18 OCTOBER 1890, Page 13

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

IRISH LAND-PURCHASE AND THE ELECTIONS.

[To THE BDITOR OF TEE " SPECTLT011.."

Si,—In explanation of this letter, I am obliged to say, what" those who may read it could not know, that I have been for four years a volunteer speaker on behalf of the Liberal Unionist Association, and as such have gained some insight into the forces which will decide the next Election. Of course, for a man of my calling, the experience is not very great ; still, it extends from East Suffolk to West Cornwall, and, what is of importance, has been mainly with hostile audiences.

My object is to express my absolute agreement with your contention as to the Land-Purchase Bill ; but there are other considerations that require notice. Of these two appeals to sentiment upon which the movement for Home-rule mainly depended—viz., Coercion and Mr. Gladstone—the former, I think, is getting played out. At meetings of the more educated type, questions are rarely asked, and mockery of it not resented. It is, however, reserved for agricultural districts (which, by- the-way, probably have the decisive vote), where the labourers are told that if they permit brutal tyranny to go on in Ireland, the Tories are quite prepared to treat them next in the same way, "and serve you right." Now, there is no way of meeting charges of this sort but by showing what the "base, bloody, and brutal" Ministry is prepared to accomplish for the Irish peasant. Deep interest is at once aroused, and the professional questioner himself (not a person easily abashed) is apt to grow silent and serious.

But I am convinced that the only real strength of Home- rule among ordinary voters is the worship of Mr. Gladstone. Voters, of the lower class especially, have fallen back more and more upon his prestige as the one only certain thing for them amidst the war of assertions and arguments. At the close of a meeting the other day, an elderly labourer, ap- parently just the kind of man whose opinion would carry weight with his comrades, said to me : "It is all very well, Sir, but show me a better man than Mr. Gladstone, and I will follow him." Here in a nutshell is the hopelessness of the case, so far as argument goes. Of course, on the other hand, it robs the next Election of any decisive value, and makes the in- evitable reaction more sure and speedy. But what I want to complain of is, that the Land-Purchase Bill is not made use of as it should be in the present struggle. It would set free the conscience of the English and the spirit of the Irish people ; it would begin the real work of constructive ameliora- tion. In itself it is the greatest and most significant measure since Free-trade. Yet no one cares to put it forward, or to explain it to the voters. At the pending Election I cannot see that it is allowed to exercise any influence, and so once more the faddists are the masters of the situation. The fatal blunder of the Government last Session still seems to cling to the Bill, and it remains linked in popular esteem with some such insignificant measure as the Tithes Bill— Alexander the Great and Alexander the Coppersmith un- equally yoked together in the same Ministerial programme. Dissentient Tories, blind to facts, are allowed to gird at it in the Times without being answered, the attack being always of the old sort,—viz., that there are drawbacks, and no absolute certainty of success. It does not seem as if the Ministry realised how fine anlinfant they had produced, or that people in general perceived that to make England at once the bene- factor and the creditor of the Irish tenants, would be the surest antidote to Home-rule poison. I entreat some one in authority to speak out and give a line to those who at great disadvantage are fighting the battle of the Union and the Empire. In one word, do the Ministry intend to stand or fall by the Land-Purchase Bill, and will they say so, so loudly and plainly that it will become the one subject upon which the contest turns, and redeem the Union and Parliament from the charge of impotency as to effective reforms which its opponents lay to its charge P—I am, &c.,