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Show Crowded upon 20, COO, 000 acres of land, of which only 15,000,000 acres were productive. Two acres per inhabitant, and much of that poor land! For all the arable parts of the country, a population of 320 "persons per squave mile. With similar density den-sity of population, the agricultural agricul-tural State of Iowa would have 17,000,000 inhabitants, instead of 2,500,000. In Ireland, at that time, four-fifths of the people lived directly by agriculture. There were so many people and so little land that the average holding was but a few acres per family. The great mass lived in a mud hut of one or two rooms, with or without windows, and 'sustained life almost exclusively with the potato'. They lived 1 Land settlement may be regarded re-garded as fairly well assured. , There is always danger of accident acci-dent or delay, but the men who have the work in hand are con. fident of success. Already their I plans are '.. Well-nigh perfected; , subject to slight variations of I details, which will not affect the ! general principle involved, the ! project is substantially as fbl-jlows: fbl-jlows: . Landlords are to have I twenty -three; years' purchase of their second term rents, or 23,-' 23,-' 000 for an estate renting at ! ; 1,000 a year, one-half in cash, j to enable them to clear, off their i debts, and .one-half in land stock bearing about 4 per cent interest. I This will , assure the landlords I their present net income, with the advantage cf prime security in place of the existing uncertainty. uncer-tainty. Tenant purchasers, are to, pay eighteen years' rent in 'terms of fifty or sixty years, I making their annual payment considerably less than their present rent, . and with ownership owner-ship instead of endless tribute at the end of the period. Most landlords are glad to sell, all tenants willing to buy on these terms. The difference of five years' purchase, and the differ-! ence between the 3 per cent the government will : have to pay for literally from hand to mouth. I They have no reserve or sur-'plus, sur-'plus, nothing to fall back upon j in evil days. The system had ; drained the country; the annual ; tribute, paid for centuries, had left no margin against the hour of dire want. Then came the 1 failure of the potato crop, the famine years, starvation, famine fever. A million human beings perished. Since then, five .millions .mil-lions have emigrated. In every subsequent year, the population has dwindled. about 100,000,000 of capital or credit and the 2 or 2f per cent it will get from the purchasing tenants,'is the bonus which the state muiit pay for contentment and prosperity, and in- the end for loyalty, in Ireland.' It is computed that the annual cost of carrying and amortization of this bonus "will be under a million pounds', sterling, the best in vestnjeri'c for the unity and strength, of th? empire Engrlaud The new era in Ireland, now foreshadowed by coming events, began with Gladstone. He laid the foundations; and then there was a pause. For twenty years, little has been done toward a solution so-lution of the land problem, except ex-cept some additions to -the purchase pur-chase acts. . With the rise of the Balfours as influential factors in' the English Government, the work of 'regeneration may be said to have taken a fresh start. From.1687 to 1891 Arthur Balfour Bal-four was chief secretary of Ireland. Ire-land. He studied the Irish problem prob-lem with great care, and his studies are now bearing ;;fruit. Accompanied by the brilliant young man who was then his private secretary, but who is now chief secretary of Ireland, with a seat , .in the cabinet, George Wyndham, Mr. Balfour visited all parts of the island on tours of investigation. He went ever, made,, even if every penny of it'inust come out of the treas-urv.-'Bufthe treasury will not have to bear it. With the land quests settled, members of the cabiiiet tell me the cost of Irish administration can easily be reduced re-duced 1,000,000 a year. For instance, the royal constabulary, a standing army of 13;000 men, maintained almost entirely because be-cause the" landlords think they need ic, costs 1,350,000 a year. With landlordism abolished, this standing army may be largely dispensed with, be reduced to one-quarter or one-third its pres-j ent numbers and cost. . IRELAND'S EMANCIPATION. Two of the greatest events in She history of the British nation are now near at liand7 and yet ' ' they have attracted so little at tention from press.. arid public ihat only a small number of people peo-ple are aware of their imminence. immi-nence. These two events, taken together, will amount to a solution solu-tion of the problem of Ireland! The Irish question has run so long unsolved, has given rise to so much bitterness and conten- into the poorest parts of the country, the unhappy West, where a new problem has presented pre-sented itself during the last quarter quar-ter century. After the famine and the repeal of tli6 corrf laws, landlords began to look abput for more profitable use of their, lands than the precarious rentals afforded. English farmers took up the importation of foreign corn and the fattening of store cattle, and the Irish landowners resolved to supply English feeders feed-ers with stores. So thousauds tion, has stirred such fierce and apparently implacable animosi- ties, that most obseryers have j '; settled down to a state of mind : - ' ' concerning it which may fairly , - be described as utter and chronic y- hopelessness. The news that a y ; settlement is now within sight, that finally an - end is to be " pnt to the centuries-old story of ' repression, struggle, agitation, conspiracy, crime, coercion, suffering, suf-fering, seems almost too good to . fce true. . . .. - Furthermore, Great Britain found during the recent Boer war, that the Boer regiments contained Irish soldiers from all parts of the world." This fact indicated plainly that the Irish people are in no wise a part f the Empire, but are in a state of perpetual antagbnism. Balfour ( is the first Conservative Premier to admit this fact, and he nowj observes the ' necessity of im-' proving the condition of the Irish people to thereby build; op a more harmonious condition. Sixty years ago, the process of ehoking out the natural devel- pment of the country had reached its climax. The condi-- condi-- ' tion of Ireland was fearful. Mire Mian 8,000,000 of people were of tenants were cleared out from their little holdings and the land they had tilled turned into pasture. pas-ture. In fifty years the area devoted to cereals has ditninish-j ditninish-j ed cnc-half ; that devoted to root crops had diminished one-quarter. Meadow and pasture have j increased 65 per cent. , It is an extraordinary fact that to-day, of 15,000,000 acres of productive I land in Ireland, only 2,400,000 j are under plow. As there are ' about five hundred thousand so-'called so-'called farmers, the average of i crops is only five acres per farm. And. as manyhousands of farmers farm-ers in Ulster and other more prosperous sections have from ten to fifty acres each, it follows that others must t-e reduced to one or two acres. |