AN ENGLISH JOURNAL ON THE IRISH LAND QUESTION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 396, 12 November 1880, Page 17

AN ENGLISH JOURNAL ON THE IRISH LAND QUESTION.

The following article, which may be regarded as a sign of the times hs4 appeared in the Nottingham Daily Express :—: — ' Are the Lords glad of their handiwork ? Do they rejoice over their defeat of the small bill that was to prevent Irish landlords from taking advantage of the Irish famine to evict their tenants without compensation ? Have they improved the value of the rights of property in whose name they have spurned the claims of a people and risked the peace and safety of a nation 1 Probably they are content with what they have done, and the eviction of hundreds of tenants who cfcn't pay rent because crops have failed, and who can't claim compensation for their improvements because they can't pay rent may aeem a proper outcome of the position of landlord and tenant and the rights of property in land— provided the land be in Ireland In England landlords are checked by well-established tenant right, by public opinion, and by consideration and concord between class and class. Even in England cases of oppression occur, but there is a note of warning uttered by the press and by that floating public opinion which none can define or escape, and this is sufficient to prevent much mischief ; but in Ireland class has been against class for centuries, and especially during the great absenteeism of this century. An Irish landlord does with pride what an English landlord could not do, till low pricesand bad crops have ruined thousands of Irish as well as English farmers, but we don't hear of rebates of Irish rent, and we do hear of pitiable cases of enforcing rent by means of armed constabulary whose hearts have melted at their own deeds. The twaddle of the House of Lords is cold comfort for tenants who' have reclaimed bog and waste, and built stables and fences, and put their savings into more and more reclamation and improvement till the famine seasons prevent them from paying rent, and then the landlords evict them. We lay aside all quibbles about l io-hts of property and freedom of contract, in face of the great fact of Irish depopulation. No land system that drives out three millions of people as enemies and leaves five millions in misery can be good. That one fact condemns the Irish land system enough, and looking at the matter as Englishmen, if we must choose between 8,000 landlords and 3,000,000 peasants, we prefer to keep the peasants. There is hardly a more wasteful, useless citizen than the average Irish squireen, and small landlords and large, though they may differ in degrees, are 'alike responsible for the evil system which they have built, and which we are now upholding with 21,000 troops and 11,000 armed constables We English taxpayers don't care to bear the burden, danger and disgi ace of the Irish landlords. If we left them to bear them themselves the Irish land question would find a rough remedy, and we cannot patiently see English landowners, with whose system we are not satisfied, joining with Irish landlords to make us maintain a system that we detest. All landlords in dealing with the people are apt to forget that the value of land comes from the people, and the people have a right to make laws for its disposal. Without people land is wilderness, and the people are as much a necessity for the land as the land for the people. And yet while Irish depopulation and discontent disgrace us before Europe, so that Turks can call lieland our Bulgaria, and Russians can point to it as our Poland, the landlords think there is not enough of either. They have the effrontery to propose that depopulation shall go on, and that the English ratepayer shall pay for it in order that they may extinguish tenant rights, and although discontent has reached such a pitch that their own lives are not safe, yet their course is to refuse the small concessions required by Government, and then to call on it for more soldiers and more police to put down the agitation raised by themselves. We do not wonder at Irish tenant* combining to refuse all farms where unjust evictions have taken place. This is perfectly right, and considering how they combined and succeeded under O'Connell, we hope they may combine and succeed under some equally patriotic leader. But under O'Connell they combined for Catholic Emancipation, which, when obtained could not be lost. The success of combination against high rents and wrongful evictions can be only temporary unless the land system be changed. At present, however, it is having its effect, and landlords don t like it. Their property is fast going down in. value, and after another year s experience they may be glad to accept a far more radical change than the protection to tenants which the House of Lords has for the nonce lepulsed. At all events we English taxpayers are weary of their present system, and if Mr. Gladstone will bring in a bill to abolish primogeniture, entails, and fictitious estates of the unborn, to impose a special source of national tax on Irish rents as a source of national danger, and a full tax on Irish wastes (increasing by 40,000 acres a year), according to the rents which freehold tenants would pay for them, then English Radicals will eagerly support his remedies for Ireland with a full assurance that England will soon share the advantage.