THE BRIGHT CLAUSES OF THE IRISH LAND ACT.-
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPISITATOR.1
Sra,—The late Duke of Wellington once told the House of Lords that it was useless for them to talk about some desirable
reform, because every noble lord had a family solicitor on his back who forbad the change. It is dangerous to argue about Ireland from English precedents ; but unless Irish landlords' solicitors are more capable than their respectable English brethren of taking a new departure out of their old accustomed routine, it is likely enough that with them lies the main hindrance which makes the Bright Clauses in the Irish Land Act so inoperative.
There is at least one English county mostly divided into small 'estates, and where, when one of these comes into the market, there is no adjoining leviathan ready to absorb it, and be con- tent with 2i per cent, for his purchase-money. Such large estates used to lie for years unsold in the hands of the old-fashioned London solicitor, who employed the great London auctioneer, -who, in his turn, waited patiently the result of his grand adver- tisement on the last page of the Times, and his auction in the City, where no one came to bid. At last some enterprising local house and land agents bought one of these estates, cut it up into small lots, and immediately resold it at a large profit. And as Jar as I kn ow, this process has never failed. Among others, I know three such estates, actually adjoining, one of which lay for years in the market, waiting for a North-country millionaire ; another was sold by the family solicitors and the London auctioneers in one lot, to three or four local people who united to buy it, and who immediately resold it in lots at a considerable profit ; while the owner of the third had the wit or luck himself to employ a local agent, who at once cut up the estate into as many lots as there were holdings, and sold -them at an auction on the spot, or immediately afterwards, and mostly to the existing tenants, at a very consider- able advance on the price which could have been got in the 'old-fashioned way. Now, when I read in the debate on Mr. Shaw Lefevre's resolutions that the difficulty in making the Bright Clauses operative arises from the antagonism of the in- terests of the vendor and the buyers, I think of these English experiences, and ask myself whether the antagonism is not be- tween the old-fashioned prejudices of the solicitors, who like to sell large properties in bulk in the accustomed way, and the new-fashioned wants of a new kind of would-be owners. The interests of the landlord who wishes to sell, and the tenants who wish to buy, seem to me to be identical, not antagonistic.
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