1.±1..g STATE OF IRELAND.
WE have no love for carping criticism of men who are engaged in a difficult task, and the adminis- tration of Ireland is assuredly at all times no light occupation. But it is impossible to refrain from protest when those in charge of the Irish helm are blindly and stupidly steering the ship on the rocks. With the best of intentions, Mr. Birrell has succeeded in gravely weakening the restraints of law and order, and to-day we honestly believe that Ireland is drifting into a worse state than she has been in since the Fenian outrages. The Chief Secretary's blunders are due partly to false theory, and partly to sheer inability to grapple with a situation. He seems to think that a joke or a kindly phrase will keep the riff-raff of a population in order. For months he let the ugly and discreditable practice of cattle-driving flourish unchecked, refusing to make use of the ordinary powers of repression which the law gave him, till a Chancery Judge, without any support from Mr. Birrell, managed to find, a way to vindicate the outraged decencies. And now, after months of negligence, we have the bad theory in the new Irish Land Bill, which has been carried over to next Session. Last week we pointed out some of the glaring faults of that measure. Indeed, they are so glaring that it is difficult to believe that it is the work of serious statesmen. Yet we are assured that a Liberal Government will strain every nerve to pass this measure, which runs counter to every Liberal principle. Once upon a time Liberals believed in justice, individual liberty, and sound economics. But this Bill gives ignorance and idleness a preference over skill and experience, ties up the individual in bureaucratic shackles, and flatly defies every economic principle known to inankind. "Men before cattle," says Mr. Birrell, with his love of an emotional catchword. He might as well cry " Men before turnips," "Men before wheat," "Men before bacon," or any other kind of produce. On his theory, which confuses the product and. the cultivator, the only defensible type of holding is a baby-farm. "Abolish the ranches," he says again, appealing to un-Liberal prejudice by the use of a foreign word. Let us put our case in homely prose. Certain districts of Ireland, owing to soil and climatic conditions, are economically more suited to grazing than to any other form of farming. The grazing industry demands capital and a considerable area, therefore the grazing farms are large. It is of immense value to the country, for it enables the small farmers to find a ready market for the young stock they breed ; and since it is, on the whole, a profitable business, it brings money where money is sorely needed. Mr. Birrell, in effect, proposes to destroy that industry, though it is a purely Irish industry, and not one which can be dubbed as "Saxon," or "alien," or "PrOtestant," and to set in its place a collection of small holders without capital, without skill, without co-operative agencies, who will take what they can get out of their holdings. That something will be less than the graziers got, and therefore the country will suffer a net loss. We had imagined land. settlement to be a thing requiring careful selection of both laud and occupant and strict attention to economic laws. To Mr. Birrell's ardent soul it is an enterprise which depends solely on the grace of rhetoric and fine sentiments.
This is bad enough, but there is worse to follow. Who is to occupy these " ranches " ? If tenants were brought from congested districts, we should still think it ruinous policy, but we should dimly see a motive. But the "con- gests" are to have nothing, as Mr. Butcher showed clearly in a letter to the Times of Monday. "Every holding," said the Dudley Commission, "given to the son of a tenant, or to any other person not at present a landholder, will to that extent perpetuate congestion in the West." This is precisely what the Bill intends to do. It gives up the problem of congestion, forsakes Connaught for Meath and Westmeath and Tipperary, and proposes to satisfy the "land-hungry eyes" which Mr. Birrell sees in every Irish village. The landless are to be presented with bits of the grass farms ; the heroes of the cattle-drives, who braved for their principles the perils of cold and dark- ness and an occasional stumble into a bog, are to have their reward. Can we wonder that Mr. Ginnell has taken Mr. Birrell to his bosom, that Mr. Dooley of Birr has declared that the Bill is what the cattle-drivers fought for, and that Mr. Lennon of Mullingar has thus delivered his soul: "To-day Mr. Redmond and Mr. Dillon, who were independent men, down to the most insignificant member of the party, were all cattle-drivers, and Mr. Birrell, for that matter, was a very vicious cattle-driver " ? We hope the Chief Secretary likes his fellow-sportsmeu. There is one thing of which he may be perfectly sure, and that is that few of these sportsmen will ever settle down into useful tenants. They will get their holdings cheap from the Government, and they will lease them at a profit on the eleven months' grazing system. A Bill may make this procedure illegal, but what do these spoilt darlings of the law care for illegality? They will do it all the same, and Mr. Birrell from his place in the House of Commons will declare that no law should be enforced which is in conflict with the communal conscience.
Mr. Ginnell has most decidedly won, and the result is a state of affairs in Ireland which every wellwisher of the Irish people must look on with grave concern. The Nationalist Party found the wind taken out of its sails by the Laud Act of 1903; it has lost thousands of recruits to the Sinn Fein movement ; and being, therefore, deserted by the decent peasant and the intellectual, is clutching more desperately at the riff-raff of society. Mr. Birrell has played its game for it, and given preferential treat- ment to that worthy clientele. As a consequence, we see lawlessness everywhere. The insane repeal of the Arms Act makes every ragamuffin a public danger. Old methods of persecution are being revived, and unfortunate land- lords are being terrorised into parting with their home farms and demesnes. What of that dream that once tenants were provided with fair holdings, they and the squires would live happily side by side ? The case of Mr. Charles Neville Clarke, a Tipperary county gentleman, to which the Times has referred this week, shows what is going on. Mr. Clarke is an exemplary landlord, who' has never given a grazing lease or evicted a tenant. He has sold all his property to his tenants except his demesne and home farm, and on these he employs about a hundred people. The League has been attempting to force a sale of the home farm, and its bravos—a hundred to one, according to their heroic practice—have been bombarding his house with stones, while a rigid boycott has been maintained against him in the countryside. The men who are anxious to grab Mr. Clarke's land have already large farms of their own. If this is Mr. Birrell's "land-hunger," it is very like the old-fashioned brigandage of which King Ahab furnishes the classical instance. The whole situation is intolerable. Mr. Birrell's persistent sentimental blindness has destroyed the chief sanction of civilisation, and without this sanction no reform, even if it were conceived with supernatural wisdom, would be effective for a week.
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