LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE IRISH LAND BILL. ere TRH EDITOR OF TICE 14 SPROTA,TOR.1 SIR,—The fable of the Sibylline Leaves represents the truth of Irish history, and in a special sense that of the Laud Question in Ireland,—legislation found too little, because offered too late. During forty years before the Union, the Irish Parlia- ment refused even inquiry ; during sixty years after the Union, of inquiry there was enough, and proposals for reform abounded. Of one hundred years of apathy and discussion, the outcome
was the Consolidation Act of 1860, which effected all the land- lord wanted, but practically did nothing for the tenants. In 1865, a moderate scheme for protecting their improvements was proposed and would have been accepted by the tenants, but the opportunity was lost. In 1870 was passed the Act which, reversing the freedom-of-contract policy of 1860, legalised status, and virtually recognised the historic claim of the tenants throughout Ireland to be co-partners with their land- lords. The Act of 1870 was proclaimed a settlement. The same language is now held respecting the Bill of 1881. This view is, I am convinced, unsound and full of dangers, which can only bo averted by a frank recognition of the warnings which the past offers to the future. The Act of 1870 was a great advance, -yet it failed as a message of peace. The " Lords' and Tories' amendments," as the popular analysis of Mr. S. C. Buxton clearly shows, materially contributed to the failure, especially to the fatal aggravations due to three bad seasons-1877-78-79. Is it reasonable to suppose that Lords and Tories will abstain from similar " amendments " in 1881 P But suppose that the Act of 1870 had fully carried out Mr. Gladstone's intentions, assume for the Bill of 1881 the most favourable result, its issue from the Parliamentary ordeal, strengthened by friendly, uncurtailed by hostile amendments ; I apprehend, nevertheless, that it will not and cannot settle the Irish Land Question. I speak of it now as a measure for -reorganising the relations of landlord and tenant, The failure of the Act of 1870, hastened and aggravated by remediable defects, was essentially due to the attempt to solve by legisla- tion a problem insoluble by such methods. Monopoly and competition, with their inevitable results—rack-renting land- lords and land-grabbing tenants—are urged as reasons for legislative interference. But these arguments apply to all forms of landed property,—to every kind of dealing with land. If valid, they justify and require a permanent interference by the State with sale and purchase, with leases, with inheritance and devise, equally with yearly tenancies. No one proposes, or would propose, a measure so extreme. Why not P The only way out of the logical difficulty lies in recognising the truth— which English economists are so slow to admit—that the rela- tion of landlord and tenant is not universal and necessary, but natural and beneficial only under certain social conditions. Where and so long as those exist spontaneously, as in England and Scotland, they will work. But in Ireland those conditions have never existed, and the attempt to create them by law is futile. The bad landlords, be they few or many, who made the Act of 1870 necessary, defeated its policy, and, I believe, will defeat a much stronger Act than the Bill of 1881 is likely to prove. Its real value, therefore, as a reform of the relation of landlord and tenant is, to my mind, that of a transitional mea- sure, calculated to facilitate, in a gradual and equitable manner, a social and political revolution, the aim of which should be the substitution for all that portion of the land-owners who cannot exercise the rights, yet fulfil without legal compulsion the duties, of property, of an occupying proprietary, small and large, pursuing agriculture as a branch of industry, while supplying elements of social harmony and progress. History presents no example of a European country where, under modern conditions of society, Government, even the strongest, has successfully attempted to supply by law those
difficult and delicate relations under which alone, when spon taneously recognised, the harmony of an agricultural copart- nership can be maintained. Holding this view, convinced at once of the urgency of the Bill of 1881, and its impotence to. settle the Irish land question by galvanising the strained relations of landlord and tenant into an unreal life, I see, with regret the want of vigorous efforts to enlist Euglish public opinion in favour of the part of the Bill of the most vital importance for the future,—that which relates to the con- version by purchase and Government loans of tenants int . agricultural proprietors. The proposals of the Government are certainly a great advance upon the Act of 1870. But thej need to be strengthened and enlarged. The Government doe not propose compulsory expropriation of any class of landlords,. or offer them the choice of selling their estates. Nor could this be reasonably expected. But surely this might more fully re- cognise the statement of the Committee on the Act of 1870, in their report of 1878, that " there is a general desire on the part of the tenantry to become absolute owners of their farms.' Why not give full effect to their unanimous recommendations that "the restrictions against alienations and assignments. during the continuance of the loan should be repealed," and that, " as a general rule, four-fifths of the purchase-money might be advanced by the Board P" The points of paramount importance, however, are the constitution and working of the- Land Commission. The Irish " nettle " was never so dangerous. as now. Safety can be plucked from it only by the firmest and most courageous grasp. The reform of the relation of land- lord and tenant is, no doubt, the most pressing need, But the best, indeed the only guarantee for the thoroughness even of that reform, lies in the conviction that its accomplishment is not a settlement, but merely the affirmation and transitional adjustment of a copartnership in the laud, which—as in all other European countries—when once legally acknowledged, can only terminate by the complete, though it must be hoped gradual and just, separation of the partners, and redistributio of their copartnery interests in the land, the labour an capital incorporated with the soil of Ireland.—I am, Sir,
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