Lord Lansdowne, in last Saturday's Times, put the leas e
for the landowners in the Irish Free State who are. to be expropriated at very low rates, and for the many respectable people who, like himself, have had their houses burnt and are now offered trivial compensation. He showed that these honest and loyal people would in most cases suffer grave injustice under the Land Purchase Bill and the Compensation Act of the Free • State Parliament. While the landowner is to get only fifteen and a-half years' purchase, payable in bonds at a heavy discount, farmers are selling their tenant rights at forty, fifty or sixty years' purchase. Lord Lans- downe reminded the Government that they had warned the Free -State a year ago that they must " see that -such claims (for compensation) are met equitably and as promptly as inevitable difficulties allow." There might have been less trouble, as Lord Lansdowne pointed out, if Mr. Lloyd George, in his anxiety to conclude a treaty with the rebels, had not forgotten to obtain some guarantee for the loyal minority. Lord Lansdowne made the useful suggestion that the Free State might be induced to agree to the appointment of a Joint • Commission to deal with hard cases.
* * * *
Previous page
