England's Jubilee Gift to Ireland.
BY ANNIE BESANT.
Jubilee gifts, Jubilee testimonials, Jubilee memorials, are on every hand. It is not, therefore, an unsuitable time for the presentation by England to Ireland of a Jubilee gift, and with a fine sense of the fitness of things she presents her with a Coercion Act. It would be impossible to choose a more appropriate gift, one that could better crown the fifty years of her Majesty's Irish reign. Mr. Mulhall, in his "Fifty Years of National Progress", says of Ireland:
"The present reign has been the most disastrous since that of Elizabeth, as the following statistics show: Died of famine, 1,225,000; persons evicted, 3,668,000; number of emigrants, 4,186,000. Evictions were more numerous immediately after the famine, the landlords availing themselves of the period of greatest calamity to enforce their 'rights'. Official returns give the number of families, and these averaging seven persons, we ascertain the actual number of persons evicted:
| Years. | Families. | Persons. | ||
| 1848–51 | 263,000 | 1,841,000 | ||
| 1852–60 | 110,000 | 770,000 | ||
| 1861–70 | 47,000 | 329,000 | ||
| 1871–86 | 104,000 | 728,000 | ||
| Total | 524,000 | 3,668,000 |
The number of persons evicted is equal to 75 per cent. of the actual population. No country, either in Europe or elsewhere, has suffered such wholesale extermination."
There is a curious sameness in Irish history. Landlord aggression and tyranny gave birth to the Whiteboys, and the Whiteboy Acts were passed to put them down. Landlord aggression and tyranny have in our own times given birth to the Moonlighters, and the Whiteboy Acts are utilised by the present Government to put them down. In the State Trials of 1843, '44, '48, '49, '59, Catholics were excluded from juries, and packed Protestant juries were empanelled. In the trial of John Dillon and his comrades similar tactics were employed. The impossibility of getting verdicts from fairly chosen juries in agrarian cases has long been matter of complaint; the present Bill abolishes trial by jury in the most commonly occurring cases in order to avoid the difficulty. Yet Englishmen from their own struggle for liberty ought to be familiar with the way in
