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small, in view of the large proportion of persons to be named, if the limitation be adopted of forbidding nominating delegates from being their own successors. Such mass meetings of a party, however, ought to be held in a summer month, at an hour in the early evening fixed by law, and at a place in each division previously announced in a satisfactory way. They ought all to be held at the same time, in order to prevent, as far as possible, the danger of interference by politicians of one place or party with the deliberations of the citizens of another place or party.

One other thought, and I am done. The evils under which we labor have given rise to various plans of reform in the government. of cities, one of which is at present before the Legislature of this Commonwealth for consideration. Like the New York plan, which is followed, it proposes a real-property qualification for members of one branch of the municipal Legislature. Without adverting to the anomaly of introducing this feature into the government of cities, when it is not proposed for the incomparably weightier interests of the State and National Governments, I desire to call attention to the fallacy lurking behind it. It assumes that tax-payers are either more capable or more honest than other citizens. This principle is radically opposed, not only to our governmental theory, but also to common experience. Imperial Britain is steadily cheapening the suffrage, and good government, it is claimed, is thereby promoted; but if we look nearer home for conspicuous examples of tyranny and misrule, we must pass by political corporations and examine the great railroad companies. In them property is the exclusive qualification of the right of suffrage, and every motive for the intelligent exercise of the right exists. The result is, that officers on moderate salaries grow to be millionaires, directors reelect themselves, and though the owners may suffer want by lack of dividends, they have not the power to change the rulers or to abridge their emoluments. Besides, a real-property qualification is easily eluded. A man may pay taxes on enormous masses of real property, of which he is merely the nominal owner. While the true owner, called the mortgagee, is ineligible, the sham owner possesses the required qualification. Nay, further; the direct tendency of such a law would be to sell the government to the rich. Penniless politicians could readily obtain houses from persons of

great wealth in consideration of diverting legislation from its proper channel into such directions as might satisfy private greed.

Such expedients are worse than useless.

The hope of man lies not in appeals to the bad passions of avarice and lust of power; but in the virtue, the intelligence, and the patriotism of the masses. Building upon this sure foundation, our country has been able to give, on the whole, the greatest blessings to the greatest number; and now that we discover evils in our system, it is our duty conscientiously to study their causes and ascertain the best ways to remove them, instead of making reactionary experiments, whose only result can be to delay the progress and impede the happiness of mankind.

MAYER SULZBERGER.

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THE ENGLISH PANIC IN REGARD TO IRELAND.

KNOW that you will be glad to avail yourself of any means

placed at your disposal to help to dispel the cloud of mischievous fabrications which is spread over the world just now with regard to Ireland.

I have been in Dublin for some weeks; present at the State trials for several days, mixing with Protestants and Catholics, with Irish and Scotch and English; and were it not for the unjust, cruel and criminal consequences which flow from them, it would be positively ludicrous to contemplate the state of feeling in England in the light of fact in Ireland.

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You would imagine, from the panic in England, that there was the greatest confusion, excitement and alarm wherever you went in Ireland. You land at the North-Wall from an English steamer, or at Kingstown from Hollyhead; but instead of being saluted by the boys," with shillelaghs over your head, or being "Boycotted,” you have a difficulty in getting out of the hands of civil and polite poor fellows, anxious to know if you" want a cyar, yer honor." The usual work goes on as if there were no Land Question disturbing the composure of the Lords and Commons of England. You make your way into the city. Sackville Street, Dawe Street, Grafton Street, are as usual; men and women perambulating the pavements as if nothing was astray; and if you get into conversation with them, they smile at the fiction of the "reign of terror" which

the newspapers and the House of Commons have got up. Even in the Four Courts, from the opening until the day on which Mr. A. M. Sullivan was to speak, there was plenty of room and to spare, in a place which, for its limits and awkwardness, was wofully suggestive of what I hope is at an end-packed juries. It is true, there was a crush that day, and thereafter, when the question came to be, "What will the jury do?" But even then there really was no excitement. The friends of the gentlemen on trial were, of course, anxious about the issue, and eager to learn the result, when it was near at hand. But all over the town the feeling was that of amusement at the panic in landlord circles, and the great to-do in the landlord House of Commons.

The whole of this affair has been gotten up and multiplied and exaggerated by the landlord class and their willing friends and flunkeys on the press and in the Government; for crime there is not and has not been above the average of Ireland, and not up to the average of England. But the Land League was getting too powerful. Landlordism in Ireland looked as if it were about to be done for, as has been done for it in all the other civilized countries in Europe; and so a desperate struggle must be made by the landlords, the money lords and the military members in the House of Commons.

