THE IRISH LANDLORDS IN CAUCUS.
WS., have no intention of attacking the Irish landlords who on Tuesday assembled in such vast numbers in Dublin, to plead their cause before the country. We deem their speeches querulous and their proposals hopeless, but there was much that was sad in their position, and more that was melancholy in their attitude. It was sad, to any one who can recall or realise to himself the history of Ireland, to see a mighty caste so fallen, a whole aristocracy holding out its hat publicly to the nation for relief. Three thousand land- lords are said to have been present—half, at least, of the larger owners of the soil—the largest representation ever col- lected of the great caste which for three hundred years has owned Ireland, and governed it, and treated its people as they would. They met under circumstances which would impel any such caste to justify itself, believing themselves on the brink of rain, seeing before them, as their most highly-applauded speaker said, no prospect, except to give up the work of centuries, and with the relics of their fortunes emigrate en nulase to some happier land. Many of them are innocent of any offence, many more are suffering for their forefathers, all but a very few are unconscious of error, as much bewildered as wrathful at the penalty that has fallen on them. Encumbered up to their lips, trained to idle- ness and to extravagance, they have been scarcely aware that their demands on their tenants had exceeded justice, have almost forgotten that they were ruining partners entitled by the prescriptive tenure of Ireland to be only ruined with the landlords themselves, and feel, when the old claim has been made valid by the law, as if they had been suddenly stripped of all that made life enjoyable by an arbitrary fiat. Not only do they not recognise that, as Lord Derby said at Liver- pool, they are being dragged by the hair of the head out of a whirlpool which would otherwise ingulf them, not only do they not perceive that they are passing through a revolution and paying only a 49. income-tax to escape harmless, but they do not see the smalleat reason why they should be affected at all. Nothing is more strange than to notice the absolute ignorance of the speakers at the Dublin meeting of the first datum of the popular argument. The landlords all exclaimed, as if that were the as plus ultra of injustice, that when farms had fallen into bad condition, the Sub-Commissioners valued them low. Because, they cried, tenants had been neglectful or drunken, rents were reduced. Do they know of any busi- ness on earth in which the senior partner escapes loss from his junior's faults, or would they have refused an increase of rent because the tenant's industry or money had made the land valuable ? Why do they claim the benefit of his good work, and refuse the burden of his bad work ? Is it not noto- rious that in Ireland, tenants, the junior partners, were afraid to cultivate well because landlords, the senior partners, would take all profit, and more, in enhanced rent ? The landlords evidently could not see even the main fact of the partner- ship, and could only repeat over and over again that reduction itself was hard usage, for which they were entitled to com- pensation. It is difficult to doubt, as we read the speeches and mark the cheers, that the misconception is perfectly genuine, and that the landlords deserve pity, not only for their losses, but for their unconsciousness of the reasons why losses have come upon. them.
The unconsciousness of the landlords was sad, but saddest of all was their incapacity. They were present in thousands, in a gathering such as scarcely any country ever witnessed. The ablest men of their own opinions and position may be assumed to have been present. They had picked their first speakers carefully. No one, so far as we can perceive, who desired to speak was refused a hearing. Yet it is impossible to find in all their speeches one gleam of light, one particle of evidence that there is a statesman, or a man in any way what- ever like a leader, among them all. There were no sugges- tions, no proposals, no solid arguments even, nothing but querulous coniplaints that Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright had not expected general reductions—which have not been made yet—that they themselves had expected no reductions; that that lihda-Commiesioners• were nobodies, selected became they were partial to tenant; that there must have been secret instructions—a palpable piece of nonsense, as they themselves put the reckless independence of the Sub-Commissioners in the forefront of their complaints, and one instantly denied by Mr. Forster,—that all of them would be ruined ; and that they were entitled, like the slave-owners, to be compensated. Even in asking for this compensation they produced no argument, no plea such as a statesman would consider, but only said that Mr. Glad- stone had admitted that a claim would arise if there were a general reduction of rents ; and that expert valuers, and not the Sub-Commissioners, ought to fix the reductions. The speeches were, from first to last, mere pleas that the Sub- Commissioners must be unjust, because they had reduced rents, and that, just or unjust, those who suffered IroPt entitled to compensation. It is notable that the most real of landlords' grievances, the non-redaction of burdens imposed. on estates under the idea that the English tenure could always supersede the Irish tenure, was never alluded to. No; they wanted compensation for loss of the rent itself, and could not get beyond that idea. It is melancholy to see an entire caste so sterile of suggestion.
