Mr. Kavanagh, in a letter addressed to last Saturday's Times,
announced the formation of an Irish Land Corporation, for the purpose of aiding the Irish landlords against the illegitimate terrorism of the Land League. Mr. Kavanagh declares, in a. second letter, which appeared on Thursday, that he and his friends are totally opposed to swelling the number of evictions in the case of tenants who have really been either over-rented, or rendered unable by exceptionally bad seasons to pay their. rent ; and. that, far from desiring to help landlords who are dealing hardly with their tenants, the managers of the Irish Land Corporation Scheme are resolved to give no aid to such landlords. Their object is to aid only those landlords who have been the victims of the Land League terrorism, and mulcted of just and moderate rents by the agency of that terrorism; and in aiding them, the managers of this Corporation believe that they shall greatly diminish the number of evictions, by removing the prevalent impression that it will be safer to repudiate just debts at the dictation of the Land League, than to pay them at the dictation of honour and law. What the Irish Land Corporation propose to do is to take farms from which tenants have been justly evicted for refusing to pay a fair rent which they had it in their power to pay, and to farm them on behalf of the Corporation, which will be on a scale that it will not be easy to deter,—L120,000 had been subscribed within a few weeks. towards the capital of the Corporation,—the Corporation also buying up at a low price the fee-simple of lands which it thinks that it could farm with advantage. Mr. Kavanagh expects by this scheme to defeat the illegal and secret action of the Land League, and so to check the disposition to withhold just rent,— but not in any way to stimulate the eviction of tenants whom either hard times or rack-rents have reduced to poverty.
Previous page
