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them worse and not better than their enemies. Lord Belmore spoke truly when he said that even the present Government were scarcely free from the reproach of being more anxious to conciliate their opponents than to serve their friends. Anybody who is acquainted with the inner life of Ireland knows that the Loyalists suffer in many ways, just because they are too honourable to resort to Parnellite tactics. Even Governments follow the line of least resistance, and this means in Ireland that the disloyal get what they do not deserve, while the loyal are deprived of what they ought to have, simply because the former are unscrupulous and brutal and can give trouble, while the latter are fair and courteous and are in no sense to be dreaded. This is an inverted order of things, and it ought to be at once righted, but there is not much hope of this being done. Lord Derby said not long ago: "I am no believer in the system of sacrificing friends in order to conciliate enemies." That is a wise remark, which Mr Balfour would do well just now to take to heart. The alternative policy, which he has shown some disposition to follow, is a suicidal one; for when you have sacrificed your friends you find that your enemies are as implacable as ever, and that you have placed yourself at their mercy.

Considered as a body, however, the Irish landowners are friendly to the Bill as a whole, though they demand that it should be comprehensively amended in the interests both of landlord and tenant. They are not opposed to the principle of State-aided purchase. At their Convention last December, they expressed their opinion that

a large increase in the number of occupying owners of land in Ire

land is of the highest importance to the interests of the country"; but they now explain that this referred to tenants of over £10 ayear-about one-third of the whole, the other two-thirds being rented under £10 and under £4 respectively. They fear that the present Bill will apply almost exclusively to the two latter classes, and therefore will tend to perpetuate the evils of subdivisions and of small holdings, and to create pauper proprietors; and they very properly contend that to displace the great landlords for the sake of these petty proprietors would be a foolish and an insane policy. Hence they would amend the Bill by confining it to holdings over £10, which is an eminently reasonable proposal, in the true interests of the whole community.

The most serious objection of the landlords, however, is that the Bill practically fixes the number of years' purchase at twenty-i.e., as the maximum, although Mr Gladstone estimated the property of the Irish landlords to be worth twenty-seven years' purchase in 1881. It is no uncommon thing in Ireland for people to give twenty years' purchase for the mere tenant-right of a farm-the good-will-or, in other words, to give twenty years' purchase of the present rent for the privilege of paying that rent. In view of this fact, it is a cruel absurdity to fix a limit of twenty years' purchase for the fee-simple. It is notorious that many landlords, chiefly wealthy men, have sold under the Ashbourne Acts at only about half the real value. The bulk of the landlords are not in a position to do this. In its present form Mr Balfour's Bill would undoubtedly tend to stereotype the low prices which have prevailed of late, and which, having been created by a

panic, do not correspond to the true value of the land. An amendment ought to be inserted providing that where a tenant gives over twenty years' purchase, all the purchase-money shall be advanced, and the payments reduced and spread over a longer period; and also that where a tenant gives less than eighteen years' purchase, only three-fourths of the purchasemoney shall be advanced. If twenty years, instead of eighteen, were fixed, in the latter case it would be all the better. Even these terms would be favourable enough, as they would represent a reduction of twenty per cent under the judicial rent; while at eighteen years' purchase the reduction would be twenty-eight per cent.

If these amendments were made in the Bill, and if, in addition, purchasing tenants were permitted to pay larger annual instalments than those fixed in the Bill; if tenants in congested districts were assisted by Government to buy up each other's interest; if all land taxation were to be transferred from the landlord to the tenant, the judicial rent being reduced in a corresponding degree; and if, lastly, every owner of land were to be freed from the restrictions imposed by the Acts of 1870 and 1881,-Mr Balfour's Bill would be the most comprehensive, far-reaching, and beneficial Land Act ever passed for Ireland, and would settle this troublesome question as thoroughly as it can ever be settled by legislation. The Act, thus amended, would virtually repeal the land legislation of Mr Gladstone, restore the reign of political economy and of contract, and thus place us once more upon the high-road to prosperity and peace. The government have a splendid opportunity. Would that they had the courage to grasp

it boldly, and make it yield its uttermost result!

