THE NEW IRISH LAND BILL.
THE essence of the debate on the new Irish Land Bill is contained in four speeches,—Mr. Balfour's, which is a most able exposition of the Bill ; Mr. Campbell-Bannerman s, which is an equally able denunciation of it, alike in its principle and its methods ; Mr. Chamberlain's, which is a defence of the
Bill, moderated by a wish that it went further ; and Mr. Dillon's, which is a passionate outpouring of hatred to land- lordism of any kind,—a hatred so deep, that he openly prefers that evictions should be cruel. We wish those four speeches could be brought to the knowledge of every elector in the country, Unionist or Liberal, with a careful explanatory com- ment, and studied as speeches would be which directly affected the electors' private interests. The result would be, as we believe, a conviction that the views of the three parties in the House are, as regards Irish tenure, absolutely different ; that their ideas upon just methods of reform are nearly irreconcilable; and that their conceptions of the very nature of property in land are so widely apart, that they hardly understand each other, and suspect one another of secret objects in a way frequent enough in the French Chamber, but exceedingly rare in the British House of Commons. The Unionists say, through Mr. Balfour, that the dual ownership of land now existing in Ireland is a nearly unworkable and wholly unsatisfactory system; that they hope, as soon as time is given them, to introduce a better one ; but that, pending the great change,they will make the system as little oppressive to tenants as they can. They there- fore introduce a Bill full of " generous " amendments to the Act of 1881. By a further and tremendous departure from the principle that contracts are sacred, they allow the 100,000 leaseholders of Ireland to apply to the Commissioners to settle their rents as if they were tenants at will. By another departure, this time a fair one, they permit middlemen whose sub-ten ants' rents have been reduced by the Courts to throw their tenancies-in-chief upon the landlords' hands. In order to avoid the scenes got up at evictions, they make " notice " equivalent to ejectment, thus, in truth, making the non-paying tenants caretakers for a time, whether the landlord likes it or not; and in order to prohibit the exaction of unfair rent, they allow the tenant who is to be evicted to interpose the equitable jurisdiction of the County-Court. That Court can, on full cause shown, release the tenant from arrears, stay eviction, and replace men in the farms at the rent it considers just. Now, we ask any reasonable human being not interested in Irish land, to decide whether it is conceivably possible that the object of this Bill can be anything but kindness to the Irish tenant. It places him in such a position of advantage that, but that the landlord can recover under the difficult and expensive process by which ordinary debts are exacted, the claim upon the tenant would be reduced almost to a debt of honour. If the tenants of a county combined, they could refuse rent, pour thousands of claims into the County-Court, and practi- cally " block " for months, or rather years, not only eviction, but the recovery of rent. There never were such terms offered to defaulting tenants since property in land was recognised in Europe ; and they are offered by Tories, whose first notions of property are offended by them, and who see in them a direct and by no means imaginary menace to landlordism throughout the United Kingdom. They are offered almost, one might imagine, in a kind of despair, in order that while the great revolution in tenure which Mr. Balfour acknowledges to be necessary and impending, is maturing in the Government offices, the poverty-stricken section of the tenantry may be saved from ruin. Whether the method adopted for the end is a wise one, is a different matter. Many able and generous men among the Peers thought the Govern- ment had gone too far ; Mr. Chamberlain, in the Commons, doubts if they have gone quite far enough ; all kinds of men, some very competent, think this or that detail could be im- proved. We should ourselves half-doubt whether, as so much is conceded, the principle of Mr. Parnell's defeated Bill would not have been a wiser one to adopt,—viz., a Delaying Act, suspend- ing eviction on payment of a large proportion down. Such an Act, limited to two years or one year, would have given the Govern-
