Mr. Parnell, who will, it is believed, sit on the
Tory side of the House, and be accepted, we trust, as a Tory ally, has -developed his land scheme for Ireland. He denounces fixity of tenure as only an "attractive phrase." He recommends that a Commission should be appointed authorised to advance money to tenantry for the purchase of their holdings, at twenty years of the Poor-law valuation. This money to be lent for thirty-five years, at five per cent. The Commission is also to be able to purchase an estate at the twenty years' valuation, and let it to the tenantry at a rent equal to 31 per cent. interest. Further, all titles should be registered, the existing laud-laws so reformed as to make land readily transferable, and a "mora- torium," as it is called on the Continent, granted for two years, during which no one shall be evicted for non-payment of rent. That suggestion of an arbitrary twenty years' valua- tion is, as Irish tenants already perceive, fatal to any such scheme. Even supposing the creation of small proprietors an object sufficiently national to justify expropriation, the price must be the market price, with a bonus for involuntary sale. Mr. Parnell does not say whether future tenants of the new proprietor are to be able to buy him out, too. If they are not, where is his principle P and if they are, the price of land is stereotyped for ever. He might as well enact that Consols shall always be eighty.
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