THE OBJECTIONS TO THE LAND BILL.
B. GLADSTONE'S Land Bill has, on the whole, beam. 131 well received in Ireland. The Irish Members intend to support it, the Irish landlords see clearly that it will increase• and secure their incomes, and the body of Irish tenants, par- ticularly in Ulster and the South, though not in Tipperary, if not fully contented, are evidently impressed with the magnitude- of the change which has been effected in their favour. At a meeting of the Cork Farmers' Club there were eight speakers in favour of the Bill, and only one against it,—whose solitary speech was, of course, the one reported in England,—and thee Club is believed to express the general feeling of the South. From the Liberal side there have been only three serious attempts to pick holes in the Bill, and of these only two demand any careful examination. The Pall Mall Gazette argues against the purchasing clauses on the ground that an Irish tenant wants a landlord to guide him, that he is, in fact, a blind sort of beast, to whom a rider, if heavy, brings safety in compensation ; but the assertion seems to us refuted by the whole history of a country in which for two hundred years landlords have mono- polized power, and have failed to spread among their tenants even passive contentment with their rule. The argument of the Freeman's Journal, the organ of the Tenant-Right farmers,. that the option allowed to the farmers of commuting the- Custom into a lease of thirty-one years will lead to the uni- versal grant of leases binding the tenant too stringently, will in fact renew in another form the insecurity from which the pre- sent agitation has arisen, is a much stronger one. The distrust existing between landlord and tenant in Ireland is still so great, and the tradition of oppression and of subservience still so strong, that an equitable agreement by consent is hardly to be hoped for. The landlord will demand all the power he can get, and the tenant will be forced to yield lest another take his place. The framers of the Act have endeavoured to avoid this danger by inserting in the clause allowing the tender of a lease in lieu of compensation a proviso that it must contain " such terms as the Court may think reasonable ;" but we- are not sure that is quite enough. No particular principle is laid down so as to guide the Court in defining " reasonable," and there is nothing to prevent the Court of Appeal from making the terms exceedingly stringent, or reserving rights to the landlord, such as rights over game, which would either reduce the- lease to a merely nominal value or lead to an incessant bickering. It would not be advisable to stereotype the form of Irish leases for ever by laying down unalterable rules in the Bill itself, nor, we presume, would it be possible to pass through Parliament a clause insisting that the lease should contain_ only three conditions,—prompt payment of rent, prohibition of subletting, and a fine for cultivation " calculated to- impair the value of the land," but we may venture to suggest a. compromise which would be less unacceptable to landlords and. would secure the end desired. Let a model lease, say one of Lord Portsmouth's leases, be inserted in the schedules of the Bill, and the Court be instructed to define a " reasonable lease "" as a lease in fair accordance with the spirit of the one given- in the schedule. And then let the operation of this clause be limited to thirty-one years. That would be ample time for the growth of a customary form of lease which it would be diffi- cult to change without odium, and also for the growth of the new confidence between landlords and tenants which we trust this Bill will ultimately produce.
The objection to the Bill produced by the writer in the Times of Friday who signs himself " H." is even more serious. We are greatly afraid, indeed, that he has hit a blot in the Bill. He has shown very clearly that under its operation it will be the interest of any unscrupulous landlord to evict the holders under £100, 555,000 in number, or half the adult males in Ireland, consolidate their farms into about one-fifth of the number, and then " contract " themselves with the new tenants " out " of the Bill. That process is allowed by the mea- sure whenever the holding exceeds £100 a year, Mr. Glad- stone arguing that a farmer who can take a farm of that size is as free to make a contract as a farmer in England. That is scarcely true while there exists in Ireland so furious a competition for land, but even if it is true, the argument does not meet " H.'s " point, which is not that the hundred- a-year farmer is injured, but that the small tenants will be swept away to make room for him. The Bill, no doubt, pro- vides a considerable fine for the process, but the difference in the value of wheat farms and grazing farms might compensate for that. and the threat of doing it would place a dangerous power in the hands of a rich man. We do not, moreover, quite like to see premiums offered to induce men to escape from a law which ought to be regarded, by the Legislature at all events, as a protection, and would suggest that the right
of escape be withdrawn. If the law is fair for land- lords whose tenants are small men, it is fair for land- lords whose tenants are big men, and there is nothing in freedom of contract for a commodity which is ex remit naturd a monopoly, that should elevate it into an ideal to be sought through any amount of suffering to the people at large. It must not be forgotten that the moment the ballot is introduced the political interest of the landlord in retaining tenants will disappear, and he may find it profitable to turn half-a-dozen parishes into a vast grazing farm without people, poor-rates, or any other nuisance to interfere with the growth of his rent-roll. That would be a terrible result of a Bill the object of which is to convert the Irish tenant-at-will into a sort of copyholder, as little liable to eviction while he behaves fairly and pays his rent as the tenant of a London house.
The serious objections as yet made to the Bill from the other side are not many, the main one, that the purchasing clauses may tempt tenants to threaten the landlord into selling, not appearing to be very strong. They could only drive him to become an absentee, which they do not want to do. But it is understood that Mr. Disraeli has a very ugly bone to pick with the framers of the Act. It breaks, he is said to think, the pledged faith of Parliament. The purchaser of land under the Encumbered Estates' Act was guaranteed his title as against all prior claims, and actually paid cash for all improvements on the land. He did not, indeed, pay it to the true owner, the tenant, but he did to the legal owner, the landlord, and the completeness of the transaction was recognized by Parlia- ment. The Act, however, antedates the tenant's claim for improvements by twenty years, and thus revives the rights which Parliament had pledged itself to destroy. That may be fair to the tenant, but it is not fair to the purchaser, the tenant's real claim being against the former owner, not the present one. That point is clever, and will give a great deal of worry to the framers of the Bill, but we suspect the answer is complete. Everybody buys property subject to any burdens the Legislature may put upon it, and no one property-right can be more " sacred " than another. Take, for instance, the case of Consols. The Government distinctly pledges itself to give £3 a year for each £100 it receives ; but it does not give £3, but £3 minus the income-tax imposed by Parliament. O'Halloran bought a hundred acres at auction last March, and will, under the Bill, have to pay the tenant for his improvements. He bought in a way sanctioned by the laws, and his claim, therefore, to exemption under the Bill is as complete as that of a man who bought under a particular Act, more complete, indeed, for the latter enjoys a special privilege in the way of a title which makes the transfer of his land very cheap. No special Act can be more sacred than the whole body of the laws, and it is they which protect the people in the enjoyment of their property, and, indeed, create the right of property itself; yet we do not scruple on occasion to set them aside. The proprietors of houses in St. James's gave high prices for them, under the belief that they would be rated very low, being houses within a Palace precinct, but that will not debar the Legislature from equalizing the Metropolitan rates. So, too, with much property purchased as extra-parochial, but rated under the Act making the Union the basis of rating. In all these cases a legal pledge was set aside in obedience to the tacit understanding that property must bear the burdens fixed by the Legislature, and there is nothing in the Encumbered Estates' Act which should make its provisions inviolable as against the Law.
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