TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE BROAD EFFECT OF THE PURCHASE BILL. THE passing of the Land-purchase Bill through the House of Commons by majorities which increased until they reached much more than two to one, is one of the pleasantest political facts of the last twenty years, and one, too, which diminishes fear as to the future of Parliaments. The Bill has been, as it were, blown forward by such a steady wind, that the public has hardly perceived the magnitude of the obstacles over or through which it has been driven to its goal. It had, to begin with, to encounter an unreasoning, and therefore strong, apprehension that it would involve a heavy pecuniary charge on the British taxpayer, an appre- hension so vivid that it helped to overthrow Mr. Glad- stone, who had annexed to his Home-rule project a scheme identical in principle with this one. Then it was not heartily supported by any party in the House. The hotter Irish Home-rulers hated the Bill, as likely to break the weapon with which they hoped to secure an independent Executive for Ireland. The Gladstonian Home-rulers looked askance at it, as a measure the credit of which ought pro- perly to have belonged to themselves, a dislike which they expressed under cover of a regret that "local bodies" would have no control over its working. The older Tories were lukewarm about it, seeing that it was fatal to the country-gentleman organisation of society, and might one day be quoted by British farmers as a ruling precedent ; and the Radicals openly resisted it, as far too favourable to landlords, whose claims, in their judgment, were the origin of all agrarian troubles. Then the finance of the Bill excited fierce criticism among some econo- mists, who thought that if the peasants did not in- tend to pay instalments, it would be as difficult to make them as to make them pay rent, and that if they did intend, the Bill was needlessly, and, indeed absurdly, loaded with guarantee clauses. Then the object of the Bill hardly appeals to English sentiment, ambitious Englishmen wanting nothing so little as minute patches of agricultural land ; while a great many felt, with some justice, that the Bill had the appearance of a reward for a persistent and violent refusal to keep contracts. And finally, there was a feeling, only expressed audibly in a few rhetorical sentences, but still very widely diffused, that the Bill was a great deal bigger than it looked ; that, if it succeeded, it must be extended ; and that the State would, for a few years at all events, be the direct landlord or sole mortgagee of all the soil of Ireland. The conse- quence of this state of feeling was, that there was from first to last no really grand epee& delivered in favour of the Bill ; that its advocates always felt on the defensive, and inclined to a piecemeal defence ; and that throughout its history no public meeting was called in Great Britain, or, indeed, even in Ireland, specially to facilitate its pro- gress. The measure, in truth, never was in Great Britain a people's measure at all ; while in Ireland, though the people were for it, and that very strongly, they chose, with characteristic astuteness, to say as little in public about it as might be, and only hinted quietly to Members and candi- dates that, though criticism would be tolerated, hostile votes would not. Nevertheless, the Bill passed by a majority of much more than two to one. Slowly, and by degrees, as the dilatory debate dripped on, all the hostile parties grew lan- guid, the House as a whole awaking to the conviction that the Bill was a necessity, that the method its authors had adopted was the best practicable, and that the dangers painted in such blazing colours were most of them imaginary. The landlords, it was seen, did not get too much, though their lots, where burdened and where free, would be un- equal. The finance of the Bill, it was perceived, if the tenants paid, was not complicated at all, but was so simple that uneducated men could understand and see that a low rent paid for one lifetime bought a freehold ; and it was reflected that, as Parliament could and did enforce the pay- ment of rent, so it could and would enforce payment of instalments due to the State itself. On the other hand, hope grew about the Bill. Mr. Parnell's absolute refusal to believe that a freeholder could not be a Home-ruler, silenced objection from that side, which, indeed, had never beenguite open, while English Members learned by degrees that the peasant-proprietors previously created were all paying their instalments, and attending to business instead of agitation. And lastly, the fear of the figures died out. It is the way with the British people, owing, we fancy, to their use of a high unit of calculation, and the consequent absence of large numbers in their customary accounts, to be at first shocked by a demand expressed in millions, then to grow doubtful whether it really is so large, and then to decide that, compared with the work, it is not large at all. And so opposition died away into a little flutter of protest, which was at last left to Mr. Keay, the unlucky arith- metician whom even the House, trained from the days of its founder to suffer statistics gladly, finds too intolerable a bore.
