THE MAGIC OF PROPERTY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2928, 27 April 1910, Page 78

THE MAGIC OF PROPERTY.

THE FKEEHOLD IN IRELAND

By Charles A. Hands, in the Daily Mail. Fifty-five million pounds have been advanced by the British Government for the purpose of placing the Irish farmer in possession jf his land. Between 1885 and 1903, under the Ashbourne Act of the former year, and the Balfour Act of 1891, twenty-five of these fifty-five millions -were advanced in the purchase from landlords jf individual holdings. In November, 1903, the Wyndham Act came into operation, and for the retail system of the purchase of individual holdings substituted the wholesale system of the purchase of entire estates. In the period down to March of last year advances under this act amounted to £30,000,000. In five and a-half years the Wyndham Aco has accomplished more than the preceding acts had in 18 years. At the present time agreements for purchase between landlords and their tenants involving the advance by the State of fifty millions more are waiting to be carried into effect as fast as the State can manage to find the money. Roughly, a third of the agricultural land of Ireland has been transferred to the ownership of the farmers, if not at the cost of the State, at all events by the guarantee of the credit of the State. The landlords have got their money, and have been able to invest it partly in foreign and partly in home securities on terms that give them a better, safer, and easier return for their money than they were able to extract as rent for their land. lne farmers have got their land, and are paying for it is in purchase instalments less than formerly they were paying or owing as rent. The State is getting its money back. Under the Ashbourne Act of 1885 the arrears of instalments unpaid on Maxell 1, 1909, amounted only to £3582 due from 342 purchasers. At the same date exactly a year ago the arrears of purchase instalments under the Balfour Act of 1891

amounted to no more than £3280 owed *>y 365 owners. Under ■ the Wyndham Act repayment ha.s been proportionately to its more extensive operations even more satisfactory. On December 1, 1908, there was due from 60,549 farmer-owners purchase instalments amounting to £734,412. By March 51 following the whole of this amount had been paid with the exception of £12,727, which 1743 -purchasers still owed. During the year the State received all of this but £3601, for which 463 purchasers were still in default. So that, generally speaking, under the operations of these three acts, the former landlords have got their money, the farmers have got their land, and the State has got its purchase instalments. —Significant Facts.— Irish land purchase has cost England dear, but unquestionably its results have been all to the good in Ireland. Including the operations of the past year close upon 300,000 struggling farmers have become freeholders of their farms. As many more are waiting their turns to receive the same benefit, inspired with hope and enthusiasm by the prospect. Here in Dublin men of all* classes and parties —Unionists, Nationalists, irreconcilable extremists of both sides, detached observers, impartial civil servants —are agreed that in every respect the country is the better and more prosperous for the change. The individual farmer is a better farmer and .a better man for the ownership of his land. It is not merely the advantage of paying less in purchase instalments than he formerly paid or was unable to pay in rent. The magic of property touches his imagination, his sense of responsibility, and ambition. Land under the hand of its owner yields not only produce, but character, self-reliance, contentment. Men who as tenants were depending upon politics and violence to protect them from eviction and other consequences of bad and thriftless farming are now, as owners, relying with success upon their own efforts and industry. They are poor still, as every small farmer is poor, but the trifling amount of their unpaid purchase annuities proves that they are getting a living. Ban lie, shopkeepers, agricultural implement makers, all corroborate the land statistics. Ireland, in the districts where land purchase is in operation, is in a condition of improved prosperity. But the profits of the Freeman’s Journal, as represented ir. the last balance sheet, which is not likely to have put the worst face upon the position, have fallen to a beggarly £2OO a year. From an annual profit- of '£Booo before the Wyndham Act car do operation the business of the giv rgan of the Home Rule movement has shrunk and shrunk until its balance has reached almost the vanishing point. When Irish agriculture was at its most distressful, politics were booming and the Freeman prospered. Now that general prosperity is increasing, the Freeman has to struggle to live. The great paper has lost nothing of its fire, eloquence, and enthusiasm. Only its profits have declined. The fact reflects, so they say here in Dublin, the changed political conditions which have been created in Ireland by land purchase. The Freeman’s Journal resented, criticised, and opposed Mr Wyndhara’s Bill with all its bitter force. Because that bill was an English Conservative measure, offered frankly as a substitute for Home Rule, the Nationalist Party organ refused to see its merits, and prophesied for it nothing but disaster. The scheme has prospered, and the news paper has suffered for the failure of its prophesies. That the Freeman's Journal will yet recover- its lost position' and enjoy its shar j in the increasing general prosperity need not be doubted, but for the present it is paying for the fact that one-third of the land of Ireland is subject to changed economic conditions, to which it has not yet adapted its political views. The Worn-out Creed.— The great Nationalist Party is in as bad a financial condition as' the great Nationalist newspaper. It, too, clings to its old politics and its old methods, unmindful of the fact that over a third of the land of Ireland the Irish question has undergone a great change. To 300,000 farmer-landowners politics which were directed against landowners have now neither meaning nor appeal. There is a slackening in the Home Rule movement now that Home Rule has no longer its agrarian basis. The Nationalist Party still controls the machine, but the machine does not work so easily. Both on. the part of Unionists and Nationalists in Ireland a more moderate and conciliatory spirit is manifested in political discussions. Five years ago there wa. one public man in Ireland who, outside of politics, was devoting himself to doing some practical good for agricultural Ireland, and for Sir Horace Plunkett neither Unionist nor Nationalist had a good word to say. He was assaulted and insulted by all the factions of both sides. To-day there is no one but has praise and gratitude to express for Sir Horace Plunkett’s untiring and self-sacrificing services to practical, payable agriculture. The Nationalist cause is weakening, and the Nationalist Party is disintegrating. Mr O’Brien’s fierce hostility to Mr Redmond is, it is said, not more weakening than the growth of Mr Devlin’s authority within the organisation. The parish priest remains with the local branch of the Nationalist Party, but the Roman Catholic Church is resentful of its claim to authority, and Mr Healy owed his election to the support of the high dignitaries of the Church. The expenditure by Great Britain >f thirty millions of money during five air! half years upon the' betterment of the conditions of the Irish voters must have had

its effect upon Irish politics. Mr O'Brien recognises in its effects some of the benefits wihich Home Rule promised, and to that extent finds it worthy of praise. Mr Redmond sees in the benefits which land purchase has brought a weakening of the Home Rule appeal. In 10 years' time, say lookers-on, even, if land purchase only proceeds at the £5,000.000 a year rate, the demand of the Irish agriculturist will be for preference over foreign producers in the English markets, and Home Rule will have become an empty and meaningless phrase. The universal hostility to the Budget is due in the country to the fact that whisky is an agricultural product. It is made of Irish barley. The land taxes threaten 300,000 newly-created Irish landlords, and as many more Irish farmers who are looking to become landlords. Mr Redmond's acceptance of the Budget as a means to the veto as a step towards Home Rule has no appeal, for the Budget exaggerates the burdens of Irish agriculture which Home Rule promises to remove. These axe my views, gathered in Dublin.