THE IRISH LAND QUESTION.
[To TIM EDITOR or THE ''SPECTATOR."J SIR,—It has pleased Mr. Stephen Gwynn in your issue of February 6th to refute my opinion (Spectator, January 30th) that a truer reason for the cattle-driving agitation can be found in the finances of the United Irish League than in a supposed retaliation on the landlords for occasional wrongs which cannot have existed since 1881, He disposes of this opinion by the statement that the United Irish League receipts for
1906 and 1906 were a great deal higher than those for 1907 and 1908. Cattle-driving was first practised, I think, towards the end of 1907. To disprove my opinion, Mr. Gwynn must prove that the receipts from the counties affected fell in 1908, not that the gross receipts of the League from America, England, and Scotland, as well as from Ireland, were less. At a meeting of the " National Convention" in Dublin on February 9th, Mr. John Redmond is reported to have made the following statement from the chair .—
" It had constantly boon thrown in their face that the sub- scriptions to this fund [the Parliamentary Fund of the United
Irish League] had fallen off. That was absolutely untrue Re had compared the Irish subscriptions from 1900 to 1908, and he found that in 1908 there was an increase of .21,252 on the previous year, and taking the whole period from 1900 to 1908, inclusive, he iound that the subscriptions from Ireland in 1908 wore above the average of all those years."
Of these two statements by Mr. Redmond and Mr. Gwynn 1
will leave your readers to judge which may be the more apposite to the point which Mr. Gwynn has raised.—I am,
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