THE IRISH FEAR FOR THE LAND BILL.
WE trust that the debate of Thursday will have removed the fear which seems to have taken possession of the tenant-farmers of Ireland, that the Government are so bent on conciliating the Tory Opposition that they are ready to mini- mise or even whittle away the substantial benefit which their Irish Land Bill had promised to confer on the Irish agricultur- ists. No one who really knows Mr. Gladstone would have had any fear that he would either mutilate the practical efficiency of such a measure as this, only in order to make it slip more easily through the meshes of Tory prejudice, or that he would fail to see.'where a mutilation of its efficiency was really threatened. But Thursday's debate has, we venture to hope, put an end to these fears. By accepting Mr. Charles Russell's amendment. as modified by Mr. Cartwright, and describing as a fair rent such a rent as, in the opinion of the Court, after hearing the parties and " having regard to the interest of the landlord and tenant respectively," and after considering all the circumstances of the case, holding, and district, a solvent tenant would undertake to pay one year with another,—Mr. Gladstone has removed the fear which prevailed very generally in Ireland that the omission of the detailed directions which the Government propose to drop out of Clause 7 will be prejudicial to the interests of the tenant, and exempt the Court from taking fully into consideration what the tenant's interest in the holding I really is. The words, " Having regard to the interests of the landlord and tenant respectively," really recognise emphati- cally the fact of such a partnership of interest between them as it is the object of the whole Bill to reduce to something like distinct shape, and to strengthen with the character of a legal obligation. But even this amendment, which simply puts in evidence what it is the object of the whole Bill to enforce, was not the most important of the incidents of Thurs- day's debate. Mr. Gladstone's concession on the subject of leases was the greatest proof that he could have given of the absolute bona fides of his attitude towards the Irish farmer. He declines, very rightly, to interfere with the rent provided for in a lease, where the lease is otherwise to hold good. He con- siders this to be a matter of strict contract with which it would be demoralising to interfere. But he consents to allow the Court to consider any case which can be presented to it to show that between 1870 and the passing of this Bill, a lease has been extorted inequitably, that is, on terms virtually inconsistent with the provisions of the Land Act of 1870. The Court is to have power altogether to quash any lease which it regards as unfairly squeezed out of the tenant by threats inconsistent with the fair equitable meaning of the Act of 1870, and so to replace the tenant in the same position in which he would have been if he were still a tenant from year to year, and without any lease at all. Of course such cases will be exceptional and very few. But the most moderate of the Irish Members sincerely believe that they exist, and think it unfair that tenants out of whom a long lease had been inequitably screwed between 1870 and 1881, by moral coercion, should now be put at a great disadvantage, as compared with tenants-at-will who had accepted no lease. And Mr. Gladstone admits the unfairness. Only he says, if such cases exist, those who think themselves placed at a disadvantage by an unfairly extorted lease, must give up the advantages as well as the disadvantages of what was thus extorted, and must return, if they can prove that unfair pressure was put upon them, to the position of tenants-at-will. They must not profit by those incidents of the lease which they like, and yet reject that part of the lease which they dis- like. If the lease was unfairly extorted at all, the whole contract is unfair, and that contract must be quashed. It would, be simply unjust to give the Court power to lower the rent of a lease, i.e., to take away what is to the landlord's advantage, and yet hold the landlord to all those concessions of the lease which are to the tenant's advantage. This is so clear, that we cannot imagine even a plausible apology for such a one-sided dealing with leases. Still, what Mr. Gladstone conceded,—that where an unfair lease can be shown to have been extorted by moral coercion tending to deprive a tenant of what the Act of 1870 had given him a positive interest in, that lease may be altogether quashed by the Court,—ought to prove, we think, to Ireland that he is not afraid of encountering Tory opposition, when he believes that that opposition is hostile to the principle of tenant-right. The concession may, and probably will, apply to very few cases, but it is obvious, from the tone taken by Sir Stafford Northcote and his followers in relation to it, that it is one to which they are vehemently opposed. Nor is it only Thursday's debate which ought to convince Irishmen that the Government are in earnest. Tuesday's and Wednesday's debates, on Mr. W. H. Smith's amendments on the clause for raising the scale of compensa- tion for disturbance, proved that the Government, having made up their own minds concerning what is most reasonable, are not to be stirred from their position by the taunts of the Tory Party. We believe that those Irish Members who, like Mr. Shaw, have declared that nothing has yet happened to deprive the Bill of its beneficent purpose for Ireland, are strictly within the mark. The Bill will emerge from Com- mittee not less efficient for the purpose of protecting the Irish tenant than it was at first, and, moreover, better, simpler, and stronger.
We do not wonder at the extreme importance attached by the Irish farmers to the determination of a " fair rent," for on that Seventh Clause will depend, no doubt, the whole future operation of the other portions of the Bill,—the figure of the rents at which copyholds will be acquired by many Irish
farmers under the tenth and eleventh clauses of the Bill, and
the price at which the freehold will be acquired by many others under the nineteenth and following clauses. Of course, it is of the first moment to the Irish farmer that if he is to become a copyholder, he should become a copyholder at a reasonable rent ; and that if he is to become a freeholder, he should purchase the freehold at a reasonable rate, which rate will, of course, depend in very great degree on the ostensible
annual value of the land he holds. It is this which makes the seventh clause of such vast importance. By that clause the way is paved not only for a satisfactory relation between those tenants who wish to continue mere tenants, with those landlords who wish to continue true landlords, but also for the transition of a great many tenants into copyholders, and a great many more into freeholders. Still, it is well to remember that, important as the seventh clause is in this respect, inas- much as it will probably furnish the data for determining at what rents copyholders are to have their copyholds, and at what price the freeholders are to buy their freeholds, it is not to be expected that this seventh clause will remain as important many years hence, as it will be for a few years after the passing of the Bill. If the Bill effects its pur- pose, the seventh clause will dwindle in importance, after it has governed the transactions of the next few years. Hence while we regard anything which is necessary to determine the action of the Court during the first years of the operation of the Act, as a matter of great moment, we altogether discredit that fear which seems to have taken hold of the Irish farmers that even after a few years, the constitution of the Court may be so vitally changed by the appointment of Judges with a prejudice against the tenant-farmer, that the good effected at first may be again undone. In the first place, that fear is chimerical, because a British Court of law hardly can throw off the yoke of its own precedents. Even new Judges must recognise and fall in with the traditions of the Court in which they sit. But, in the second place, such changes, even if made after a time, and even if so made as to alter the ten- dency of the judicial decisions as to " fair rents," would be, we believe, too late to injure the great mass of Irish tenants. What we at least expect, is that, so soon as the rent has been fairly settled, the transformation of tenancies-at-will into " fixed " tenancies, or into freeholds, will begin to work, and will proceed very rapidly. Tenants will be eager for such a change, but hardly less eager than the landlords, so that, in the course of a very few years, the latter portions of this Bill will have had so much effect, that the constitution of the Court determining the judicial rent will no longer be a matter of the first importance. Get the Court fairly constituted and fairly set in motion at first, and not only will it be very diffi- cult to alter its procedure after a few years, but it will soon be too late to alter it to the injury of the more thrifty and saga- cious of the tenants of Ireland. The fear that the constitu- tion of the Court may be altered in a reactionary sense, some years hence is, we are convinced, a chimerical fear, both because it will hardly be possible to effect such a change, and because such a change, even if possible, would be hardly worth the while of reactionary politicians.
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