THE IRISH LAND PURCHASE BILL.
TBERE has seldom been a measure against which more could be said than the Irish Land Purchase Bill. It is admitted on all hands to be an experiment, and surely if there be any country in which it is time to put an end to experi- ments that country is Ireland. Its object is to create a peasant-proprietary,—that is to say, a class which will need a specially large provision of the virtues of industry and thrift. Yet the Bill deliberately rejects the best and natural evidence of these virtues,—the possession of money put by. We are constantly told that the Irish peasant likes nothing so much as spending his savings on the land ; that he will give large sums for the occupancy right ; that now that he is protected against a rise of rent he will be an improving tenant ; that if he has preferred in the past to swell his deposit at the bank, it has been because he has had no confidence that if he made the land his bank, it would not be taken from him. It might have been thought, therefore, that when the State came forward with a new and easy machinery for giving him the land out and out, and when circumstances ensure that the landlords will put no obstacles in the way of its application, every farthing that the peasant could command would have been poured into the lap of the Land Commission. The authors of the Bill, at all events, show no anticipation of this. On the contrary, the Bill is framed on the assumption that the Irish peasant must be tempted into becoming an owner ; that he must be dealt with as though he were a pauper unable to make one single move towards the realisation of what is all the time represented to be his most ardent ambition. Then as to the results, we are met by equally gloomy predictions. The fabric of society in Ireland is to be weakened by the withdrawal of the landlord class ; the Government is to be made more odious than it is already by being largely invested with the character of landlord ; and the Irish vote will be the object of conflicting offers in the shape of proposals to remit or reduce rent. No part of this case can be said to be overstated. The Bill has all the faults which have been attributed to it, and these faults are undoubtedly calculated to work the results expected of them.
And yet, notwithstanding all this, we hold that the Bill ought to pass. If it is very far from being a perfect Bill, it has to be applied to a condition of affairs which is very far from perfect. True, it is an experiment, and Ireland has been dosed with experimental legislation. But there is such a thing as spoiling the ship for a pennyworth of tar, even in experi- ments, and we are still too far away from anything that can fairly be called success in our method of dealing with Ireland to make it safe to stop short where we are. True, the Bill proposes to tempt the peasant into becoming an owner. But given that it is desirable that he should become an owner, which hardly any one denies, it is absolutely necessary to tempt him. True, in so far as the landlords are bought out,
absenteeism will be increased. But are the relations between a landlord anxious to sell, and a tenant who has to be tempted into buying, likely to be of a kind which makes the cessation of them a public misfortune? True, it is a great disadvantage that the State should displace the landlords. But is it a less disadvantage that the State should have to protect the landlords in the exercise of the rights of ownership which were reserved to them by the Act of 1881 True, the spectacle of Liberals and Conservatives alternately baiting their hooks for the Irish vote will not be an improving one. But it is not only in the character of landlord that the State may be made to bid for popularity in Ireland. It will be pressed, no doubt, if the Bill passes, to forego the remaining payments, or to allow of their postponement ; but if the Bill is rejected, it will be pressed just as much to compel the land- lord to forego the rent due to him ; and of the two, we think that effective resistance to this pressure will be harder in the latter case than in the former. In theory, the British taxpayer suffers when the Irish landowner suffers. Are they not both members of one body politic? But in practice the British taxpayer feels a penny taken out of his own pocket more than he would feel a pound taken out of the pocket of an Irish landowner, and we look to this difference to put some strength into his economical backbone.
The case for the Bill is this. In the opinion of the Liberal
Party, it was essential to the safety of life and property in Ireland, as well as to the right adjustment of the several interests of landlord and tenant in the soil, that the powers heretofore vested in the landlord should be curtailed. He is no longer the absolute owner of his estate except so far as he has limited his ownership by his own act ; Parliament has intervened, and, without consulting him' has subjected him to serious additional limitations. A step does not cease to have certain consequences which are mischievous, only because it was necessary to take it ; and one effect of setting up fixity of tenure was to deprive the landlord of his interest in the management of his estate. That in many cases this effect has not been produced is due to the presence of exceptional circumstances. Where the landlord is wealthy, has a good deal of land in his own hands, is tied to the district by beautiful scenery, good sport, a fine ancestral mansion, and the position among his neighbours which wealth and residence for generations com- monly carry with them, his presence on the estate is a gain for all concerned. But it is a gain because he retains so many of the other characteristics usually associated with the landlord, that the obnoxious characteristic of drawing rent is almost lost sight of. But where the landlord is poor, has no source of income other than his rents, lives in an ugly house in an ugly part of the country, finds his sporting rights reduced to nothing by the hostility of the farmers, and is despised by his neighbours as a new man who bought the property when the old family were forced to sell under the encumbered Estates Act, his presence is no gain at all. The only incident of a landlord's position that is left to him is the right to draw the rents ; and when this is all, the sooner he becomes in fact, the absentee which he already is in spirit, the better for all concerned.
It is quite right, therefore, to tempt tenants into becoming owners when the alternative is the continuance of so unsatis- factory a relationship as this ; and when so much has been conceded, we have only to consider what is the lowest bid that will tempt them. We wish that it were not necessary to offer them an annual payment which, when interest and principal have both been provided for, will be lower than their present rents. Had this not been indispensable, the period of repay- ment might have been very much shorter than the forty-nine years fixed in the Bill. Unfortunately, all who know Ireland are agreed that unless the tenant sees an appreciable immediate saving to be effected by buying his farm, he will prefer to go on renting it. He cannot be turned out so long as he pays his rent ; he cannot have his rent raised ; and he has convinced himself that there is at least an off-chance that before many years are over he will get the land for nothing. It is not to be expected that he should exchange these advantages in the present, and this prospect in the future, except for a very sub- stantial immediate gain. Our own fear is that the gain pro- vided by the Bill may not be great enough to induce him to part with the off-chance.
If it is great enough, we should hope that the period of repayment will be shortened by the natural desire of the pur- chaser to buy on the most favourable terms. For a time, probably, he will rait to see whether the State proves an easier paymaster than the landlord. But in proportion as experience disabuses him of this hope, he will come more and more under the inducement to cut short the interval which stands between him and full ownership. In that case, the table in the schedule to the Act will have a new attraction for him, and his savings will naturally go to redeeming future instal- ments at the reduced rates there set out. No doubt he will not do this unless Parliament shows itself determined not to forego the rights of the taxpayer. But, after all, a firm front on the part of Parliament is a condition precedent to any solid improvement in the condition of Ireland. If we are for ever to be refusing to-day, hesitating to-morrow, and giving way the day after, we had better wash our hands of Ireland. Firm- ness is of the essence of this experiment ; and we hope that there are no British statesmen yet in existence who would fail to be firm here.
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