Chapter 382: , Laws of 1889, to read as follows (20)

"At the eve of the great famine, the mass of the people,
outside the large towns, still spoke Irish; to-day partly
owing to emigration, Irish is only spoken by 600,000 persons,
out of four and a half millions, and that concurrently with
English. Twenty thousand persons speak Irish only; these are
mainly of the West. … An glicisation had begun its work, when
the old language had been lost. Therefore, must not the Irish
renaissance begin with the readoption of that language? So
thought a small and elite group of Irish patriots, men of
talent and enthusiasm, imbued with the national gospel
preached by Thomas Davis forty years earlier—a gospel which
Ireland had to some extent forgotten amidst the sufferings of
the Great Famine, Fenianism and the Land Wars. Prominent in
this group was the descendant of an old Protestant family of
Roscommon, a Celtic scholar and folklorist, a poet of merit in
English, a poet in Irish also, so say the connoisseurs, Dr.
Douglas Hyde. He had the genius for propaganda, and when the
country was ripe for it, gave body to his ideas by founding
the Gaelic League, with the aid of his early friends, in 1893.
The Gaelic League—though to limit the Irish renaissance by
placing it under this title would be to limit its actual
scope—may be said to be a faithful representative of the
general ideas underlying the new Irish movement. It has
declared its objects to be, the preservation of Irish as the
national language, the study of ancient Irish literature, and
the cultivation of a modern literature in the Irish language.
But we must be careful not to judge it by its name. The Gaelic
League is not a society of scholars, and leaves to others all
that concerns literature and philology, pure and simple. It is
occupied with propaganda, the application of its doctrine of a
national renaissance on the basis of a national language. It
intends to confer anew upon the country a psychological
education, and, by means of the national language, by the
revival of national art and literature, and the reconstitution
of a national social system, to regenerate its soul from
within and teach Ireland how she may again be a nation. …
Though still growing, it has already in Ireland 964 branches,
local and popular centres of activity, whose work it is to
spread the national idea and the national language by every
means, and to make them active factors in the every-day life
of the family and social circle. Their primary duty is to
organise Irish language classes for the benefit of their
members.
{332}
These classes are practical above all in their scope, and are
conducted sometimes by paid teachers and sometimes by generous
volunteers whose work is almost always good. … Such a teacher
in the country manages, on his rounds, to hold a dozen classes
or so regularly every week. There are special classes for
workmen, for students, for ladies; special classes for
beginners, for veterans, Irish history classes, singing and
even dancing classes, where the old national airs are taught
and the national reel and jig. … In the summer, during holiday
time, the enthusiasts of Irish speech come together in the
western villages for the _Sgoil Saoire_ (Summer school).
There their teachers are the old peasants, from whom they
learn not only the correct accent, the music of the language,
but the spirit and tradition of ancient Irish culture, of
which these peasants, who, from generation to generation, have
gathered up the songs and legends of former times, are the
most faithful guardians. In the summer also the _Seilge_
are organised, that is to say, excursions to places of
historical interest, with national sports and recreations. A
_seilg_ in Galway in 1901 was attended by no less than
2,000 pilgrims. In the winter evenings each branch holds
reunions from time to time, lectures (_seanchus_),
followed by discussions on Irish subjects, concerts
(_sgoruidheacht_), with choirs, Irish dances and songs,
and _ceilidhe_, informal meetings on the lines of ancient
village gatherings, where serious conversation—in
Irish—alternates with music or a ‘recital,’ that is to say, a
story or a piece of news, told, according to popular custom,
by the author or a raconteur. Every year the Gaelic and
National Festival, that of St. Patrick, is celebrated
throughout Ireland, but notably in Dublin. … A start—the first
and greatest difficulty—has been made, and now the League is a
power in Ireland. It sells annually 20,000 Gaelic books and
pamphlets, in which are included _editiones principes_ of
the poets of the eighteenth century, and new Irish
publications, tales, and novels. Its financial resources are
moderate. They represent, however, the spontaneous obol of the
poor; and a large part of the annual subscription to the
Language Fund, during St. Patrick’s week, is made up of pence
and of half-pence. From the start the League has had the good
sense officially to declare that it was both necessary and
desirable that it should stand apart from all political and
religious struggles; such has been its line of conduct, and
now within it are found representatives of every party, from
the strongest Orangemen to the fiercest separatists."

_L. Paul-Dubois,
Contemporary Ireland,
part 3, chapter 2
(Maunsel & Co. Dublin, 1908)._

Public meetings have been held in Ireland during the past year
(1909) to support the demand of the Gaelic League "that the
Irish language, both oral and written, and Irish history be
made essential subjects for matriculation in the new national
University, and that proper provision be made for the teaching
of Irish in all its colleges."

IRELAND: A. D. 1901 (March).
Census

"4,456,546 Persons (2,197,739 Males and 2,258,807 Females)
were returned in the Enumerators’ Summaries as constituting
the population of Ireland on the night of Sunday, the 31st of
last March—thus showing a decrease since 1891 of 248,204
persons, or 5.3 per cent.—the decrease in the number of males
was equal to 5.2 per cent., and in the number of females to
5.3 per cent.

"There was during the decade a decrease of 41,297 persons, or
3.5 per cent. in the Province of Leinster; 98,568, or 8.4 per
cent. in the Province of Munster; 38,463, or 2.4 per cent. in
the Province of Ulster; and 69,876, or 9.7 percent, in the
Province of Connaught."

In 1841 the population enumerated in Ireland as a whole had
been 8,196,597; in 1851 it had been 6,574,278; in 1861,
5,798,967; in 1871, 5,412,377; in 1881, 5,174,836; in 1891,
4,704,750. Excepting in 1861 the showing is a steady decrease,
and this latest census finds the island almost half
depopulated.

