LOST OPPORTUNITIES OF THE IRISH GENTRY

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 20

LOST OPPORTUNITIES OF THE IRISH GENTRY

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member with what shrieks of laughter the landlord newspapers received the first project of the Land League, under Mr. Parnell's hand, to buy the landowners out at twenty years' purchase of Griffith's valuation. I wonder what they would give to catch Mr. Parnell's signature to such an offer under date of this present month of grace, September, 1887. I am afraid it is only an artist from the Times Office who is likely to furnish them with such a document. Again, several years ago, in a remarkable paper read before the Statistical Society, Lord Monteagle suggested to the landlords of Ireland the two conditions, and the only two conditions, on which they could still lead lives of comfort and of honour and of usefulness in their native land—First, that they should cease to be landlords; second, that they should cease to act as the English garrison. That is. of course, the landlord way of putting it. What acting as the English garrison really means is using the power of England to garrison their own rent offices and to make the name of England detestable; for I deny that the landlords of Ireland have ever been either a loyal or an efficient garrison of England, whenever their own interests or their own fears prompted them to be rebels or runaways. Well, Lord Monteagle's warning fell on heedless ears. Mr. Gladstone's great Bills of last year came. They offered the most splendid avenue to power and honour that ever opened its arms to a dethroned and fallen oligarchy. The Irish gentry might have had a price for their estates which, in a cheap country like Ireland, would have ensured them affluence. They might have had in the Parliament of their country the power for which they hunger and which they travel all the way from the Riviera to retain in even a local board of guardians. Far-seeing men have estimated that in an Irish Parliament, constituted according … continue reading »

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