LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
COUNTY GOVERNMENT IN IRELAND.
[To ma EDITOR Or ma" SPECTATOR:1 SIB,—Mr. Redington, in your number for May 5th, makes the best apology possible for the scandalous misappropriation of the £20,000 allotted by Mr. John Morley to the relief of six im- poverished Unions in the West of Ireland. I agree with him in thinking that the misconduct of the Guardians of those Unions should not be "fairly taken as typical of Irish local administration" as it at present exists ; but we have to con- sider what such administration would most likely become in the future under such a system as Mr. Redington advocates ; and his idea that "a strong controlling administration in Dublin" would be necessary to prevent and correct local abuses sufficiently indicates his opinion on the subject, and bears out the surmise of Professor Dicey, that an Irish Parlia- ment would be hostile to local government.
The case of the six Western Unions is no doubt scandalously bad, but numberless other cases, less disgraceful, but still bad enough, could be quoted in recent years. Take, for instance, what happened a few months ago in the Union from which I write. Tenders for meat were invited in the usual way, and three were sent in to the Board of Guardians, one at 4c1., another at 44d., and a third at 4id. per lb. The first two tenders were by responsible and well-known men, and the third by a much less responsible contractor ; yet the highest tender was accepted. It was in vain that the chairman, a Catholic landlord, and the parish priest, who is everything a clergyman ought to be, remonstrated with the majority of the Guardians. They insisted on giving the contract to the highest bidder, their only reason, as far as I could learn, being that he "was
a poor man and needed it." In the same Union, the scavenger of the town is a vice-chairman, and had recently to be hastily summoned from the duties of the broom to preside over the counsels of the Board. In this Union, a goodly number of tenants have purchased their farms under the Ashbourne Act ; and these landlords of the future are, to do them justice, loud in their complaints against the Guardians, and say,—" When we had the gintlemen for Guardians, the rates were always asy."
The only statesman of the first rank who understood the Irish Question was Mr. John Bright. In 1870, he was unfor- tunately in bad health ; otherwise I have reason to know the "Bright clauses" of the Land Act of that year would have been passed in a far more comprehensive and workable form. My own belief, founded on considerable experience, is that fifty millions invested in making occupiers into owners, and a few millions of it employed in some such scheme of "migra- tion "as Mr. Parnell started a few years ago, but, unfortunately for the country and his own reputation, allowed to drop, would finally close the era of Ireland's troubles. And, pace Mr. Redington, I will add that, in my opinion, there is not a peasant even in the wilds of Connemara, who, if he understood the project of Home-rule proposed by Mr. Gladstone and accepted by Mr. Parnell a couple of years ago, would not indignantly refuse to see his country turned into a province subordinate and tributary to Great Britain. To accomplish this con- temptible purpose, the Irish tenants have been corrupted and demoralised, and men are found sufficiently fatuous to believe that they can prepare a nation of freemen by creating a nation
Previous page
