IRISH LAND PURCHASE AND THE UNION.
TF the legislative union, the financial union, and the administrative union between Ireland and Great Britain are to be maintained, if we are to continue a United Kingdom with a common purse, if, in a word, the incorporating Union is to be upheld, then by all means let the richer parts of the Kingdom help the poorer parts. Let us in that case complete the work which we have begun in Irish land purchase and convert the whole farming population of Ireland into an owning and occupy- ing peasantry. It is a great work, and one from which no Unionist will desire to flinch, even though the expense may be great, and even though the pledging of British credit may have far-reaching financial consequences. The people of the south of Ireland may from many points of view dislike the incorporation with the rest of the British Isles, but nevertheless they ought to be allowed to reap its advantages to the full. If, however, the legislative, financial, and administrative Union is to be broken, if we are to abolish the idea of the common purse, if the incorporating Union is to come to an end, and if Ireland is to be placed in the position of a self- governing colony (enjoying, however, a tribute from the central body), then we say unhesitatingly that it is a monstrous injustice to saddle the English and Scottish taxpayers with a further tribute and to pledge their credit for purely Irish concerns. For ourselves—and here we believe we speak for the whole Unionist Party—we would not for one moment have consented to the great sacrifice not only of money, but of strict economic principle involved in Irish land purchase, if we had not believed that the legislative and administrative Union and the common purse would be preserved intact. If Ireland is to have not only her own Parliament and her own administration, but her own treasury and her own customs system, then unquestion- ably Ireland should provide from her own resources and by means of her own credit whatever sums she needs for land purchase. Except that it would involve a breach of faith with the public creditors of the United Kingdom, the whole of the responsibility for Irish land purchase ought under the Home Rule scheme to be transferred to the Irish Exchequer. Since, however, that cannot be done without a breach of faith, England and Scotland are unfortunately obliged to shoulder this heavy obligation. To increase it, however, would, as we have said, be a monstrous injustice to the taxpayers cf Scotland and England. We might as well ask the English and Scottish taxpayers to pledge their credit to buy the land held by the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Hudson Bay Company, and other trading bodies in Canada in order to cover the Dominion more rapidly with land-owning farmers. The existence of the common purse and the incorporating Union is the sole justification for the policy of land purchase by means of British credit and British grants in aid.
In view of these considerations, considerations which in our opinion are imperative, we hold that it will be the duty of the Unionist Party, no matter how great the temptation to be generous to Ireland, to use every endeavour to insist on the maxim, " No Union, no Purchase." In dealing with the Home Rule Bill that must be the guiding principle of our party. We say this not out of spite, not out of any desire to be vindictive, but purely on grounds of justice to the British taxpayer, already so deeply involved and so unjustly treated by the Home Rule Bill. We trust, then, that when the Irish Land Purchase Bill, which has only been put into the shop window for show this Session, is reintroduced next Session, the Unionist leaders will meet the second reading by a motion declaring them- selves in favour of a generous scheme of land purchase provided the Union is maintained, but insisting that if the Union is to be abandoned Parliament has no right to impose this special burden upon the Scottish and English taxpayers, or to pledge their credit—credit which the country is now discovering is by no means unlimited—to concerns which under Home Rule Ireland is to regulate for herself. Ireland and the Nationalist Party must be taught that they cannot have it both ways. They cannot, where it may seem advantageous to them, have a Treasury of their own, and, where the advantage appears to incline the other way, keep a common purse with us.
Holding the strong view we do as to committing our- selves to providing another sixty millions for Irish land purchase at the very moment when the existence of the Union hangs in the balance, we do not feel called upon, until the Home Rule question has been decided, to discuss in detail the Government's proposals. We may say, how- ever, that on the whole we find ourselves far more in agreement with the criticisms of Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Healy, and even with those of Mr. Redmond, than with the proposals of Mr. Birrell. Speaking generally, we think it would be safer and juster, even though it involves a considerable extra charge, to apply the Wyndham Act than to try new terms of purchase, terms which will have the disadvantage of making those on whom they are forced feel a sense of grievance. If some alteration of the conditions of the Wyndham Act is shown to be necessary owing to the deplorable fall in English credit since the year 1903, we suggest that the right and reasonable change is to extend the number of years during which the tenant should pay his instalments. To require payment for another five or seven years would be no great injury to the tenant when the term is already so long. Such an addition would make the provision of a. sinking fund very much easier. For the tenant-in-being, indeed, such an addition to the annuity period would be no personal grievance at all. In all probability it would merely mean for him a slight deduction of the value of the interest which would pass either by inheritance or by sale to his successor. The increase in the number of years during which the annuity was to be paid would certainly not make what we may term a sensational difference, and consequently a sensational grievance, when compared with the period in the Wyndham Act. Finally, there is no disadvantage, but possibly an advantage, in a complete freehold status being reached at different times by different classes of purchasers.
Before we leave the subject of Irish land purchase we may point out that all we have urged from the point of view of the English and Scottish taxpayers—the vast majority of whom, remember, are men as poor as, and often a great deal poorer than, the Irish tenant farmers— applies with still greater force to the last of the proposals which Mr. Birrell includes in his scheme, though, of course, it has nothing to do with land purchase. We mean the provision of £1,000,000 for labourers' cottages in Ireland. With the policy of providing such cottages, granted that the common purse remains, we have no small sympathy, for we admit that under the Irish land system the position of the labourer is a very hard one, especially in the matter of housing. Still, the fact remains that you cannot imagine a more purely domestic Irish concern than the provision of labourers' cottages. If it is an outrage on the English and Scottish taxpayer to dissolve the common purse when it is con- venient to Ireland to do so, while retaining it when that course happens to be convenient to Ireland as in the matter of land purchase, it is even more of an outrage to demand the common purse in the matter of providing cottages. Here, indeed, we reach the very summit of the absurdities and unfairnesses created by the Home Rule Bill plus Mr. Birrell's new Purchase Bill. If both Bills passed, we should not only be paying a subsidy to provide cottages in Ireland, and so be requisitioned, as it were, by Ireland to help her in her purely Irish concerns, but we should actually have forty-two Irish members coming here to decide the question of what we ought to do in England in the matter of providing Cottages for English labourers. It is quite possible that owing to the working of the party system it would lie with these forty-two gentlemen to determine the lines upon which this purely domestic concern of Britain should be settled. And of course they would cast their votes in accord- ance with instructions received from Mr. Redmond and his Government in Dublin. Now unless Irishmen suddenly lost their power of bargaining we may be quite sure that those instructions would not be issued on grounds of general philanthropy, but for value received. Is this the last word in Liberal statesmanship ? Is this the substitute that is to be offered to us for the incorporating Union—a Union which, whatever may be its demerits, at any rate offers no such folly and no such injustice as that we have just described ?
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