ietly and quite plainly how things
stand at this present moment. There is no need for hysterics on the
one side or the other; and to amend one's views by the testimony of
facts is not a dishonest turning of one's coat--if confession of that
amendment is a little like the white sheet and lighted taper of a
penitent. Things are, or they are not. If they are, as will be set
down, the inference is plain to anyone not hopelessly blinded by
preconceived prejudice. If they are not, let them be authoritatively
contradicted on the basis of fact, not sentiment--demonstration, not
assertion. In any case it is a gain to obtain material for a truer
judgment than heretofore, and thus to be rid of certain mental films
by which colours are blurred and perspective is distorted.

No one wishes to palliate the crimes of which England has been guilty
in Ireland. Her hand has been heavy, her whip one of braided
scorpions, her rule emphatically of blood and iron. But all this is of
the past, and the pendulum, not only of public feeling but of legal
enactment, threatens to swing too far on the other side. What has been
done cannot be undone, but it will not be repeated. We shall never
send over another Cromwell nor yet another Castlereagh; and there is
as little good to be got from chafing over past wrongs as there is in
lamenting past glories. Malachi and his collar of gold--the ancient
kings who led forth the Red Branch Knights--State persecution of the
Catholics--rack-rents and unjust evictions, are all alike swept away
into the limbo of things dead and done with. What Ireland has to deal
with now are the enactments and facts of the day, and to shake off the
incubus of retrospection, as a strong man awaking would get rid of a
nightmare.

Nowhere in Europe, nor yet in the United States, are tenant-farmers so
well protected by law as in Ireland; nor is it the fault of England if
the Acts passed for their benefit have been rendered ineffectual by
the agitators who have preferred fighting to orderly development. So
long ago as 1860 a Bill was passed providing that no tenant should be
evicted for non-payment of rent unless one year's rent in arrear.
(Landlord and Tenant Act, 1860, sec. 52.) Even then, when evicted, he
could recover possession within six months by payment of the amount
due; when the landlord had to pay him the amount of any profit he had
made out of the lands in the interim. The landlord had to pay half the
poor rate of the Go