The one idea of the landlords is, we need hardly say, hope- less. If they can prove that the Sub-Commissioners have been unjust, then the Commissioners, whom the landlords do not affect to distrust, will. upset their decisions ; but if, as Lord Monck, for instance, in his letter published in Monday's Times asserts, their decisions as a body are substantially just, there is no hope of compensation. None could even pretend to claim it, except those whose unjust rents had been diminished ; and to ask the English people to pay a hundred millions because the senior partners in the Irish Estate had for many years deprived the junior partners of their fair share, and were ordered to cease from doing so, would be impossible or absurd. We might as well compensate every bank shareholder who had had too much dividend, and who, when the bank, in conse- quence of those dividends, failed, had lost the income he had reckoned on. It is the overplus of landlords' dividend which has produced the agitation. Lord Derby, one of the largest landlords in England, formerly a great Irish proprietor, and notoriously tender to the claims of property, sees that as clearly as any landless politician. "You must," he says, in his coldly judicial way, "exclude the claims of those landowners who voluntarily, or under pressure, have settled with their tenants out of court ; you must exclude equally the case of those liberal and indulgent landlords whose rents will not be reduced to any appreciable extent ; and, of course, it is not contended that compensation should be given to those who may have really abused their powers." Who, then, remain? Only the few who may be proved to have been unjustly treated by the Sub-Commissioners, and they will have redress from the superior Court. Even this reduc- tion of claimants does not cover the whole truth, for after ex- cluding all these classes, we must still exclude all proprietors whose excess rental was only nominal, was never or very seldom received, and was only intended to increase the agent's power over the tenantry through the heaping-up of arrears. We are not sure that even the much more just claim as regards encumbrances will strike the English people as fair, and certainly it is being pushed much too far. As far as family allowances are concerned, there is, no doubt, a colour- able claim, as the landlords may say that their predecessors at all events, were entitled to believe that the injustice in- volved in the English tenure would always be maintained by law. An advance to pay off such claims would not be unreasonable, and would not involve any permanent danger to the Treasury, the payments ceasing as the lives expired. But the proposals of the landlords' advocates go far beyond this. One of the ablest of them, Mr. Wentworth Erck—who, at all events, looks the whole matter in the face—asks that the State should pay off all Irish encumbrances by a loan at 3 per cent. He believes Irish estates in the aggregate to be en- cumbered to nearly half their value, or £100,000,000, at 4i per cent., and would raise a loan to that amount. This would save the landlords l millions a year, reduce their total loss from a third of their incomes to a sixth, and even benefit the encumbrancers, who now fear the loss of their money. We doubt that last proposition very much, and should expect to hear a scream for compensation from mortgagees who are to take 3 per cent. Coesols instead of 41 per cent. secured, on land, though, as Consols are at par, there would be no In- justice inflicted on them. But we do not see why landlords' debts for borrowed money should be paid off by the State, any more than the debts of the sugar-refiners, who were ruined by the abolition of the sugar duty and the consequent competi- tion with sugar-refiners earning bounty. The Land Act takes away no property, it only reduces income ; and the fact that a burden is more burdensome in con- sequence of a change in the law, has never been recognised as ground for compensation. The rates are more burdensome, as well as the mortgages ; but is the State to pay a third of the rates ? The amount is too serious to be treated from the charitable point of view, and merely as a beneficial operation, the people, we feel sure, would reject the proposal. If they are to be burdened with the col- lection of all mortgagees' dues in Ireland, they had better buy the estates themselves, and sell them to the tenants, and so terminate the tenure question, at once and for ever. The proposal, however, if the figures are accurate, displays one more of the endless difficulties of the Irish Question. What is to be done for a people who have nothing but land to look to, and whose landlords have so burdened themselves that they are forced to rack-rent, and when rack-renting is stopped and the cultivator allowed to earn something, have nothing left on which to live ? We had thought the Encumbered Estates Court had rid Ireland of part of this burden ; but there it is again, acknowledged in every speech at the Dublin 'meeting, and apparently as heavy as before.
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