MR. MICHAEL DAVITT AND MR. HENRY GEORGE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 47, 21 March 1884, Page 19

MR. MICHAEL DAVITT AND MR. HENRY GEORGE.

In the Pall Mall Gazette of the 18th January a letter appeared signed" An Irish Nationalist," attacking Mr. Henry George's theories on the land question. The following reply is from Mr. Michael Davitt : — Sir,— Under the above heading you insert a letter in yesterday's issue of your paper, in which a correspondent, signing himself "An Irish Nationalist," either ignorantly or intentionally misrepresents my position towards the Irish tentant-farmers. Were it not that his unfounded statement, that I propose to " practically confiscate the tenant's interest in order to buy out the. vested interest of the landlord," has been copied into the Irish Press, I should not trouble you by noticing the attacks of anonymous opponents. My views on the question of " purchase " are so well known in Ireland that they need no elaboration in this letter. I have not proposed that the tenantfarmer should purchase from the landlord at any price. I sketched a plan some two years ago by which the interest of the tenant should be separated from the " prairie value " interest of the landlord, which English law recognises as his, and (" since it is out of the question to propose confiscation at present," in the language of your correspondent), leaving to the former what was his to enjoy, I proposed that the English Government should arrange with its landlord garrison the terms for the surrender of the land of Ireland to the Irish nation, and that it could do this out of the imperial taxation, to which Ireland contributed more than her due share. The plan was not a very scientific one, I admit ; but it proposed the very reverse of what your correspondent charges to my intention. As the fine Roman hand of " An Irish Nationalist " is easily recognised as that of a gentleman who finds it more convenient to attack Mr. George and misrepresents me than to embarrass a Liberal-Eadical party by renewed agitation in Ireland, it would be a waste of your valuable space for me to deal at any length with a writer who still further illustrates his consistency by accepting both purchase and confiscation for the establishment of something which he does not care to name. Just a word with reference to Mr. George and Ireland. Long before " Progress and Poverty " was thought of a national land pioprietary obtained in Ireland. Its records are in our history and its traditions are living, and have lived, in a never-ceasing struggle by the Irish people against class or individual ownership of the soil. It was this fact, and the justice of such a system, with ita regard for natural and national lights, which inspired Fenton Lalor to agitate national proprietary in 1848 ; and the cry of " The Land for the People," which was raised again in Ireland in 1879— before George or his book had yet crossed the Atlantic — proclaimed that the old national land system of the Celtic race was still the cherished aspiration of an Irish peasantry. If "An Irish Nationalist" honestly doubts this, or desires to test whether or not " the great mass oE Irish nationalists repudiate " tny advocacy of national as against peasantry proprietary, will he, or any other Irish

Nationalist" holding like opinions, put the matter to a test by a direct appeal to any meeting of Nationalists in any part of Ireland, England, or Scotland 1 It is beside the auestion to talk about Mr. George haying no following among Irishmen, tfo effort has been made, nor is there need or necessity of making any, for the organising of any such following. Mr. George is a propagandist, not a politician or a party man, " with an axe to grind," as your correspondent dishonestly asserts ; and as such I know that he is appreciated as much by Irishmen (who are not very concerned about Mr. George's inconvenience to the Radical Caucus party in England) as by liny other nationality to whose cause his sympathies are given. There is no room in Ireland for rival land reform movements while landlordism is still powerful enough to rob and t) evict our people ; but, that system once pulled down, neither will there be much chance for extending toleration to a new development or an expansion of the same system, and the creation of another garrison class of petty landlords as the "West-British conservators of an alien Government, which would guarantee them in return the absolute ownership of the soil of Ireland. — I am, sir, your obedient servant, January 19. Michael Davitt.