Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 June 1886 — JAMES G. BLAINE. [ARTICLE]

JAMES G. BLAINE.

Mis Address at the Portland (Me.) Meeting —The Home Rule Principle Indorsed. Directly after the publication of the call for this meeting I received a letter from a venerable citizen in an adjacent county asking me to explain if I could ju fit what the Irish question is. I appreciate the question, or rather I appreciate his request for an explanation of the question that calls forth so much svmpa thy and excitement on the part of the world at large, and evokes so much opposition among those who are directly interested. There may bedanger of not giving attention enough to the simple elementary facts of the case. Now what is home rule ? Why, it Is what every jjtate and Territory ilifhe United States enjoys, and It is what Ireland does not enjoy. In a Parliament of 156 members, Great Britain has 513 and Ireland has 105, and except with the consent of that Parliament Ireland cannot organize a gas company, or horse railroad company, or ferry over a steamer, or do the slightest thing that implies legislative power. Now suppose we bring that home, and the State of Maine should be linked with the State of New York, relatively as large with the State of Maine as England in number with Ireland, and your beautiful city here could not take steps for its own Improvement, nor the State of Maine organize an association of any kind or charter a company of any kind unless an overwhelming galaxy of the New York Legislature gave her consent How long do you think the people of Maine would stand it? That is a simple question between England and Leland, except that there is a great fact in addition which would not apply to New Nork Ohd Maine, that there are centuries of wrong Which have built up monuments of hatred on the part of those who are subjects of oppression, and which have aggravated the question between Ireland and Great Britain far beyond the limits that would be found between New York and Maine. I suppose if the question were left to the United States to decide we would say: “Adopt the federal system, have your legislature for Ireland, your legislature for England, your legislature for Wales, your legislature for Scotland, and your imperial parliament for the British Emfdre. Let questions that are Irish be settled by rishmen, questions that are English be settled by Englishmen, questions that are Welsh be settled by Welshmen, and questions that are Scotch be settled by Scotchmen. Let questions that affect the whole empire of Great Britain be settled by Parliament, in which four great constitutional elements shall be impartially represented." I say that would be the shorthand method of settling the question, for we have lived that way for nearly one hundred years in the United States of America. Ido not forget, however, that it would be political empyricism to attempt by any prescription to give the exact measure or exact details of any measure that should settle this long dispute between Great Britain and Ireland. I am admonished by what I have noticed in the British Parliament in the discussions concerning America, not to be too forward in knowledge or details, or in prescribing the exact measure, because, I suppose, they would retort that we know quite as little about their precise troubles as they know about ours. Therefore, I do not stand here simply to savthat Gladstone’s is a perfect measure ; Ido not’stand here to say that I ever could give you the exact details of that measure. Ido not say that I ever took time to examine them; but I say that lam in favor of any bill that shall take the first step toward righting the wrong, and of handing over the Government to Ireland. Lord Salisbury says if the Irish do not wish to be governed by the British, they should leave. But the Irish have been in Ireland quite as long as Lord Salisbury's ancestors have been in England, and very likely, for aught I know, for I have not examined his Lordship’s lineage in Burke’s peerage. Very likely his ancestry were Danish pirates or peasants in Normandy, who came over with William the Conqueror centuries after the Irish people were known in Ireland. Further on Blaine said: If the home-rnle bill shall pass and the Dublin Parliament be granted, there never was an association of men since human government was instituted which assumed power with greater responsibility to public opinion than the men who will compose that Parliament, because if they are allowed to form it it will be by reason of the pressure of the public opinion of the world, and I know that the Catholics of Ireland and the Presbyterians of Ireland can live and do just as the Catholics of the United States and .Presbyterians of the United States live—the citizens of one country, each giving to the other the perfect right of conscience, each declining to interfere in any manner with the perfect liberty of the other.