The objections urged against the Bill by the Opposition are unworthy of serious notice-first,because they are prompted by purely partisan motives; and secondly, because they are so inherently and contemptibly feeble. The Opposition case has ignominiously collapsed. Impotent as the Opposition leaders were known to be, nobody could have believed that they would have cut such a sorry figure. Mr Parnell's humiliating fiasco has not only disgusted his English allies and irritated his servile Irish creatures, but it has materially qualified the extravagant estimate which some of the Gladstonians had formed of that gentleman's ability. Certain gentlemen at Edinburgh, who made themselves look very foolish on an occasion which they have probably no wish to recall, talked of Mr Parnell as a great statesman, and we have been treated to similar ridiculous flattery more than once since. And lo! the first time this profound statesman gets a chance to show what stuff he is really made of, his failure is so abject that his admirers hide their heads, for very shame. Mr Gladstone's resources are so great, that, unlike Mr Parnell, he was able to spread himself and conceal the nakedness of the land; but the nakedness was there all the same.

Mr Balfour's triumph is complete. The stars in their courses have fought for him. His greatest opponents have proved his most effective allies. His tactics have thrown the already disorganised Opposition into utter confusion: their tactics have been so maladroit, that many of Mr Balfour's own side who did not regard the Bill with favour have been converted. Sensible men discern that

the opposition of the Parnellites is of itself sufficient to justify the

measure.

The Irish landlords, too, are almost as much entitled to congratulate themselves as Mr Balfour is. Their value is beginning to be discovered. Mr Parnell, to the infinite disgust of the Healys, and Dillons, and O'Briens, actually tells them that they constitute a most valuable element in Irish society, that Ireland needs them, and that their withdrawal will be a calamity, &c. But they are not likely to be deluded by a man who has proved himself so utterly false and treacherous to his own principles. In his Westport speech, June 7, 1879, he said :

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In the same speech he said :--

"If we had the farmers of Ireland the owners of the soil to-morrow, we should not be long without getting an Irish Parliament. I don't intend to be demoralised myself by any concessions. While we are getting a concession we may show the Government a little consideration for the time being, and give them a quid pro quo, but after that the bargain ceases, and when we have returned them a fitting return for what we have got we are quits again, and are free to use such measures as may be necessary according to the times and according to the circumstances.'

On March 17, 1885, Mr Parnell said at Westminster Town Hall:"Whenever they made a bargain with the Saxon, it should be of such a character that it would be a great deal worse for the Saxon than themselves.'

Mr Gladstone has also discovered

clusion" that the Irish landlords should be expatriated, though he himself, as recently as 1886, proposed to drive them out of Ireland, bag and baggage. But although he now wishes to keep the landlords in Ireland, he declares that they have not "even the smallest title to express the voice of Ireland." This, it seems, can only be done by carpet-baggers and adventurers, many of whom had never set foot in their constituencies until they were elected by order of the League. The landlords, who represent Protestantism and culture, the commercial and the professional classes, and the loyalists generally, have "not even the smallest title to express the voice of Ireland!" Gladstone's speech against the Bill was confined to mere details, and was so flimsy as to be beneath contempt. He thinks the Bill should be confined to present landlords. Why did he not confine the act of 1881 to present tenants? That is to say, why did he not limit the application of the restrictions which were imposed upon the landlord by that Act-in dealing with his tenantry to the tenants who were then upon that estate, instead of making them applicable It is the to all future tenants?

Mr

absence of this limitation which has created much of the mischief in Ireland. Mr Gladstone also thinks that it would be very wrong that people should buy under the Purchase Act to sell Yet he gave free sale to tenants, again-i.e., to speculate in land. which permits them to purchase tenant-right to sell again, or on the chance of getting large reductions from the Land Court.

Mr Gladstone's more serious criticisms are five, and they are all answered out of his own mouth.

that it would be a "sorry con- 1. He thinks the Bill should not

be passed against the wishes of the Parnellite M.P.'s. Yet his own Land Acts were opposed by the very same men for the very same reasons. He ignored their wishes because they did not represent the real Ireland, just as Mr Balfour is compelled to do now. Nay, he actually put them into prison to prevent them nullifying the Act of 1881. They do not even represent the Irish tenants, who have bought under the Ashbourne Acts in spite of them, and who have refused to obey their no-rent manifestoes. 2. He thinks the existence of coercion should invalidate the Purchase Bill. But coercive laws were in force when he passed the Act of 1881, and when he indorsed Sir G. Trevelyan's Purchase Bill in 1884! 3. He condemns the use of British credit. Yet he is the author of the Land Purchase Bill of 1886, under which British credit was pledged indefinitely up to £150,000,000, on the security of a Parnellite Parliament and Executive! 4. He is alarmed at the evils of State landlordism. Who would suppose that he established State landlordism in Ireland by the Acts of 1870 and 1881 ? His quibble that what would be evil if done by the British State would be good if done by the Irish State, is an insult to intelligent men. 5. He objects to the terms of purchase, because, forsooth, they place the poor tenant at the mercy of the landlord. Apparently nothing will satisfy him but that the landlord shall be compelled to sell on any terms the tenant chooses to offer.

