. The money to build their houses 
 should be borrowed on the very best possible terms, 
 and the time for repayment extended. There should 
 
be instructions inserted in the Act that when the 
 labour requirements of each locality would be ascer- 
 tained, the land selected for the labourers should be 
 the best quality, in the best sanitary situations, taken 
 from the largest grass farms or from farms longest 
 under grass, and where this would not be practicable 
 from the largest tillage farms. The maximum 
 quantity of land should be raised to two acres to meet 
 cases where there would be little employment. The 
 absurd expenses as to titles and appeals, and the more 
 absurd exemptions of demesne lands from the scope 
 of the Act, should be summarily dealt with. 
 
 I shall now close this series of letters on the Irish 
 question by claiming on behalf of the Irish .industrial 
 classes fair or freight rents for the land and for the 
 land only, and free land for the labourers. 
 
 If an Irishman or woman relies on England and 
 doubts the doctrine laid down in those letters — viz., 
 that the united pressure of the entire four millions of 
 people on the Irish side in Ireland is required to 
 secure a full measure of right, to any section, let them 
 show the difference between Gladstone’s coercion and 
 that of his predecessors and the difference between 
 Eussell’s cold-blooded political economy and Tre- 
 velyan’s wolfish pinch-of-hunger policy. The Irish 
 children have no room to doubt Spencer’s good-will so 
 long as they can lisp the name of Belmullet. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 A. J. Kettle. 
 
 ALLEY AND CO., PRINTERS, RYDER’S ROW, CAPEL STREET, DUBLIN. 
 
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