It is for seven-and-twenty years that we have been urging this Bill, or one akin to it in principle, as the only remedy, not indeed for all the woes of Ireland—they arise from the remediless fact that Ireland is not as rich as England, and always wishes to be—but for the Irish chronic agrarian war ; and even now we can hardly believe that it has passed the House of Commons. It did seem so hopeless. There is hardly anything in the world so diffi- cult as to persuade average Englishmen—and Members, though not quite average Englishmen, are still elected by them—that other men may be dominated by feelings which they themselves do not entertain. They acknowledge, for instance, but never realise, the strength of race-hatred, and regard the "Southern problem" in America as something to be solved by a little Christianity and a, modicum of common-sense. They have felt in their history, but at present they do not even comprehend, genuine religious horror, the feeling that made a Spaniard endure autios-da- fd, and think any cruelty practised on Mexicans and Peruvians was compensated to the aufferers by a compulsory baptism, or which leaves the Russian Slays, who are essen- tially a. kindly people, pitiless when the miserable are only Jews. They believe as a fact that there are millions of men who would perish by fire rather than forfeit their caste- purity ; but that they should be so foolish, almost in English minds differentiates them from the human race. This, the most marked incapacity of a capable people, extends itself on points even into the region of economics. Average Englishmen do not even believe that there are nations which will not bear direct taxation, whatever the consequences may be, and will yet pay excessive indirect taxes on the very food they eat ; and why a whole people should hate rent, and yet submit to usury, is to them abso- lutely incomprehensible. Nearly the whole human race outside England entertain that feeling, and have regulated their conduct by it for ages—we wonder how many Englishmen know that, of the seventeen million Spaniards in Europe, thirteen millions live on freeholds—but to Englishmen it seems nothing else than absurd, the fantasy of an ill-balanced mind. If it is more convenient to rent than to buy, why not rent I' They hardly believe that the most thrifty of mankind, the Belgian peasants, con- stantly give fifty years' purchase for land, though they could make 5 per cent. of their money while asleep. The mere conception of the existence of a fear so deep that nothing but proprietorship will extinguish an expectation of starving, escapes the Englishman, and sometimes cannot be driven into him, till we can quote grave books in which it is argued that all peoples will one day adopt the English tenure. Some of the ablest Englishmen alive assert, and fully believe, in the teeth of the fact that no .people has ever abandoned peasant proprietorship, that if Ireland were given to its peasantry to-morrow, it would within twenty years belong to land- lords again. Against a defect of imagination like this, argument beats in vain, and we confess that during the controversy we have often despaired, not doing justice to that wonderful" political sense" which, as a German friend once told us, makes up for all the British stupidities. That sense, however, has prevailed at last, just as it has in India upon all questions of creed, and the quarrel which threatened to be endless—for how can a quarrel end when the Judge does not understand the plaintiff's grievance P- is virtually over. It is political sense, generated we suppose, in part, by all that weary debating, which has won at last, or sense and that other British quality which we find in such full measure nowhere else, political kindliness. Grant that the Irish are foolish about their tenure, let them be foolish if no injustice is done,—that has been the thought in thousands of minds which are still entirely uncon- vinced by the discussion. It is a very useful way of thinking, odd as its manifestations sometimes are, and has helped us to keep at the top on many a difficult day, and it never did greater service than when it facilitated the passing of this Bill. That undoes the conquest of Ireland in its worst social result, and leaves all other disputes to be settled without the aggravation of a belief on one side that the other would never even attempt to comprehend where his grievances lay. Not that the Bill removes the whole agrarian trouble from Ireland. The British people never makes a finish at once of anything, nor makes any formula absolute, and there will be many more deluges of talk over many more Purchase Bills ; but the principle is acknowledged. The English people have abandoned the idea of maintaining the English tenure in Ireland, as they abandoned the idea of maintaining prelacy in Scotland ; and they will, when the time is ripe, reap a similar reward in the death, not perhaps of hatred, but of the hatred that is effective.
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