Next to Mr Gladstone, the most important leaders of the Opposition are Earl Spencer and Mr John Morley, who acted as Viceroy and Chief Secretary under him. These gentlemen merely repeat what their chief says, or

else he repeats what they say. Both of them, however, express great solicitude on behalf of the Irish taxpayer, who, according to them, is treated very hardly by this Bill. But who authorised them to speak in the name of the Irish taxpayer? Where is their mandate? The people who pay most of the taxes in Ireland are the loyalists, and they are on the side of the Bill.

It is clear from the course of this debate that Mr Gladstone and his supporters are beginning to be alarmed at the results of their own work in Ireland. This is shown by the altered tone of the Parnellites and the Gladstonians with regard to Irish landlords; in such utterances as that quoted from Lord Spencer; and in Mr Gladstone's complaint that the Bill confines its benefits to landlords and tenants, "nothing being done for the labourers or the nation at large." These men are slowly realising that they have done irreparable mischief in Ireland by despoiling the landlord, without bestowing any compensating advantage upon the tenant or the community at large. Some of them oppose Mr Balfour's Bill on the abstract ground that Land Purchase is wrong in principle, unless the whole benefit is given to the community in general instead of to the tenants in possession, and complain that the whole machine of Imperial credit will be employed to put money into the pockets of these tenants. Here is one such criticism :

:

"You and I and all the slum

gullions of London are to pledge our credit in order that the well-to-do Irish tenant-farmer may be converted into a landlord with right to rackrent any poor wretch to whom he may sublet his holding; may keep 20 per cent of a fair rent in his pocket for the first five years, and 44 per cent

of it for the next forty-four years, and at the end of forty-nine years receive his land rent-free-a freehold possession for ever. That will not do. It is not good enough for the Britisher. It is a long way too good for the Irish tenant. It is so easy to spoil people. And when even Tories offer this gigantic bribe, how can Liberals

refuse to do at least as much? But

we think that it will be found that the British public, which is neither Liberal nor Tory, will not see the sense of lavishing this extraordinary donation upon the 600,000 individuals who happen to be squatted on Irish farms. That it is a bribe, and a tremendous bribe, no amount of denunciation can disguise... Taking it over the forty-nine years, the net effect of the change is this: The 500,000 Irish tenants averaging £6 rental will, if the law is not changed, pay £147,000,000 to their landlords. If the bill passes they will pay only £64,800,000 to the State. To the

small tenants this Bill is therefore a gift in reduced rent of over £80,000,000 in forty-nine years; and at the end of that time, to console them for having had so heavy a reduction of rent, they get their land for nothing. This

is too much. It is monstrous to endow any set of men with such largess at the expense of the taxpayer. We do not object to the use of the State credit; but if it is employed, the fee-simple which is bought

from the landlords must be trans

ferred, not to a new pack of still more greedy proprietors, but to the local community, so that the whole people may share in the value of the land."

But these Gladstonian censors were quite willing that the "lucky tenants," or "land-grabbers," as they now term them, should receive as an unmerited free gift half the ownership of their farms, to which they were in no sense entitled, and they helped Mr Gladstone to pass an Act bestowing upon them that half ownership. Why, on grounds of equity and common-sense, were they entitled to half ownership

any more than to full ownership? It was granting that half that did the mischief. How is it that the

people who were so eager to go half-way grow frantic with rage and fear when they are asked to travel the whole distance? Alas! it is "so easy to spoil people," though it takes some persons who pride themselves upon their acuteness a long while to discover this fact. Can it be that the opponents of this Bill were quite willing to spoil the Irish tenantry to any extent, so long as it could be done at the expense of the Irish landlords, and that their real ground of objection now is that it is to be done at their expense, or at their risk? It certainly seems to be so.

We hear much about the injustice inflicted by this Bill upon the British taxpayer-not, indeed, from that stolid individual himself, but from the men who assume the right to speak in his name. The practical question for the British taxpayer is, however, whether it is best on the whole that the risk should be incurred. There are weighty reasons for believing that it is. Besides, the risk, although it exists, is of the most shadowy and attenuated description.

Mr Gladstone, the author of "the union of hearts," who indignantly denounces the doctrine that the Irish have "a double dose of original sin," calmly assumes that tens and hundreds of thousands of Irishmen will deliberately make. a contract with the British Exchequer, and then as deliberately break it on the first opportunity, and on this assumption he builds his case against this Bill. After covering the Irish with flattery for years, he shows us that in his heart he does not believe they are to be trusted.

It must be admitted, however,

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