TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE LATEST SUGGESTION ON HOME-RULE.
THE letter, signed "Economist," which appeared in the Statist of the 9th inst., and which is attributed by a sort of consensus of opinion to the accomplished statistician, Mr. R. Giffen, is a valuable contribution to the great Irish Question. The writer does not, we think, realise fully what that question is, what Irishmen are seeking, or what Englishmen are fearing; but he does realise one grand obstacle to Home-rule, and, after his fashion, meets it face to face, not talking sentiment or accepting illusory promises, but proposing a definite, and, if Irishmen were like other people, a working scheme. He sees clearly that, apart altogether from the general political difficulty created by the circumstances of the two islands, the English people will not consent to abandon the landlords of Ireland to what they believe will be plunder, either under forms of law or through wilful defect of legal protection. They believe that the Irish tenantry intend, if they can, to sit rent-free, and that consequently, if they and the labourers elect an Irish Parliament, the payment of rent will, either by quasi-legal or directly unlawful means, be abolished. They further believe that in breaking old con- tracts and establishing a judicial rent, instead of a rent settled by competition, the Imperial Parliament pledged itself to the landlords that, so far as legal machinery can secure anything, the lowered rent should be secured. They consequently hold that an arrangement for compensating the landowners must be a condition precedent of any scheme whatever for conceding Home-rule. The writer in the Statist, without affirming or deny- ing the correctness of this belief, accepts it as a dominant factor in the situation, and maintains that compensation can be granted out of Irish sources, yet without danger to the British Treasury. He takes the "judicial rent" of Ireland to be £8,000,000 a year, and its capital value at twenty years' purchase to be £160,000,000 sterling. He would give the landlords this amount in Consols, in full discharge of their claims, and would vest the freehold of their properties in the tenants, subject to a quit-rent of half the judicial rent, or, say, £4,000,000 a year, to be paid to the Irish State, which would organise its civil departments out of that money. The Imperial taxes would remain as at present, and the expenditure for Imperial purposes and the Consol interest would be met by the Imperial Exchequer ceasing to pay Irish local charges, which amount, " Economist " says, to £4,000,000 a year, "exclusive altogether of the outlay for the army of occupation, for the collection of revenue, and for other matters which would still remain Imperial." For that proportion of the guaranteed interest, or five-sixths of the whole, the security, being actually in the Imperial Treasury, would be ideally perfect. In fact, for an outlay of .2800,000 a year, Great Britain could solve the Irish agrarian question, yet leave the Irish Government sufficient funds to maintain the regular machinery of civilisation.
The charm of this scheme is patent on the face of it. If the figures given are correct—and we accept them only in the faith that "Economist " is the head of the Statistical Depart- ment, for, to us, the rental seems understated—the proposal would settle the agrarian difficulty without confiscation, and without placing a new burden upon the British Treasury, that is, without the direct moral or financial evils every scheme has hitherto involved. Ireland would compensate its own land- lords, yet there would be no confiscation. But then, the weak point of the scheme is also clearly revealed. Where is the proof that the Irish tenantry would pay the reserved half- rent to the Irish Exchequer? They would be just as unwilling as they are to pay the full rent, and would have far better moral reason for resistance. The half-rent would be, in fact, a tax ; and why, the taxpayers would argue, should farmers alone be taxed to pay the whole civil expenses of internal government ? They would resist, and then the Irish Exchequer would have no money for the expenses of civil government, which would fall first into arrears' and then into utter anarchy,—police, Courts, prisons, and schools being all alike unprovided for. That would not signify to Great Britain if Ireland were independent ; but it would signify, it would be utterly intolerable, if Ireland were still part of the United Kingdom, though with a subordinate Parliament of its own. The richer Kingdom would be compelled in com- mon decency to restore order, and could do it only by one of two devices,—either by forcibly levying the half-rent in the teeth of passionate opposition from the Irish Parliament, or by providing the deficient money out of its own resources. With Irish Members still seated in the Imperial Parliament, we all know which expedient would be adopted ; and matters might readily come to this,—that an Irish Parliament would govern Ireland out of an annual grant from the British Exchequer ! That would be Union with a vengeance, and would lead to Separation within five years. There is, so far as we can perceive, no guarantee whatever in "Economist's" plan against this conclusion, except the two grave assumptions,—that the Irish Parliament both could and would levy rent, though the Imperial Parliament has failed to levy it ; and that the Irish tenantry would be so delighted with their low rents, or so con- vinced of the fairness of their bargain, that they would submit to the prima'-facie injustice of defraying all the internal taxa- tion of their country. Experience is certainly not in favour of the payment of rent in Ireland under such circumstances ; and this objection alone seems to us nearly, if not quite, fatal to the scheme.
There is, however, another objection of even greater weight. Where is the application of this new principle, with its terrible force, to end ? Why should not Scotland be treated exactly like Ireland, and her reconstituted Parliament be invested with the half-rent, to be expended in maintaining civil govern- ment at the discretion of Scotchmen alone ? Scotch tenants would like that arrangement very much, and Scotland, if she once promised either to levy the half-rent or to provide other- wise for her internal expenditure, would assuredly keep her word. Her social system is knit too strongly for successful resistance to law, and her people understand that of all devices for raising money easily, the most successful, and in the end the easiest, is the rigid payment of debt. Scotland once allowed to settle her agrarian question by utilising the difference between State credit and private credit, Wales would perceive and claim her rights, to be fol- lowed in no short time by whole divisions of England. The Eastern Counties would be delighted, in consideration of half- rents, to manage their own affairs ; while London, a greater entity than even Ireland, and far more separate, would regard a final settlement with her landlords as cheaply purchased by the burden of a self-government which she is at least as competent as Ireland to undertake. The effect of the scheme would, in fact, be to place Federalism in a new and attractive light, and thus help on that complete break in the history of England which Federalism, in whatever form and under whatever limitations, could not fail to produce. Under the scheme, it will be noticed, Irish tenants risk nothing, suffer nothing, and expend nothing. Assuming even that they consent to bear all local expenses, they are rewarded for strikes against rent, for threats against landlords, and for terrorism exercised against all trade competitors, by a free gift of half the capital value of their farms. How could English and Scotch tenants, with such an example before them, be expected to rest content ? They have been law- abiding ; they have either paid rent or submitted to dis- possession; and, therefore, they are to receive nothing. It is not in human nature to be content under such circumstances ; and the tenantry of Great Britain, seeing in Federalism a way to demand similar favours, would unquestionably either become Federalists, or begin to support any party which included Federalism in its programme. A shake would have been given to the unity of the Kingdom which nothing could repair, and we should be at the commencement of a new era, with new politics, new aspirations, and, we fear, a new system of political morality. "Economist" has solved some difficulties, but he makes Home-rule more attractive, and bestows on a class a bonus of £4,000,000 a year for being successfully bad.
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