TOPICS OF TIIE DAY.
MR. BRIGHT AT BIRMINGHAM.
THE speeches of Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Bright at Birmingham would have been weightier and more useful than they were,—and Mr. Bright's, at least, is most weighty and most useful,—if they had accompanied their advocacy of English patience and remedial Parliamentary legislation by a more indignant condemnation of the contract-breaking, and the conspiracy to intimidate contract-keepers, now going on in Ireland, and a declaration that simultaneously - with any remedial legislation introduced into Parliament, a measure to strengthen the penalty and secure the convic- tion of all such intimidators ought to be presented also. What Mr. Bright said of the long legacy of evil and unjust traditions by which the English Government has debased the tone of Irish society, and taken out of the very meaning of the word "patriotism " anything like loyalty to the Central Government, is most important, and most true. If an Englishman wishes to know what political shame means, let him read the brilliant chapter of historical review in Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's book on " Young Ireland," and he will feel it for a time a burden almost too great to endure. But none the less are we bound now to do all in our power not only to extinguish the evil crop of fruits left behind by that long career of criminal administration, but to counteract, if we can, the great political vice which that history of tyranny has engendered. It is as much for the benefit of Ireland that those Irishmen who try to intimidate others from doing what they know that they ought to do, should be detected and sharply punished, as it is that there should be no more excuse in future for the desire to break faith. The two changes should go together. Let us root up the great chronic mischief, if we can. But let us strike a blow also at that cowardly conspiracy against straightforward and upright good-faith which does more to render the best remedial legislation vain, than almost any deficiency in its own structure. If we cannot sustain the Irishmen who wish to abide by their word freely given and frankly accepted, we shall not succeed even with the best land-law in the world. For our own parts, we deprecate with all our hearts the renewed suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, first, because we believe it to be unjust and debasing to the upright among the peasantry of Ireland ; and next, because we believe it would be found wholly inefficacious for the purpose for which it is pressed on the Legislature. This is not a Fenian rebellion nor a Ribbon conspiracy, of which the leaders are known. This is a great, semi-socialistic revolution, fomented by men who have found all purely political agitation a useless and powerless weapon in their hands. You can- not resist such a revolution as that by taking power to seize any one who aids it. Imagine the imbecility of arrest- ing all the men of Mayo who have shaken their fists at Captain Boycott, or cursed the Ulster volunteers who came to his relief. The way to meet such a rising as this is, first, to up- root, so far as is possible, the rankling sense of injustice in which it has taken its origin ; and next, to strengthen for the future all the guarantees of good-faith, and all the penalties of cowardly intimidation and social dishonesty. We should be very glad to see the Government bringing forward a per- manent—not a temporary—measure, inflicting a sharper penalty on intimidation and conspiracy to intimidate, and even doing away with trial by jury for this one deep-rooted class of crimes, so long as any fair tribunal, in the impartiality and fair- ness of which all Irishmen would be constrained to feel confidence, could be substituted. There is no essential wisdom in leaving to a perverted social conscience the power to increase that per- version by the unjust acquittal of those tainted with the same vice as their jurors. At the same time it would be absolutely necessary that the tribunal substituted for the jury, should not only show the utmost scrupulousness in weighing evidence and deciding according to that evidence, but should be known through all Ireland for its scrupulous justice.
So much for the side of the question which Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Bright passed by almost in silence. The former, especi- ally, committed a mistake in making that empty appeal of his to Irishmen not to do what they are doing, for the love of Liberal- ism. We fear that the Irish love Liberalism very little. If the Liberals ever make Ireland content, the result will be that the Irish will turn Conservatives rather than Liberals, and will use the good institutions we have given them to throw the great weight of popular Irish opinion for the future into the hands of, our rivals. All we can say is that we shall welcome the day when it is so, not because we desire to lose the Irish from our side, but because we believe it would be the best possible proof that Ireland at last was really content. In the meantime, our statesmen should beware of empty hortatory appeals. They have no effect on Ireland. They only give that impression of weakness which all ad misericordiam cries inevitably produce, and they excite no response at all in the hearts even of the better-disposed peasantry. Like all peoples who have grown. up in a tradition of injustice, the more they hear of the supposed fears and supplications of those whom they regard as their foes, the more they are persuaded that they themselves are really on the right tack. Justice should be done ; but justice should be done with a strong hand, with the utmost fearlessness, and accompanied with a more stringent attitude towards those who resist justice, on whatever side of the lines of the old con- troversy they may happen to stand.
