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About Hesperian student / (Lincoln [Neb.]) 1872-1885 | View Entire Issue (April 15, 1889)
THE HESPERiAN pcndcncc. Though centuries have elapsed since she was first deprived of her God-given rights, they archers today; they are hers today, even though Britain declares with a voice of thunder that they arc not. What has been the effect of British domination upon Ire land? Under the inspiration of Grattan's parliament the mel ody of her mills was increasing. During that brief period of eighteen years Ireland made unparalleled advance in mater ial prosperity. More than one-half her people were fully occupied with manufacturing industries. Lord Plunkctt speaks of her revenues, her trade, her manufactures thriving beyond her hopes, owing, he says, to the protection of a domestic superintendent parliament. Such was home rule. What is the other picture? No sooner was the Irish parlia ment, abrogated than England, covetous of the home market Ireland made for her products, deliberately and with cold blood crushed her manufactures through the influence of powerful and grasping monopolies. Thus debarred from every other industry the Irish people have been forced to look to the soil for sustenance. They have found themselves at the mercy of men in whose eyes their lives when balanced against personal and selfish interests have been deemed worthless. Has Great liritian done her duty to the toiling Irish ' peasantry? For answer look back only forty years. and behold the outcome of her inhuman laws. The lailurc of the potato crop for a single year has plunged a nation in woe. Famished mothers ate the babies their withered breasts should nourish. Hut think not there is not plenty in the land. They are dying, they are dying, where the golden corn is growing; They arc dying, they are dying, where the crowded herds are lowing; They arc gasping for existence where the streams of life arc flowing, And they perish of the plague where the breath of life is blowing.' The Irish produced, but not for themselves. The petty suzerains filled their own store houses from the abundant supply of grain, and then exported what they did not want. The estimated value of the cereals raised in Ireland in 1846, the year before the famine, was $400,000,000, yet when Dan iel O'Conncll, the patriotic champion of Irish rights, asked Lord John Russell that this cnoimous supply be kept in the country, he met with the cold response, 'We cannot interfere with the laws of trade.' Death claimed his own. With the granaries of the haughty landlords overflowing and within four hours journey of the richest country on caith, fifteen hundrcU thousand struggling, starving men gave up their lives, victims to British greed. What wonder that the heart of the Irish patriot almost bursts with agony in contemplat ing such a scene! America revolted because, forsooth, her tea was taxed, and the God of battles' smiled upon her efforts. What a righteous appeal for interposition, freighted with the story of hideous murder, could Ireland have raised to the throne a merciful Jehovah! Hut the curse of landlordism has not passed away. The sun that today illumines the hills of (he fairest pearl of ocean looks down upon atrocities committed under the sanction of law, in cruelty befitting the dark ages. Aged men are torn -from the hovels they have called their homes and cast upon the road to die. Families, with their vitals'picrced by the pangs of hunger, are dragged from their only shelter, and, barefooted and in tatters, are thrust out in the pitiless storm. The clang of prison doors ceaselessly resounds, as they close on wretches whose only crime is their resistance to the unholy laws of an alien land. Can a just God smile on such barbar ity? A down trodden and bleeding nation pleads for free dom, freedon from the insufferable exactions of a proud and soulless aristocracy. Can home rule give this freedom? Can home rule today raise Ireland from her industrial depression? In answer, notice another evil to which British rule has given rise. A national feeling tends to national prosperity, but immedi ately after the dissolution of Grattan's parliament absentee landlordism .assumed stupendous proportions. Those self exalted plutocrats came to look upon the peasantry as serfs, or chattels. They, forsooth would spend their money in society of higher pretensions. Heboid now the opposite effects of legislative independence and dependence. Under home rule this evil was abated, yet after its repeal, and in the reign of Queen Victoria alone, $11200,000,000 have been taken from the channels of Irish trade by absentee landlords and expended to swell the traffic of forcigu cities. Restore again the home rule of too years ago, and let it stimulate again in the breasts of the moneyed class the spirit of national pride, and once more will be dried up that fatal stream that is now draining Ireland of her legitimate capital. Self-government is the first and essential step. Give the "Sons of Erin" a place among the nations of the world; give them a chance to redress their wrongs and battle for their rights. Then will the mountains of the "Green Isle" lift up their crests and her waste places blossom as the rose, as the streams of her commercial life swell again within her borders. Then will the busy loom and the sounding ham mer betoken the emancipation of her people from a thraldom wonc than death. Then can Ireland go forward, with firm tread and resistless forward, to the realization of the bright hopes of her most ardent patriots Notwithstanding Ireland has suffered so greatly from, subjection to alien legislation and notwithstanding the man ifest benefits of full national independence, we must not for get that she does not ask complete separation from Great Hritain. She asks only for control of those matters that arc exclusively her own. Mr. Gladstone says: "Apart from imperial necessities Irishmen must be the best judges of their own affairs." State autonomy the American government would deny to no commonwealth. With Irish representation at Westminster, there would be no essential difference between our local self-government and the home rule that Ireland desires. Moreover, the end she thus seeks, if secured, might be but the catering wedge which would result in the federalization of the whole British empire. Men often shrug their shoulders deprccalingly, when the Irish character is mentioned. They seem to place a low estimate upon its worth. Let such remember that responsi bility is an active agent in the formation of character. Here are facts vouched for by Alexander Sullivan. Since the present movement to gain national legislative independence began, crime in Ireland has become the lowest and school enrollment the highest. So much has the people done for themselves under circumstances the most discouraging. Place their destiny in their own hands and they will rise to the full height of the great possibilities within them and assert their manhood in the excellencies of their country's laws. Has there been rebellion against British rule? Is that an unprecedented crime? America is proud of her resist ance to the exactments of the same British parliament. The painted and tomahawked figures of the Boston tea party we honor. Our gallant patriots of Bunker Hill arc embalmed in the hearts of the American people. Shall we honor them because succcssiul and cast a sneer upon the weaker people, staggering under a weight a thousand times heavier .than theirs? Great Britain ha a material anxiety in the welfare