The Jail For Ireland

The mayor of Dublin goes to jail for prinüng a certain article in his paper. William O'Brien, the Irish editor and patriot, is still in jail, with a plank for a bed and coarse food for his daily fare. Although of a delicate constitution, he bravely courted imprison inent by refusing to be silenced by English tyranny. The law under which be was senten eed is the most savage of all the seventy or eighty coerción bilis which the English .-■arliament since 1800 has passed to use in Ireland. The Irish have never in their own country, since the first conquest by the Normans, experienced true liberty. I is difficult for Americans to realize the condition of affairs in Ireland. An English writer has said: "The criminal dock is, indeed, the sacred rostrum of Irisb patriotism. Most of her national worthies have been hanged or transported, or at least imprisoned. The men to whom the Irish common people rear statues as héroes are those whom our judges brand as felons. If the Irish youth is enthusiastic and daring in his devotion to the ideáis which in every age stir most deeply the heart of man, he is certain to find himself before long in the hands of the pólice, and sooner or.later to stand as the criminal in the dock. Henee the flower of the youth of Ireland, generation after generation.finds its wayto the dungeon and to the gallows." To say nothing of the brilliant young orators, poets and journalists whoni England has banished or murdered in the past, there is hardly a man of great prominence in Ireland to-day who has not slept on the "plank" in a British prison. Davitt was transported to a convict colony. Parnell, the chosen leader of the Irish nation, was confined at Kilmainham. And all this was for doingwhat we consider most common liberties. How can the Irishman in Ireland be blamed for being "agin the government ?" He would be despicable if he were not. England should open the prison doors, and cease, as the same English writer says, " to regúlate Ireland from without and from above, as if we were some celestially commissioned turnkey regulating some criminal convict committed to our safe keeping." The decisión Dea 5, of the United States Bupreme court sustaining the Sansas prohibitory law seems to surprise Bome of the bourbon papers like the Detroit Free Press. If they are 3urprised that the court has given a right decisión even against the power and influence of the saloon, it shows how high their conception of duty is. If it is genuine surprise that such a decisión could be rightfully reached, it is itself surprising. It would be a singular state of affairs if society could not abate and remove any business which it considera a nuisance and dangerous to public health or moráis. If society cannot rightfully abate the saloon, how can it rightfully abate houses of pros titution? The right cannot be disput ed. Expediency may not always and in all places cali fo ite exercise. The New York World, democratie, has been figuring on the cost of the recent election in the metropolis, and concludes that it cannot be far from a million dollars. At least half a million must have come from the pockets of democratie candidates and otbers personally interested. The million does not include the vast sums wbich the saloon-keepers handed over to democratie committees, the amount of whieh will never be known, but which must have been large, as the line was clearly drawn and the saloons went in to win. Just think of the scramble which the distributión of a million dollars causes ! If a fair history of that election were written, the record of unpunished crime which it would present would go far to sicken most people of our systera of elections. The imprisonment of Mayor Sullivan of Dublin for print' ng an article in his laper that was objectionable to the inglish government, is worse than they sometimes treat editora in Russia. In Russia two bishops and an archbishop had been put in jail for a trifling matter and were left there seventeen o twenty-two years, apparently forgoten. An editor discovered the fact, and mentioned it in his paper. He did not express disapproval, but merely menioned it in a harmless kind of way. ?or this the Russian government derived him for a month of the right to rint advertiseinents. How many American newspapers could live after heir advertisements were lost for a month ? Ax ex-superintendent of pólice in New York city, Mr. Walling, has writen a book in which he says that "the ity of New York is actually ruled by ome 20,000 office holders, most of whotn are taken froni and controlled by the very worst element in the community." He says that he would not ount"among probable conti ngenci es, under our present system of government in New York, the hanging of any one of its millionaires, no matter how unprovoked or premeditated the murler he might have committed." Lord Clanricarde, one of the richest andowners in Ireland, declares that he will destroy the house ofevery tenant on lis estáte whoresists the execution of a writ, andswears that he willspend L20,000 rather than submit to the demands of he tenants. Here is a man who has never done any productive work, and is proud of the fact that he has never worked, but who is so rich from the abor of others that he can afford to spend L20,000 in evicting tenants I Is hat right? And does it not explain why Ireland is poor? The LansingRepublican calis Shevitch of New York an anarchist. We doubt f that paper, with all its sensational nastiness, knows the difference between he philosophy of the anarchist and hat of the socialist. Shevitch is not so much of an anarchist as the manager of the Lansing Republican is. He is a state socialist, the very antipodes of an anarchist. The prohibitionists were cast down by the Atlanta defeat, but only to be revived by the II. S. supreme court decisión in the Kansas case, and the winning of Antrim, Benzie, Grand Traverse, aifd probably Leelanaw counties, in Michigan, under the local option law. The supreme court decisión is the most important event in the history of temperance agitation.