"According to the Summaries furnished by the Enumerators,
3,310,028 persons returned themselves as Roman Catholics, this
number being 237,279 or 6.7 per cent under the number so
returned in 1891; 579,385 were returned under the head of
‘Protestant Episcopalians,’ being a decrease of 20,718, or 3.5
percent., compared with the number tabulated under that head
in 1891; 443,494 were returned as Presbyterians, being a
decrease of 1,480 or 0.3 per cent. compared with 1891; the
number of Methodists returned on the present occasion amounts
to 61,255, being an increase of 5,745 or 10.4 per cent, on the
number returned on the Census Forms in 1891."

In Dublin City, as extended under the Dublin Corporation Act
of 1900, the population enumerated in 1901 was 289,108, being
a gain of 20,521 since 1891. With the Urban Districts of
Rathmines and Rathcar, Pembroke, Blackrock and Kingstown
added, the total population of Dublin and suburbs was
373,179,—an increase in the decade of 27,220.

The following table shows the population of the 14 towns in
which more than 10,000 inhabitants were found: compared with
the enumeration of 1891.

Towns. 1891. 1901.

Belfast 273,079 348,965
Cork 75,345 75,978
Limerick 37,155 38,085
Londonderry 33,200 39,873
Waterford 26,203 26,743
Galway 13,800 13,414
Drogheda 13,708 12,765
Newry 12,961 12,587
Dundalk 12,449 13,067
Lisburn 12,250 11,459
Wexford 11,545 11,154
Lurgan 11,429 11,777
Kilkenny 11,048 10,493
Sligo 10,862 10,862

Total 554,446 637,222

IRELAND: A. D. 1902 (February).
Lord Rosebery and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman at issue on
the Home Rule question.

In a speech delivered at Liverpool in February Lord Rosebery
pronounced a most positive funeral oration on what he assumed
to be the death and burial of the Irish Home Rule question in
British politics. A few days later Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman, speaking at the annual meeting of the
General Committee of the National Liberal Federation, took
occasion to resurrect the supposedly buried issue and take it
under his protection, as one of the responsibilities of the
Liberal Party.
{333}
Home Rule, he said, was often spoken of as if it were "a
strange, fantastic, almost whimsical and mad-cap policy,
rashly adopted in a random way, to secure the Irish vote. It
is to be easily and lightly dropped at any moment when an
equal amount of support can be obtained from any other
quarter! Not a very noble view of the case! Not, in truth, a
very creditable or even a decent view of the case, but
intelligible enough if there were in the way no principles and
no facts." One such fact he found in the "fixed constitutional
demand of the Irish people"; and Sir Henry concluded that the
"old policy" remains "the sole remedy for the condition of
Ireland, which is the most serious weakness in the whole
British Empire and the most grave blot upon its fame."

By these two sharply opposed utterances the Liberals of the
United Kingdom were called to decide which leading they would
follow—that of Lord Rosebery or that of Sir Henry. Not being
in power, however, nor measurably within reach of it, decision
of the party did not need to be made in haste.

IRELAND: A. D. 1902-1908.
Conditions in the matter of Disorder and Crime.

In the course of a debate in the British Parliament on
conditions in Ireland, which took place on the 24th of
February, 1909, Lord Percy, charging the Liberal Government
with responsibility for an increase of disorder and crime
since it came into power, brought statistics in evidence as
follows: "Take the indictable offences against property and
firing into houses. In 1906 the total number of these offences
was 20; in 1907, 29; in 1908, 80. Outrages on the person by
the use of firearms, agrarian and non-agrarian, were:—In the
first 11 months of 1906, 20 agrarian and 36 non-agrarian; in
1907, 56 agrarian and 53 non-agrarian; in 1908, 128 agrarian
and 65 non-agrarian. In addition to these open outrages there
was the system of boycotting and intimidation. In
cattle-driving—a new offence unheard of before the days of the
Chief Secretary—there were 390 cases in 1907 and 681 in 1908.
The number of persons under police protection on January 31,
1907, was 196; in 1908, 270; and in 1909, 335. The cases of
boycotting had risen from 162 on November 30, 1905, to 874 on
January 31, 1908. An impression prevailed that the cases of
boycotting were ‘minor cases,’ and of no great importance; but
the Lord Chief Justice, at the Clare Spring Assizes on one
occasion, referring to these so-called minor cases, pointed
out that no one dealt with or spoke to the boycotted person,
and that he had to go 20 miles to Limerick for the necessaries
of life. People also had to go to mass and to weddings
protected by police; and he asserted that the Government could
not point to a civilized country in Europe in which the
Government would tolerate a large section of its population
living daily and hourly under the shadow of a terror like
this."

The Chief Secretary for Ireland, Mr. Birrell, retorted with
the following: "For the purpose of making a comparison between
the condition of Ireland to-day and as it was when the
Government was led by the right honourable gentleman the
leader of the Opposition, when they introduced and made
permanent their Crimes Act, we must consider what was the
state of things in 1886 as compared with what it is now. I
will give the House the figures. Murders in 1886, seven; in
1908, one; manslaughter in 1886, three; now, none; firing at
the person, 16; now, 15; firing into dwellings—and here is a
most formidable addition, I admit—43; now, 66; incendiary
fires and arson, 103; now, 54; killing, cutting, and maiming
cattle—a horrible and brutal crime—73; now, 22—far too many;
riots and affrays, nine; now, 13; threatening letters or
notices, 434; now, 233; intimidation, 92; now, 57; injury to
property, 150; now, 89; other offences, 136; now, 26; showing
in 1886 a total of 1,056, and now a total of 576. On January
1, 1886, there were 175 persons wholly boycotted, and 716
partially boycotted—a total of 891. In those days, I admit,
the police made no distinction between partial and minor
boycotting. In 1887 there were 145 persons wholly boycotted,
and 763 partially boycotted, making a total of 908. On January
1, 1909, there were 15 wholly boycotted, 10 partially
boycotted, and 172 cases of minor boycotting, making in all
197. Persons under constant police protection on December 31,
1887, numbered 252, and those under protection by patrol,
704—a total of 956. On December 31, 1908, there were 74
persons under constant protection, 270 under protection by
patrol, a total of 344 against the total of 956. I leave the
House to draw their own inference from those figures."

