"He warned the English taxpayers that if they advanced the money to the Irish people under present circumstances, the time might and probably would arrive when, for political as well as for social purposes, the Irish members would call upon their people to repudiate the debt." Mr T. P. O'Connor followed in the same line: "Hon. gentlemen thought that this Bill would limit the area of discontent. On the contrary, it would widen the area of possible repudiation. If those tenants bought under compulsion from the landlords, backed by removable magistrates and by a perpetual Coercion Act, there was no sanctity in the contract. If a tenant who should have entered into a bargain under this Bill with his eyes open could, by a temporary postponement of his payments to this country, aid in turning the present Government out of office, he would be morally justified in adopting such course." a Morally justified in being immoral! These are the men to whom we are asked to intrust the government of Ireland! The evil spirit of Repudiation will be summoned from the vasty deep; but will it come? The spirit of No-Rent, the Plan of Campaign spirit, and the antiLand Court spirit, were all so summoned, but they refused to obey the call. In spite of the protestations, demonstrations, and objurgations of Dillon & Co., the Irish tenants went into the Land Courts, laughed at the Plan of Campaign, and trampled the NoRent manifesto under foot. So it VOL. CXLVII.-NO. DCCCXCVI. will be with the purchasing tenants. There is no reason whatever to suppose that they will be dishonest, even at the bidding of the League. Happily we have some experience to guide us on this point. Under the Ashbourne Acts £5,143,000 have been advanced; and the amount that has become payable by purchasers is £310,450, of which only 1 per Under cent has not been paid. all the Land Purchase Acts now in force in Ireland (for the Act of 1881 was a Purchase Act), 20,000 tenants have purchased, and £10,000,000 has been advanced; yet in only four cases have the authorities had to fall back upon the guarantee funds in consequence of the tenants' default. Only a little over 2 per cent of the instalments remains uncollected. Mr Gladstone holds up this deficiency as serious, and as an indication that wholesale repudiation will occur. If repudiation does occur, it will be because he, and such as he, have suggested that it should be made to occur, by propounding the novel doctrine that if an elector enters into a private bargain against the wishes of his political representative, he has a right to repudiate his obligation! But the bulk of the Irish tenantry, whatever their faults, are not rogues and swindlers, and they will bitterly resent the stigma which has been placed upon them by those who have declared them to be capable of a gigantic act of robbery. They may well pray to be saved from their "friends"-those friends who beguile them with flattery at one time, and load them with calumny at another. The second reading debate brought out very clearly three things: (1) the utter demoralisation and confusion of the Opposition; (2) the extreme and irre 3 L concilable nature of Parnellite demands; and (3) the dangers which beset the question of Local Government in Ireland. Upon the first point it is not necessary to dwell, further than to say that the most contradictory theories and schemes were advocated from the Opposition benches, -schemes and theories which destroyed each other, so that the most effective answers to opponents of the Bill were delivered by their own colleagues. Sir W. Harcourt made a slashing speech against Land Purchase ab initio, -a speech which, as to its main argument, would have been wholly admirable if it had been directed against a proposed scheme of Land Purchase forGreat Britain, but which, considered in its application to Ireland, was utterly absurd. Of course he disguised the fact that he and his colleagues are responsible for the necessity which has arisen for these exceptional measures in Ireland. He even blessed dual ownership, and very naturally, as he helped to create it. As Mr Wyndham demonstrated in his effective reply, Sir W. Harcourt "ignored the real conditions of the problem in Ire land." He expatiated at great length upon the anomalous features of the Bill. It would unsettle the "settlement" of 1881; create a lower rent alongside the judicial rent; make the payers of judicial rents dissatisfied; use the rewards of all for the benefit of the few; was a censure on the landlords-and all the rest of it. But on the most monstrous anomaly of all-viz., the abnormal conditions which exist in Ireland and their authors-Sir W. Harcourt was judiciously silent. The real nature of the Parnellite demands is brought out clearly enough in the speech of Mr. Dillon, who ranks next in influence to Mr Parnell, upon the congested districts. Mr Balfour rightly claims that his Bill proposes to treat the people of these districts more generously than any measure ever submitted to Parliament, and that, taken in connection with what he has already done, it forms a remedial and constructive policy far in advance of anything yet attempted by any Government. How are these overtures received by the Nationalists? With ingratitude, contumely and indignation. Mr Dillon, while disdaining to