Referring to the land question, Blaine said: “In the year 1880 Leland produced 4,000,006 bushels of wheat But wheat is not the crop of Ireland. She produced 8,003,000 bushels of barley. But barley is not the great crop of Ireland. Now we begin to strike into the next item, to which she is specially adapted. She produced 70,000.000 bushels of oats. The next item I think everv one will recognize, as it is peculiarly adapted to Ireland. Of potatoes she produced 110,000,000 of bushels—within sixty milliops of the whole product of the United States. She produced turnips and mangolds, put together, 185,000,000 bushels. She produced of flax 60,000,000 pounds. She produced of cabbage 850,000,000 pounds. She produced of hay 3,800,000 tons. She had on her thousand hills and in her valleys over 4,000,000 head of cattle. In the same pasturage she had 3,500,000 head of sheep, she had 560,000 head of horses,- and 210,0C0 head of asses and mules. During the year 1880 she exported to England over 700,000 head of cattle, over 700,000 sheep and nearly 500,000 swine, and now in that territory, not quite so large as the State of Maine, and out of this magnificent abundance the life of which has scarcely been known since the richness of Goshen, there are men in want of food, and they appeal to the charity of the stranger. Why should this be in a land that can produce so very abundantly ? Why should any one want? The great Law Giver of Israel ordered that “thou shall muzzle the ox that treadeth'out the com, ” and St. Paul added in quoting, in his epistle to Timothy, “that the laborer is worthy of his reward." And yet many of the men who are producing these great results that almost turn the imagination in their extent, are absolutaly in want of sufficient food. I do not think it is difficult to find a reason. Seven hundred and twenty-nine men own one-half the land in Ireland, and the other half is owned by about three thousand more, and of rural farm land there are but nineteen thousand two hundred and eighty-eight owners in ail, whereas there are twelve hundred and fifty thousand adult males in Ireland. Produce that condition of affairs in Maine—in New England—to-morrow, and the distress there would be as great as the distress has been in Ireland. Now. Gladstone' says that this condition of affalrs must cease, and the men who till the soil in Ireland must be -allowed to purchase and to hold it But I did not tell the whole story on this land. As the British authority I quote gives it, three thousand seven hundred and fifty persons own over four-fifths, and they take from the tenantry that cultivate the land sixty-six millions of dollars of rental per annum. Now, mark you, I am talking of the little island not so large as Maine, and they pay a rental of sixty-six millions of dollars per annum, and then they pay an Imperial tax of 835,000,000 and a local tax of $15,000,000 more. There are $117,000,000 to be wrought out of the bone and flesh and spirit of the Irish peasant, and no wonder he lies crushed and down-trod-den. I believe the day hath dawned for his deliverance. From the experience of - Ireland's past it is not wise to be too sanguine of a speedy result. I, therefore, for one, shall not be disappointed to see Gladstone’s bill defeated in this Parliament. The English members can do it, but there is one thing which the English members can not do—they can not defeat the public opinion of the civilized world. And Lord Hartington made a very remarkable admission when, in a complaining tone, he accused Gladstone of having conceded so much that the Irish would nevsr take less. Well, Ido not know the day. whether this year, or next year, or the year after, that final settlement shall be made, but I have entire and absolute confidence that it will never be made on as easy terms as Gladstone now offers—if his mils are defeated—to give, or if I was in a position that would authorize me to give advice, it would be this: That the time has come, and is coming, that will probably try the patience and mettle of the Irish people more severely than In any other age in the progress of their long struggle, and my advice is that by all means, and with every moral influence that can be used, all acts of violence be withheld. You have earned the consolidated opinion of the Christian world, that believes in government. Do not have it divided. Let .no act of imprudence produce reaction.

A farmer of Ithaca, N. Y., had to defer the completion of some important legal papers the other day Because, after trying for twenty minutes m his lawyer’s office to recollect the full name of his wife, he failed to do so. '' ’ ' " ;■ A NEW English dictionary containing 240,000 words is about to be published. This seems to be a direct effort on the part of the learned author to curry favor with Senator Evarts and the man who is moving. Imprisonment for debt has been abolished in New York State.