Our countrymen make one perverse mistake in arguing this question
of eviction. They think that when they have assured Irishmen that they will not be evicted they have settled every- thing, whereas the Irishman's crave is to know that he cannot be evicted. It is no comfort to him to be told that the County-Court Judge may give him time if he pleases ; he wants the right to have time, and unless he gets it, frets himself into an imaginative fever. That is the real reason why no settlement of the question which is not based either upon peasant-proprietorship, or perpetual tenancy at a low quit-rent, will ever cure the agrarian unrest. Such unrest seems to Englishmen foolish, but it is the feeling of half the world, of Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, Russians, and all the races of Asia. It arises from fear, and can no more be reasoned away than liability to panic can be reasoned away. The ideal system for Ireland would be peasant-proprietorship, subject to a tax not exceeding, say, one-fourth of the produce of the year, leviable not through eviction, but a prohibition of har- vesting until the previous year's rent had been paid. The system is impossible with Irish feeling in its present state; but it would give them precisely the security, which, and not contract right, is what the people seek.
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