recognise the efforts of the Chief Secretary, has the impudence to propose an alternative scheme of his own, of which the main features are these: that landlords in the congested districts should be compelled to sell their estates for eight years' purchase of Griffith's valuation, even though they may be worth double; that the tenants should be relieved from all rent,"The question of rent, in fact, ought to be abolished all over the west of Ireland"; that "the tenant's interest in the holding should not be seizable for any debt of any kind contracted after the passing of the Act"; that the Congested Districts Board should consist of a majority of Nationalists; and that the Boards of Guardians in these districts should have power to levy double the amount of poor rates now paid. Rob the landlords ; bleed the Loyalists; bribe the tenants-that is Nationalist policy all over. With regard to Local Government, it is to be feared that Mr Chamberlain's well-intentioned efforts to conciliate the Parnellites have done much more harm than good. To give county councils in Ireland the powers of landlords— power to veto all transactions under the Bill, and power to dis will have to buy his own interest rent is assessed upon the tenant's improvements. In other words, it repudiates the judicial rents fixed under the Act of 1881, and the contracts based upon them. How can such people as these ever be satisfied? All that can be predicated of the BiH is, that it will tell, and tell powerfully, in the right direction; that it will extend the area of content, and decrease the area of disaffection; and that so it will bring nearer the time when Ireland will have peace within her gates and prosperity within both her cottages and her palaces. pose of a portion of the funds repaid by purchasing tenants-would as well as the landlord's, as the be absolutely disastrous. It is amazing that a man of Mr Chamberlain's perspicacity should have made such a suggestion, except on the supposition that he wished to preserve a semblance of consistency. Mr Balfour and Lord Hartington refused to countenance the insidious proposal, as indeed they were bound to do, both by their own previous declarations and by the inexorable facts of contemporary Irish history. But the danger is not yet over. This point will be fiercely contested in Committee, and it behoves all who realise its momentous importance to see to it that the Loyalists of Ireland are not again betrayed either by the weakness of their friends or the malignity of their enemies. Finally, will this Bill satisfy the Irish people and settle the Irish question? Emphatically not. There is no magic power in it. The Irish people have been so demoralised that nothing short of a gift of the land, and a salary for the trouble of living on it in idleness, will pacify many of them. And as for settling the Irish question, there are too many persons interested in keeping it unsettled to admit of that being done just yet. The very boons given to the tenants will be made the germ of a new agitation. Already the Freeman's Journal' says that under this Bill the tenant Sir W. Harcourt unwittingly testified to the beneficent character of this Bill when he uttered these words: "When you have reduced Ireland to this condition, I do not see why the whole process should not begin again, and why these small tenancies should not coalesce like drops of quicksilver which you run upon a plate, and which join together into one mass. I see nothing in your Bill to prevent this land being sold— no limit to the people who may purchase." Exactly. And therein lies the virtue of the Bill. So far as it is operative, it will restore the condition of things which was ruthlessly torn up by Sir W. Harcourt and the other destructive statesmen who were associated with him in the work of ruining Ireland INDEX TO VOL. CXLVII. by Frank E. Beddard, 517. 'Asolando: Fancies and Facts,' by Robert Beauties, some great and social celebri- 'Beecher Stowe, the Life of Harriet,' re- Begründung des Deutschen Reiches BOSTON, OLD, by John C. Locking, 242 BURN, THE, by Peter Bayne, LL.D., CAMPING IN THE CAÑADAS, TENERIFE, by A. Silva White, 520-the old crater Chamberlain's Mr, efforts to conciliate Chartist agitation, collapse of the, 328. of a new set of letters of, ib.—a “tea- 'Claire Brandon,' by Frederick Marshall, COLLECTOR ON THE PROWL, THE, 677- Crockford's Club and the Gambling Com- DANDIES, IN THE DAYS OF THE, by Lord I. CHANGES IN LITERARY AND SOCIAL II. SOME GREAT BEAUTIES AND Sheridan, ib.-the Eglinton Tourna- III. THE YOUNG ENGLAND PARTY, 'Demeter and other Poems,' by Alfred Lord Tennyson, reviewed, 137. DOWIE DENS, THE ORIGINAL BALLAD OF THE, by Professor Veitch, 739. Eglinton Tournament and its cost, 172. EST MODUS IN REBUS, 367. Eugenie's, Empress, visit to Hamilton EVENTFUL VOYAGES, SOME, by C. F. I. The fall in the price of silver, 384 II. Indian imports and exports, 557 EXPERIENCES OF A MULTAZIM, THE, by Falling in Love, and other Essays,' by Fenian Conspiracy, the, and its organisa- FOREIGN POLITICS, CURRENT INFLU- FORTH BRIDGE, THE, by H. D. Rawns- Friendly Societies, 331. Gambling in the eighteenth century, GERMAN AIMS IN EAST AFRICA, 689- Gladstone's, Mr, charges against the Land League, 431-his criticism of the GOLD-FIELDS, THE TRANSVAAL AND ITS: |