For the rest, Mr. Bright's speech appears to us most valu- able, though it would have been still more so, if he had ex- plained more fully the policy which he desired to sketch in this sentence :—" What they " [the tenant-farmers] " want is this, to ensure in some way, by some mode, that when a man. has his house over his head,—built it himself, probably, or some preceding member of his family may have built it,—and his little farm around him, he should not incessantly be taught that he may any day have notice to quit, and be turned out of his farm and home ; and that the rent should not be con- stantly added to, till the going-out of his farm is a less evil than remaining in it. He wants some security from the constant torture and menace which he feels hanging over him." That means, of course, what we have always contended for, fixity of tenure. But fixity of tenure needs defining, and if Mr. Bright had defined what he proposes in relation to this matter, as well as he defined the modes in which he would add to the num- ber of peasant-proprietors, by assisting them to buy from their landlords, and by the State purchase of waste lands on which they might gradually be settled, he would have added to the value of his speech, valuable as it is. For our own parts, we have seen no scheme better adapted to the actual condi- tions of life in Ireland than that sketched in a letter to the Times, some fortnight or so ago, by Mr. Errington, M.P. for Longford County, and since expounded in a very able letter to Mr. Childers.* Mr. Errington shows that the chaos in Ireland is due to the utter inconsistency between the traditional Irish land customs (partly fortified by the Land Act of 1870) and the principles of English real-property law, which have always been recognised in the Courts, and have always been in conflict with the tone and spirit of the Irish customs. "As might be expected," says Mr. Errington, " the evils of both became fully developed, and each successfully thwarted any good which might have come from the other. If, how- ever, in the struggle for existence one or other had prevailed, or was likely to prevail, we might be content to let things take their course ; but what the country cannot and ought not to tolerate is, this continuous internecine feud between them, which has reduced Ireland to the condition we see,—a condi- tion hardly consistent, surely, with the most elementary ideas of confidence and security. But, indeed, so far from diminish- ing, this struggle and its results have been growing daily worse, and this for an obvious reason. Up to a recent period, various social conditions tended to keep it within comparatively moderate bounds. On the part of the landlords there was a good deal of the old feudal feeling of easy-going indulgence, and reluctance to manage landed property on strictly commer- cial principles ; as for the tenants, absence of education among a poor and backward and naturally gentle population, kept them timid and in entire ignorance of their power of combina- tion and self-assertion. Thus a state of things in itself utterly anomalous, was made possible only by the circumstances of the time." And he proposes to put an end to this conflict by a large measure, which would recognise at once both the share of the landlord and the share of the tenant in the land, at once present and prospective. He would extend the present Land Court, give it the power to establish subordinate divisions all over Ireland, empower it to determine the initial " fair rent," having regard to the history of each tenancy ; require it to keep records of the prices of all products of the land, so as to furnish the means of knowing, by the averages of these prices, how far land is
• London: Wyman and Sone, Great Queen Street.
growing intrinsically more valuable, without regard to the particular efforts of particular tenants ; and take the rise or fall of the average prices of land produce as the basis for a revision of the rents at fair intervals, so that when the value of the land was rising without reference to the efforts of the tenants, the landlord at every decennial period, we will suppose, might reap the advantage of it by a rise in rent ; whereas, if it were only the effort of the tenant which increased the value of his particular farm, the tenant would keep the whole advantage of that in his own hands. Further, Mr. Errington would authorise the Court to superintend the sale of any outgoing tenant's interest in his own tenancy, and in every case to sanction it, and to order that sale on the application of the landlord, if his rent remained more than a year unpaid, the tenant having the right to recover his tenancy by paying his debt in the interval. And lastly, the Court would be entrusted with the arrangement of terms between landlord and tenant, when the landlord was willing to sell his interest to the tenant ; and also with the administration of the waste lands, if, as Mr. Bright proposes, the State undertook to pur- chase a considerable amount of these waste lands, intending to transfer them to the peasantry on easy terms. Such a scheme as Mr. Errington's appears to us at least a possible basis for legislation, and it is all that is wanted so to complete Mr. Bright's proposals for the creation of a peasant proprietary, as to make landlords still possible in Ireland, and possible with great advantage to the tenant-farmers, as well as to themselves. We earnestly recommend Mr. Errington's scheme to the attention of the Government, but with it we should be glad to hear of some proposal for strengthening the law against intimidation, and securing more certainly the con- viction of offenders. This, we think, English opinion justly demands. If we are to yield what is just, let us not yield it weakly. Let us not yield it without showing plainly that we are yielding it to justice, and are not afraid to enforce a just law against an unjust mob.
Previous page