An official return to Parliament, from the Royal Irish
Constabulary Office, Dublin Castle, of the number of cases of
boycotting and of persons boycotted throughout Ireland on the
31st day of January, 1908, and on various days in several
preceding years, showed 5 cases of entire boycotting,
affecting 26 persons, and 9 cases of partial boycotting,
affecting 39 people, on the date mentioned in 1908; 4 cases of
entire boycotting, affecting 20, with seven cases of the
partial boycott, affecting 35, on the 31st of July, 1907. On
the 31st of July, 1903, there had been 4 cases of entire and
21 cases of partial boycotting affecting 25 and 131 persons
respectively; while the cases on the 31st of March, 1902, of
entire boycotting had numbered 5, the partial cases 46, and
they were directed in the first instance against 26 people,
and against 275 in the second.

IRELAND: A. D. 1905.
Defective working of the Land Purchase Act of 1903.
Inadequacy of its financial provisions.
Baffled in the Western Counties by cupidity of landlords.

The first two years of the working of the Irish Land Purchase
Act of 1903 sufficed to show that the splendid promise of that
measure could not be realized satisfactorily without
fundamental changes in its plan. By that time the agreements
effected between landlords and tenants for transfers of land
from the former to the latter called for purchase payments far
in excess of the sums which the Act had provided for supplying
at so early a stage of the operation. The process of transfer
was checked and the feelings that helped it on were chilled by
increasing delays in the completion of transactions when
begun.

But this was not the worst disappointment in the working of
the Act. Another more serious is charged to the cupidity of
landlords in the poorer counties of the west. In the article
by Mr. Thomas W. Russell from which a quotation is given above
he explains it as follows:

{334}

"It was quite impossible to apply the same rule to Connaught
and to other similar areas as to Ulster, Leinster, and
Munster. In the west the holdings are small and hopelessly
uneconomic in their character. Parliament felt, and rightly
so, that to make the occupier of a five-acre bog holding an
owner was to do him no good. Such a feat in statesmanship
merely freed the western landlord from a risky security and
transferred the risk to the state. It was, therefore, enacted
that the large grass holdings which abound in that region,—and
which are held by graziers on a tenure of eleven months, the
object of the term being to avoid the creation of a tenancy,
—should be bought and wherever possible should be distributed
among the small holders, thus rendering a decent living
possible. And in several cases this has been successfully done
by the congested districts board, with the very best results.
… The landlords as a whole professed at the land conference
and in Parliament their entire willingness to sell, provided
they received a price equivalent when securely invested to
their second-term net income. To enable this to be done the
bonus of £12,000,000 was sanctioned by Parliament. The whole
thing was a bargain—a clear case of contract. And what the
western landlords have been guilty of is a simple breach of
faith. They are quite ready to sell the bog holdings, the
barren mountain tracts out of which a decent living cannot be
had, demanding for this wretched land in many cases more than
is being asked in Antrim and Down for the best land in these
counties. But the grass ranches they refuse to part with. And
so the whole plan of the act,—the whole scheme for the
re-settling of the land, and raising the station of the small
holder,—has been brought to naught.

"In this connection another difficulty has arisen. When the
western sections of the act were being passed, Mr.
Wyndham,—who was in grim earnest about these poor
people,—provided for the sale of congested estates to the
estates commissioners or to the congested districts board.
Special inducements were given to sales under these sections.
The cost of sale was borne almost entirely by the state, and
the commissioners were authorized in such cases to spend money
upon the improvement of the holdings. The policy was
excellent. But the landlords have ruined it. They quickly
discovered that if they sold to the estates commissioners the
land would be inspected by an expert valuer, and its price
would depend upon its value. This was not their idea of how
things should be done. They preferred to sell to the tenant
direct, against whom they could use the screw of arrears of
rent, and from whom they could exact a higher price. Hardly a
case of sale to the estates commissioners has taken place
under these well-meant sections. And for the reasons stated. …
The fact is, compulsory powers of purchase in all such cases
ought to have been frankly given. But to mention the word
compulsion to the then chief secretary was to send him into a
fury. He would not hear of it."

_T. W. Russell,
Workings of the Irish Land Purchase Act
(American Review of Reviews, November, 1905)._

IRELAND: A. D. 1905.
Formation of the Sinn Fein Party.

"While the outside world was looking to the Irish
Parliamentary Party as the guardian of the national conscience
of Ireland, a Young Ireland Party, determined, virile,
thoughtful, idealistic and, strange though it may seem,
practical, was gradually forming, becoming a power, sweeping
away outworn ideas, preaching new and putting them into
practice, and working wonders in the revival of a genuine
national spirit throughout the country. … Naturally, and very
gradually, the various units gravitated toward one another;
and, less than two years ago, under the guidance of a Dublin
boy named Arthur Griffith, they elected a National Council,
and formed themselves into a party known as the ‘Sinn Fein
Party,’ which included probably three-fourths of the national
thinkers in Ireland. Since its inception, the Sinn Fein Party
has been rapidly gaining power, raising itself upon the ruins
of a fast crumbling Parliamentary agitation, and eventually
leaping into greater popular prestige when, recently, the
ludicrous Irish Councils Bill was submitted to the nation as
the fruits of a generation of Parliamentary agitation.

