Government it must, to really and finally settle matters,
break all leases. If it stops short of
this the trouble will crop up again. If a man
now with a thirty-nine years’ lease can go into
the Land Court, the man with a lease of a hundred
years, or a hundred and fifty, or two hundred, should
not be shut out. This point cannot be put too
strongly to this Government. If the thing is
to be done let it be done thoroughly, and let every
man who holds a lease—no matter for what
term—go into the Land Court, and also purchase
under Lord Ashbourne’s Act. Lord Ashbourne’s
Act is the real cure if made to apply all round.”]
[Footnote F: The Irish have always been cruel
to animals. It is a curious fact that most Roman
Catholic peasants are. In the time of Charles
I. an Act was passed to prevent the Irish farmers from
ploughing by their oxens’ tails. Even now
they pluck their geese alive.]
[Footnote G: The boycott against the Great Northern
Railway line between Carrickmacross and Dundalk is
now in full swing. It was begun at Friday’s
fair in the former town, intimation having been given
to all dealers in cattle and pigs that not an animal
was to leave by the Great Northern line. Not
a hackney car was permitted to attend the railway
station, and commercial travellers had to leave their
samples at the station. Many of the cattle and
pigs purchased at the fair were driven by road to
Kingscourt, where there is a station of the Midland
Great Western Company, a local National League branch
having published a resolution recommending all goods
to be sent and received via Kingscourt.
It has also been resolved to do no business with commercial
travellers from Belfast, or other parts of the North
of Ireland, whose goods had been carried over the
Great Northern system. Travellers from Scotland,
England, and Dublin are only to be dealt with under
guarantees that they do not use the Great Northern
line.
BOYCOTTING IN COUNTY WATERFORD.
THE LEAGUE’S BLACK LIST.
There has been issued by the National League in the
county Waterford a “list of objectionable persons,
with whom it is expected that no true man will have
any dealings whatever”—cattle dealers,
butter merchants, grain and hay merchants, brokers,
and farmers being specially enjoined to refrain from
any dealings with them, the farmers being told that
they “must carefully avoid” the sale of
milk or stock to agents of objectionable persons,
and evicted tenants that they “must deem it
their strict and imperative duty to follow to the
markets all stock and produce reared upon their farms.”
Look, too, at the abuse poured out on all the Government
leaders and officials. In the Freeman’s
Journal, of December 5th, is one of the most disgraceful
attacks on Mr. Balfour ever made by journalism.
It reads like a filthy outpour of a Yahoo rather than
the utterance of a sane and responsible man.
Are these the minds to govern a great and honest country?]
