TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE FORGOTTEN POINT IN THE IRISH LAND QUESTION.
TSOLATED ministers, Lord Hartington, the Earl of Claren- don, Mr. Cardwell, have all been firing off speeches on the Irish Land question, and all of them, while in greater or less degrees—Lord Clarendon more, and Lord Hartington decidedly less—appreciating fairly enough the essence of the pecuniary grievance to be remedied, omitting to appreciate one very im- portant grievance, which seems to us to be pretty well at the root of the political difficulty. The only matter that these ministers are thinking about in their respective speeches is how to prevent the landlord from "feloniously," as Lord Clarendon says, though legally, robbing the tenant of what had been added by the tenant's capital and the tenant's industry to the value of the holding. Mr. Cardwell reiterates precisely the same doctrine. The problem, he says, is how to prevent a land law which contemplates the landlord's making all the permanent improvements himself, and leaving nothing of this sort to the tenant, from doing the grossest injustice when applied to a condition of things such as exists in Ireland, where in multitudes of holdings the tenant makes all the improvements, and the land- lord none of them. The problem, in other words, as it appears to Lord Clarendon and Mr. Cardwell, and still more as it appears to Lord Hartington, who thinks of little beyond warning the Irish that blessed are they who expect no- thing, is how to discover a tenants' right which shall not be, as Lord Palmerston said, a landlords' wrong. Lord Harting- ton is even very uneasy in his mind about the agricultural labourer. The tenant-right, he fears, will be a labourers' wrong, no less than a landlords'. The Foreign Minister and the Postmaster-General are absolutely agreed on one point,— to call for help to the Conservatives in putting on a drag to check the velocity with which this question is moving. Lord Clarendon exhorts the various parties to consider the matter in no party light, just as Lord Hartington did a month ago. And in his recent speech at Lismore Lord Hartington insists, with something like asperity to the farmers, that their interest in the matter is the interest of a class, and by no means an impartial class,—as if he had expressly intended to warn them that one member at least of the Cabinet would resist their demands to the last. Mr. Cardwell is more cautious than his two colleagues. He does not intimate, as they do, that it will be necessary to appeal more or less to the Con- servatives for help in resisting Irish claims. But he limits his view of the mischief to be remedied absolutely to the one point,—the guarantee of the tenant against legal spoliation. Now, though this is a very important point indeed, — possibly, the most important point of all, inasmuch as it has been this legal plunder of tenants here and there which has created so deep a sense of wrong in the Irish imagi- nation,—it is a very narrow view of the Irish difficulty which regards it as the only point. If we only guarantee to those tenants who have made improvements the full value of those improvements, we do indeed do all that the common laws of honesty require, but we utterly evade the principal political question involved, whether or not policy does not require that in a country where the vast majority of the people are in some sense identified with the land,—many of them as small farmers, alarge number more as agricultural labourers, who hope to become small farmers,—we should leave wholly to mere private contract the determination of the conditionsunder which the career of the farmer is to be carried on. The problem seems to us one not merely of legal honesty, not merely even of economic science, but in a very great measure also of poli- tical wisdom. There were, according to the last full returns in Ireland, about 540,000 separate occupiers of land in Ireland, some of them holding more than one farm, so that the number of holdings was nearly 600,000. The number of agricultural labourers, on the other hand, was probably above this number. The farmers' families make up not much under half the total population of Ireland, and the families of the agricultural labourers probably an equal proportion. For a population thus living by agriculture it seems obvious that a very different policy is needed, from what is needed in a country where the principal careers are opened by great towns. If we do not give the Irish people every chance in agriculture, we cannot even suppose that their legitimate ambitions—that need for a prospect of something better which every energetic and lively people needs—will be satisfied.
The main question is,—Can the law do anything to guarantee ' a fair career to the agricultural peasant,—anything which will neither be unfair to the landlord, nor ultimately detrimental to. the peasant himself ? Now, practically this question has solved■ itself in all the prosperous parts of Ireland, for a custom, almost as strong as law, has grown up, and this custom does not merely ensure the tenant against legal plunder, but it ensures. him more or less a fair chance as well. No law will be adequate,. politically adequate, to the necessity of the case, which simply compels landlords to pay the full value of improvements, if it does not, at the very least, secure from the first the position of a tenant, so as to raise him above mere caprice in the landlord. It is absolutely necessary, doubtless, to give those tenants who have, in fact, made their holdings what they are, who have so transformed the property they rent as to make it a new property, some fixity of tenure corresponding to the importance of the change they have effected. When the tenant has, in effect, made the property, the rent reserved to. the landlord might fairly be turned into a rent-charge, and the tenant recognized as what he really is, the equitable owner. But that, we maintain, is not nearly enough for the political evil. It is quite as essential to secure the tenant who has hitherto done little or nothing, a fair encouragement to invest his capital in his farm, and improve its value. We want to give the ignorant, and timid, and dependent farmers hope, as well as to give the intelligent, and bold, and successfule farmers the due reward of their services. We want to encour- age the thriftless to save, as well as to protect the thrifty who have saved. We want to identify the interests of the petty farmer with the interests of the Government, as well as. those of the opulent and intelligent farmer. Of the 540,000'. tenant-farmers in Ireland, no less than 272,000,—say, exactly- half—hold less than 15 acres, and about 122,000 more hold' less than 30 acres. We have no means of knowing how many of these are farmers who have greatly improved their farms., But it is pretty certain that if the Government only contem- plates ensuring full compensation for permanent improve- ments, the measure will affect the larger farmers very much more than the smaller,—that it will vitally interest and do- something to satisfy, perhaps, a third of the whole tenant- farmers' interest ; but that it will affect far less the greater number of small farmers,—on whose satisfaction, however, and on whose loyalty, the political tranquillity of Ireland depends, far more than on those of the class above them.