ment and the people time, without the risks which, though they may prove unreal, undoubtedly exist within the present measure. Still, be that as it may—and in our day action is only impeded by the perpetual hailstorm of suggestions—can any one doubt what end the Government proposed to itself, or that it would have accepted any reasonable improvement proposed in Committee f Yet the Bill is denounced in tote by the united Opposition. The Parnellites, whose clients the tenants are supposed to be, exhaust upon it the vials of their wrath. Mr. Dillon flatly declares that, among the tenants' creditors, the landlord is "the one man whose claim is dishonest," and rejects the proposal to evict by notice instead of actual eject- ment in the following most significant sentence :—" He now came to Clause 4, of which he could only say that it was an infamous and atrocious attempt to take away from the tenant the last remaining protection,—the power of turning the public attention of this country to evictions." And on the whole Bill he passed the following unmistakable judgment :—" He rejected with contempt on behalf of the Irish tenants this delusive Bill, the bankruptcy clauses of which, according to Lord Cowper himself, were dishonest in their inception and calculated to ruin the credit of the people of Ireland, and to provide fresh means of oppression and evic- tion in the hands of the landlords." Mr. Dillon is for this purpose the official mouthpiece of his party, and this is his ultimatum. In his speech he criticised this detail and that detail, and even accepted the leaseholders' clause, though he said there was no " grace " in it ; but his meaning must be gathered from his peroration, and his meaning is to the utmost of his power to work for the rejection of the Bill. So is Mr. Campbell-Bannerman's. This gentlemen, who was Irish Secre- tary, and—so far as that is humanly possible among a people who, if an angel were Secretary, would declare that the presence of a supernatural being was an insult to Ireland—was a successful one, and his opposition is as decided as Mr. Dillon's. He goes, indeed, over the Bill with greater care, picking holes here and holes there, sometimes very cleverly ; but his real ground of opposition is of the most radical kind. He will not have even the rich tenant held to his contract, though the man may, upon the distinct stipulation that he shall pay the lower rent for fifteen years, have had his rent reduced by 25 per cent. Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, who would not pay his cab- man less than his legal fare for the world, wants, if he takes an Irish farm, to be allowed to compel the Legislature to break both its compact and his own with the landlord. He says :— " I say, in the first place, that these provisions mean injustice in the treatment of one tenant as compared with another, because while the benefits of the Bill—dismal benefits at the best—are reserved for the impoverished and ruined tenant, it does nothing whatever for the industrious, frugal, and struggling tenant, who is struggling under a hard fate to save his little capital from destruction. If rents are un- reasonable, they are unreasonable for the richer as well as for the poorer tenant, and I should have thought that in the publics interest, in the interest of the moral tone of the community as well as of its material prosperity, it was even more necessary to help a struggling tenant who is on his lege than the man who has already fallen. It seems to me that that one objec- tion is fatal to the whole conception of the Bill." That is to say, Mr. Campbell-Bannerman holds it monstrous to compel even a solvent debtor to keep his contract, unless it can be proved that his contract is as profitable as he expected. Indeed, the very words of the amendment which he proposed in the name of his party assert that doctrine. The Legislature, when by the Act of 1881 it reduced rents so heavily, made, as a kind of compensation to the landlord, an agreement that rents should not be revised for fifteen years. Mr. Campbell- Bannerman and the Liberals now propose that, in defiance of that pledge, rents shall be revised, and this for the richest as well as for the pauper tenant. He proposed to declare "that this House, taking into view the circumstances set forth in the Report of the Royal Commission of 1886 on the Land Acts of 1881 and 1885, and the recommendations of that Commission, is of opinion that no Bill for amending the laws relating to land in Ireland can be satisfactory which shall not provide, not only for entitling leaseholders to the benefits of the Land Act of 1881, but also for affording such means for the revision of the judicial rents under that Act as will meet the exigencies created by the heavy fall in agricultural values since the passing of the Act." If that amendment had been adopted, there would have been an end to the possibility of Irish Land Reform, for no agreement could be final, the copyhold tenant might use his voting power to abolish quit-rent, and even the
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