"'_Sinn Fein_' is Gaelic for 'Ourselves.' The doctrine of
the Sinn Fein Party is that the salvation of a nation is to be
wrought out by the people and upon the soil of that nation,
and it holds that ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ It
asks Ireland to cultivate, what for a long time it neglected,
self-reliance, and aims at regenerating the Irish nation, not
merely politically, but also linguistically, industrially,
educationally, morally and socially. Almost all preceding
national movements made the grave mistake of considering
politics coincident with patriotism; the Sinn Fein policy
provides for all-round upbuilding of the nation, and is
successfully working along many lines on which no political
movement touched before."

_Seumas MacManus,
Sinn Fein
(North American Review, August, 1907)._

IRELAND: A. D. 1905 (December).
Change of Government.

On the change of government which took place in the United
Kingdom in December, Mr. Balfour resigning the Premiership and
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman forming a Liberal Ministry, the
Earl of Aberdeen was appointed Lord Lieutenant and Mr. James
Bryce Chief Secretary for Ireland.

IRELAND: A. D. 1907.
Effects of the Land Purchase Act as seen by
a revisiting Irishman.

Notwithstanding the defects in the working of the Land
Purchase Act, as described above, Mr. T. P. O’Connor, the
well-known Irish journalist in London, on returning from a
visit to Ireland in the spring of 1907 after a somewhat
protracted absence, wrote enthusiastically to the New York
Tribune of the happy wakening he had found in the country to a
new life. "You are seeing in Ireland," said a lady to him,
"not merely a revolution but a renaissance," and he found her
characterization to be true. He concludes, too, that there was
no exaggeration in her further remark, that "so much is going
on in Ireland now that you dare n’t leave it even for a
month." "Everybody," writes Mr. O’Connor, "seemed to be doing
something and something new for Ireland"; with Catholics and
Protestants working together, as they have never worked
before. And the main cause of this "renaissance" is traceable
to the working of the Land Purchase Act of 1903. Already, says
Mr. O’Connor, under the working of this splendid measure,
nearly half the soil of Ireland has changed hands, and "the
second half will be transferred at a much accelerated speed."

{335}

"For seven centuries there has been a continual, a bloody, a
desperate war in Ireland between two races, and the prize for
which they fought—was the land. … And now, at last, before our
own eyes, in this generation of men to which we belong, this
secular struggle is at an end; the battle has been fought and
has been won; the land belongs again to the ancient Celtic
race from which it was stolen centuries ago. … If you want to
realize further what all this means, do not forget that these
people who are now brought into full liberty are able to
appreciate it the more from the fact that the greater part of
them were born into slavery, and know all that slavery means.
I myself, though no septuagenarian, can remember the time when
the Irish farmers were driven to the polls to vote for their
landlords like so many cattle. I remember the poor, wretched,
cringing slaves which they had to be in those not very far off
days; how they bowed and cried, ‘Yer Honor,’ at every second
word; and how, in fact, they revealed by their outward bearing
the knowledge that when they stood in the presence of the
landlord they were confronted by the master of their life or
death.

"The despair of the impossible situation in the Ireland of 40
or 50 years ago was worse almost than the servitude. There was
no room left for hope in a system which permitted the landlord
to rob the tenant of every addition the latter made to the
wealth of the soil; and there could be no hope or prospect in
a system which kept the tenant liable to eviction from his
holding whenever the landlord wished to do so. And now realize
that on half the soil of Ireland the people never see a
landlord or a landlord’s representative; that every year
brings them nearer to the time when they will be the absolute
owners of their holdings; but they know that their children
will secure full possession and complete ownership if they do
not, and you can understand what a new strong tide of hope and
exultation there must be in the breasts of these people."

IRELAND: A. D. 1907.
The Evicted Tenants Act.
The healing of an Irish Sore of Twenty Years.

"The passing of the Evicted Tenants Act in the recent session,
defective though it may be in one respect, is an admission on
the part of all parties in Parliament that a long pending
Irish controversy must be closed, and that the demand
persistently and pertinaciously made by the great majority of
the Irish members and people for over twenty years for the
reinstatement of a large body of evicted tenants must be
conceded. …

"The wholesale evictions of tenants, whom it is now decided to
reinstate, were primarily due to the agricultural crisis of
1885, when the great fall of price of Irish farm produce
commenced. This averaged not less than 20 to 30 per cent. in
respect of cattle and dairy produce, the main sources of
income to Irish farmers. Tenants for the most part paid their
rents in that year, hoping for better times, but many who
lived from hand to mouth, with little or no margin, fell into
arrears. The position was far worse in the following year,
when it became clear that the fall of prices was a permanent
one. The Land Court recognised this by fixing judicial rents
at 18 to 20 per cent. less than those fixed between 1881 and
1885. An universal demand consequently arose on the part of
all other tenants for a reduction of rent in proportion to the
new range of prices. They claimed this not only in the case of
yearly tenancies, but of holdings where judicial rents had
been adjudicated before 1885, and of holdings under leases.
The majority of Irish land-owners in 1886 recognised the
justice of the claim, and allowed rebatements of rent,
averaging between 20 and 30 per cent. in respect of all
classes of holdings. The claim of the tenants was not for the
forbearance of the land-owners, but was founded on right, on
the traditional claim to a property in their holdings—a claim
to which the Land Act of 1881 had given Parliamentary and
legal sanction. That great agrarian Act had in fact
established Dual Ownerships of land in Ireland. It secured to
the occupiers a property in their holdings by enabling them to
appeal to a Land Court for the settlement of rent, and by
giving them fixity of tenure and the right of bequeathing or
assigning their interests. Beneficent and generous as the Act
was, it had serious defects. …

