TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE GREAT DANGER OF THE SITUATION.
wh doubt whether either the Government or the public duly appreciate the chief danger of the situation. The longer we study the events of the Session, the significant atti- tude of Mr. Parnell, and that attitude of the Irish tenants which makes Mr. Parnell's attitude so significant, the more deeply we are convinced that if the agrarian problem could be really solved, the constitutional problem would not be found half so serious as it is the cue of the Home-rulers to represent, and as a great many of them no doubt,—Mr. Gladstone especially,—believe it to be. But this conviction, deep as it is, gives us little comfort, when we see, or think we see, that every effort to ease off the immediate pressure of the agrarian difficulty, is tending to render its early settlement on a large scale, except by the most wholesale confiscation, all but impossible. The situation is this. The Government have now introduced, and are pressing through the House of Commons, a measure not merely for reducing temporarily the rents that the recent fall of prices has rendered oppressive,—for this reduction, just because it is a temporary expedient, would, we believe, do little harm,— but that may easily go so far in enabling the tenant- farmer to decline all payment of rent that is in any way inconvenient to him, without losing his holding, that he will be absolutely indisposed to make himself owner of the property at all. All parties are agreed that to intro- duce a peasant-proprietary on a large scale is the one hopeful remedy f or the present state of things in Ireland. But Sir George Trevelyan, Mr. Chamberlain, and others have set their faces resolutely against throwing any part of the burden of the scheme of purchase on the British taxpayer. We have never assented to the justice of this attitude of theirs, and we do not assent to it now. We hold that if British mismanagement has led, as most people believe that it has led, to the agony of the Irish crisis, the one way in which we could expiate our mismanagement with- out injury to the Empire, would be to ease off the pressure of the crisis by the use of a little of our very considerable, though not superabundant, wealth. But, however, as Mr. Gladstone has declared that the sands have run through the hour-glass, and as Sir George Trevelyan rages against the mere mention of the smallest British responsibility for the redemption of the Irish land, as he does not rage against any of the more serious injustices of Mr. Gladstone's proposals, we have very slender hope that even this Government will have the courage to recur to the general character of Mr. Gladstone's plan for the solution of the agrarian question ; and if so, we are thrown back upon plans which require the Irish tenant-farmer to buy out his landlord honestly for himself, if he is to become a proprietor at all.
But if the Irish tenant-farmer is to buy out his landlord for himself, we must make it his interest so to do. And the great danger of the present Land Bill appears to us to be that it puts so many and such grave difficulties in the way of obtaining even the most reasonable rent from a tenant who does not choose to pay it, that the keen Irish farmer will see at once that it may be his interest not to buy out his landlord, —at all events at any price which it is conceivable that we could require the landlord to accept. Look at the twenty- second clause of the measure which is now before the House of Commons, which defines "the power of the Court to stay eviction,"—a power which, so far as we understand Lord Salisbury's speech at the Carlton Club meeting, is likely to be extended rather than to be restrained in Committee. The first portion of this clause, even as it came down to the Commons from the Lords, runs as follows :—
"In any proceedings for the recovery of a holding to which this section applies, for non-payment of rent, if the Court in which the proceedinge are pending is satisfied by the evidence before it that the tenant of the holding is unable to satisfy by an immediate payment in full the landlord's claim for arrears of rent for which the pro. ceedinge are brought, and for costs, and that such disability does not arise from his own conduct, act, or default, and there is reasonable ground for believing that, having regard to the interests both of the landlord and tenant, an extension of time to pay ought to be granted, the Court may put a stay upon the execution of the judgment of the Court, for such time as the Court thinks reasonable ; and the Court may, if it thinks fit, order that the arrears of rent and the costs, or such sum in satisfaction thereof as may be agreed upon between the parties, shall be paid by each instalments as the Court may appoint : Provided that when the landlord has offered to accept in full satisfaction of the arrears of rent, such lesser earn, payable either in one payment or in
instalments, as the Court shall think reasonable, and the tenant has refused each offer, no stay of execntion shall be granted under this. section."
Now, even if the terms of this proviso are not to be" extended" in Committee, it is obvious that as it stands it gives the Court the absolute power to judge between a landlord and his tenant whether it will stay proceedings for eviction or not, and how long it will stay them, and on what terms it will allow the proceedings to go on again. And the real question is, how this enormous and arbitrary power is likely to be used by the Irish Courts concerned. It may be used, no doubt, where there is time so to use it, in the wisest and the most judicial way. But is it likely that it will be generally so malt An immense amount of very difficult discretion must be exer- cised by the Courts under these large powers. It is to be feared that it will be often exercised under some dominant preposseasion,—either the prepossession of sympathy with the landlord, or the prepossession of sympathy with the tenant, and in either case alike the result must be very mischievous. If the Court exhibits a strong leaning to the landlords, we shoula hear the cry which has gone up during the present Session over again, and so far as such Courts go, the Act will be declared a failure, and the agitation will be renewed. If the Court exhibits a strong leaning to the tenant, under the dominant. influence of popular Irish opinion and the influence of the Press,—which is, we think, the more likely event of the two,—then the Court will interpose so many delays, and render eviction, even in the case of the most moderate rents, so practically impossible, that the tenant will certainly say to himself that, far from its being his. interest to buy his holding, he is much better off as he is. He can pay just rent enough to induce the Court to withhold its assent from any proceedings for eviction, and then he can wait, in the assurance that it is more likely that Mr. Parnell's agitation will in the end get him his holding for little or nothing, than that the Court will ever agree to turn him out because he pays only half or a quarter of the stipulated rent. We really do not and cannot know how the Irish Courts will use these powers ; but we feel very confident. that if, as is most likely,—knowing as they will know the extreme dislike of the Government to suffer from the scandals of scenes such as we have lately had in eviction cases,— they incline towards a very liberal use of their power to stay evictions, the result saust be to discourage and pre-
vent purchase. The first essential of the success of a. purchase measure is that the tenant should feel that it gives him his best chance of becoming the proprietor of his farm. Will he think that, if he can count on 'remaining undisturbed, although he pays only a portion of his rent, and. if he feels sere that the longer the other portion remains unpaid, the more likely it will be to be remitted altogether I* We are earnestly, intensely desirous to see the tenant-farmers of Ireland transformed as soon as possible into owners, and that, too, at a valuation of the land which shall be really fair, and shall take full account of the fall of prices which has lately so much depreciated the value of land. Undoubtedly the loss due to that depreciation should fall on the seller,—that is, the present owner,—not on the buyer. But none the less the tenant-farmer should feel that when that fall in value has been fairly taken into consideration, he is not likely to gain anything by refusing to buy, by trusting to the dilatory action of the Courts in staying evictions, and to the consequent accumulation of arrears, for running down the value of the land still further. Unless the House of Commons enter on the twenty-second clause fully realising the immense danger of the situation, we greatly fear that the passing of the present measure, so far from paving the way for a purchase measure of a large kind, may render such a measure simply impossible. Mr. Devitt evidently hopes to put a final end to evictions, whether for just or for unjust rent. But if the measure now before Parliament plays into Mr. Davitt's hands, the Govern- ment had better give up all idea of a great purchase measure, and confess that what it really means to do is to promote confiscation by rendering eviction so difficult as to be practi- cally impossible. Of course, we are well aware that that is not the object of the Government at all. But we do fear lest it should do unintentionally what would least of all suit its policy. If it is not to make this mistake, the Courts should be instructed peremptorily that it is their duty never to stay evictions where a reasonable rent is not punctually paid, and there should be some standard given them by which to judge what rent is reasonable, or far too great a discretion will be left in their hands.
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