MR. REID'S ARGUMENT AGAINST THE CRIMES BILL.
WE at least have no prejudice in favour of Irish landlords. From the beginning of the agrarian struggle, which has now lasted almost without a break for eighteen years, the Spectator has admitted that the Irish tenant had serious grievances ; that he, and not the landlord, had over most of the country created the agricultural value of the soil ; and that he was, in consequence, entitled to lower rents than are customary either in Scotland or England. We have, moreover, constantly expressed a conviction which we strongly entertain, that Ireland is, owing to economic conditions, agriculturally a poor country ; that it is naturally unfitted to the production of cereals, and that it is at once badly drained and overcropped, the result being that the English analogy which unconsciously guides us all in estimating values, is usually unfair. We have, moreover, never shut our eyes to the fact that, what- ever its origin, the principle of tenant-right had always been acknowledged, if not by Irish law, at any rate by Irish custom. Finally, we have admitted, what is so constantly denied here, that a tenure is frequently good or bad because it is in accord or disaccord with the history, habits, and natural genius of a people ; and that when so considered, the English tenure, which is almost unknown except among Englishmen, cannot in Ireland be pronounced a good one. We have therefore supported strenuously every Bill which tended to con- cede either fixity of tenure or equitable reduction of rent, and even argued, in the face of strong remonstrances from our own friends, that the principle of Mr. Parnell's Land Bill of 1886 was sound, and that it should be licked into shape instead of being summarily rejected. We are therefore entitled to a hearing even from Home-rulers, when we protest against the argument em- ployed by Mr. R. T. Reid on Tuesday night, and which the more moderate Home-rulers repeat every day. If that argument is just, then every man with a genuine grievance, even if it be only a grievance from overcharging, is entitled, in his own defence, to set aside moral considerations, and defy the law by force. Mr. Reid says that, according to the Report of the Cowper Com- mission, the value of agricultural produce in Ireland has sunk by about 20 per cent. ; that, consequently, fair rents have become, on the theory of dual proprietorship, unfair rents ; and that combinations to resist payment are inevitable, and ought not to be interfered with. If they are inter- fered with, the tenants who cannot pay the rents and will not quit the land will resort in self-defence to means which he deplores,—namely, Secret Societies, murder, conspiracy, and outrage generally. To us, who support the agrarian side so far as it can be made consistent with common honesty, that proposition appears monstrous ; and as we are certain that Mr.
• Reid puts it forward in full good faith, we will just say why. It is an assertion that a partner in a concern who has received his legal share of proceeds, but has not received enough to live on comfortably, or, it may be, in that freedom from suffering to which his industry entitles him, has a right to coerce his partner by illegal combinations into giving him more. He has a right to stop his partner's share en passant ; to refuse to leave the partnership ; to isolate his partner's family from all human aid, even that of the undertaker ; to punish by violence any one who makes to the other partner an offer to take over his own share. He has a right, that is, in Irish phrase, to appeal to the National League, to adopt the "Plan of Campaign," and to boycott all underbidders, the word "boycotting" covering all the " sanctions " of that tremendous penalty. If this is not Mr. Reid's contention, what is it The Crimes Bill does nothing except make the acts we have mentioned easily punishable, after they have been proved in the regular way before tribunals which are no more arbitrary than are the Stipendiary Magistrates in London. Would Mr. Reid justify similar conduct in any other relation of life? And if not, why does he make an exception for the tenant, who not only has an appeal to the Land Court, which no other debtor has, but has also an appeal to Parliament so powerful and so certain of a hearing, that the Conservative Party has thrown precedent to the winds, and introduced a Bill under which, if the tenant cannot pay, he can get his arrears wiped off, and his rent reduced to the fair limit by order of a County-Court ? Grant that that Bill will not work, and still Mr. Reid has only to draw up one that will, and it will be accepted, the very desire of the Govern- ment, or of the Unionists upon whose support it depends, being that unfair rents, rents beyond the capacity of the tenant to pay or the soil to yield, should be no longer levied. Even a clause delaying evictions until cases could be heard would, if the Liberals chose, be hurried through without any swim demur. It is easy to say the law should not ruin a tenant ; but people are ruined by judgments obtained in Court in hundreds every month ; nor, if debte are not to be debts of honour, can there be any remedy. Would Mr. Reid think it wrong to prevent the " victims " of the Bankruptcy Law from threatening or bludgeoning or boycotting their creditors, and the bailiffs of the Court, and even the policemen who protect the bailiffs? We cannot imagine where he finds his distinction between those cases, unless it be in the partial proprietorship of the tenant ; but admitting that to the full, what possible right can that give him to coerce his partner out of his fixed share? Grant even that Mr. Reid holds the whole tenure bad, because there are fixed shares which ought to be fluctuating shares, and still that is reason for a new law, not for a resort to violence.