"As a result of these defects the Land Act of 1881, great as
it was in principle, did not afford a sufficient remedy in the
crisis caused by the great fall of prices in 1885-1886. A
minority of Irish landowners refused to follow the example of
the larger and better class of owners, and to make rebatements
of rent in 1886. They justified their refusal on the ground
that since the Act of 1881 the tenants had no longer a claim
for forbearance in respect of rent. They insisted, therefore,
on full payment, and began to evict on a large scale those in
default. …

"Numerous combinations of tenants were formed to refuse full
payment of rent and to resist evictions to the utmost. With
the object of assisting and strengthening resistance of the
tenants, a new form of combination was devised by Mr. T.
Harrington, M. P., known as the ‘Plan of Campaign.’ The
essential feature of it was the payment by the tenants of an
estate adopting it of 50 per cent. of the rent due into a
common fund, to be administered by a committee of tenants for
the purpose of resisting eviction, and supporting the evicted
families. The fund thus created was beyond the reach of the
landowners and of the individual members of the combination.
It afforded, therefore, great security for the maintenance of
the combination.

"The tenants, before adopting the plan, were advised to offer
arbitration of their rents to their landlords. If evictions
took place the tenants were to stand by one another, and not
to come to agreement with their landlords, except upon terms
that the evicted men were to be reinstated in their holdings.
Those taking farms from which tenants were evicted were to be
rigidly boycotted.

"The plan thus devised was commended to the tenants of
Ireland, where landowners refused reasonable abatements of
rents, by many of the Irish members, such as Mr. Dillon, Mr.
W. O’Brien, and others. … Mr. Parnell held aloof from it, not
so much from disapproval of its method, as from fear that it
might injure the Home Rule cause with English constituencies.
Many of the Catholic Bishops expressed their disapproval. It
was denounced by the Government as a fraudulent and dishonest
attempt to break contracts. They prosecuted Mr. Dillon and
other leaders for conspiracy under the ordinary law. The Irish
judges pronounced the scheme of combination to be a criminal
conspiracy on the ground that it subjected landlords to
unlawful pressure. …

{336}

"By the commencement of the session of 1887 the Royal
Commission appointed by the Government to report on
agricultural prices and the claim for a revision of judicial
rents, presided over by Lord Cowper, an ex-Lord Lieutenant,
reported in favour of all that had been contended for by Mr.
Parnell in his Bill of the previous year. They emphatically
affirmed that a great and permanent fall of prices had taken
place. They advised that judicial rents, fixed before the year
1885, should be revised and reduced, and that leaseholders
should be admitted to the privileges of judicial rents. The
Government, at the instance, as it is believed, of Mr.
Chamberlain and the Liberal Unionists, were compelled to
legislate in accordance with this report. …

"This measure, which so greatly extended the Act of 1881, was
accompanied by a new Coercion Act dispensing with trial by
jury in agrarian cases, and enabling resident magistrates—mere
nominees of the Government—to try and convict in such cases.
…

"The Act of 1887, by providing a legal alternative, put an end
to further combinations of tenants. The Plan of Campaign was
not adopted in any fresh cases. It had been put in force on
111 estates where the owners refused general abatements of
rent. In 94 of these it had the effect of inducing the owners
to come to terms with their tenants for reductions of rent of
a reasonable character and sufficient to avoid further
trouble. In seventeen estates only the owners were obdurate,
and declared war against their tenants. …

"After the passing of the Coercion Act wholesale evictions
were resumed on the Campaign estates, and were supported by
all the forces at the disposal of the Government. … In 1891, a
great step was taken by the late Government in the direction
of a more conciliatory attitude to the evicted tenants. In the
Land Purchase Act of that year a clause was inserted enabling
the Land Commissioners to admit the evicted tenants as
purchasers of holdings, where their former landlords agreed to
their reinstatement. The clause was to have effect for one
year only, and very few transactions took place under it. …

"Nothing more was done till 1903. Meanwhile this Irish sore
remained unhealed. The evicted men continued to live in
temporary dwellings near to their former homes, patiently
expecting reinstatement at some future time. Nor have they
been mistaken in this respect, though many of them had to wait
nine more years, and the remainder still longer.

"In 1903 it became advisable for the Tory Government to bid
for the support of the Irish Nationalists for Mr. Wyndham’s
measure aiming at an universal scheme of land purchase in
Ireland—a scheme offering very great inducements to landlords
to sell to their tenants. It was again provided in this Act
that the evicted tenants might be reinstated, not as tenants,
but as owners by purchase of their former holdings, Provision
was made for the advance of money from an Irish fund for
buying out the Planters, for rebuilding the houses of the
evicted men, for restocking their farms, and for buying
untenanted land on which to replace the evicted men, where it
was not possible to reinstate them in their former farms. … As
a result, however, all the remaining Campaign estates except
two were dealt with under this Act, and nearly all the men
evicted from them were reinstated on the most favourable
terms. …

"The Act of 1903, however generous and successful so far as it
went, failed to deal with the whole case. It is wanting in
backbone—in coercive power as against a residuum of
landowners. Two Campaign estates—the Clanricarde and the Lewis
estates—remained undealt with, and about 2000 tenants evicted
from other, not Campaign, estates were left out in the cold.
It was to supply coercive power for dealing with these
remaining cases that the recent Act was passed."

_Eversley,
The Evicted Tenants (Ireland) Act
(Fortnightly Review, December, 1907)._

IRELAND: A. D. 1907 (May).
Proposed Bill for the creation of a Representative Council.
Rejected by the National Party.
Abandoned by the Government.

