THE LAND-PURCHASE BILL.
IT is with a sense of profound relief that we note the refusal of the Government to be drawn aside from the main object of their Irish Land policy. The pleas put forward_ both by friends and enemies for changing the direction of the Purchase Bill were so specious, that we must confess to having doubted whether they would not seduce the Ministry into taking up a position involving the loss of the greatest opportunity for settling the Irish Question ever presented. To begin with, there was Mr. Parnell's scheme for " fining down rents," and for helping the landlords to free themselves from their most pressing embarrassments. Under it not only would the poorer tenants have obtained immense immediate benefits, but the owners would have been able to keep their estates, and yet have money put in their pockets. Looked at from the standpoint of political opportunism, the ex- pediency of bodily adopting this scheme, or, at any rate, of engrafting some portion of it upon the Purchase measure, must have seemed very great. To have done so would have smoothed a thousand difficulties and perplexities, and have made no one angry or jealous. And even though the Ministry were able to resist this temptation, there was a harder trial in the shape of Mr. Chamberlain's proposal. Not only were the loyalty of its author and his sincere desire to strengthen the Administration undoubted, but the plan had the recommendation of being devised by an able and astute statesman whose position outside the Cabinet gave him many advantages for seeing the best of the game. It has always been regarded as a cardinal principle that any scheme of Land-purchase ought, if possible, to appeal to the material sympathies of the local bodies, and to enlist the interest of the particular community as well as of the individual occupiers ; and here was a scheme which accom- plished this very object. It did not apparently interfere with the working of the purchase operations, and yet endowed the County Councils with a vital concern in their success, by endowing 4iem after five years with a very large charge upon the land. In other words, it not only gave the local authority the strongest possible interest for seeing that the __bar ain with the State was strictly kept, but half-solved the problem of how to extend local autonomy to Ireland. Nothing could show more convincingly the statesman- ship of Mr. Balfour than that he refused to listen to either of these schemes, but resolutely insisted upon keeping his eye fixed upon the real object of Unionist policy,—the creation of a body of peasant owners under the most favourable conditions which can possibly be secured with- out endangering the safety of the national credit. This is the true goal, and for this alone must the Unionist Party strive,, no matter how good a case may seem to be made out for changing their direction, or for stopping half- way to pick up the golden apple of Local Government. If we refuse to be led away by any side-issues, but con- sider in its simplicity the reason why it is advisable that the action of the State should be invoked to create a yeoman class in Ireland, we shall at once see the wisdom of Mr. Balfour's action. The Gladstonians have declared that the real object of the Bill is to bribe the tenants of Ireland. If by this they mean that its intention is to create a society which shall not be exposed to the influence of agitators who use the lever of the Land question to promote national disintegration, we accept their description. Ireland suffers from the want of a sufficiently numerous class of property-holders. Until this disorder in the body politic—for such it is—can be cured, it is useless to imagine that any permanent remedy for Irish dis- affection will be found. As Mr. Bright saw long ago, the land is the only real question in Ireland. All the other ills from which that country suffers are but its shadows. Get rid of the agrarian difficulty, and you will have solved the whole problem. But there is only one way to do this, and that is, as we have said above, to turn the occupiers into owners. Anything, then, that detracts from the completeness, the simplicity, or the rapidity with which the work is accomplished, injures and post- pones the establishment of sound social conditions in Ireland. In order to give the Irish peasant as soon as pos sible the real as well as the nominal sense of ownership, we must make the benefit of the gift as great as we can. It would be absurd to imagine that anything appreciable could be accomplished if we did. not decrease the tenant's annual payments ; but merely told him that after forty-nine years of waitin g, he should have the unencumbered freehold of his farm. The less the instalment money, the more strongly will the spell of property work. It is for this reason that we object so greatly to Mr. Chamberlain's proposal. We do not at all underrate the advantages of local representa- tive institutions, and shall be exceedingly glad, when the fitting time comes, to establish them in Ireland ; but we cannot for a moment compare the benefits which they are capable of producing with those secured by low instal- ments. The 12 per cent. which he proposes the County Councils should receive, will be infinitely better employed in making the tenant feel the advantages which he has secured by becoming a landowner. In four or five years' time, the novelty of possession will have a little worn out, and the occupier will begin to notice that he has still a considerable sum to pay as the equivalent of rent. If, however, he is just then receiving or expecting a large reduction in his instalments, he will be strongly reminded of the beneficial character of his position. To see the sum go instead to a County Council, either to be jobbed away or else used for purposes to which he is indifferent, would be a poor consolation to the farmer, and he would almost certainly regard the transaction as a personal " loss," and so as a political grievance. So far from desiring that any local body should partici- pate in the advantages secured by a scheme of expro- priation, we only wish that it had proved possible to make the immediate boon to the tenant even greater than it is. Having once accepted the principle that the exceptional conditions of Irish society make it necessary to employ State action to re-establish it on a firm basis, we hold it to be absurd to debate whether we are not perhaps making things rather too easy for the tenant, and whether we cannot manage to " fine down " his benefits under the Act, and apply the money thus saved to some other purpose. It was not by confusing their policy by the introduction of plans involving other and perfectly different purposes, that the Prus- sian statesmen carried the foundations of rural society in Prussia down to the rock. They set themselves one clear object, and carried it through without flinching. This is the way of statesmanship,- which geklonr =Wes beyond the region of the simple and direct, and never forgets the fundamental maxim that things cannot be and not be at the same time. You cannot get rid of landlords and at the same time endow County Councils with their attributes. In so far as you move in one direction, you retreat in the other. If instead of letting the tenant have the 12 per cent., you give it to a County Council, by so much you deprive him of the essential benefits of ownership.
We have dealt above with certain objections to Mr. Cham- berlain's scheme which seem to us conclusive. There are, however, other and nearly as weighty arguments which may be produced against it from a totally different standpoint. These which were well summarised by Mr. Balfour are too important to be overlooked. To allow the County Councils to have a hand in the administration of the Bill would be to put it in their power to destroy its whole efficacy. In other words, the working of the Act might at any moment be rendered abortive at the bidding of the Nationalist agitators. These are Mr. Balfour's words : " It seems to me to be indisputable that if this be a national object, we should not allow ourselves to be frustrated in carrying it out by the action of any local authority, if we have ground for thinking that that local authority will be influenced by political reasons, and by political reasons alone. The local authorities in many parts of Ireland— there never was any secret about it—are as much elected by political arrangements and on political lines as the Par- liamentary party opposite. If it suited the Parliamentary party opposite to burke or misuse,—to burke the efforts or misuse the liberality of the Imperial Government, I think it would be most rash to give them the power of carrying out designs which are, after all, political, and not social, in their objects." We have already seen the fatal consequences which have resulted from the influence exerted by the Nationalists in regard to the agrarian question. Surely, then, it would be little short of madness to put the plan for solving that problem completely at their mercy. Local Government ought, no doubt, to be given in due time ; but the ad- ministration of the Purchase Act is, of all matters, the one which should not be handed over to the County Councils. It would be absurd to wrench the lever out of the hands of the Parnellites, and then quietly hand it back to them.
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