TOPICS OF THE DAY
THE DIVISION OF THURSDAY NIGHT.
THE small majority by which the Government defeated Mr. Heneage's amendment on Thursday night, is at once dis- creditable to the Liberal Members who mutinied against the Bill, and of evil omen with regard to the operations of the House of Lords. The real mischief of that amendment, if it had been carried, or should be carried in the Lords, is that by creating a class of tenants who are not to be entitled to assign their occupancy to another, and to receive whatever it may be worth from that other, it would break the uniformity of the new principle, and destroy in a great degree the sense of secu- rity felt by tenant-farmers all over Ireland. Mr. Heneage is a Liberal, and has given himself out especially, like Mr. W. Fowler who supported him, for a Land-law Reformer. Moreover, we quite understand what he has to say for himself. He asserts, and truly, that it is because the agricultural circumstances of Ireland are totally different from those of England, that this Bill is required at all. Well, he goes on, if that be so, if the Bill is required only because the agricultural circumstances of Ireland are so different from the agricultural circumstances of England, why should it apply to those exceptional cases in which the circumstances of Ireland are not, different from England, but are governed by the English rule ? The answer seems to us very simple. In the first place, even where the English practice—that the landlord makes all the improve- ments—prevails in Ireland, the Irish tenant-at-will has some- thing to sell, for even then he cannot be evicted without having a claim for "disturbance." And though, of course, the Court would not make the same allowance for disturbance in the case of a tenant who had been dealt with very liberally by his landlord in the matter of improvements, as it would for a tenant who had made his own improvements, it would allot him something for disturbance ; and there is no reason in the world why that something, whatever it is, should not be sold by him to a successor. There is, then, this difference between the Irish tenant-at-will and the English,—that the English tenant- at-will has no claim for disturbance, while the Irish .tenant-at- will has, even in the case where the landlord does all the improvements. Why, then, should he not have the right to sell the interest which he certainly possesses, however small that may be ? That is one point. But there is another of still more weight. If there is any interest, however small, which the tenant has a right to sell, it is of the first importance that the right to sell it should be established in its full generality, so that the Irish tenant should have no doubt at all that, in future, his interest in his bolding, though it may be an interest of very different value in different cases, is really his,—his to dispose of to any unobjeetionable person, as well as his to hold. To permit of any doubt on this subject would make an enormous difference in the effect of this Bill on the mind of Irish tenants-at-will. And we must remember that this Bill, though a Land Bill, has been forced upon public attention by political reasons, and will fail notably, if it does not produce a great political effect. Now, will those Liberals who, like Mr. Heneage, Mr. W. Fowler, and Mr. Cartwright, voted for this amendment, pretend to say that any clause which exempted from the operation of the Bill in relation to Free Sale, a distinct class of tenants, would not produce a very mischievous effect on the mind of Ireland,—indeed, a very much greater sense of insecurity than the words of the clause would justify I It would make all the difference ta the Irish people whether it were left to the Court to de- cide whether the tenant had anything to sell, or only to decide how much he had to sell. In the latter case,he would feel that the law secured him absolutely in his right to dispose of his occu- pancy, whatever it might be worth, and that all the Court had to inquire into was, how much it was worth. But in the former case, the Court might decide that the landlord, having im- proved his own estate on the English principle, the tenant could not claim to dispose of his occupancy at all, even though he himself would be bound, in case of evicting him, to grant him some compensation for the disturbance. The difference in the political effect of the Bill, between frankly recognising that every tenant-at.will in future is to have the kind of interest in his occupancy for which it will be somebody's interest to pay him pounds, shillings, and pence, if he can choose that somebody rightly, and deciding that most tenants- at-will are to have that kind of interest, but that the Court may judge a certain number of them not to be entitled to it,—
would be the whole difference to the Irish tenant between. security and insecurity of feeling,—between having a foothold„ and only hoping that he had a foothold.
Mr. Cartwright argued that one of the subsections to the seventh clause of the Bill proves that there are admittedly estates in Ireland managed in the same way as most English estates, and that where these exist, they ought not to be sub- jected to the operation of this Bill. But the argument is fallacious, because Mr. Cartwright omitted to point out the difference between the question raised on the first clause,— which deals with the Bale of the tenant's interest,--and the question raised on the seventh clause, which deals with the. proposed intervention of the Court to declare a fair rent, It is perfectly true that the eighth subsection of the. seventh clause provides that where the Court is satisfied that the holding has hitherto "been maintained and im- proved by the landlord," it may decline to interfere in the
question of rent. But it does not at all follow that be- cause, in such a case, it would be unfair to have the Court intervening to decide what rent a landlord who has done everything himself for the holding, ought to ask for it, it would be unfair to give the tenant absolutely a right of disposing of his occupancy, subject to that rent, to a suitable successor. The Irish Land Law aims at giving the tenant so much security in his occupancy, that even though the landlord haa the right to raise the rent, he cannot evict a tenant who does, not choose to pay the higher rent without some compensation. It is, then, a pure non-sequitur to argue that because the Law says, 'This is not a case where we can interfere with the landlord's right to fix his own rent,' it should also say, 'This is not a case in which the tenant should have any right to hand over his occupancy to another as suitable as himself, who is will- ing to meet the landlord's terms in relation to rent.' It may be freely admitted that there are cases in which the Irish land- lords do for their land very much what English landlords would. do. But it does not at all follow that in these cases the Irish tenants should have no further security of tenure than Eng- lish tenants have. The law of 1870 was meant to give them a greater security, and there were sound political reasons for doing so. The law of 1881 should certainly enable them to transfer to others, for whatever it may be worth, what the law of 1870 gave them. Mr. Fowler made some. impression, by referring to the case in which a landlord, has bought up the tenant-right. Well, in that case, of course, so long as he keeps the land in his own hands, he gets what he paid for. But if he lets it out again,. why should he be in any way exempted from the opera- tion of the law which gives a tenant an interest in his holding,, and a right, under fair conditions, to transfer that interest t There is no reason in the world why a landlord should be per- mitted to break through a principle which has been decided to, be for the benefit of Ireland, only because he has compensated certain persons for the interest which they had obtained. under the operation of that principle.
We fear that the House of Lords will be encouraged by- the smallness of the Government majority to reingraft Mr. Heneage's amendment on the Bill. But if they do so, they- will greatly impair its poliiical effect, however slightly the amendment might alter the actual business relations of land- lord and tenant in Ireland, whenever the Act fairly came into operation. If the Lords should make this blunder, the House. of Commons must undo what their own hesitation will have induced the Lords to do.
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