How was this to be done? Get every scrap of alleged crime reported, exaggerated and multiplied, and credited as "agrarian." For this purpose the tools were ready. First, there were the literary police, who are eager for promotion. They could prove their title by being active in getting up reports of "Eoycotting," window-breaking, threatening letters, etc. The use made of the reports of the League meetings is an excellent illustration of this. Even where the reports of those meetings were written out in full, they were only reported in the pro-English papers in such a way as to give the strongest passages without the general scope and sense; and in this way the speakers who were engaged in the benevolent work of saving poor tenants from oppression and poverty and death, were made to appear as if they justified the shortsighted allegation of Judge Fitzgerald, that they were merely aiming at "the impoverishment of landlords," and that by violent means. It is worth while taking special note of the doings of one of these literary preservers of the peace,-Jerry Stringer. In his beat was

one Nally, vulgarly called "Scrab." Nally was fond of making speeches, and he attended the Land League meetings as often as he could. If possible, he got hold of Stringer and gave him a dram, to make sure of his speech being reported; and he saw Stringer after all was done, and over another dram they managed to make up a good, full report. This went on for a good while, Nally indulging in strong language, a prominent element being references to his own "pills," which were the best cure for the landlords. This man was no agent, no director, not even a member, of the Land League; and he never was in the list of speakers appointed to any meeting. He got up either before the proceedings began or after they were over, and in this way he made those irregular speeches for which the Land League was held responsible, and for which its leading men were actually tried, along with him in the Court of Queen's Bench. The worst parts of these unauthorized speeches were reported to the papers beforehand; but never, until the trial, had the public an opportunity of knowing that they were not the authorized teachings of the Land League. Be it noted that all this came out in the trial, on the testimony of Stringer, the Government witness and reporter.

As has been said, the other speakers were reported in such a manner as to serve the same purpose. The stronger, less guarded and more sensational portions were sent off to the Dublin prolandlord papers, and thence they reached the offices of the Press Association and Central News, to be reproduced in the leading newspapers of England, Scotland and America. And even when the qualifying portions of those speeches were produced in court and read there, they were not reproduced in the English papers; so that even when there was so good an opportunity of doing justice to the Irish, and of affording the English people a fair chance of understanding this matter, it was not availed of by the caterers of news for Great Britain. To illustrate the possibilities in this way of working, let me give a pointed example:

It is in the office of the Irish Times, a pro-landlord paper, that the dispatches of Irish news for the Central News are prepared. Of the character of that workshop, I leave the public to judge from one fact. There can be no doubt that the trial in Dublin excited great interest out of Dublin, and the Irish Times was careful to give very full reports of the speeches of the Attorney-General and

Mr. Heron for the prosecution, as also of the Judge's charge, which was equally strong for the prosecution; yet, when the greatest and best speech of the whole trial was made,—that of Mr. A. M. Sullivan,—the Irish Times did not give one word of it,-did not even mention that he had made a speech at all! There was no difference of opinion as to the character of that speech. I heard Counsellor O'Brien say, when it was finished, "That is the best speech I ever heard, or ever expect to hear."

And this magnificent speech was not reported because there was a private quarrel between Mr. Sullivan and the conductors of that paper. They had libelled him, and he got damages of them; and they did not scruple to defraud those who depended upon them for a true report of the proceedings, and to prejudice the public against the Irish in order to gratify personal, private spite. I repeat, these are the hands which prepare one great stream of Irish news for the British public.

There are other papers in Dublin which are even more hostile to the Irish people than the Irish Times. The Evening Mail and the Daily Express are the other pro-landlord papers; and from their offices are sent other streams of Irish news to supply the Press Association and several individual papers, and however much worse their contributions may be than those of the Irish Times, they cannot be better in their feelings towards the Irish.

It is no wonder, then, that there should be a very bad and very unfair impression made on the English mind with regard to Ireland. But this is not all.

Be it noted that never was there a movement in Ireland which appeared so likely to bring landlordism to its knees as this of the Irish National Land League. In the first place, it was an open, above-board, Constitutional movement, intended to prepare the people of Ireland, by means of intelligence and co-operation, to bring about the establishment of a peasant proprietary. It was not a secret society, which could be put down as such. It could not be met publicly. No landlord or agent could face a public meeting and discuss the misdeeds of his class, in the hope of refuting the agents of the Land League; and, to all appearance, no existing law could be applied to put it down.

What, then, was to be done? Have recourse to invention; and so the papers which had always maligned the people had only to

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