But, answers Mr. Reid, in all cases of criminal legislation we must think of consequences. We do not /mirth an attempt to murder like a murder, though morally it is quite as bad, because if we do, the murderer will be tempted to carry his crime through, and so suppress the evidence. Under this Bill, however, we punish illegal resis- tance so severely, that we tempt those who would resist to fall back on still darker means of protection against eviction, and, in fact, compel them to substitute assas- sination and arson for boycotting and threats. We cannot accept that argument. It is entirely opposed to all human experience, which shows that the steady administration of the law reduces the proclivity to all crime, and develops in the most anarchical community what we may call a legal con- science often so strong that purely law-made crimes like smuggling grow to be considered shameful and degrading. If, indeed, the Crimes Bill were really "ferocious," as Mr. Reid once called it in his otherwise reasonable speech, if, for example, boycotting were punished with death or penal servitude for life, there might be something in the argu- ment. Irish moonlighters are cruel, and might be tempted to commit murder rather than to spare the witnesses against them by stopping short of it ; but the case supposed does not exist. The Crimes Bill does not increase penalties at all, but only makes the law clear, and provides means for carrying it out other than the juries which have refused, out of sympathy or from terror, to do their duty. That the Bill should be attacked as an encroachment upon liberty, we can understand, for there are many men who believe that to be tried by a jtuy jean inherent right of man, or at least analogous to his right to be heard before he is condemned; but to declare that it tempts men to crime is to employ mere rhetoric of the most vulgar kind. Such an argument assumes that if an Irishman is, for any reason except an order from the National League, compelled to quit his land, or to pay an over- high rent for it, his freedom of will is thereby suspended, and he is forced into violent crime. Why is he forced, any more than any one else who suffers severely from an overcharge? There is no antecedent probability of such crimes ; and the evidence is wholly against Mr. Reid, for under the Act of 1882, which was in principle the same as this Bill, though no doubt more severe, Ireland sank back into temporary order. It is when crime is unpunishable in Ireland that crime grows rampant, and the object of the Crimes Bill —its sole object—is to make crime punishable. It is possible, of course, that the Bill may fail, and that with the tenantry maddened as they have been by perpetual denunciations of the tyranny of exacting rent, there may be an epidemic of murder ; but even if so, the Bill will remain a just and right attempt to restore true order. All able jurists maintain, and Mr. Reid would, if he were talking of any country but Ireland, himself maintain, that there are occasions on which a Government must act regardless of consequences, must protect the innocent from oppression, whatever happens afterwards ; and surely this is an occasion. If, as Mr. Reid implicitly admits, the National League does by violence prevent certain classes of Irishmen from doing what they legally have a right to do, the Government is simply bound to liberate those classes from that illegal oppression. It is fulfilling its duty, and that with singular mildness, by means of a Bill the whole object and aim of which is to allow the Courts to fulfil their function of carrying out the ordinary law.
The Bill punishes nobody for not paying rent, but only for preventing other people from paying it. If Mr. Reid thinks that the word " conspiracy " would cover innocent acts of combination, such, for instance, as an agreement to throw up farms, let him move a clause restricting its meaning ; or if he distrusts the Resident Magistrates, let him demand that they shall all be men learned in the law. Those would be improvements ; but to condemn the Bill because if it passes the tenants must, in default of other means of redress, put the landlords or agents to death, is only to make an attempt to terrify the Legislature from performing a clear duty. Suppose the threat justified by facts—which we do not believe, for we have not yet lost all confidence in Irish con- sciences or in Irish dislike to be hanged—and still it is better that men should die than that the law should be permanently set at naught. Murder is a terrible crime, probably the highest crime; but if punished, it does not work the horrible effect of anarchy. Many societies have survived the vendetta, but none can survive continued and permitted lawlessness.
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