An admirable letter from the Roman Catholic Bishop of Limerick,
Dr. O'Dwyer, to Archdeacon Halpin, urges the tenants on the Glensharrold estate to accept the last offer of the Landed Estates Court, which reduces their rent by 30 per cent., and forgives entirely four years of arrears on the pay- ment of one year's arrear, less 30 per cent. Mr. Parnell had recently proposed in the House of Commons to lend money to the landlords in order to induce them to lower rents by 30 per cent. Here was a public tribunal lowering rents by that amount without any offer of help to the landlords, and yet the tenants on the Glensharrold estate were advised to refuse the terrres- -offered them; and to' suffer eviction rather than accept the very terms which Mr. Parnell had proposed to the House of Commons to induce the landlords to give. It will be impossible, says Bishop O'Dwyer, "to persuade the public that these poor people are still the victims of rapacious land- lordism." If they follow the advice of the agitators, says the Bishop, they will by one supreme act of folly ruin themselves without deserving the sympathy of the public. That is the kind of speaking out which we had hoped to hear from the majority of Irish Bishops. Yet, in fact, those of them who speak out in this manly fashion are but some two or three in the whole hierarchy.
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