THE EXTENSION OF 11:11] ASHBOURNE ACT.
WE trust that the Government will be firm as to the extension of the Ashbourne Act. They have every argument on their side, and. for once they will have also the secret sympathy of the Irish people. We should like nothing better than a dissolution, in Ireland only, with this Act as the pivot of the struggle. All parties are agreed, Liberals as well as Unionists, that there will be no peace in Ireland until freehold tenure is made general, and that it can only be made general in one of two ways,—either by confiscation, or by the conversion of the rent into instal- ments which, in a moderate term of years, will convey the freehold to the tenants. Even Mr. Parnell admits that this is the case, though he would offer a fictitious price as compensation to landlords ; it was the very basis of Mr. Gladstone's proposal for settling the land question before Home-rule had begun to operate ; and it is accepted as sound by all but the most extreme Irish Tories. The Ashbourne Act simply makes this nearly unanimous opinion executive, and that in a very cautious way. The Act is permissive, and the outlay under it was limited to five millions, or about a thirtieth of the sum which a general measure for the enfranchisement of Irish tenancies would involve. Nevertheless, it has succeeded. Both landlords and tenants, after a pause for consideration, have approved it, and, under a series of voluntary agreements, the whole - sum of five millions has been taken up. The instalments are regularly paid, the landlords, if not satisfied, are -acquiescent, and. the tenants who have accepted the Act are so contented, that the professional agitators find it impossible to rouse them up to a full perception of the political wrong, under which it is desired that they should believe themselves to labour. They assume, indeed, in some places, the attitude of the French peasants in the Revolution, who, Jacobin at first, from the moment their agrarian struggle was over became devotees of Con- servatism, and supported every successive Government in exact proportion to its strength and its severity. The Government now propose, without tinkering the Act or in any way altering its principle, to add another five millions to the sum available under its provisions,—that is, to lend • another five millions for the purpose of extending Peasant- proprietorship. One would have thought that, although the proposal might have been condemned as insufficient, it could not have been opposed either by the Parnellites or the Gladstonians ; but it has awakened in them both a fury of opposition. The feeling of the Parnellites is easily intelligible. They are perfectly well aware that it is the unpopularity of the tenure which gives them their hold upon Irish farmers, and that if the peasants became freeholders, the main prop of their agitation would be gone. The body of the people, who are all producers, would recognise the dangers involved in separation from their only customers, and would, at all events, cease to be unanimous in their advocacy of Home-rule. The Parnellites cannot endure the prospect of this change, which would be fatal to their seats, to their personal importance, and to their dreams of .an independent Republic in which they shall occupy a European position. They see that the Ashbourne Act, if :steadily worked, will cure the grand Irish grievance- -which is not an unjust tenure, but an alien tenure, tenure that is unsuited to the character and prejudices of the people—and they have resolved to resist its extension by any means, constitutional or otherwise. If they can defeat it in Parliament, they will ; and if they cannot, they will, "however reluctantly," as Mr. Dillon threatened, preach to the people that it is unpatriotic to pay the agreed instalments. They are the more ready to do this because they perceive that under the Act the land- lord caste is escaping with nearly two-thirds of its just dues ; and they hate the landlord caste so virulently, that to witness even so much of salvage drives them mad. We do not allege, mind, that they hate landlords. If landlords were little men with multitudes of votes, and let land at, say, twice its value in little patches, the Parnellites would protect them strictly, as they protect the village usurers, or " gonabeen " men, who now fleece districts. It is not landlordism, but the landlord caste which they hate, partly because it is English in sympathy, and partly from the feeling which all over the world induces Jacobins to detest the wealthy or the well-born. The amount of true Jacobin feeling, indeed, which is mixed up with the Irish movement has been insufficiently perceived, chiefly, we imagine, because English landlords are not a writing class, and the movement has not as yet directed itself against wealth in general.
The opposition of the Parnellites is, as we say, in- telligible; but that of the Gladstonians is hard to under- stand. They want to make a. peasant-proprietary. They want to settle the landlord question before Home-rule is conceded. Their chief proposed a grand Ashbourne Act of his own, with a limit of fifty instead of five millions. Yet Mr. Gladstone is going next week to resist the Govern- ment proposal, and to offer as an "alternative one," a settle- ment of arrears upon the system adopted to relieve the Highland crofters. Why ? Clearly his object cannot be to resist the creation of a peasant-proprietary in Ireland, for he avows that to be one of his dearest wishes. It cannot be to save the taxpayer from risk, for the risk is infinitesimal ; and if it were greater, he himself proposed a risk ten times as large. Nor can we, at least, believe that Mr. Gladstone would resist a beneficial proposal merely to keep up a dangerous agitation which may give addi- tional strength to a pet project of his own. What, then, can be his motive ? It is unintelligible, for the assigned one has no relevancy to the matter. He says that the utility of reducing rent to a legal and scientific standard— which, of course, was his own policy—is rendered null by the refusal to reduce arrears in at least an equal degree. This was done, he affirms, in the case of the Scotch crofters, and ought, therefore, to be done in that of the Irish tenantry. Well, we have always maintained that a reduction of arrears was expedient, just as a reduction of any debt is expedient, when the whole of it absolutely cannot be paid. Bankruptcy is not necessarily immoral, though a bank- rupt is so often something of a thief; and this seems a moderate and lenient form of bankruptcy. But then, the relief should be granted against all creditors, and not against the landlord alone. There is no justice in annul- ling the debt due to him, in order that the debt due to the usurer may become a much better secured claim than before. We might as well annul every claim due to bakers, in order that butchers should be sure of twenty shillings in the pound. Let us, however, for a moment assume that Mr. Gladstone is in the right, and that while it is wrong for him to claim arrears from a Hawarden tenant, it is right for the local banker to distrain for his advances ; and still how is that proposition an alternative for the Ashbourne Act? It has nothing to do with the matter. Mr. Gladstone might as well say, when asked to sanction an Act for the enfranchisement of copy- holds, that he should greatly prefer a law reducing all ploughmen's debts by one-half. Both proposals may be admirable, though we do not think so ; but to produce one as the alternative of the other is almost absurd. Granting them both to be good, moreover, they do not impede each other, and Mr. Gladstone, if he votes, as he should do, for the Ashbourne Act, is not pre- cluded from pressing his own measure. We can see no reason in an opposition on such grounds, and only hope the Government will go steadily and calmly forward. They may rely on it the country understands the matter, and will be far more dissatisfied with any evidence of weak- ness than with the trifling risk involved in pushing forward a most promising and hitherto successful experiment.
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