A Bill proposing half-way progress toward Home Rule for
Ireland was introduced in the British Parliament by the Chief
Secretary for Ireland, Mr. Augustine Birrell, in May, 1907.
Its main feature was the creation of a Representative Council,
not to be legislative in function, but having large
administrative powers. This Council was to consist of 107
members, eighty-two elected by the Irish householders
(including peers and women), and twenty-five nominated by the
crown. Eight of the existing Irish departments, including
agriculture, public works, congested districts, and the
registrar’s office were placed under its control and a new
one, the education department, created. In addition to the
$10,000,000 of annual expenditure controlled by these
departments, the bill provided for an increase of $3,250,000
to be spent on public works and "general improvement." The
provisions of the Bill did not extend to the constabulary, the
courts, the prisons, or the Land Commission. The Lord
Lieutenant was to have general supervisory control.

Apparently the Liberal Ministry had been led to expect that
Mr. John Redmond and other leaders of the Irish National Party
would accept this measure, as an installment of the
self-government they claimed for Ireland. If so, then the
leaders who encouraged that expectation were overborne by
their followers, for the Bill was denounced and rejected, on
motion of Mr. Redmond, at a convention of the National Party,
in Dublin, on the 21st of May, and was therefore withdrawn.

In offering this plan of government the English Liberals had
turned back to what was the original Gladstone project of
Irish home rule, contemplated and discussed, without result,
by the Liberal cabinet in 1885. As Mr. Morley relates in his
Life of Gladstone, there were two main opinions in the cabinet
at that time: "One favored the erection of a system of
representative county government in Ireland. The other view
was, that besides the county boards, there should be in
addition a central board for all Ireland, essentially
municipal and not political; in the main executive and
administrative, but also with a power to make bye-laws, raise
funds, and pledge public credit in such modes as parliament
should provide.
{337}
The central board would take over education, primary, in part
intermediate, and perhaps even higher; poor law and sanitary
administration; and public works. The whole charge of justice,
police, and prisons would remain with the executive."

This defines, practically, a measure of home rule within the
same limits that Mr. Birrell proposed. It appears to have been
suggested to Mr. Gladstone by Mr. Chamberlain and to have been
accepted by the premier, with the understanding that it would
satisfy Mr. Parnell, for the time being, at least. It was not
acceptable, however, to a majority of the Cabinet, and, when
rejected, Gladstone remarked bitterly to one of his
colleagues: "Within six years, if it please God to spare their
lives, they will be repenting in sackcloth and ashes." The
wearing of the sackcloth was not postponed so long.

IRELAND: A. D. 1909.
Amended Land Purchase Act.

The defects which have been noted above in the very promising
Land Purchase Act of 1903 raised increasing difficulties in
the operation of it, until the pressing need of amendatory
legislation was acknowledged by all parties. Wide differences
of view, however, between different interests involved made
the attainment of such legislation no easy task. A Bill for
the purpose, brought forward in the autumn of 1908, by the
Chief Secretary for Ireland, Mr. Birrell, was pushed over into
the next session, and reintroduced in March, 1909. Mr. Birrell
then reviewed the circumstances which had rendered amendments
of the Act necessary, stating that "28 millions had now been
advanced for land purchase, and that there were pending
agreements involving the advance of 56 millions. The total
acreage of the land sold and agreed to be sold exceeded
7,000,000 acres. The country was now in the very middle of
this great agrarian revolution. Mr. Wyndham, the author of the
Act of 1903, thought that £100,000,000 would suffice to carry
this revolution through, but already £84,000,000 had been
accounted for and there was every reason for supposing that
Mr. Wyndham’s estimate should have been £183,000,000. With
regard to the loss on the flotation of land stock, he
expressed the opinion that for a decade, at any rate, it would
be unsafe to assume that a higher issue price would be
obtained than £85, and he calculated that if nothing were done
a charge of £855,000 annually would eventually have to be made
good by the ratepayers. It was impossible to expect them to
bear this enormous burden, and if the law were not amended the
scheme of land purchase must break down. His proposal in
regard to the bonus was that, instead of fixing it at 3 per
cent., it should be paid according to a scale under which the
lower the price given for the land the higher would be the
bonus. For this at least £3,000,000 would be required over and
above the original £12,000,000. By this Bill the Exchequer was
assuming, everything considered, a total capital liability of
about £30,000,000. Calling attention to the principal
provisions of the Bill, he reminded the House that landlords
were empowered to take payment partly in cash and partly in
stock at 92. He then mentioned the steps that were being taken
to accelerate the work of the Estates Commissioners and stated
that advances to the amount of £10,000,000 were never likely
to be exceeded in one year; they now had reached £8,000,000."

On a question arising as to one part, called a "bonus,"
provided for in the transaction of purchase, Mr. Wyndham, who
had been Chief Secretary in 1903, and author of the original
Act, said. "Some honourable members sitting for English
constituencies might think that the bonus was not necessary.
They might think that if the State lent its credit, landlord
and tenant could come to terms, and that the bonus was
something thrown in as a sop to the landlords. If the transfer
of land in Ireland were sporadic, he agreed that landlords
might sell without the assistance of a direct bonus from the
State. The question to be solved in Ireland, however, was that
of the general transfer of ownership of land throughout the
country, and that, broadly speaking, could not be effected
unless the present owners received an equivalent to the income
which they now enjoyed. In the past nearly all the cases of
the sporadic transfer of ownership of land had been got rid
of, and there were now left those cases which could not be
dealt with unless a bonus were given. It had been generally
recognized by all parties that a bonus should be given rather
than that the land difficulties in Ireland should continue,
and six years ago the decision arrived at was supported by the
unanimous opinion of all parties in the House. Now it was
proposed that the method of giving a substantial bonus at a
uniform rate should be set aside in such a way as to increase
the discrepancy between pending and future agreements. Already
by altering the rate of instalments in future agreements, and
by giving stock instead of cash, they had created a wide
difference between the two classes. On the top of that they
were now going to do away with the bonuses and apply a method
which he thought he would be able to show would prove most
injurious; and if it did prove injurious, it would touch the
cardinal point in the whole matter."

