The remarkable article in the Dublin Review, on " Is
Ireland Irreconcilable?" of which we took some notice a fortnight since, has been republished in a separate form by its author, Mr. J. Cashel Hoey, with a very striking appendix from the pen of Mr. Gavan Duffy,—a lecture on "Why is Ireland Poor and Discon- tented?" delivered at Melbourne on the 23rd February. It is a matter of no small importance for the solution of Mr. Hoey's great question, that a statesman so thoroughly Irish as Mr. Duffy, and yet of such proved ability, should so completely re-echo Mr. Hoey's estimate of the prospects of Ireland, and of the cardinal importance of that security of tenure which the present Govern- ment propose to give. Mr. Duffy mentions as a proof of the clear appreciation of the land question which his party had attained after the famine, that in 1851, fourteen years before Mr. J. S. Mill was returned for Westminster, Mr. Duffy was deputed by the Irish Tenant League, in connection with the late Mr. F. Lucas, to offer Mr. Mill a seat for an Irish county. Mr. Duffy also illus- trates the political clear-sightedness of the men who directed this League, by mentioning that of seven or eight who reside in the Australian Colonies, " three have risen to be Ministers of State, three are Australian Judges, and one has just laid down a legal
office to enter the Parliament of New South Wales." Mr. Duffy also pays the highest possible tribute to Mr. Gladstone's Irish statesmanship. Clearly, if men like Mr. Hoey and Mr. Duffy are -convinced that at last the solution of the Irish problem is at hand, we need not despair because English county members chafe at the introduction of principles which they, as English landlords, dread, and profess to condemn.
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