The threat of a Land Tenure Bill for Ireland is
already trying the reins of the landlords. A club is to be formed for the discussion of tenure, the Times has sent a commissioner to Ireland with orders to " tell the truth, " i.e., to show that absolute property in land is part of the natural order of things, and Lord Stanley has made a speech at Ormskirk upon the subject. He, of course, thinks peasant proprietorship fatal to the expenditure of capital on the soil—as if peasants could not combine—and believes the system of cultivation through landlords, farmers, and labourers to be the absolute best. Certainly, for the owner of Knowsley ; but sup- pose the field open, the table cleared, would not the farmers be the happier without rent to pay, or the labourers if they got the rent, the farmers profit, and their wages ? That cannot be, but the objection to its being is a moral, and not, as Lord Stanley thinks, an economic oue. As a matter of mere economy, every payment by the actual tiller—and it is ho who pays profit and rent too—is pure evil, an offence against the doctrine of the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
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