TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE STATE OF IRELAND.
E trust that the Peers who rushed into the lobby to vote down the Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill, are satisfied with the result of what they have done. We feared at the time that by taking it out of the power of the Government to distinguish between cases of eviction which de- prive the poor tenant unfairly of an interest in the land which he ought to have retained, and cases of eviction which are the just consequences of a thriftless and idle tenancy, the Home of Lords would put a most dangerous weapon into the hands of zgitators, and so it has proved. The discreditable speech made by Mr. Dillon, M.P., at Kildare last Sunday, is the beginning of an agitation which may, we fear, only too easily bring more trouble on Irish landlords in a month or two than Mr. Forster's Bill could have brought on them during the whole time of its operation. Of course, the House of Lords will maintain that this agitation would have been pushed on in just the same way had the Bill been carried. It might have been so. We cannot say that it would not. But it is certain that it would have been pushed on at much less advantage. The Government could then have said that they had carried, against the most determined and vehement resistance, a measure enabling the Courts to distinguish between the cases of just and unjust eviction in the distressed districts ; and that any Irishman who, after that, refused to leave his case to the equity of the Courts, was putting himself outside the law, and had no right to complain of the hardship of the law. The priests throughout Ireland would have shrunk from en- couraging breaches of the law when the Government had expressly provided against the serious injustice which the famine might otherwise have caused, and we might fairly have expected their whole influence—whatever it may be equal to—to be used on the side of order. Now, it is not so. Mr. Dillon began his mischievous speech, as, of course, a clever agitator would begin it, by appealing to the indignation excited by the injustice of the English Legislature, and suggesting that that injustice justified the use of force. "A great deal," said Mr. Dillon," "had been said about the House of Lords having rejected the Compensation for Disturb- ance Bill ; but he asserted that the Irish people had a right to be thankful to the House of Lords, if they only knew how to take advantage of them. The House of Lords had taught them that no good would come out of London to Ireland, and that until the Irish people, on the fields of Ireland, were banded together in an organisation fitted to win the battle for themselves, they could not expect justice or fair-play or good laws from an English Parliament." Of course every one knew that there were agitators unscru- pulous enough to use this blunder of the House of Lords for such a purpose, though every one did not know that Mr. Dillon was one of them. As it is, the House of Lords has lent them their most effective weapon, and has done all in its power to paralyse the Government, and such wise and temperate Irish landlords as Lord Monteagle, whose admirable letter on the land question we publish in another column. Whatever is done,—and of course the Government will act with firmness and decision in resisting the appeal to the tenants to refuse rent all over Ireland till their own terms are conceded to them, —nobody now can deny the allegation which the agitators will make that, by the confession of the Government itself, the present distress presses most hardly on the equitable rights of the Irish peasants, and has rendered the infliction of very serious injustice on them not only possible, but, in some cases at least, actual. It was a very bad blunder in the House of Lords to put such a weapon as that into the hands of agitators.
However, the mischief has been done, and what we have now to consider is how the Government ought to meet the agitation which, in the coming autumn and winter, will un- doubtedly attempt something like a forcing of the Legislature's hand on this land question. We believe that there is but one course to pursue. It must use all the powers it has—and it has very large power without any application for a renewal of ex- ceptional prerogatives—to enforce the law as it stands, and at the same time make it clearly and generally known that the rejection of the temporary measure intended to relieve the un- just operation of the Land Act of 1870 under the conditions due to a long series of bad seasons, will only increase the resolution of the Government so to amend the Land Act in the next Session of Parliament as to remove not only this blot, but other serious blots which experience has discovered in it. The strict enforcement of the law should be accompanied by the most plain and public pledges of the inten- tion so to improve the law as to exclude, so far as possible, every clear injustice as well as all avoidable miscarriages of justice for the future. For instance, Lord Monteagle's letter shows us one most fertile cause of the misery of Connaught,—the failure, and the special failure in Connaught,—of those provisions in the Act of 1870 which were intended to prevent rack-renting where the improvements were made by the tenant. Nothing could be more necessary, and nothing was more visible in the discussion of 1870, than the intention to provide against this danger. But it is quite clear that it has not been provided against, especially where it is most serious ; and though the House of Lords have most unfortunately determined that the special injustice caused by this failure shall go on, under aggravated circumstances, for another winter, the Government should let it be clearly understood that what they were not allowed to provide against temporarily in 1880, they will pro- vide against permanently, so far as legislation can effect it, in 1881.
But, no doubt their first care will be to deal with the mischievous terrorism which Mr. Dillon and his friends are taking steps to organise. Fortunately, these steps cannot be taken without giving the Government room for such inter- ference as may, we hope, put a stop to illegal proceedings, with- out asking for fresh powers. Mr. Dillon says that after the Land League is well organised, the word should go out,—" That no farm from which any man had been evicted should be touched or used for human purposes, until its rightful owner was put back on the soil." This, however, cannot be done without violence. Mr. Dillon himself generously suggests one form of violence,—injuries to be secretly inflicted on the cattle which may be put to graze there. But the frequency of such injuries,—and still more, outrages on new tenants,— would undoubtedly warrant the Government in quartering a large force of police on any neighbourhood where such things were done, and levying the cost on the district by adding it to the county cess. That is a measure before which, as we believe, a great deal of Mr. Dillon's suggested violence would at once collapse. The Irish are not so stupid as to ignore the difficulty of fighting a resolute Government, especially where that resolute Government is one anxious to amend the condi- tion of the people, and not to aggravate it. They will soon find out that to invite a large force of police into their neighbour- hood, for the cost of which they will themselves have to pay, is not worth while, especially as the police, if resisted, would be able to call in the help of the military. It is all very well to talk of a land league of 300,000 Irishmen being quite powerful enough to refuse rent altogether. Perhaps it might be, if it could get really formed and drilled, could feel that it had nothing but justice on its side, and could get itself well supplied with arms. But all this involves a great deal of sacrifice, a great deal of secrecy, a great deal of expense, and a great deal of confidence in the justice of the cause ; and we venture to say that almost all these elements , are conspicuous by their absence. The Irish know perfectly well that a Land Commission is sitting to inquire into their grievances, containing men as Liberal and high-minded as Mr. Shaw and the O'Conor Don ; that whatever Mr. Dillon and his friends may say against such men, they are the friends of the ' Irish tenant-farmer, and not his foes ; that the Government itself, at a very great cost of time and labour, passed through the House of Commons, and urged vigorously on the House of Lords, a measure for the relief of oppression during this time of distress ; and that such a Government cannot be ranked as the bitter foe of Ireland against which civil war is rather a. virtue than a crime. Knowing this as the Irish people do, in spite of the applause they give to agitators, they will hardly set their country in a flame for the purpose of resisting a Government from which they hope much. We anticipate, therefore, for Mr. Dillon's noisy and dangerous policy an eventual failure, under the calm restraint which Mr. Forster will impose on it. But, none the less, we deeply deplore that the action of the House of Lords has lent to that mischievous agitation the only shadow of moral respectability of which it can affect to boast. If the Lords had not been in such a hurry to convict the present Government of subserviency to the Home-riders,—if, as Lord Monteagle says, they had but . read and digested Mr. Tuke's pamphlet, before they did_ in ,a harry what they will repent at leisure,—we should not now have much to fear for Ireland.
Previous page
