THE LANDLORDS MEETING.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 12, 11 July 1884, Page 7

THE LANDLORDS MEETING.

(The Nation, May 24.)

Most of the main features of the distressed landlords' meeting in the Rotundo towards the close of last week are calculated to excite simply unbounded laughter. The paucity of the attendance, in spite of the most persevering and gigantic efforts to get together a large crowd ; the alternate bragging and mendicant appeals of the chief speakers ; the rattling of the tin box to gather in the expenses of the assembly, and^the failure of the greater part of the audience to put a single coin into it— all this was enough to make the mere spectator smile in utter contempt. The meeting was, in fact, -virtually a throwing up of the sponge on the part of the landlords, a confession of ultimate failure in their long contest with the Irish people, a cry for mercy from a beaten though still vicious faction. Regarding it as such, we cannot ourselves pretend that we are much grieved, nor can we conceal the opinion that the feelings of the mass of the Irish people are like our own. The landlords have gone so far in pursuance of their diabolical policy, and still show in so many ways their hostility to the popular interests, that even their most piteous tales awaken not compassion bnt satisfaction that a band of brutal enemies of everything which the Irish people hold dear have at, last been brought to their knees. The most laughable thing about the latest meeting of the distressed landlords is not, however, its ghastly failure in point of size, nor the mendicant tone of the speakers, nor the valiant proposal for the creation of a "war-fund," nor the ineffectual rattling of the tin bos at the door, but the general character of the suggestions offered to the Government apropos, of the promised Purchase Bill. Finding their estates unsaleable, the assembled magnates, substantially and in effect, asked the Government to make them saleable 1 The idiotcy of this proposal is amazing. Supposing that the Government wera to go bo far as to declare that a certain value shall attach to the feesimple of every landed property in Ireland, and were to offer every tenant in Ireland the amplest facilities for purchasing his holding at a certain fixed price, how far would tbo landlords' position be improved if the tenants still declined, as they probably would decline, to buy at that price? Obviously, not to the extent of a hair's breadth. The truth is, the defeated rackrenters forget the essential facts of the case. They forget that several concurrent circumstances, not one of which can be controlled by any artficial means at all likely to be adopted, have bronght the land market in Ireland to its present condition. The depression in agriculture, the abolition of the landlords' power.to increase rents at will, and the reduction of the robbing gang to the status of mere rentchargers without social or political in* fluence, have all taken away the fictitious value which landownership possessed in the ante-Land League days ; and, consequently, until the agricultural depression has been succeeded by prosperity, until the power of unlimited rackrenting is revived, and the landlords regain their old political influence, to think of raising the value of ownership to its old figure would be as absurd as to expect water to flow up an incline. * :_*-, It is well to be perfectly frank with the landlords. The straits to which they are now reduced rejoice the hearts of the Irish people, and the Irish people, of whom the tenantry of Ireland are a large portion, have no desire whatever to see them rescued from their present embarrassment. Quite the reverse. The tenantry will be doubly careful, therefore, before falling in with any purchase scheme, however it may seem to favour their interests, which the Government may propose. They will not be entrapped by the offsr of the whole purchase-money, of a low rate of interest, and of along time in which to pay back ;!none of these inducements will tempt them for an instant to pay for their lands more than they are worth, or to pay anything at all for their, own improvements. A steady perseverance in this policy may cause the ruin of the landlord class,; but that cannot be helped, and moreover, as we have intimated, it is a catastrophe which no one outside that class itself will feel the slightest inclination to bewail.