Now, what possible reason can be given why the State should not interfere to abolish tenancy-at-will, and secure at- the very least a fair start and trial even for this class of farmers without merits,—who cannot fall back on the doctrine of justification by works already effected, but who are really struggling for a fair chance ? Why should not the State assume at the very least a minimum term for all occu- pancies not otherwise determined by a written contract be- tween the parties ? It is absurd to say that this would be a. gross injustice to the landlords. The State always assumes the right to interfere to settle the terms of any monopoly which it grants ;—and land is as much a monopoly when. granted to a landlord as when granted to a railway company. Of course, if the landlord's pecuniary interest in the matter is to be seriously injured, he ought to have compensation ; but no one could maintain for a moment that a law assuming a given. term of years as the minimum tenancy, unless different pro- visions were expressly provided in a written contract, would injure the landlords as a class. The State would not, indeed,. prescribe any such law without believing that it would be beneficial to all the interests involved, landlords no less than tenants,—labourers, who most flourish with the prosperity of the farmer, no less than tenants; and every one sees the terrific results to both tenants and landlords in the existing state of things,—the landlords fearing for their lives, the tenants fear- ing for their properties. It seems to us as clear that the tenancies-at-will have been a fearful mischief to the whole of Ireland, except where custom has turned them into some- thing virtually very different, as that the tenant-farmers themselves chafe bitterly under the insecurity of their tenure. It is the soreness of tenants-at-will that has given rise to the very sombre and fatal attempts to snake the landlords feel themselves landlords-at-will,—arbitrary evictions being answered by arbitrary murders. No class in society can possibly be benefited by this chronic feud. Any measure which should put an end to it would be an equal blessing to all. It is now abundantly evident that the smaller tenants of Ireland are entirely incompetent to the task of con- tracting on anything like equal terms with their landlords. It
is as ridiculous to assert that the law ought to leave this matter to be settled by the natural 'higgling of the market,' as it would be to denounce interference with the track system on the same ground. If the Irish peasant is to have a fair chance in the only career open to him, the law must interfere to lay down the general rule, in the absence of explicit modifications of -that rule formally agreed to by both parties. Indeed, we would by no means say that, in the present condition of the Irish peasant, the law should not absolutely disallow the yearly tenancies and all tenancies under a certain term, if they are likely to be forced upon him by irresistible moral influence. We interfere, if not in the same way, yet on _precisely the same principle, in the English factories with respect to hours of labour and the education of the children. We interfere on precisely the same principle in -regulating the conditions on which mines are worked and ships are navigated. To leave a system which has worked so badly for the whole community, which has set class against 'class, sympathy against law, even wealth against government, —witness the remarkable testimony in our correspondence to- day—untouched, and to rectify only the pecuniary robbery -which the Irish land law sanctions, would be, we do not scruple to say, a fiasco of statesmanship. The evil which -Lord Clarendon and Mr. Cardwell so freely admit, but suppose to be the only evil, must, of course, be broadly dealt with. -Both parties have recognized the grievance. We hope the -remedy will come in some bolder and wiser shape than a mere compensation for improvements. We trust that, at least in those cases—and they are not few—where the tenant has made the property and the owner has contributed little or -nothing, the State will recognize fully the justice of the case, and give the equitable proprietor his due without confiscating any real claim of the legal proprietor. But if the reform of the land law stops here, the political reconstruction for which we are looking will not be attempted. Unless tenancy-at- will virtually ceases in Ireland, and at least a certain period of fixity is secured to every tenant who does not expressly surrender that right, without liability to eviction except in case of his failure to pay the rent agreed upon, the Ministry will have surrendered all claim to true statesmanship for Ireland. What Lord Clarendon and Mr. -Cardwell sketch out would be accepted of course, just as -a bill to rectify short measures and false weights would be accepted; and, in fact, it would be nothing more. What is wanted to touch the root of political discontent is something -beyond that—something that will terminate for ever the reign of caprice in the landlord, and the necessity for extra- legals customs to protect the tenant. The aristocratic section .of the Cabinet are trying to divert our attention from this -sine guti non of a great measure. We do not believe that they -will succeed. We are quite sure that if they do succeed in thus dwarfing the proposals of the Government, they will forfeit 'the most brilliant opportunity which any administration ever bad of redeeming a people and uniting an empire.
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