Mr. Wyndham opposed the new Bill on this point, apparently
without success. Strong opposition to a grant of the power of
compulsory purchase which the Bill embodied was raised, in the
House of Commons, as well as ultimately in the House of Lords.
Its contemplated changes in dealing with what are called
"congested estates" and "congested districts," being those in
which the holdings of tenants are too small to yield a decent
living, were also a subject of criticism and opposition.

The Bill received some amendment in the House of Commons,
before having its third reading and passage on the 18th of
September. In the House of Lords it met with harder treatment,
and was returned to the Commons with amendments which the
latter rejected _in toto_. Informal conferences brought
about an accommodation of the differences between the two
Houses and placed the Act on the statute book. The peers
yielded on the question of compulsory purchase, as well as
with regard to the tribunal which should have a deciding
authority in the matter, these being the two points most in
dispute.

IRELAND: A. D. 1909 (January).
Disclosures of Poverty by the Old Age Pensions Act.

See (in this Volume)
POVERTY, PROBLEMS OF: PENSIONS.

IRELAND: A. D. 1909 (October).
Organization of the two new Irish Universities.

See (in this Volume)
Education: Ireland.

{338}

IROQUOIS THEATER, Burning of the.

See (in this Volume)
CHICAGO: A. D. 1903.

IRRIGATION.

See (in this Volume)
CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES.

ISLE OF PINES:
United States Supreme Court Decision concerning.

See (in this Volume)
CUBA: A. D. 1907 (APRIL).

ISTHMIAN CANAL.

See (in this Volume)
PANAMA CANAL.

ISVOLSKY, Alexander: Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
His Aide Memoire on Macedonian Affairs.

See (in this Volume)
TURKEY: A. D. 1908 (JULY-DECEMBER).

ISVOLSKY, Alexander:
Convention with Great Britain.

See (in this Volume)
EUROPE: A. D. 1907 (AUGUST).

ITAGAKI, Count.

See (in this Volume)
JAPAN: A. D. 1903 (JUNE).

----------ITALY: Start--------

ITALY: A. D. 1870-1905.
Increase of Population compared with other European Countries.

See (in this Volume)
EUROPE: A. D. 1870-1905.

ITALY: A. D. 1901.
The First Year of the Reign of King Victor Emmanuel III.
Greatly improved conditions.
Restored Liberty of Speech and Meeting.
Neutrality of Government in Labor Disputes.
Zanardelli and Giolitti in the Ministry.

In the early months of 1901, when Volume VI. of this work went
to press, Italy was in an uncertain and anxious state. It had
not recovered from the shock of the assassination of King
Humbert, and could not foresee what length the sobering
effects of that tragedy would have. It had hope that the new
reign just beginning would quiet the dreadful disorders that
had become rife in Parliament and in the country at large, but
fear to the contrary was more than equal, perhaps, to the
hope. Happily it was the hope that found justification within
the passing year, as will be learned from the following report
of conditions, published in the last month of 1901:

"Those who expected that King Victor Emmanuel III’s reign
would be coincident with a marked improvement in Italy, have
so far been amply justified. Few ventured to hope that his
Liberal Ministry under Signors Zanardelli and Giolitti would
weather a Parliamentary session. As it is, despite some
weakness and a few mistakes, it has come out triumphant.
Compared with eighteen months ago, Italian politics have
undergone what is little less than a revolution. The closing
months of the last reign saw the most dangerous constitutional
crisis that United Italy has known. A reactionary Government
was threatening Parliamentary liberty; the Liberals and
Socialists were making a desperate stand, which at all events
preserved the Constitution, and perhaps saved Italy from
revolution. Now the signs of danger have almost passed. The
Crown is fast getting back its popularity. Parliament is
asserting itself as it has not done for many years, and is
able to give its time to quiet, useful work. The Extreme Left,
stubbornly obstructionist last year, is giving an independent
but fairly cordial support to the Ministry. Outside Parliament
Italians have for once a government ‘which allows them to
breathe and move and speak.’ For the first time since Crispi
introduced coercion, seven years ago, there is liberty of
speech and public meeting. Still, occasionally, the
unteachable censorship suppresses an issue of some democratic
paper. But there is no prosecution for political speeches, no
arbitrary political imprisonment, no harrying of cooperative
or benefit societies from empty fear of political designs or
at the bidding of shopkeepers.

"But this is of small account beside the altered attitude of
the Government towards labour questions. Hitherto its
influence had been always more or less on the side of the
employers. Trade Unions were dissolved and sometimes their
members arrested; their organisers were imprisoned for
‘exciting to class-hatred,’ and under the military courts of
1898 it was an offence to plead, however moderately, in
defence of the claims of labour. When the agricultural
labourers of the lower Po valley struck for a living wage, the
Government sent soldiers to reap the crops. Suddenly and
radically all this has changed. At last the law is observed,
and Trade Unions are allowed the legal sanction which
nominally they have had for years. The Government has
announced its neutrality in labour disputes, so long as there
is no violence or interference with individual liberty. The
result has been an epidemic of strikes. The Italian working
man, long cowed by his powerlessness before the alliance of
employer and Government, is using his new freedom to raise his
miserable wage. Signor Giolitti estimated in the middle of
last June that since the beginning of the year there had been
511 strikes, affecting 600,000 workmen (a number almost
unparalleled even in England) and resulting in an increase of
wages by nearly £2,000,000, a huge sum in poverty-stricken
Italy. Probably by now the total of strikers has reached a
figure which has never been equalled within a year in any
European country. … Thanks to the vigorous advocacy of
arbitration by the Chambers of Labour, the urban strikes have
generally been short, and, so far as I know, except for some
not very serious trouble at Naples, there has been no case of
disorder in them."

