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Show " England's Failure in Ireland. (From the St. Paul Globe.) In the house of commons recently Mr. John Dillon, one of the Irish nationalist na-tionalist members, presented a very amusing view of the operation of the so-called Crimes act in Ireland. It was a thoroughly ridiculous situation which he portrayed. The serious feature of It was found in the conclusion reached by one of the special courts convened under thp Crimes act in having! declared de-clared the accused innocent of - the charges made against them, yet sentencing sen-tencing these same accused to three months" confinement in prison. Ireland is now being governed chiefly chief-ly through the operation of a special penal law ' capable of producing the shocking results poirited out by Mr. Dillon. Of course, there is nothing exceptional ex-ceptional in this as -a' matter of Irish experience. Since the rebellion of 1798 the Irish people' have been so governed perhaps the greater part of the time. Modern progress and enlightenment do not appeal to English statesmen in this connection. The present English representative rep-resentative in Ireland had long demanded de-manded the suspension of the habeas corpus,. ifa orSer td ifefi&hle'him to cope with the new Irish league.. The government gov-ernment withstood the demand as long as possible that is;- as long as the situation in South Africa was really threatening. Then it. did as al other tory governments and many liberal ones have done, it set itself to the task of ruling "Ireland through the prison and the bayonett. ,'. One hundred yearsoof this sort of thing has brought nothing but misery to both the parties to the political, union between England and Ireland. One thousand years of it will produce no different result.! The Irish are a virile race. They have survived the worst devices put forward by English soldiers and statesmen for their annihilation an-nihilation since the days of Elizabeth; and that fhey will survive and rule in their own land ultimately is as certain as the existence of the British empire itself. Then why not let them do so peacefully? peace-fully? The present state of things is maintained to perpetuate the rule of the little garrison ofsoldiers. pensioners pension-ers and landlords wITTijh now alone represents rep-resents British ascendancy on the island. is-land. That little garrison has been steadily growing. less. and less during all the years. It is now in a condition of final decrepitude. England boasts of the wisdom of her government of her colonies. Why does she not try a little of that wisdom in Ireland? Ire-land? Why not help the people to develop the industries of the country, tq make the country self-sustaining? The young men and .women are fleeing from that' land to this, as they have been doing steadily for sixty years. -The Irish exodus begaif when the ffower of Irish manhood, enlisted in the Irish army of General Sarsfleld, decided in 1691 to enlist In the armeis of the continent. con-tinent. It has continued since to the present hour. But the island remains, as ever, a garrisoned possession of England, and its people are as thoroughly thor-oughly hostile to British rule today, as ever, from the beginnig. , Sinoe neither penal laws nor enforced emigration, nor the jail nor famine, nor the halter, has been able to change the attitude of the Irish toward England, Eng-land, it is surely a nation of blockheads block-heads that will persist in the policy represented by the crimes act, and will not try the policy of justice and common com-mon sense. ' |