_Bolton King,
The New Reign in Italy
(Contemporary Review, December, 1901)._

ITALY: A. D. 1902 (June).
Renewal of the Triple Alliance.

See (in this Volume)
TRIPLE ALLIANCE.

ITALY: A. D. 1902-1904.
Coercive Proceedings against Venezuela concerted with
Great Britain and Germany.
Settlement of claims secured.
Reference to The Hague.

See (in this Volume)
VENEZUELA: A. D. 1902-1904.

ITALY: A. D. 1903 (March).
General Strike in Rome.
See (in this Volume)
LABOR ORGANIZATION: ITALY.

ITALY: A. D. 1903 (October).
Change of Ministry.

Signor Giuseppe Zanardelli, President of the Council, or
Premier, since February, 1901, gave his resignation to the
King in October, 1903, on account of ill-health, and a new
Ministry was formed by Signor Giolitti, who had been Minister
of the interior in the administration of Zanardelli, and who
still retained that portfolio after assuming the presidency of
the Council.

ITALY: A. D. 1903-1905.
Initiation of the International Institute of Agriculture
by the King.

See (in this Volume)
AGRICULTURE.

ITALY: A. D. 1904.
Tokens of a Disposition to bring the Church and the
State into better Accord.

Several marked tokens of a conciliatory disposition on both
sides of the long break in relations between the Papacy and
the Government of the Kingdom of Italy appeared in the course
of the year 1904. The Government brought in a bill for
increasing the public salaries of curés. Its diplomatic agents
in South America were instructed to give attention to a Papal
nuncio who travelled thither on a mission from the Vatican as
though he represented the King. The King conveyed a piece of
ground to the Pope which enlarged his domain. A Cardinal took
part in a reception to the King at Bologna and sat at table
with them. These were such amenities between the royal and
pontifical courts as had not been seen for a generation, and
they seemed to bear much significance; but little came from
them in the end.

{339}

ITALY: A. D. 1904 (October-December).
Dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies.
The Government sustained in the Elections.
Increased Participation by the Catholics.

The Chamber of Deputies was dissolved by royal decree on the
17th of October, and elections appointed to be held on the 6th
and 13th of November. The canvass was more animated than
usual, Catholics taking part in it, and in the subsequent
voting, more numerously than hitherto. The Ministry of Premier
Giolitti, representing the Liberals and Moderates in politics,
between groups of the extreme Right and Left, secured a strong
majority. Those of the Left lost a number of seats, though the
Socialists claimed to have made large gains in the popular
vote.

ITALY: A. D. 1905.
Effect of the Russo-Japanese War on the Triple Alliance.

See (in this Volume)
EUROPE: A. D. 1904-1909.

ITALY: A. D. 1905.
Action with other Powers in forcing Financial Reforms
in Macedonia on Turkey.

See (in this Volume)
TURKEY: A. D. 1905-1908.

ITALY: A. D. 1905 (September).
Earthquake in Calabria.

See (in this Volume)
EARTHQUAKES.

ITALY: A. D. 1905-1906.
Illness and Retirement of Premier Giolitti.
The Fortis and Sonnino Ministries.
The Demoralized Railway Service.
Catholic Abstention from Politics relaxed.
Return of Giolitti to Power.

The Italian Premier, Signor Giolitti, was forced by illness to
withdraw from office early in the year, and Signor Fortis was
commissioned by the King to form a new Ministry. He did not
succeed, and Signor Tittoni was then required by the King to
take the lead in Government with the late colleagues of Signor
Giolitti. Tittoni soon resigned, however, and Fortis was again
called, late in March, to form a Cabinet, which he now found
himself able to do. In the following December, however, a
reconstruction of the Fortis Ministry occurred, the King
requiring the Premier to retain his place, while his
colleagues were partly changed.

Throughout the year the Government and the country were
greatly troubled by a general demoralization in the management
and service of the railways. Travel and freight transportation
were exasperatingly delayed; accidents were of constant
occurrence, and strikes, having no result but the public
affliction, were repeated again and again.

Early in the summer an encyclical on the attitude to be taken
by the faithful in political controversies was addressed to
the Italian bishops by the Pope. Not distinctly, but by
inference, it was taken to be a relaxation of the policy of
abstention from politics, and to prompt political action by
Catholics, but always under clerical guidance and advice.

The Fortis Ministry held its ground in the Government, against
much attack, until February, 1906, when it lost the support of
a majority in the Chamber, and gave place to a coalition
Cabinet formed by Signor Sonnino, which conducted the
administration till the following May, when, on a question of
the purchase of the Southern railways, it suffered defeat.
Whereupon Signor Giolitti returned to power, in the face of a
threat from the employees of the railways that they would
proclaim a general strike if he took up the reins again. The
strike did not occur, and a notable access of vigor and
activity of Government appeared.

ITALY: A. D. 1906.
At the Algeciras Conference on the Morocco Question.

See (in this Volume)
EUROPE: A. D. 1905-1906.

ITALY: A. D. 1906 (April).
Violent eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

See (in this Volume)
VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS.

ITALY: A. D. 1906-1909.
The Giolitti Administration.
Its recent resignation.

The Giolitti Ministry was maintained in the direction of the
Government for nearly four years, by virtue of the energetic
and efficient administration it conducted. Its capabilities
were demonstrated somewhat notably before the close of 1906,
by the conversion of the Italian rentes (Government bonds)
from 4 to 3 per cent.,—a financial operation which had been
discussed and fumbled over, apparently, for a long time.
Premier Giolitti brought the question to a determination in
the Chamber after less than one day of debate; and the
conversion of 8,000,000,000fr. of national debt was so readily
accepted by the rente-holders that only 1,700,000fr. needed to
be paid off.